Page 26 of Kiss Me Like You Mean It

‘That is…’ I reach for the words, ‘a crime! Phoebe, that is an actual against-the-law crime!’

‘Pffft.’ Phoebe waves a dismissive hand. ‘It was an investment. You gotta spend money to make money.’

‘Where are you getting this stuff?’ I ask wearily.

‘You know… around.’ Phoebe keeps her answer vague, pushing her glasses up her nose. ‘I think you and me need to have a talk about your crypto wallet.’

‘I don’t have a crypto wallet.’

‘You don’t have a crypto wallet?’ She echoes me in disbelief before turning to Lee and making a face like can you believe this guy?

Lee makes a choking sound that could be a laugh.

‘And where were you when my daughter was committing grand larceny?’ I ask Magda, who has the decency to look guilty.

‘Phoebe did that without me knowing,’ she admits, ‘and I told her it was wrong. But the ticket was non-refundable so there was no point in not sending it to Lee. Plus,’ she adds gently, ‘she is your wife, Nico.’

My wife.

My wife.

The words echo in my head, and I can’t even begin to sort through the way they make me feel. I clear my throat. ‘How did you hide all this from me?’ I ask gruffly.

‘I deleted the emails afterwards,’ Phoebe shrugs, before taking a noisy slurp of her lemonade. ‘They’re probably in your trash folder.’

I pull my phone out, scroll through and find the entire exchange that ‘I’ apparently had with Lee. First, there’s her brisk, efficient laying out of the facts. Lee clearly kept a cooler head over this whole debacle than I did. Then there’s a reply from me.

‘Hashtag YOLO?’ I exhale a shaky sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan.

Magda looks proud. ‘Didn’t I do a great job getting into character? Throwing in some young person speak and all.’

Phoebe leans against me, reading the email over my shoulder and wrinkles her nose. ‘I tried to tell her that young people don’t say YOLO. And that she used ‘lol’ wrong.’

‘Lots of love!’ Magda insists.

‘Right.’ I rub my temple. I can definitely feel a stress headache coming on.

‘And I told her that trying to sound young was a dumb plan anyway because you’re actually really, really old,’ my daughter adds with devastating candour.

‘We were going to talk to Lee before you got back from Portland,’ Magda says. ‘Explain everything about—’

I get abruptly to my feet.

‘That’s enough. That’s…’ I trail off and take a deep breath.

Okay. So this is really happening. My daughter and her grandmother have basically kidnapped my best friend’s little sister and delivered her to me like some sort of mail order bride, and I am going to have to untangle this whole situation as best I can.

And also get a divorce, I suppose.

That is when we are interrupted by the frenzied sound of barking coming from the next room.

‘Oh, yeah. Suzy dropped Taco off,’ Phoebe announces unnecessarily, going over to open the door. ‘She says he tried to eat three of her socks and a plastic water bottle and he might be untrainable.’

The moment the doors open a small, sturdy whirlwind of fur erupts, heading straight for Lee.

‘Is that… a dog?’ Lee asks doubtfully.

Taco is, in fact, a dog – though one of indeterminate breed – who I adopted as part of a series of ill-advised parenting bribes about six months ago. He has a scruffy black and white coat, stubby legs and a long, barrel-shaped body. He also possesses oversized floppy ears, slightly bulging eyes and a squashed face. No one could describe him as an attractive creature, he has abominable manners, and zero respect for me.