Page 111 of Red Flag
I blinked, staring down at the phone that was suddenly very heavy in my hand. His Instagram only had three pictures of him and Clara and I deleted them in silence before staring out of the window.
Why would he turn everything off if I was on his phone?
Was the ex who was sending him death threats at it again?
“What’s wrong?” he asked, laying his hand on my thigh. “We don’t have to stay at your mum’s the whole time if you don’t—”
“Why? Why not let me see who is messaging you?”
He shook his head. “Have a look.”
“I trust you—”
“Have a look.”
So I opened up his texts, only to see twenty from his mother, a couple from Abbe, a few from someone called Andrew in French.
“I just didn’t want it to distract you from giving me directions,” he said and added with a laugh, “we both know how awful you are at giving them.”
Good point.
“Your mum has texted you a lot. Shall I read them out to you?”
“No,” he said quickly. “It’s okay. She’s… we’ll have to have a talk about my mother.”
“A talk?”
I knew something was up there. But I wasn’t about to say something when I knew that from eavesdropping.
“She’s… my mother is complicated.”
Welcome to the club.
“So you also turned off your notifications so I wouldn’t see her texts,” I concluded.
“Partly,” he admitted with a wince.
“And when will this talk be?” I asked, kind of wanting the distraction from how quickly we were approaching my childhood home. “Because, not sure if you’ve realised, but you’re about to meet all of my family. And I don’t know a thing about yours.”
He breathed in deeply, grip tighter on the steering wheel. Hereached over to place his hand atop mine on my thigh. “You’re right. My mother… fuck. This is going to sound dramatic. My father is… not in the picture. Mostly. My mum left him when I was really young. It didn’t end well. My dad is…” He looked over at me, eyes desperate. “He’s a criminal. Treated my mum like shit. It wasn’t that she walked away from him. She ran.”
“A criminal?” I parroted, putting my other hand on his.
He nodded, his attention back on the road. “He’s a piece of trash. I was too young to remember what really happened, but I know she’s suffered enough.”
“Is that… is that why you do so much for the domestic abuse charities?”
“Yes. If she didn’t have my stepfather… if we were without money, god knows what would have happened.”
His stepfather ran hotels throughout Europe before his passing when Nix was a child.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, squeezing his fingers with mine.
He squeezed back. “Is this it?” he asked, bending to get a better look at the cottage as we drove through the open, low gate.
I’d spent the first eighteen years of my life there before university. I knew every nook and cranny of the stone-brick house, every square inch of the surrounding gardens, and could give a good guess at what was at the bottom of the pond.
I knew how my parents’ bedroom looked with a hospital bed in it.
