Saving from Monkeys (18 page)

Chase's troubled expression faded as he felt Nan's pulse and lifted her wrist to look at the, now barely discernible, twitches. "Nice work, guys," he said approvingly. "She's resting pretty peacefully now."

"Great." I felt like something inside had cracked, a vital something that had been holding back a whole wall of terrified grief. With this proclamation that we'd soothed some of Nan's distress, I could almost hear the last of my resolve being ripped apart and I jumped to my feet. "I have to...uh...
excuse me."

And I ran from the room, bolting like I'd wanted to since I'd first seen what was left of my hero.

I barrelled down the corridor, wanting to be far, far away from Nan's room when I finally let loose. I needed to howl and scream and vent, but I wouldn't let myself go until I knew for sure some conscious part of Nan's damaged brain wouldn't be able to hear me.

"Rox!"

I heard Elliot's shout as I made it out into the foyer, and stopped dead, my breath coming in shorter and more painful pants as the choked feeling in my chest grew.

And then his arms grabbed me from behind, pinning me back against his chest and, in that moment, I lost it.
  My knees sagged, but he supported me, holding me up as I started to cry in earnest.

"I know," I heard Elliot murmur against my hair. "I know, Rox. God, I'm so sorry."

I turned then, clutching fistfuls of his jacket for purchase and burying my face in against his neck as I shook.

I had worked so hard to keep it together when we'd been in her room. I'd wanted so much to take away Nan's pain, but I was done being brave.
My tears slid down his throat, making his t-shirt damp beneath my cheek, but Elliot just kept stroking my hair, his lips moving against my forehead as he muttered words of comfort I was too far gone to hear.

I'd scoured the Sinclair house from top to bottom; I had shoved a mop, a broom, a duster or a vacuum into every last centimetre of it, and the only good thing I'd found there was in the process of leaving it.
Permanently.

I couldn't stand it. It was too unfair and it hurt too damn much.

I don't know how long I poured it all out on Elliot, it felt like my heart was breaking and I was fairly sure no-one had developed a measure for exactly how long that took. Slowly, however, I exhausted myself; my choked sobs stuttering until I was just leaning weakly against him my head throbbing with more tears I was too tired to cry out.

Well then...

I slowly loosened my grip on Elliot, my fingers stiff from how desperately I'd been clutching at him. I wasn't embarrassed exactly, but now I was coming out of my sort of hysteria, I was certainly very aware of how raw I felt pressed up against him.

"You alright?"
I heard him ask, and I snorted unattractively.

"No," I croaked, wiping at my slick cheeks with my sleeves.

I pulled back, and he let me go until only the massive wet patch on the front of his t-shirt showed where I'd been. Seeing the direction of my gaze, he looked down at the stain and shrugged. "I'm definitely going to win the morbid wet t-shirt competition tonight."

I rewarded his weak attempt at humour with a similarly weak smile, before suddenly remembering what lay beneath his soggy t-shirt and widening my watery eyes in horror.

"I forgot you're an opal!" I exclaimed, although it came out as little more than a gurgle. "I shouldn't have grabbed you like that. Did I hurt you?"

He stared at me for a moment and then, with a wry shake of his head, he took a couple of steps back and sank down onto the stairs.

"Only my pride," he grimaced as, after only the slightest pause, I joined him. "
I
should've been the one to...anyway, thanks. For stepping up back there, I mean. I didn't know...I couldn't..."

It was a bit easier for me, I realised then. I hadn't wanted to, but breaking down and crying like that had probably been good for me. I felt drained, but drained felt a bit better than when my skin had felt tight from holding in all the awfulness. Elliot was clearly still working hard to hold it together, surely just setting himself up for a bigger crash later. I didn't want to crack him before he'd got there on his own, however, so I didn't say anything.

We fell into as comfortable a silence as could be expected, and I was just starting to think about girding myself into going back into Nan's room when Elliot said quietly, "Did you mean what you said about knowing what happened?" It was a pretty loose question, but obviously, I knew exactly what he was talking about.

I tucked my legs up onto the step I was sitting on and wrapped my arms around them, hunching myself into a ball as I said, "Yeah."

"But you're not going to tell me."

It wasn't a question, but I answered him anyway.
"I'll tell you when it starts mattering again."

"Fair enough."

"Rox?"

Elliot and I
both looked up to see my mum coming down the stairs as she had when we'd first arrived. It wasn't the first time I'd lent some credence to the idea that she had a sort of 'foyer' sensor and knew whenever someone was down there.

We
scrambled to our feet, almost as if we'd been caught doing something wrong, an impression reinforced as I swiped at my face again trying to hide what had just gone down.

"Mrs Sinclair just said that you were planning to stay here?" My mum's expression was neutral, she was in proper 'staff' mode and I started towards her up the stairs, confused by this cool façade.

Was she mad that I was staying here? Was she upset that I wasn't going home with her? I hadn't really thought about that when I'd accepted Elliot's invitation. Maybe she'd been looking forward to spending that time with me?

"Yes, I-"

"Which bedroom should I make up?"

"Mum!" I exclaimed, absolutely horrified by the question. "Don't be stupid, I'll make it up myself, it's not like I don't know where the sheets are."

Clearly sensing, as I had, that something was going on with my mum, Elliot cleared his throat, interrupting us to say, "I'm going to go back in and sit with Nan. I'll catch up with you later."

I was thankful to him for bowing out, and shot him a quick look to tell him so. He acknowledged the look with a quick nod, and then, in what I recognised as an incredibly brave move, he turned to go back to Nan's room on his own.

As he went out of sight I turned, expecting my mum to start talking normally now it was just the two of us. Instead, she started back up the stairs and, as I hurried up after her, I realised she was on her way to the airing cupboard, presumably to come good on her threat to make up my bed for me.

I hadn't let her do things like that for me even as a kid and there was no way I was going to let her start now. To this end, I edged my way past her in the corridor, beating her to the cupboard and starting to rummage around for the things I'd need. She came up beside me as I tried to pick out a set of the simplest sheets, thwarted by the fact that they were all of the most ridiculously high quality.

"What's wrong, Mum?" I asked lowly as I gathered up the manchester and she stood mutely by my shoulder.

"I don't like this."

Instantly I felt stupid for asking such a dumb question, dumb and a little bit ashamed that I hadn't thought that Nan's deterioration would affect my mum too.

"I know," my tone softened and I put a hand on her arm in commiseration. "It's really hard. Seeing Nan like that, well..." I gestured towards my face where I had no doubt there was still more than enough evidence of my breakdown in the foyer. "It's tough."

My mum pursed her lips, but wouldn't say anything until we'd made our way, by silent agreement, into the smallest guest bedroom a couple of doors down. Following the trend of the rest of the house, the room was sparsely furnished with just a bare bed in the middle flanked by two bedside tables and opposite a door to the obligatory en-suite. There were no paintings on the pale walls or items on the tables; it was like a very posh monk's chambers.

"Obviously
Nan's condition is upsetting," Mum finally said as she closed the door behind us. "But that's not what's concerning me now."

"No?" I dumped the bedding onto the mattress and we both automatically reached for the bottom sheet.

Again, Mum didn't answer straight away, she concentrated on tucking the elasticised corners in on her side and, as I did the same on mine, I watched her anxiously. What was going on?

"It's Elliot asking you to stay here, that's what's worrying me."

"Oh." In my surprise I let the corner I was holding go and it sprung away from me with what I could only describe as fiendish delight. Remembering just how much making up beds had annoyed me when this was my job, I clambered after the escaped sheet end. "I'm really sorry," I said as I recaptured the corner and shuffled back to the edge of the bed. "I know I haven't been home in a while and it's kind of cheeky to come back and then not even stay with you, but-"

"No, Rox."
I looked up, startled by the sharpness of her tone and, obviously seeing my surprise, she took a little breath before she added, "I'm worried about the precedent Elliot asking you to stay might create."

"Precedent?"
I repeated blankly, really having no idea what she meant and finding that that annoyed me given that there was other, more important, stuff going on. "I don't think Sinclair has an abundance of beloved family members suffering strokes, does he? And, even if he does, it's not like I'd stay here for any of them; it's Nan I care about."

"The Sinclair family is my employer, and they've been
good to us," Mum continued, ignoring my logic and heading off on a tangent all of her own. "But we're not like them, Rox."

As if, after everything, this would be news to me!

"I'm more than aware of that," my voice rose accusingly.

"Then you should also know that they're used to getting what they want." She was looking at me meaningfully now, but I was still in the dark until she started saying, "Your father-" and I recoiled.

"J
esus, Mum!" I took a couple of steps back, completely horrified as I pieced together what she was telling me. "Elliot is not like
that
guy."

I neve
r called my biological father 'Dad' or anything like that; there’d never been any reason to, it's not like I'd ever met him.

A few years ago, through the wonders of the internet, I'd found out where he worked and gone to sit outside his office building
one lunch time. For my efforts, I'd caught a glimpse of a thoroughly uninspiring middle aged guy who looked nothing like me, but who I knew to be Mum's old crush from a photo she'd shown me.

He'd been holding a coffee take away cup from a shop that proudly proclaimed itself to be organic and other kinds of la-di-dah healthy (read: expensive), but was tipping in generic sugar sachets by the fistful. I think that sugar really sealed the deal for me, the guy was a moron, and I wanted nothing to do with him.

Maybe I was unusual, but this quick peek had been more than enough for me and I certainly didn't harbour any 'oh, if only I had a daddy' issues. My mum knew this and so I found that I was actually kind of cross at her for bringing him up, especially when I was recovering from a massive emotional smack to the face. A smack to the face Elliot had been the one to see me through, by the way.

"Wha
t?" I asked sarcastically. "You think Elliot's asked me to stay in the big house in the hopes of
seducing
me?"

"Not as simplistically as that," my mum was clearly not going to be mocked out of her opinion. "I just think it presents a temptation and puts you in a very awkward situation."

"More awkward than this conversation?" I asked disbelievingly. "Honestly, Mum, Elliot and I haven't had sex in months, and if you're worried about me getting pregnant, I promise we used protection."

"I'm being serious."

It was on the tip of my tongue to retort 'me too!' but I stopped myself just in time. This whole thing was stupid enough without me adding petrol to her crazy flame. To that end, I forced myself to sit down on the edge of the bed and say, semi-reasonably, "After so many years of 'stick with Elliot, he can take you far', this feels pretty conflicting."

"Yes, t
ake you far at that university of yours," she clarified huffily. "He can introduce you to people and experiences and help you network in a place that neither of us are used to. You’ll need that in the future."

"So
Elliot’s useful to my, currently non-existent career, but unsafe to sleep in the same house as?" She didn't nod or anything, but I could see that, yes, that was pretty much the gist of it.

It was the final straw after everything that had already gone down that day and I jumped back to my feet almost shouting,
"Nan is dying! Maybe that doesn't mean anything to you, but it does to me and Elliot. And, trust me, it's not some sexy mood it's put us in. Besides, I'd never let myself be taken advantage of like-" I stopped suddenly, but it was too late.

"Like I did?" She asked archly
.