Page 48 of Unworthy
“And they let you move into the shed?” her voice had risen in disbelief.
“My father didn’t want us under his feet and Felicity just wanted to get pissed with her friends. Having a couple of kids around took the fun out of the kind of parties she wanted to throw.”
I shivered as a memory of another of my mother’s parties flashed through my brain. V and I had been hungry. We’d been shooed out of the kitchen earlier with a sandwich, but that had been at lunchtime and it was late evening. We didn’t have any cash, and this was before I’d managed to snag one of mum’s credit cards; to top it off, the village shop was over four miles away. There’d been music coming from the main house, which was a sure indicator that we should not go in, but Verity had a cold – and even aged nine I knew you should eat when you were sick. So I snuck into the kitchen through the side door to grab something from the fridge.
That was the last time I ever tried to go into the house during a party.
No nine-year-old should see his pissed-up mother kissing a stranger against the kitchen counter with his hand up her skirt. Not to mention the fact that two other strangers were going at it on the kitchen table, and the whole place stank of booze and cigarettes. At the time I understood the empty bottles of alcohol – it was only later that I realised what the lines of white powder meant. By the next day Verity was properly sick. I managed to steal Felicity’s mobile out from her nightstand, after negotiating an array of hungover party goers who were either passed out on the floor or wandering bleary-eyed through the house. I called Granny and she came to get us. It was a two-hour round trip, and she was seventy and not in the best of health, but there was no other alternative. She cried when she saw us in the shed, then went into the house to scream at Felicity. Father was away on a shooting trip, or a sailing trip… it was always one or the other. We spent the rest of the summer at Granny’s house. I loved it there. It was warm, and the cupboards were full of meringues. Verity had to have some antibiotics for a chest infection, and her chest has never been quite the same since. To this day, she needs inhalers and always develops a cough in winter. I felt this particular memory was best kept to myself seeing as Yaz was now practically vibrating with fury.
She was looking around us at the dilapidated shed now – old gardening equipment in the corner, the remnants of a few peeling posters that V and I had put on the walls to try and make it seem more like a proper room. “You don’t even fit on the bed,” she said when her gaze fell on the rotting wood frame we were lying on.
“Well, I did when I was little. But yes, from about the age of fourteen my feet had to hang over the end.”
“Heath, what age were you when that incident happened? When you started sleeping in this shed?” Her voice sounded strained, as if she was having to force the words out whilst maintaining her composure. When I looked up at her face, I could see the green sparking in her eyes and her nostrils flaring.
“It doesn’t matter now,” I said, trying to soothe her mounting anger. One of my hands went up to her face – my thumb trying to smooth out her frown before my fingers went into her hair and the side of her face, pushing the soft mass of curls back behind her shoulder.
“How old were you, Heath?”
I sighed. “I think we were about six or seven.”
“There are no radiators in here.”
“We used to have an old fan heater. There’s power.” I pointed to the solitary light bulb swinging over our heads.
I heard and felt her take a deep breath in, letting it out slowly, before she sat up on the bed and swung her legs over the side. When she spoke again, her voice was tight. “Do you need anything from here?”
I pushed up to sitting as well, opened the shoebox to retrieve the school photo, then threw the box on the floor.
“No.”
Yaz nodded, stood, grabbed my hand to pull me up too, and then made her way to the exit, tugging me along behind her. When she opened the door, Winnie was sitting there waiting for her. Yaz bent down and scooped her up in her arms. Winnie gave her jaw a couple of licks and then settled into her chest. She kept hold of my hand and we walked out of the shed together. When we were out and on the lawn, Yaz handed Winnie to me then turned back towards the shed. Once she’d marched over there her leg flew up high so that her foot struck the door square in the centre, causing it to slam back into the doorway so hard it almost came off its hinges. Without looking back she came to me, took Winnie from my arms and walked back to her family holding my hand, with a dog tucked under her other arm as if nothing had happened. There was a loud creak behind us. I looked back to see the door actually give up the ghost and fall off its hinges completely, crashing down onto the ground.
“Right, that isenough. We’re getting out of here,” Yaz snapped. “We’re all booked into the pub for tonight so let’s go.” Everyone nodded in agreement, and I realised that somehow Yaz had become the de facto leader of this whole expedition. As much of a bastard I’d been to her in the past, she’d still stepped up when I needed her.Shewas looking afterme. Sure, Verity had given that a go before, but this was the first time I’d really let anyone else do it.
To have this from Yaz, who for so long I’d considered just that bit flaky, was completely unexpected. I felt a renewed sense of shame about how I’d judged and dismissed her for so many years. In my mind, people were either reliable or unreliable. Reliability and dependability were incredibly important to me. My parents fell so squarely in the unreliable camp that I was biased against anyone I thought might share the same tendencies, anyone who might let me down. In a lot of ways I was still that thirteen-year-old child whose parents didn’t pick him up from school one summer. I still felt that rejection, like I didn’t matter enough, and I was wary of anyone who might make me feel like that again. But I should have known. Of course, Yaz wasn’t unreliable. It was obvious in the way she cared for her family and her neighbour, in how hard she worked for her business, how dedicated she was to being the best at her sport. She was the complete opposite of everything my parents were, and I’d been too fucking blind and stupid to see it.
I just had to hope I wasn’t too late, or she’d slip through my fingers like the water she loved so much.
Chapter 23
Shame on you
Yaz
The funeral was exactly as depressing as I expected, but what I hadn’t expected was the number of people who turned out for it – or how obnoxiously upper class they would all be. Of course I knew Heath and Verity were posh – their accents, the way they carried themselves, the fact they had trust funds and properties all over the world. But these people were next-level British aristocracy at its finest: pearls, tweed, red trousers (weird choice at a funeral, but whatever). Some ultra-posh bloke whom the vicar introduced as Lord Davenport gave the eulogy, which comprised a couple of fox-hunting stories and an anecdote about Eton. Nothing about the man’s children or his family. Nothing real or of any substance. Heath and Verity didn’t say anything. They both just sat through it with blank expressions, no hint of emotion.
But the worst was yet to come. At the end of the service, just as everyone was filing out (a few grumbling about the lack of a wake – apparently even if you were totally loaded, you still wanted a free drink if at all possible) the church doors opened and a thin, blonde woman stumbled in. We had been sitting at the front so were bringing up the rear of the crowd when she elbowed her way over to us. The woman stopped in front of us, staring up at Heath. I could smell the alcohol from a few feet away.
“Darling,” she slurred. “You got s’big. When’d ya get s’big?”
“Felicity,” Heath clipped. Verity froze next to him, but their mother didn’t even acknowledge her. It was a little freaky as she also looked not much older than either of her children, but in a weird her-face-doesn’t-move way rather than natural youth. She did manage what looked to be an unhappy expression at Heath’s use of her name.
“How many times do I have to remind you, darling, I’m yourmother.”
“Funny, but as I recall, you conveniently forgot that very fact when I actually needed a mother.”
A younger man came up next to the woman and took her arm when she stumbled slightly to the side. He looked about Heath’s age. He seemed pleasant enough – very white teeth.
