Chapter 20
Things That Have Bloody Annoyed Me This Morning:
Microfibre cloths.
The vent above the Bishopstons’ stove – it’s like a jet engine.
Snoring.
Hiccups.
Being spoken to the second I wake up, even if it is about food.
River Dade Goffey – for being like the rest of the world and not there when I needed him.
A few hours ago, I was tied to a garden chair in the Bishopstons’ garage, wondering if these three men were going to skin my rabbit alive in front of my eyes.
Now I was sitting on a big fur beanbag they called The Yeti in a cosy IKEA-decorated living room, watching one of them do a Beyoncé impersonation in his mum’s highest heels and almost peeing myself laughing as I stuffed my face with ice-cold lager and takeaway pizza.
I had no idea what was going on.
We were up all night, drinking, laughing, arguing over who the best football club was, Aston Villa or Arsenal, and I listened to each of them cry while telling stories about their dad, Dean – either from their own memories or from what their mum had told them.
His party days when he lived in Manchester and wild stag nights he organised, to school sports days where he always insisted on doing the dads’ race in a full Superman costume.
He sounded like the best dad in the universe, but then he would.
My dad would probably have been the best in my universe too.
I was glad the Bishopstons had each other.
I wish I could have that with someone; a sibling.
Now and again, my mind flew to my little half-brother, wherever he was and whatever his name was.
I wished he was here, telling stories, looking a bit like me, like they all looked a bit like each other.
The night slid from a nostalgic catch-up into a chaotic mix of therapy session, sleepover and children’s party – all fuelled by weed, booze and music.
We turned off the lights, lit candles, and swapped ghost stories about my haunted school.
I played board games with them that Mum always banned me from – Monopoly (‘It promotes greed, Ivy’), Cards Against Humanity (‘Inappropriate adult content, Ivy’), and Cluedo (‘I don’t approve of the murder narrative, Ivy – murder isn’t entertainment’).
Someone suggested a Ouija board, but thankfully they didn’t have one.
I didn’t want to contact my dad anyway – not in front of strangers.
I liked seeing him in my dreams. That’s how I wanted to keep him.
A part of me worried that if we reached out, maybe he wouldn’t come back again. I don’t know how these things work.
Sooner or later we all started yawning more and Matthew cooked some popcorn while Louis shoved a film on; their dad’s favourite, Jaws, which I’d never seen all the way through cos my mum didn’t like the gory bits, but it was actually so good.
Their ginger cat was called Hooper after one of the characters and at one point, Hooper sauntered into the room and jumped up on my lap and began purring while I stroked her.
It made me miss Maddox even more. And my mice.
And the crows. Maybe that’s what would make me happy, I thought.
Something to look after. Some animals. My little brother.
As the film finished and the yawns had become more frequent, we decided it had been a very long day.
‘Did your adoptive mum ever have any more kids?’ asked Matt.
‘She couldn’t. She always said she got so lucky with me, she never tried to adopt any others. I wish she had though. It’s lonely being one.’
Louis was sitting like a frog in his beanbag, swigging his beer. ‘Mum used to say Dad only had to look at her across the room and she was three months preggers.’
‘Urgh!’ said Anthony, throwing a cushion at his brother’s face, and he immediately got one back for his trouble.
‘It’s true! Mum said they were at it like it was an Olympic event, all the time. I walked in on them once when I was five and he said he was teaching her how to do press-ups in bed.’
I laughed, gazing again around the tiny living room.
Everywhere I looked there were photos of Dean and the boys together.
On the swings, in parks on climbing equipment far too small for him, swinging on a tyre in the woods, reading a bedtime story, one of them on his shoulders, all of them in the back seat of his cab, beaming.
‘I don’t have one picture of me and my dad together. ’
‘I’ll make you one,’ said Matt, getting his phone out.
I laughed. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Oh yeah, he’s a whizz with manips,’ said Louis, tidying the pizza boxes and taking them out to the garage. ‘That’s what he wants to do for a career.’
‘Yeah, there’s enough pix of him online, and a few of you as well,’ said Matthew, opening some app. ‘What age do you want to be?’
‘The age I am now?’ I said. He took a quick picture of me that I wasn’t ready for but actually, I looked okay for a girl who’d spent the day grieving and being drugged and kidnapped.
‘So for him – do you want him smiling, frowning, blowing a trumpet?’
‘On a beach. Both of us. Smiling. And he has his arm around me. And he looks the way he did … before he died.’
Matthew was locked onto his phone then for ages, and we didn’t hear another peep out of him as the other two tidied up around him.
‘You can have Mum’s bed,’ said Anthony, collecting up the empty lager bottles. ‘It’s fresh bedding. She changed it before she went. And you can use the bathroom first. Use what you want.’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘Yeah, I’ll drive you back in the morning,’ yawned Louis, stretching in the doorway.
‘I can get the train,’ I said. ‘Do you have a phone charger I can borrow?’
‘I’ll book your train then,’ said Louis, getting his phone out and sitting on the sofa next to Matt.
‘Thanks. Again.’
‘Do you think the police will be at your house when you get back?’ asked Anthony as he went into squint overdrive and busied himself looking for a spare phone charger.
‘Heather will have called them, I expect,’ I replied. ‘I doubt the Aussies will have even noticed.’ The boys knew who I meant as we’d done our life stories in the heart-to-heart portion of the night’s festivities.
‘Sorry,’ said Anthony. ‘Again. We’ve been massive pricks.’
Both Matthew and Louis looked up from their phones and seemed to echo the sentiment in their expressions.
‘It’s okay. I get it. I probably get it more than most people actually.’
‘What’s your email?’ asked Louis as I dictated it. ‘Done. Tickets on their way. First Class, single, 9:05 a.m. I’ll drop you at the station first thing.’
‘You can’t afford that, let me transfer you the cash.’
‘It’s not up for debate,’ said Louis, making a big show of turning his phone off. I smiled in gratitude instead.
There was a ping! on my phone as the tickets came through and it was swiftly followed by another ping!
from Matthew. There was a photo attachment to it.
I opened it up. And I couldn’t believe what I saw when the image filled my screen – it was me, exactly as I looked now, and my dad standing next to me, with his arm around me, exactly as he looked then.
‘How the hell—’
We were both smiling and on a beach and the waves were rolling in behind us. It looked like the beach in Jaws. But all I could see was my dad and me; together, touching. Holding one another and smiling. And before long I couldn’t see it at all because my eyes were too full of tears.
‘How did you get him so perfect?’
‘There were loads of pics of him online. I just chose one where he looked happiest.’
I could almost feel the warmth of the sun’s rays on that beach despite the cold of the living room.
I felt Anthony’s arm around me as he sat down on The Yeti and put his head against mine.
They all went quiet as I studied and studied it, wishing beyond all measure it was as real as the pictures of them with their dad that dotted the house.
I really hated Rhiannon in that moment. Irrespective of all the birthdays she’d remembered.
Irrespective of how she had given me to Claudia ‘for my own good’.
Irrespective of how she came back when she thought I had cancer and wanted to kidnap me and take me back to America and and and.
What she had done to the Bishopston boys, and to me, was unforgiveable.
And the boys were right – she should pay for what she’d done with more than just a prison sentence.
‘I’ve got the chance to go and meet her,’ I announced. ‘In prison. Before she does her big TV interview.’
All three Bishopstons fell silent. Until Louis piped up, ‘Are you going to?’
‘Maybe I should,’ I said. ‘Maybe I should kill her, for all of us. End it once and for all. Why should she get to live but both of our dads had to die?’
Anthony rubbed my arm. ‘Don’t think like that. We’ve got to move on.’
Matthew nodded. ‘Yeah, we’ve got to think about ourselves now. Anger ain’t gonna get you nowhere but the cell next to her.’
‘Be easier to kill her then though, wouldn’t it?’ I smiled as the tears rolled down my cheeks.
Louis shook his head. ‘No, you were right, Ivy. It wouldn’t change a single thing. It’d just get you in trouble. And you’ve got more to live for.’
I was being deadly serious at that moment but none of them were on board with me. It could have been lager bravado, I don’t know. Either way, I meant it then, but was on my own in feeling vengeful. The Bishopston boys were done.