Chapter 3

      The smell of roast yumminess hit me as soon as I opened the front door. I stood still and sniffed like a Bisto kid, picking up traces of chicken and spuds and gravy. My mouth watered in response—between the party games and the singing and the mud and the potentially life-changing encounter with Jack Duncan, I’d completely forgotten to eat all day.

      My empty tummy was rumbling in a very un-ladylike way, and I sighed with happiness. Asking Ruby to drop me off at my mum and dad’s was definitely a very sensible decision.

      It hadn’t been just for the food—although my mum was a boss cook and that was a definite bonus—it had been for the company. After such a weird day, I needed comfort. I needed to be with people who I knew loved me, and appreciated me, and cared about me. I needed to be with my family.

      The door to the living room opened and my little brother Luke popped his head around the frame.

      ‘What’s up, fart face?’ he said, before rugby tackling me to the floor.

      I kicked him in the head with one bare, muddy foot, and managed to escape from his grip. Luke is eighteen, and already over six-foot tall. He’d inherited some sporty gene that had completely skipped me, and played football, rugby, and took part in swimming contests. He also did mixed martial arts, and had a black belt in being an irritating knob head.

      I staggered upright, not exactly feeling the warm glow of family love I was hoping for, and gave him another kick in the ribs. He made pretend ‘oof’ noises and rolled around on the hallway carpet like he was having a heart attack.

      ‘I’m going for a shower!’ I yelled, loud enough for my mum to hear me. She’d be in the kitchen, elbow deep in potato peel and surrounded by steam. I heard her shout back: ‘Okay, love! Tea will be ready in ten!’

      Leaving Luke in a heap of fake pain, I ran up the stairs, and into the familiar bedroom that had been mine and my sister Becky’s until a year ago, when I’d decided—for some reason I can’t quite remember now—to move out.

      The house was one of those Tardis homes: it looked small on the outside, but it was big on the inside. There were three bedrooms—the biggest was Mum and Dad’s, Luke had the box room, and me and Becky had the medium-sized one. As I closed the door behind me, I felt swamped with relief. Everything here felt so … safe. The smells—plug-in air fresheners, cooking, Dad’s Old Spice—all meant ‘home’ to me.

      Luke had been campaigning to get the bigger room since I’d left and Becky had moved in with her boyfriend Sean. She probably wouldn’t be coming back, as she was three months pregnant with her first baby, but Mum and Dad had kept it just the way it used to be. I climbed up onto the top bunk—that was always hers, and we used to fight like cat and dog over it when we were kids. For some reason I still always felt like I’d scored a win when I managed to lie on it without her attacking me. Childish but true.

      I stared at the ceiling for a few minutes, listening to the voice of Michael Bublé floating up the stairs. My mum Michelle bloody loved Michael Bublé. We’d bought her tickets to see him in concert for her fiftieth, and she practically passed out with excitement. Still, it could be worse. My nan was obsessed with Daniel O’Donnell (‘such a nice young man!’).

      The noises coming from my stomach told me it was time for food, so I dragged myself out of my pit and headed for the bathroom. As I got in the shower, I mentally prepared myself for the torture that was washing in a house that contained both dodgy plumbing and my evil brother Luke. This weird thing happened where if you flushed the downstairs loo, the shower water went freezing cold.

      I stepped under the spray and sure enough, straight away, heard the sound of the flush. I jumped back to avoid the chill factor, waiting a few seconds before I continued. It carried on like this for the whole event, but somehow I managed to wash my hair, clean up, and dress myself in some comfy tracky bottoms and one of my old T-shirts.

      By the time I got downstairs, everyone was ready, sitting around the old dining table at the back of the through lounge.

      ‘You little shit,’ I said, whacking Luke on the head as I walked past him to my chair.

      ‘What do you mean? I just had a floater!’ he said, smirking at me. Like I said, evil.

      My sister Becky was there, and I gave her a quick hug before I sat down. I hadn’t seen her for a week, which in our family was practically reason to file a missing person’s report. She looked a bit peaky, and only had a few slices of chicken breast on her plate, which she was pushing around with her fork. Not exactly glowing, but hopefully, it would get better.

      ‘So,’ said my mum, looking across the table at us all and smiling. ‘The whole clan is here.’

      ‘Better call the paramedics and put them on standby,’ added my dad Phil, pouring gravy over his mash.

      My dad is fifty-two, but looks a lot older—mainly because he lost all his hair when he was in his thirties. It never seemed to bother him, and he calls himself the Bald Eagle to make it all sound a bit more macho. He’s tall—everyone in our family is apart from my mum, who is technically some kind of midget—and carries his beer belly with as much pride as his lack of hair. He calls it his ‘Guinness Six Pack’.

      My mum is fifty-one, and tiny. She has dyed-black hair, and looks a bit like an energetic garden gnome. She’s always busy, my mum—with work, with us lot, with her own mum. I swear if she sat still for five minutes we’d all think she was ill. She couldn’t wait for Becky’s baby to arrive, just to give her even more to do.

      ‘So, how are you, Sis?’ I asked Becky, a bit worried about her.

      ‘Fat. Knackered. Puking up all day.’

      Ah. The joys of motherhood.

      Becky shut up after that, but I noticed my mum sneaking glances at her as we ate. She’d been through it all three times, obviously, but she was like Superwoman—she probably just gave birth to us in the middle of doing the laundry and carried right on with a hot wash.

      I was so busy stuffing my face that I didn’t hear when my dad asked me about the ‘gig’. He always called them ‘gigs’. I think it made him feel young and hip.

      ‘Earth to Jessy!’ said Luke, poking me in the side with the prongs of his gravy-covered fork. I yelped and looked at everyone, almost choking on my cabbage.

      ‘You seem a bit distracted, love,’ said Dad. ‘Anything up?’

      ‘What he means is, you look like a mental patient with that cabbage hanging out of your gob,’ said Luke.

      ‘Shut UP, you little fuck!’ I replied, kindly.

      ‘Language!’ said Mum and Dad at exactly the same time. Tea time with the Malones—it was always X-rated, no matter how much they tried. Served them right for having too many kids.

      I debated whether to tell them about Jack Duncan. I needed to talk to someone about it, but I wasn’t sure who. Ruby was distracted with the disgusting Keith. Becky was distracted with her morning sickness. Luke was distracted by being a complete tit.

      I had a sudden flash of yearning for Daniel, the boy who used to live next door. He’d moved away with his family not long after our concert, heading ‘down south’ (which could mean anything from Birmingham to Berkshire) with his parents, who’d inherited a small B&B by the seaside. We’d stayed in touch for a while, but that had faded when he went off to uni—studying something techy I never quite understood. I’d tried to find him since, usually when I was a bit pissed and feeling nostalgic, but he was untraceable—possibly the only twenty-two-year-old on the planet to not be on Facebook.

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