Page 38 of The Edge of Always

Chapter Ten

The first thing Luna heard the next morning was her mum laughing in the garden. Her shriek was followed by the chortle of Eyebrow Clive.

Mae’s bed was next to the window. She pushed the curtain aside a little to get a look at the garden. ‘Jesus, she still has her rollers in.’

‘Poor Dad.’

‘Does he care, though? He’d rather spend time with his models than her. Not that I blame him for that.’

‘Maybe.’ Luna thought of Dad laughing when her mum had described Eyebrow Clive as virile.

She sighed and flopped back on the bed. ‘It’s 9am – we’d better get dressed if we’re setting off for the dunes in an hour.’ Luna started and tried to force herself to move. She was so sleepy. All the time. Every morning she didn’t want to get out of bed. She hated getting up. It just felt so unfair.

‘Remember,’ she told Mae, from where she was still lying in bed, ‘no more Man Plan.’

Mae, also still in bed, rolled her eyes. ‘You’ve already said. Personally, I thought it was going great.’

‘Emmett has barely spoken to me.’

‘That’s the beauty of the plan!’ Mae launched herself out of bed as their mum laughed again. ‘First, you make him angry, then that anger jolts him into realising that the reason he’s angry is because he’s madly in love with you. It’s a classic. It’s working perfectly.’

‘You are literally evil. It’s terrifying. But I mean it, no more plan.’

‘Okay, fine.’

There was an especially loud shriek from the garden. Luna had never heard their Mum laugh like that with them or their dad. Mae must have been thinking the same thing because she said, ‘Must have been shit, being born in a time when it was expected that you had a family and kids, even if you didn’t really want them.’

Mae rarely said anything sympathetic about their mum, so Luna was taken aback.

‘I know.’

As quickly as the sympathy came though, it began to retreat. Replaced instead with one of the dark negative emotions that came so easily to her these days. The darkness clouded her vision and made Luna feel like she didn’t quite have a handle on her own brain.

‘Let’s go have breakfast with Dad,’ she said on impulse, finally extracting her bikini and black denim shorts from the mess of her holdall. She tugged out a grey Nirvana T-shirt that someone had given away for free. Really, it was all just quite dark at the moment.

They were just about to leave for the dunes, having promised their dad that they’d go on the puffin trip tomorrow when their mum came in the back door through to the tiny cottage kitchen.

‘Where are you off to, girls?’ she asked. Luna felt guilty. She didn’t even know why she felt guilty.

‘We’re just going to the dunes with Emmett, and the others,’ Mae answered.

Their mum’s lips turned down. ‘Well, make sure you’re back for three.’

Luna was confused.

‘Why, what’s happening at three?’

‘We’re interviewing some potential maths tutors.’

Everyone started to talk at once – the general theme: outrage. Aside from their dad, who said, ‘I didn’t know you’d found some local chaps.’

‘It’s sexist, Michael, to assume that they’re all men.’

‘Are they men?’ Mae asked.

‘Yes, but that’s not the point. We can’t take a summer off, Luna, not passing Maths is not an option.’

‘Mum, will you chill out,’ Mae said and then laughed. It was a ridiculous concept. ‘She didn’t flunk it really bad. Getting a D is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. There are loads of grades after a D… E, F, G, U.’