You Must Fall In Love

Chapter Thirty-Eight

She really didn't like the fact that he was talking about Mum, but there wasn't anything she could do about it. He had, as stated, already played the orphan card, from which there was absolutely no escape.

She didn't feel sorry for him. She felt disgusted at herself, because now she couldn't pretend that her problems were bigger than they were.

"Your Mom?" said the imaginary Rob inside her head. "Oh, how cute. I didn't even have a mom."

"It's not because she's not here," said Christine, squeezing one knee on top of the other, trying to steer her mind back to the righteous cause at hand. The righteous cause of her own self-defense.

"Isn't it?"

This didn't seem to bother him at all.

"It wasn't because she was there in the first place," she said, finally annoyed enough to get over the fact that she had just made her anti-heart-to-heart opinion very clear.

Rob thought this over, but not by making a thinking face, like Jen would. She could tell he was thinking because his face was completely neutral, as if he was a computer and his brain was doing the Spinning Beach Ball of Death.

"So it wasn't because she isn't here," he said.

"Yes."

"But it's also not because she was there to begin with."

"Yes!"

"You'll forgive me if I say that this doesn't make much sense."

"Okay," said Christine, deciding to solve her own confusion by being a prig. "What would you do if you had a mum? What would you expect of her?"

It was a question that would have earned a well-deserved verbal thrashing from any orphan who wasn't Rob, but because she was beginning to get more and more of a handle on his strangely ironic outlook, Christine was able to ask the question with complete confidence.

"Food," said Rob. "Shelter. Education. That's it."

Christine's confidence cracked into tiny pieces, dissolved into little golden flakes and vanished down the drain.

"Not love?"

Rob screwed up his eyebrows just a fraction, like he was trying to see into Christine's head, and work out if what she was saying was actually what she meant.

Christine couldn't help him there. She wasn't even sure she said what she meant half the time.

"When I was in Silverfawn," he said, "the sisters were always telling me about love. About how Jesus and Mary loved me, and how they would always be there even when no-one was. How love was the great motivating force behind the universe and the creation of the world."

Beep, beep, beep, went Christine's programmed Religious Studies siren. Religious issue. Do not engage. I repeat, don't engage, you dumbass!

"I think I know how this goes," she said. "You didn't feel anything from Jesus and, uh, Mary. Nothing of the sort. Now, I respect all religions, or at least, I don't disrespect any religion, but..."

"You're missing the point, Christine."

He might as well have beaned her in the forehead with his glasses. She nodded dumbly.

I told you not to engage, said her programmed Religious Studies siren. Ninny.

"I don't think there is a God," said Rob. "But I'm sure he exists for some people, and I wouldn't want to offend anyone else by suggesting that they were wrong. Some of the sisters were great people, and some weren't. It's just how it is."