Unexpected Rendezvous

Chapter 38

Perrie's POV

"This is ridiculous," Dad mutters, stabbing at his eggs with a fork.

Mum pours a glass of orange juice. "Just ignore them."

"I am," Dad says. Stab, stab, stab. Jonnie and I exchange glances across the kitchen table, and my brother silently holds up three fingers. Then two, then one, and then...

"Enough!" Dad roars, getting to his feet. He marches into the hall as Jonnie and I crane our necks to watch him. Dad flings open the front door, and is greeted by flashes from half a dozen cameras. Reporters loitering near the news vans parked in front of our house spring to life, stretching microphones towards my Dad as he leans out the door. "We have no further comment!" he yells before slamming the door and stalking back into the kitchen.

Mum sips her juice. "They're never going to leave if you keep doing that." 

I swallow a smile. Dad is spiralling, just like me. I'm not sure I realised, until reporters started camping in front of our house all day, how much we're alike in that respect. He's just a whole lot better at managing it, usually.

It's been five days since the police pulled Leigh and me out of Mr Gray's garage. Or Andre's garage, I guess. Once you've been through a hostage situation with someone, you might as well be on a first-name basis. Coach Purcell is in jail, but Andre isn't. He lawyered up fast, refusing to say a word until one of the state's top defence barrister's agreed to represent him. Now he's cooperating with the police, helping them build a case against his fiancé, and he insists that everything he said in the garage was just an attempt to disarm Coach Purcell. He says he was too afraid of her to come forward before now, and that the false ID in his bag was a last-ditch attempt to escape from a cold-blooded killer who'd never let him go. It would be believable I guess, if you hadn't been in the room while he fantasised about running off to a beach with her.

Andre also said that Leigh, poor Leigh who spend two days in the hospital being treated for a concussion, misunderstood their conversation in the house before Coach Purcell arrived.

That Leigh misunderstood everything.

I'm not buying it for a second. I know exactly how hard he was fighting for the gun in the garage, and it wasn't, as he put it, to keep me from hurting myself. And I'll never forget the look on his face when he called me "a vindictive little thing". But other people, people who aren't related to me anyway, are divided. Some people seem to believe him, and others act like his cooperation against Coach Purcell is more important than anything that came before it.

The Charlton Citizen of the Year Award has been postponed indefinitely, and I still feel bad about that. Not to mention having to finally come clean about what I did at Spare Me last summer. But here's the thing about getting taken hostage by your brother's PE teacher-turned drug dealer: it gives you a lot of leeway. Mum and Dad are so happy that I'm not dead, they barely blinked at the fact that I single-handedly brought down a business.

"We'll make this right," Dad said. He's been on the phone all week with Ms Badwi, his insurance company, and Edwards Properties lawyers. I only eavesdropped once, when I heard Dad yelling at one of his lawyers. "I don't care about minimising my exposure," he said. "I care about what's fair." And while I felt another wave of remorse about putting my Dad in this position, I also felt relieved that he is who he is. The kind of person who will make this right. And also the kind of person I could have talked to a lot sooner, if I hadn't been too twisted up with fear and insecurity.

Zoe has a lawyer too, not as flashy as Andre's, but a friend of Jade's Mum who took the case pro bono. Her name is Holly something, and wow, does she like to talk. She's been all over the news, pushing hard for rehabilitation instead of punishment, and so far, at least, the local politicians weighing in seem to agree. There's more focus on unravelling Coach Purcell's network of suppliers and distributors than on prosecuting Zoe or Aaron. Claud Neto is a different case though, since his association with Coach Purcell goes back more than a year. Marcus Collins had it right; Claud's job was essentially to spy on his friends and classmates, and he got paid a small fortune to do it.