Page 19 of Exhale

JAMIE

Bam! That was the door, and there was today’s last moment of peace and quiet gone forever. Not that I minded because here came Olive, bouncing into the kitchen. Hulk immediately left his fluffy bed in the corner and lazily paraded across the floor to greet her with a slightly undignified meow.

“Thief!” Leo made a showy, dramatic gesture to accompany his declaration of pretend disgust. “The feline is mine, andyouhave stolen him.”

“I can’t help it if Hulk loves me more than you. You may have ownership on paper, Leo, but Hulk chose me, so that’s not thieving.Sue me. I think you’ll find that you can’t steal someone’s affection.”

“Good argument, young Olive, but the cat is still mine.” Leo still had so much to learn. Like the absolute fact that he would never get anywhere arguing with Olive. She was our mother’s daughter and would argue herself blue in the face until she had you questioning whether the Earth really was flat and believing twelve-year-old girls were actually allowed to take driving lessons, since they matured emotionally before boys. Yeah, she’d had me there.

“Leo, my dear, dear Leo.” Olive smirked, her tone far beyond her years. “We have this discussion every single day. Hulk should not be forced to choose between his emotional-support humans. He needs a stable home and life, and you know he only sleeps if he’s in my room. And we really need to throw away that old blanket. The new cat bed Granny and I bought provides a far superior sleeping environment for a discerning cat like Hulk.”

Olive was on her school’s student council and was in the running for head girl next year, something she was taking very seriously. Her debating skills were second to none, while Leo, our darling,darlingLeo…

He came over and curled his arms around me from behind, still throwing out carefully worded sentences to try to take Olive down. She was having none of it.

“Leo, don’t argue with me. You know full well your reasoning won’t stand up. Wait until Granny comes later. She’ll back me up.”

“Granny always backs you up,” I muttered, kissing Leo’s hairline, breathing him in deeply. Beneath the dusty stench of Tube and uni halls and rain and city grime was the love of my life.

He was still here, and the realisation hit me right in the feels, like it did every time he walked through our front door. It was winter again, and the house was suffering from constant draughts as people milled into the hallway in rowdy batches, always just in time to partake of whatever food being served at our massive kitchen table. Despite half of the humans currently kicking off shoes and throwing jackets over backs of chairs not actually living in this house, they all came and went like we owed them a place at our table.

And, of course, we obliged because these idiots were all, in one way or another, family.

“Ry!” I shouted over the noise that made it difficult to hear, though I could feel Leo’s heart beating against my back. He liked to hug and clung to me for at least the first hour after coming home.Topping up on Jamie-love, he would declare, shuffling around with me, like he was now, as I dealt with an insane number of soggy-looking fish fingers on the grill rack. “Ry, can you check these? Are they done or do they need longer?”

Yeah. Gourmet Dining wasn’t my forte. I usually left that to those who knew what they were doing, like Ryan, who was quite the cook, only beaten by Aaron, who was a proper chef, currently employed at an up-and-coming Michelin-rated hotel eatery.

Ryan picked up a scorching-hot fish finger with his fingertips and broke it in half. “How long have they been in?”

“Errrr…” I couldn’t remember. Fifteen minutes? I’d checked the time, but then Leo had appeared, and Olive was still walking around carrying the damn cat, and yeah. He still made me lose my concentration.

“Give them another ten,” Ryan said, “They look a bit raw to me.” Then he stood watching us with a small, amused smile. “Did you remember to put the chips in the oven?”

“Dude!” I huffed, but he had a point. I’d been known to forget to cook the chicken for our Sunday roast, instead serving up an impressive spread of vegetables, accompanied by instant gravy. There was also an unfortunate incident involving undercooked spaghetti that I’d rather my family didn’t mention, but they still did, and I sucked it up. What else could I do? They were my family, and I loved them all to the moon and back.

“Hey!!!” That was Toby and his tribe, bursting in like a small atomic bomb. How the walls didn’t creak and bend with every new human walking through that front door, I would never know. They were all here. Toby, my youngest brother, his gorgeous girlfriend Annabelle, who’d like given birth a week ago, yet still managed to look like a reality TV star from one of those shows where the girls were walking ads for fake tan and the boys had more muscles than sense.

“Can I take the baby?” Leo begged, immediately abandoning me and my sweaty back. Kneeling on the floor, he expertly unfastened the straps to retrieve the latest member of the Walters clan from its car seat. “Uncle Leo misses his favourite godchild. Hello, baby, baby, oh, aren’t you just the most beautiful little thing?”

“Careful with the head, Leo,” Annabelle cautioned. She was an amazing mum, somehow keeping an eye on the baby and their eighteen-month-old, who was chasing Hulk around under the kitchen table and giving Olive a panic attack.

“Annabelle, I bought that highchair thing you wanted,” said Luke—my twin. Basically me in different packaging and the kindest soul on the planet. He was also an obsessive buyer of untold baby gadgets and researcher of all things child-safety related, like screechy baby monitors and impossible-to-open stairgates and cupboard locks that had us all swearing in frustration.

“You didn’t.” Annabelle went over to admire some kind of child-rocking contraption at the end of the table. “You’re crazy, Luke, but thank you. You shouldn’t spend your money on us. Save it up for when you have your own kids, babe.”

My brother laughed. “I’m counting on getting all your hand-me-downs. Anyway, I’m still trying to figure out how to get Ry pregnant, because surely Tobes isn’t the only one in this family with super-sperm.”

“Told ya—I’ll carry a baby for you. I love being pregnant, you know that. Absolutely love the whole experience. Think about it, yeah? Just let me get over this one first—is there a pillow I can sit on? Squirt, babe, get me one of those pink cushions off the sofa, please?”

“You should have an inflatable ring to sit on,” Olive advised knowledgeably as she delivered the requested cushion. “I looked them up on Amazon. You need to take the pressure off those haemorrhoids and do your pelvic floor exercises. Granny told me all about it.”

“Thank you, Granny.” Annabelle laughed, digging a perfectly formed boob out of her bra and gesturing to Leo to hand her the squawking new-born infant he was cradling in his arms. It was another boy, of course. Us Walters tended to have boys. Lots of them.

“Oh, darling Bella-Boo.” That was Ryan’s mother, the great Tessa Aspinall, adopted mum to all of us, treasured grandmother and the almighty queen of spoiling us rotten. She also regularly turned up for dinner with her long-time partner Alan in tow. “We should move that feeding chair into the kitchen. A mother needs comfort for those long feeds. Jamie, darling, what are we eating? I brought a baguette and a few nibbles. Alan? Did you bring in the last of the shopping?”

“Hi, all.” Alan was a man of few words but a solid bloke who loved us like we were his own wayward kids and as always had his miniature toolkit attached to his belt. At some point, he would make his compulsory tour of the house, fixing stray fittings, tightening screws and knocking nails into any random floorboards that had popped up since his last visit. He did it every time, gratefully accepting a cold beer afterwards before attaching himself to the chair in front of the TV for the night. He’d of course expect a plate of dinner to be delivered to his lap at some point, and it was the least we could do, seeing as he’d got Granny Tessa to slyly find out Tobe’s account number and paid off a chunk of his and Annabelle’s mortgage. He’d also cleared my sister Emma’s student debt by stealth, and I was pretty sure he’d lied about the cost of the second work van Luke and Ry had recently upgraded their fleet with. The man was sneaky, but where Granny Tessa would smother us with affection, Alan was just quietly there, watching and supporting his small tribe of humans with random acts of incredibly generous kindness.

“These are all the bags.” Alan deposited them on the table. A few nibbles indeed. Granny Tessa had no clue about what constituted ‘a few nibbles’, instead buying us half of Marks and Spencer’s overpriced food hall on a regular basis. As expected, she was now unpacking a stack of family-sized cheesecakes, tubs of olives and baguettes, followed by bottles of wine and an ice-cold bottle of non-alcoholic sparkling stuff that Leo expertly uncorked as I handed him a glass.

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