Chapter Four
S ophie put plates down on the table.
“Thanks, love,” said her dad. “You finish this month’s invoices?”
“Yes,” she said, taking a seat beside her dad and opposite her brother. “But something isn’t adding up.”
“What’s that then?” asked her dad, digging into his beans on toast.
“If I knew that, it wouldn’t be a problem,” Sophie said. “It looks like there’s more money coming in than invoices going out, which doesn’t make sense, I’ll have a look at it again tomorrow.”
“Doesn’t sound like a bad thing, that,” Gio said. “Better than invoices going out and no money coming in.”
“Yeah, it all needs to add up though,” said Sophie picking up her fork.
Once, she’d wanted to do something else. She’d seen herself wearing a smart suit, maybe some heels, wearing her long dark hair up in a bun. Maybe even being daring and cool like those women she saw on TV. Sort of like in Industry , but with less sex and more accounting. Not no sex, just not every night. A girl needed her beauty sleep after all.
And then… Well, then she’d graduated and come home and just sort of not left again.
College had been fun, or fun enough. She’d worked hard, made some friends, lost her virginity, ticked all the little boxes that students were supposed to tick. It was after college that had proven to be the issue.
It wasn’t so much that she thought her dad and brother would fade away without her. It was more that they needed her. She could see that. Could see that their lives were better with her in them. For the most part, she didn’t resent that. Not really. It wasn’t like she’d been flooded with offers from fancy companies in the city or anything.
Wearing her jeans and Adidas to a dirty garage every day wasn’t quite the dream, though. Nor was picking through oil-stained receipts and booking appointments for tire rotations.
“Have a look and see that things add up,” her dad was saying.
“Yeah, I will,” she said.
She sniffed and then put her fork down.
Alright, so she wasn’t exactly living the dream. But her life was good. She had friends; she had a job; she was paid a fair wage. Jules was right, though. If she wanted to be independent, she needed to lay down a few ground rules.
“There’s something I want to talk about.”
“What’s that, love?” asked her dad, busy forking beans onto bread. “If it’s a raise, you’ll have to wait until the new year.”
“Why should she get a raise and not me?” Gio complained.
Their father glared at him. “Did I say you wouldn’t?” he said. “If business keeps going well, then the two of you will get a raise come the new year. But I’m not promising anything right now.”
“Sweet, thanks dad,” said Gio.
“I don’t want to talk about raises,” said Sophie.
“The last time you said you wanted to talk about something, you got all pale and sick looking,” Gio said.
“Because I was about to tell two macho men that I was gay,” Sophie said. “So, pretty understandable, don’t you think?”
Gio snorted. “As if we’d care. You can love who you like as long as you’re happy, end of story.” He narrowed his eyes and looked at her. “Anyone been giving you gip about it? Want me to give anyone a seeing to?”
Sophie sighed. This was part of the problem. Laying down boundaries was all very well, but it involved actually being listened to. More than that, she knew that Gio was deadly serious in everything he’d just said. He might be a lumbering idiot at times, but he adored her and would defend her to the death.
“No punching,” she said. She took a deep breath. “But I would like a bit more independence.”
Her dad looked at her. “How do you mean?”
“I mean…”
“You want to move out?” Gio asked. “But then you wouldn’t be able to save any money.”
“And you wouldn’t have dinner on the table every night,” Sophie said.
“Will you listen to the girl?” said their dad.
“Woman,” Sophie corrected. “I’m a woman, not a girl. And I’d like to go on dates unmolested.”
Her dad turned his attention to Gio. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” Gio protested. “I was just having a drink at the pub. It’s not my fault she was on a date there.”
Her father turned back to her. “See? Coincidence, that’s all.”
“Right,” said Sophie. It wasn’t like she could argue with that. She cleared her throat again. “Alright, I don’t want the two of you poking your noses into my dating life.”
“We don’t,” started Gio.
“And,” Sophie said, glaring at him. “And I don’t want to cook dinner every night.”
Her dad nodded. “Alright then. Gio, you cook twice a week.”
Gio frowned. “But—”
“No buts. Soph’s right. She shouldn’t be doing all the work. You cook twice a week.” He looked at Sophie. “As for dating, well, there’s no promises there. You’re a young woman and the world isn’t always safe. I won’t apologize for making sure that you’re not in any trouble.”
“At the local pub?” Sophie asked.
“Wherever you are,” said her dad with finality. “You might be a woman, but you’re also my girl and I’d never forgive myself if something happened to you. Gio too. We’re just looking out for you.”
“Right,” Gio said.
Sophie shook her head and picked her fork up again. There was no point in this conversation, nothing was going to change.
“IT’S ALRIGHT FOR you,” she said to Jules an hour later, perched on a bar stool with a coke in front of her. “You’re all moved out and everything.”
“Whatever makes you think that grandpa Jim was any better than your dad?” Jules asked. She and her sister had grown up with their grandfather, a formidable and slightly dodgy man who now resided in the Whitebridge Residential Center, which was a posh way of saying an old folk’s home.
“What did you and Amelia do about it, then?” asked Sophie.
Jules shrugged. “We got about. Grand-dad doesn’t have eyes in the back of his head.”
“And he doesn’t have a minion to do his bidding,” Sophie said.
Jules laughed. “Gio looks nothing like a minion. Besides, he’s not here now, is he?”
“He doesn’t need to be,” said Sophie. She nodded toward a pair of men in the corner. “Stu and Del are there. If I do anything, word’ll get back to Gio soon enough.”
“Well, you are sitting in a public place,” said Jules.
“Who’s sitting in a public place?” Amelia, Jules’s older sister, appeared. “And I’ll have a half, please.”
“I am,” Sophie said.
“And what’s so wrong with that?” asked Amelia. Sophie sighed and explained her woes to Amelia, who laughed. “You’re just not doing things right,” she said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Amelia looked at Jules and winked. “Remember the youth club?” she asked.
“What youth club?” asked Sophie.
“Exactly,” said Amelia. “Whenever grand-dad Jim used to ask where we were off out to, we told him the youth club. He was always dead satisfied with that. Thought it was good for us to socialize, didn’t he, Jules?”
“He did,” agreed Jules.
“But… we never had a youth club, did we?” Sophie said.
“Depends on how you look at things,” said Amelia. “I mean, technically, maybe not. But what’s a youth club? A group of young people getting together to socialize, right?”
“In other words, the two of you going out with your friends,” Sophie said, finally cottoning on.
“It wasn’t exactly lying,” said Jules.
“Plus, it was one place where he definitely wasn’t going to follow us,” said Amelia. “I mean, me and Cass went to the cinema once and half-way through the film I heard crunching and turned around to see grand-dad Jim sitting there trying to get popcorn out of his false teeth.”
“I think what Am’s saying is that if you want a bit more privacy, maybe you should be planning things in places where your dad and brother aren’t going to be watching you,” said Jules.
“Don’t forget all of Gio’s friends in that equation,” Sophie said. She took a drink of her coke. “Dunno. Short of having a gynecologist appointment once a week, I can’t think of anywhere that they won’t be to keep an eye on me.”
Jules frowned for a minute and then beamed, throwing her bar towel over her shoulder. “Can you not?” she asked.
“I just said I couldn’t,” said Sophie.
“Me neither,” said Amelia, accepting her beer from Jules.
“Seriously? Do neither of you listen to a word I say?” grumbled Jules. “Do you not go on the Whitebridge website? Read the ads on the board outside the school? Honestly, how do either of you ever know what’s going on around here?”
“Dunno,” said Amelia cheerfully. “Cass usually tells me anything I need to know. Cheers for the beer, Jules. Catch you later, Soph.” She went back to the table she was sharing with her best friend and business partner, Cass.
“Well then?” Jules asked Sophie.
And Sophie had a sudden flash of memory. “Right, you were just telling me at lunchtime about Billy. But… a choir? Really?”
“Think about it,” said Jules, leaning on the bar. “Your brother and his friends aren’t likely to join, are they? It’s a safe place, so no one’s going to worry about you being there. And if some nights you don’t quite end up at rehearsal and end up, say, on a date or something, no one will suspect a thing, will they?”
“But… don’t you have to be able to sing?” asked Sophie.
“Everyone can sing,” Jules said with authority. “Billy was telling me that just this morning. She says that no one thinks they can, but everyone carries a beautiful instrument with them every day. Or something like that.”
“Yeah, I’m not convinced.”
“So?” asked Jules. “If you don’t like singing, just mouth the words, it’ll be alright. And I’ll be there. There’ll be loads of people, I’m sure.” She winked at Sophie. “No brothers, but there might be the odd attractive woman, you never know.”
“In a Whitebridge choir?” scoffed Sophie.
“Oy, there’s plenty of attractive women in town.”
“Yeah, and they’re all taken,” said Sophie.
Jules rolled her eyes. “Listen, are you coming tomorrow or not?”
Sophie sighed and glanced over to where Stu and Del were guffawing at something on one of their phones. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I’ll be there.”