CHAPTER 6
SHERIDAN
“Looks like this is us…” Myles mumbles as we pull into a gravel driveway.
Tall trees line the road and open up to a small private car park. Atop the crest of a low hill sits a wide single-level structure, clad in silver wood and grey slate. Something about it reminds me of a 70s bungalow, even though it’s much more modern and probably very minimal inside.
Myles pulls in beside Beau’s car—he and the girls are already trailing up the long pathway to the front door.
Hector is like dead weight in my arms so there’s little chance of him being able to walk by himself. I undo my seat belt and clutch him to my chest as I open the door and step out. I grab his dog bed out of the footwell and start making my way towards the cabin. I can hear the excitable sounds of my siblings and our friends around us now that we’ve arrived after a brief—yet rather tragic and unplanned—stop, but I can’t find it in me to get animated about it yet.
Quite frankly, I’m regretting coming on this stupid trip and it’s only been a couple of hours. I don’t know if my tether is long enough to withstand a week of Stavros’s idiocy, along with trying to keep my dog as calm as possible while in an unfamiliar environment. He’s not used to going away overnight, unless it’s to Mum and Dad’s. After the situation in the car, I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t worried about Hector.
I also can’t quite bring myself to look Myles in the eye after my dog urinated all over his car seat—and my lap. It’s not the first time he’s lost his nerve, but it is the first time it’s happened with someone who is essentially a stranger to us. I was upset when we got to the services and ran off. The bathrooms are always massive, so I found the cubicle furthest away from the door and hid in it while I got over a panic attack. It was embarrassment more than anything else—of course I would be the one to land myself in a sticky mess, literally, in a stranger”s car because of a dog with a nervous disposition. Bloody typical.
The girls found me eventually after hearing what had happened and helped me shower and find me a change of clothes. I always wondered why there were showers in service stations and now I know.
“Okay,” Beau says once the door is open to the huge cabin, “there’s six rooms. Two are king beds and the rest are twins.”
“Me and Sheridan can take a double,” Brin says, saving me from having to wait to find out where I’m going to hide.
I dart off to locate one of the double rooms. It’s a bit of a maze inside—the ceilings are low, and the hallways are narrow, kind of like a static caravan—and the bedrooms aren’t all in one place, which is confusing. Once I find what I’m looking for, I drop the dog bed into a cosy spot by the radiator and tuck the dozing Hector into it.
I watch my pup for a moment and feel a stab of guilt. I wish I’d stayed home with him, birthday or not. He’s not cut out for this kind of stress—the travelling, the people, the excitement. Much like me, he doesn’t cope well with overwhelm. I can’t believe I ended up getting a dog who’s got worse anxiety than me. Who gets a dog to aid their mental health and ends up with a creature more nervous? Absolutely typical. He’s only eighteen months old. I could never get rid of him now—he’s comfortable with me.
I hate giving him medication because it takes him hours to come back around.
Brinsley finds me watching Hector and dumps her bags on the bed we’ll be sharing. “Aw,” she coos, standing beside me, “is he okay?”
“He’s knocked out. He won’t come around for a bit yet.”
My sister strokes a hand down my back. “Don’t worry too much about what happened. I think Beau feels appropriately guilty.”
As he should,I think. I make a non-committal sound.
“So, according to the activity schedule Beau and I made,” she continues, turning away to sit on the bed, and rummages through her stuff, “we’re going bowling first before the parents get here, and that’s at three o’clock. So, we’ve got time to settle in.”
“Cool,” my voice is still quiet, but I nod my head, “I’m gonna go get my stuff.”
I turn to leave, but Brin stops me, “Shez. Are you alright?”
Without looking at her, I admit, “No, not really. I’m overwhelmed. But I’ll get over it.”
“Did Myles say anything to you in the car?”
“No. It was all quiet after we got back on the road.”
Brin hums, contemplative. “I don’t think he’s mad. Not at you, anyway.”
“He should be mad at me. If someone’s dog pissed in my car, I’d be livid.”
She scoffs. “You drive a vintage Mini, not a 2011 model VW Polo. Very different circumstances. Plus, none of what happened is your fault.”
“I should’ve stayed at home.”
“Nope. You are right where you need to be.”
“I think some people disagree.”
“If you’re talking about Stavros, I will smack your face.”
I bite back a smile. My demure twin has a vicious streak that only a select number of people know about, and I love seeing it rear its pretty head.
“I need to draw,” Is all I say.
“Good idea. I’m gonna call Andy.”
A scowl fights for control on my face, but I keep it away. As I make my way through the maze of halls in this ridiculous cabin, I try to ignore the excitable giggles and guffaws from my brothers and our friends as they explore our temporary home. I just want my sketchbook or my iPad—anything to quiet the noise in my head.
Drawing has always been my means of escape. When everything gets too loud, or I need mental preparation for literally anything, I will find a quiet corner, or bright open space, and just draw. I didn’t have time this morning, even though my hands were itching to replicate the blur of the trees and mass of green fields while we were in the car, and it’s scratching at my brain.
I manage to escape outside without being stopped. I suppose I’m lucky in that my brothers and the girls know to generally leave me be until I come to them. And I will go to them eventually. Right now, though, I need art.
I haul my two bags back inside and set them in the corner of the room out of the way. I’ll unpack properly later. Brin is wandering around the cabin on a video call with Andy, so I have the room to myself again. I know she won’t come back for a while.
I dig through my luggage for my iPad. The lighting in this room isn’t spectacular for drawing on paper, so the digital landscape is where I’m going. I also scrounge for my headphones and put on some quiet music. I have a very specific playlist for drawing that my brothers and Dad call ‘witch music’. Eh. Whatever. It works for me. Settling on the bed with my music playing—Willow by Taylor Swift my starting track—I disappear into a land of colour.
I start with my current surroundings. A primarily dark scene—greys and browns in vignette, drawing attention to a bright spot in the lower right hand side. Hector. My blood sings as I bring him to life on the screen—red dog bed, light yellows and pinks streaming in from the window on the right, casting him in white and pale greys. I make him look like an angel.
It’s only a rough sketch so once I’m done, I save it in my files and send a copy over to our family group chat. I do it every time I draw something on my iPad because I know my mother in particular likes to see them, even if she thinks my drawing is just a hobby. I’m pretty sure she’s keeping them in some kind of portfolio, but she’s never admitted it, and I’ll never ask.
I start another one, completely oblivious to the time. I’m rarely a passenger in a car these days and getting to watch the scenery fly by while we were on the motorway really gave me some inspiration.
I don’t know how long I’m sitting there, but I’m only vaguely aware when Brinsley returns to unpack, and she doesn’t talk to me. She leaves again, and I’m not aware of anything else but my landscape until Beau flops down heavily on the bed.
“What are we doing now?” He asks casually, tucking his hands behind his head.
I finish the section I’m working on and then turn it to face him, taking my earphones out.
“Very green.”
I stick my tongue out at him. “It’s not finished yet.”
“What’s it gonna be?”
“Just a landscape—some fields, a little farm in the distance there.” I indicate it on the screen.
“Cute. I think our Shirley will like this one.”
“She always likes them. I just know that she doesn’t believe being an artist is a sustainable career. Awards or no awards.”
“Maybe if you told her about your awards she might come around to the idea.”
I know he’s only trying to help, but Beau doesn’t get it. He was lucky. Scouts were looking at him to play professionally at seventeen and made his debut at nineteen. His career has been certain ever since he decided he wanted to play football for a living with a Premier League club. It’s not that simple for me.
“I don’t get paid for my web show, Beau. I post that shit because I enjoy it, no other reason.”
“You could get paid, though. You’ve got fresh ideas; you’re talented; you’re different. I bet if you made a pilot and sent it to a bunch of platforms, one of them would offer you a deal.”
“I highly doubt that.” I scoff, continuing my drawing. The truth is, I’m actually too scared to even try.
“Shez, the longer you continue to doubt your talent, the harder you’re going to make life for yourself. Because we all know—including Mum and Dad and Nash—that interior design is not for you. No matter how good you are at it.”
I’ve paused in my drawing to turn over his words. I didn’t know Beau could be so insightful, and the part I hate the most is that he’s completely right. But I’m a chicken and it will take a miracle to change that.
I choose not to answer him and continue with my green-scape. Beau watches in fascinated silence for a moment, but it doesn’t last long.
“I’m sorry about this morning, Sheridan. I should’ve put you in my car with Hector. I was a prick.”
This is the thing about Beau. Sometimes I think he likes playing the villain just so he can apologise. The man is a golden retriever in human form. Whoever decides to marry him—although that seems like a pipe dream at this point—will be the luckiest girl in the world. I just hope she’s spunky. I think he forgets to leave the persona the media have created for him on the pitch. He’s not a bad person, he just doesn’t think before he speaks and sometimes, he comes off looking like a dickhead.
“It’s fine. But you owe me.”
“Anything you want, baby sis. Tell me and it’s yours.”
“Anything?”
“Yep. New tablet? It’s yours. Groomer for Hector? New tattoo? You name it, I’ll get it for you.”
“A new tablet seems excessive.”
“I mean it, Shez. Tell me what you want,”
I purse my lips in thought. “Let me think about it. You know I don’t cope well under pressure.”
Beau snorts. “Fine. Anyway, put your talent away. It’s time to go bowling.”
I can’t help but grimace as I tuck my iPad back into its case. “I suck balls at bowling.”
“I mean, I’m no bowling expert, but I’m pretty sure there’s no need to be sucking the balls.”
I groan and shove at his shoulder. “Sod off.”
* * *
I feel like I’m back in PE in high school all over again, and it’s miserable. Inexplicably, everyone thought it would be a good idea to split our teams in two, but rather than doing boys vs girls, or Bennetts vs everyone else, someone thought it would be a genius idea to let the two oldest siblings pick the two teams. That’s Beau and Brinsley, and if I don’t get picked last, I’ll eat my fucking hat.
Or JP’s, since I’m not wearing one.
Nash, given his defensive posture and deep-set scowl, is equally livid with this decision, but he does somehow find a way to complain about everything. Youngest child and all that. Stavros, the massive dickhead, is only egging him on.
As always, I keep my mouth shut.
The bowling alley is glow-in-the-dark, which means really odd things are glowing when they normally wouldn’t, like the stripes on Emma’s trainers, or Stavros’s veneers. But the thing that draws my attention the most is the word written across the chest of Myles’s T-shirt. It’s nothing obscene—unless you count a man’s pectorals as such—but the white ‘NO’ against black fabric in big block capitals is very distracting.
Myles’s T-shirt and Stavros’s teeth aside, the other thing that is glaringly obvious is the amount of people gawking in our direction. No doubt because two Premier League footballers are gracing their presence, and one in particular is plastered all over newspapers at least once a month for some reason or other.
“Alright, I want JP,” Beau declares once we’ve been set up at our parallel lanes.
Brin narrows her eyes at our eldest twin. “I want Nash.”
“Myles,” he says with a scratch of his jaw.
Nash whispers something in Brinsley’s ear, and she nods in agreement. “Emma.”
I stifle a sigh, because I saw that one coming. Nash and Emma have always been unusually close for cousins, but it’s never been cause for concern, so who cares, I guess.
“Bailey,” Beau smirks, and Bailey pumps her fist in excitement.
“Gemma.” Brin throws him the finger.
This leaves me and Stavros for the choosing, and at least my one relief is that I don’t have to share a lane with that stupid prick.
Beau looks guilty when he meets my gaze. “Sorry, Shez. But I want to win.”
I notice Myles’s head snap in my brother’s direction, but I’m not surprised in the slightest. Does it hurt to be boycotted by my own sibling? A bit, but I also don’t really care about bowling.
I force a nonchalant shrug. “It’s fine.”
“Come on, Steven.” Beau nods the idiot with false teeth over to his lane.
“Wait,” Bailey scowls, “am I on an all-boys team?”
“No, mate,” Beau throws an arm around her shoulder, “you’re on the winning team.”
I’ve never known bowling to be a team sport, but what the fuck do I know? Besides, he’s probably not wrong. My hand-eye coordination is absolute trash, and I definitely won’t be able to lob a ten pound ball in a straight line without landing in the gutter every time. This is honestly a living nightmare.
We set up our names in the order we want to play. I am last, obviously, because I’m past the point of caring. Last to be picked, last to throw, and likely last on the scoreboard, too.
Whatever.