Chapter 19 #2
“She would buy us these amazing gifts, and then basically say, ‘Look how much I love you, now if you don’t do this thing I want you to do, that means you don’t love me equally.
’ One time she bought me these Puma rugby boots that were about a hundred dollars, and I just kept thinking, of course she loves us, she wouldn’t spend all this money on us if she didn’t. ”
Fuck, my throat hurts.
“This is all emotional blackmail,” Eggo says. I can feel him looking at me, but I can’t turn to face him yet. “None of her actions were because of you. You’re victim blaming yourself.”
“My sister had it so much worse than my brother or I did. She fucked off on her eighteenth birthday. Got up in the morning and just went. Took a plane to Sydney. She left me and my brother a note, with some money that she’d saved from her shitty retail job and two passport application forms. I couldn’t get my own passport until I was sixteen, though.
I was always thinking I’d move to Sydney to live with her, but I didn’t.
I’m not sure why not. Then I met you when I was seventeen and you said about coming to England, and I thought, fuck it, what could be further from Perth?
From Mum. But Covid happened, and I was stuck for another two years.
My brother found a different way to escape.
He’s spent most of his adult life either in jail or rehab. ”
Eggo doesn’t say anything, but he wraps his fingers around mine.
“So, yeah. I don’t really want to go back there. Maybe I’ll move to New Zealand and live in the Lord of the Rings mountains. Or maybe Norway. Norway looks beautiful.”
“Okay, but I’d miss you if you moved to Norway,” he says.
It’s such a jarring thing to hear. I whip my head round to him.
“I don’t want you to leave yet.”
I can’t say anything in reply, even though I want to say “same,” so I squeeze his fingers and then let them go. “Sorry for bumming you out on Christmas Day.”
“You didn’t, princess. I’m glad you told me. I’m always gonna be here to listen to your trauma dumps. Always.”
I have to scrunch my eyes closed and angle my face away to stop the rush of emotions, but fuck, it feels nice to have somebody fucking care for once.
After the skate park, we drop Logan back to his mum’s as they have plans to eat Christmas dinner with Jody’s parents, and we drive to the house Eggo grew up in for our meal.
It’s a quaint, detached, three-bed home on the outskirts of town.
Because it was built in the nineties and because it’s Britain, the house, its rooms, and its gardens are all teeny tiny.
Eggo’s the tallest in his family, but his mum Kelly, stepdad Stu, grandparents Fi and Graham, sister Leoni, and brother-in-law Dale are not far behind him.
In fact, at six-one, I may be the second shortest person here after Fi.
The place smells of roasting meat and onions, and there’s a heavy, moist quality to the air.
I met Kelly and Stu last night, but everyone else is new, and they all greet me in the same way Eggo’s parents did—a huge, spine-squishing hug with a hand through the curls from the women, and a metacarpal-crushing handshake, sometimes with the other hand through the curls from the men.
Eggo had warned me on the drive to Newquay how touchy feely his family were and had asked me if I wanted him to intervene.
I’d said no, but I’m already experiencing blood pressure spikes.
“We’ve left Gristle at Nanny’s house,” Kelly says to either me or Eggo. “So Trekkie shouldn’t be too bothered today.”
“I’ve locked the little shit in the utility room with the radio on and a pig’s ear to chew. Should take him an age to gnaw his way through that with no teeth,” Fi adds. I’m pretty sure she’s still talking about Kelly’s demonic dog.
“It’s a shame our Logie Bear isn’t here, but we had him last year,” Graham says.
There’s a small dining table in the kitchen area which will seat four diners at most, and I’m uncertain where the other four adults will consume their roast dinners.
It’s providing me with base-level anxiety, and every time I glance at Eggo, I swear he’s trying to communicate a million messages with his eyes alone.
“Are you okay?”
“Do you want to leave?”
“Do you want to go outside for some fresh air?”
“Do you want me to hogtie and gag my family so that you can get a few moments of peace?”
“Do you want another Buck’s fizz?”
“Maybe a sneaky tug in the garage?”
There are three rooms in the downstairs part of the house.
The kitchen-diner, the lounge, and a microscopic little toilet cubicle just off the even more microscopic porch.
The people here seem to be working some kind of ballet that only they know the moves for, dancing from one room to another.
Even Stu, who mostly seems tied to the stove, pops his head into the lounge to catch up on the recent family gossip and rugby news.
When that runs dry, they all switch to playing a game I’ve mentally labelled as “let’s see who can embarrass Eggo the most,” as they regale me with stories from his youth.
My favourites include the time Eggo locked himself inside a rabbit hutch, the time he tried to collar a badger and keep it as a pet but ended up renewing his tetanus jab instead, the time he got drunk and stole an Avant loader from a gasworks site, the time he got drunk and told a police officer to “wind your fucking neck in,” and the time he got drunk, stripped naked, and fell asleep at the miniature golf course.
He was twenty, and to everyone’s great enjoyment there’s lasting photographic evidence of this.
“Sir, I can see your derriere,” I tell him, handing the photo back to Kelly and making everybody in the living room laugh. The folk in the kitchen are retold my comment like hearsay whispers of a historical moment.
Eggo shows me his childhood bedroom. It might even be smaller than the downstairs toilet.
I’m able to touch opposite walls at the same time.
There’s a cabin-style bunk bed, and underneath is a beanbag, an old-school television set with a bulbous back, and a couple of game consoles.
On the other side of the room is a built-in wardrobe, and covering the walls are a mixture of Pokémon and rugby posters, and a handful of photos of either Jody, Eggo, or Logan, or a mix of the three.
“Logan stays here now when my folks look after him,” Eggo tells me. He closes the door, but there’s nowhere for us to sit so we stand wedged in beside the loft bed.
“Do you stay here too?”
“I usually sleep in Lee’s old room. It’s next door.
It’s bigger, though not by much, and it has a double bed, but she’s already bagsied it for Christmas.
” His smile drops and his eyes caress my face.
I’m willing him to kiss me, but he doesn’t.
“Listen, if it gets too much for you down there, just let me know and we’ll leave, okay?
Or if you don’t want to leave, we could stand in the garden for a bit. ”
“Okay.” I can’t quite find the words to summon the gratitude I feel. It’s Halloween all over again, except this time it’s his family that he hasn’t seen for at least a couple of months. He’s willing to give that up to comfort me.
“We’ll work out a secret code.” He scratches his beard as he thinks. “‘Eggs, fancy a vape?’ That’s code for ‘I need to go outside and get some air’ and . . . Ooh, I’ve got it. ‘I’ve left my meds at the hotel,’ is code for ‘Get me the fuck out of here.’ How’s that?”
I laugh.
“I’m being serious. If you need to leave, just let me know.”
“Sure.” I nod. “Thank you.”
He pats me on the shoulder, then turns to walk away, but I grab his hand and tug him back round to face me. And I kiss him. Pour all of my gratitude into something where words can’t fail me.
It’s urgent and breathy, and Eggo is grabbing my ass and squeezing me close to him.
“Fuck, Campbell. I’m gonna let you ruin me tonight.” Eggo pulls away and catches his breath. “I’m hard as a fucking goal post now.”
“Come on,” I say, seizing his shoulders and spinning him, since there’s no space for me to pass. “We’re not here to fuck spiders. They’ll be getting suspicious downstairs.”
“Okay, princess.”
They were indeed getting suspicious.
“Your T-shirts are inside out,” Leoni says, and even though neither Eggo nor I stripped off our clothes, we both check the seams on our shoulders, making us look a thousand times guiltier than we actually are. “Busted,” she sings.
Eggo’s eyes turn to saucers and he glances towards the kitchen to see who else is around, hammering the final nail in the guilty coffin. “Well, we didn’t do . . . what you think we were doing, so . . .”
“Sure, Jan,” she says.
He grabs her forearm. “Do not tell Dale, okay?”
“Oh, Dale already knows,” Dale says, joining us in the increasingly cramped living room.
“Dale already knows what?” Fi asks from the doorway.
A grin, very reminiscent of one of Eggo’s grins, spreads across Leoni’s face. She opens her mouth to speak, but Eggo gets there first.
“That it was in fact Lee who used your fabric scissors to cut all of Titan’s fur off.”
Everyone gasps.
Eggo leans over to me. “Titan was my nan’s beloved Shih Tzu, and Lee decided to give him a haircut two days before Crufts—this massive and very important dog show in Birmingham.”
“You traitor,” Leoni hisses at Eggo. She’s halfway between shock and laughter. “I traded you three months of chores to keep that secret.”
“Leoni Amelia Berkeley nee Eggington!” Fi yells. “You might be twenty-six, but you’re never too old to be in serious trouble, missy! I cut ties because of Trimgate. You told me it was our Den’s boy, and I’ve been vouching for a fucking criminal all these years.”
Trimgate? I have to pinch my lips together to stop from laughing.
Eggo looks at me, his eyes alight with glee. “I fancy a vape, don’t you?”
“Since when do you vape?” Leoni squeaks. She’s visibly shrinking, sliding down on the leather couch, perhaps hoping it will swallow her whole. “Don’t you dare leave me in this mess.”
“Yeah, bye.” Eggo tugs my arm and pulls me through the kitchen, onto the patio, and into the small back yard. “I’m gonna get such a bollocking for that later,” he says, closing the doors and blocking out most of the noise.
We stay outside until everything is calm again and the cold has seeped through to our bones.
Leoni’s punishment is receiving only one Yorkshire pudding and one pig in a blanket with her Christmas dinner instead of the usual Eggington four of each.
As predicted, there are too many of us to fit around the table, so anyone younger than thirty is ordered to eat from a tray on their lap in the lounge.
It’s a massive weight off my shoulders because I don’t have to pretend I’m enjoying the food in front of the chef and host, and any gross bits of meat I find, I chuck onto Eggo’s plate, which he happily inhales.
I don’t end up using my safe words, but I am so grateful for their existence that every time I think about them, my eyes feel like they might catch on fire.
It’s the early hours of Boxing Day when we arrive back at the hotel, and Eggo and I are too pooped to do anything sexual. We pass out beside each other with Trekkie in the middle of the bed at our feet.
We miss breakfast the next morning, so we grab a McDonald’s on the way to Jody’s house and hang out with them for a couple of hours before heading back up to Bath.
“I’ll navigate you to the A30,” Eggo says, yawning.
“Fuck, okay.” He shakes his head, slaps his cheeks.
“Maybe we should stop at Taunton Deane and buy coffee.” But he’s snoring before we even get out of the county, and I let him sleep the rest of the journey home, because if he’ll go that far out of his way to make sure I’m at peace, I can at least allow him these few moments.