The John Hughes Club

Chapter Thirty Four

God knows what time it is. It must be stupid O' clock in the early morning hours. I can't even face checking the time. For time has been hanging around me like a noose around my neck, waiting to choke the last of my exhaustion from out of me. I am exhausted, but I can't sleep. I've been lying on my bed for hours now, yet sleep refuses to come. I'm too restless. Still too wound up about what happened earlier with my mum. I keep replaying her reaction to seeing me and Chas kissing, and the way in which she spoke to him.
I didn't like it then.
I don't like it now.
Which is why I am lying here, still angry as hell. For someone who keeps her boyfriend away from me, she has no right to treat mine so rudely. I mean, it wasn't like we were half-naked or anything. Our hands weren't anywhere that they shouldn't have been. Yup, I'm furious. So furious, that I'm going to have zero sleep tonight. When I have nightmares, dad always makes me a hot milk. This might not be a nightmare about Anais, but it's still a nightmare. Lifting the duvet off me, I quietly head towards my door, opening it just as quietly. On the balls of my feet, I delicately tread across the hallway. As I'm passing my mum's closed bedroom door, I hear her voice. With the same care, the soles of my feet take me closer to her door. It's only her voice I am hearing, so I'm guessing that she's on the phone to someone. Wanting to hear better, I squish my ear right up against the wood panelling. If she's whinging to my dad about me, I want to know the content of her whinging.

"You didn't see what I saw. It's getting out of hand with them," Mum moans, "They have to be spoken to. They're getting serious, and things are escalating between them. If we don't intervene now, before we know what's hit us, we're going to find ourselves being grandparents." Her quiet rant tails off, obviously allowing my dad to put his thoughts across about his wayward nympho of a daughter. "I know we were both hoping it would naturally fizzle out with them, but clearly it isn't. That's why we need to talk to them. This can't go on, it really can't," Mum continues moaning to my poor dad, only pausing to let him speak. With my ear still pressed against her bedroom door, I'm interested to hear what's going to come next from out of her motherly mouth. This is her getting my dad on side. Her way of convincing him to assist in the demolition of my love for Chas. "I mean it, we have to end things between them, Rob. I don't appreciate finding your son with his tongue down my daughter's throat. If we are wanting things to develop between us, we have to stop anything more developing between them...which is why you need to tell Chas, and I need to tell Mindy."

Swinging open her door, not caring about how my intrusion might appear, the whole of me stands in the doorway with a heart and mind that's needing answers and needing them now. "Tell me what?!"

Alarmed, mum twists around on the edge of her bed. "I'll call you back," she mumbles, looking at me sheepishly.

That sheepish stare, her words being re-told on a fast loop within my mind, and the way she has always been towards Chas and my relationship with him, suddenly all fits into place. Like an annoying jigsaw that's had some pieces missing, then are randomly found, I am finally seeing the whole picture—the whole and unpretty picture. Taking a deep and unsteady breath, my composure is nothing but a fragile shell around myself. "Shower guy is Chas's dad?" My voice now just as fragile.

Rising from off her bed, mum tries to make the emotional divide between us smaller. "I know this isn't something you're wanting to hear...but yes, myself and Rob are seeing each other."

Internally struggling with what mum has just told me, I swallow down a lump of confusion, hurt...anger. "Is it serious between you two?" Tears are now forming on my lower lashes, getting heavier and heavier with every distressing second passing.

Seeing my tears, a pale sombreness veils my mother's face. "It's more than a fling. We care about each other. We'd like to take things further, but we're not sure how to because of you and Chas."