Page 51 of Two Wrongs
‘But did you let himput it in?’
‘Away with you, you dirty wee scrubber.’
‘So,’ Nat asks, once she’s stopped sniggering. ‘Same time tomorrow night? Same pizza joint?’
‘Aye, of course,’ Ted responds.
‘You in, or have you somewhere else to sneak off to?’ she asks me.
‘I wasn’t sneaking.’
‘No, of course not. You’re the picture of innocence, the soul of transparency.’Looks like Nat missed her calling. With her theatrics, she should’ve been on stage.‘Because you’ve got nothing to hide, have you?’
I narrow my gaze. ‘Why don’t you just... ’
‘Piss off, shall I?’ God knows where she produces it from, but Nat begins rattling a money box, that appears to be made of tin, under my nose. ‘My swear envelope was getting full,’ she says with a smirk. ‘It’s a wonder the air in here isn’t blue!’
‘Yes, why don’t you do just that,’ I respond with as much dignity as I can muster... while also swallowing a million very rude words. ‘I’m going upstairs.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ivy
The questionof when to announce my current state is more or less taken out of my hands the following week when my lack of appetite becomes something else entirely.
I begin to vomit.
Morning sickness, my bum.
Try all day sickness.
Trycatching-a-whiff-of-something-that-turns-into-projectile-yellow-green-goosickness.
Then try hiding it from everyone. Staff. Friends. Clients who look at you like you’re infectious when you make a run for it, slipping and sliding across the wooden salon floor.
It’s Nat who, in the kitchen, takes me to one side, suggesting I find my way to tell people, so they don’t look at me like I’m carrying the plague.
So, I do. I tell Mac, my brother, first, who looks like he’d rather be hearing that I do have the plague and that I’m dying from it.
‘Holy fuck.’
The first words out of his mouth are hardly reassuring. In fact, they sound like a plea for mercy. There’s no enveloping hug in response, just a stark astonishment.
‘What are you gonna tell the mother-monster?’ he manages shortly afterwards.
Our mother isn’t really a monster. She’s just a wee bit overbearing. Thankfully, she and my father are on the other side of the world, living in a motorhome while travelling the length and breadth of Australia. They’d originally planned to make their trip based in the States, but after I moved back to Scotland, they’d decided on Australia instead.
‘Well, what I’llnotbe telling her is that this is the result of a one-night stand.’ My brother winced like I’d smacked him over the head. ‘Don’t start that with me,’ I’d responded with a clear warning in my tone. ‘I’ve hadyearsof girls crying on my shoulder over you. You think they spared me the gory details?’
‘I can’nae be held responsible for other people.’ He shook his head with vehemence.
‘And you tried to get into the knickers of my best friend—that’s like sanctimonious or something.’ I had known before I’d closed my mouth, I’d gotten it wrong. Again.
‘Definitely or something.’
‘Sacrilegious—that’s it!’
‘Come on! I was drunk—and young. And you,’ he’d said, pointing a finger at me, ‘promised you’d never mention it again.’
