Diego, a gay boy growing up poor in machismo culture, knows about bullying.
Abi clasps her forehead and groaning says, ‘I think I have to go back to London, D. I don’t think I can do this …’
‘Hey, hey.’ Diego shakes his head and puts his hands on her shoulders. ‘Come on, now. I’ve never heard you talk like this – you’ve never been ashamed of who you are.’
‘Not until now. Not until moving here.’
Abi thinks about Lotte, how delighted and appalled she looked when she told her that Margot was a donor child. She’d likely combust if she found out about Abi’s past.
‘No, Abi.’ Diego holds up his hand in refusal. ‘You’ve worked too hard, too long to give up so easily. This is your time, your chance; you deserve your chance. You can’t let other people’s small-mindedness, their prejudices, stop you from doing what you have wanted for so long. It might be hard, sure, but you’ve done much, much harder things in your life.’ He pauses before he adds with a little smile, ‘Good speech, hey?’
She nods, wishes she shared his conviction.
‘But I do think if anyone else finds out then maybe tell Lily.’
Adrenaline shoots through her as she imagines the conversation. Lily pulling her hands away from Abi with a look of confusion, revulsion. What if Lily looks at her the way Rosie looked at her today? The way her own mum looked at her. That would kill her.
‘What about the restaurant?’
‘What about the restaurant?’
‘Well, if people find out about me, they might, I don’t know …’
‘Want to book a table because not only is the food magnificent but the people working there are also interesting, real people?’
Abi tries to smile at her friend’s efforts, but Diego has only just arrived in Waverly. He doesn’t understand. Abi is pretty sure Anna, Lotte and the rest would rather see her lynched for her past than help her succeed in her new life. Women, especially mothers, are never let off the hook easily.
‘Come here,’ Diego says, and they stand to hug again. He kisses the side of her head and his deep voice tickles around her ear as he says, ‘I mean it, though. You can’t give up so easily. Besides, think of all those dicks you’ve had to suck to get here.’
She whacks him in the side then and he starts picking at the chicken again while she goes upstairs to kiss Lily goodnight.
Chapter 12
It’s Tuesday morning and Anna’s still asleep as Eddy flicks the kettle on. Yawning, he starts up her laptop on the kitchen table. She’d spent most of the night down here, tapping away while he pretended to sleep upstairs. Since Singapore he’s often caught her reading messages on his phone, emails on his laptop. Of course he doesn’t like it, but he lets it go. Their therapist had said that rebuilding trust required effort on both sides. His effort is practising patience and if that means letting Anna snoop from time to time, then so be it. He’s never felt the need to spy on her in return, but since she came back from talking to Seb she’s been muttering about ‘doing something’ and Eddy is pretty sure whatever it is she’s planning is laid out on her laptop.
Albie sloshes milk all over his Weetabix and flicks through an old Lego magazine while Eddy taps ‘Smithson’ – Anna’s maiden name – into her computer and the screen lights up with a Word document.
He rubs the coarse hair of his beard, the words blurry without his glasses; he can only make out a few: ‘unethical behaviour’, ‘unsafe’ and ‘immediate removal’.
‘What the fuck,’ he mutters, and Albie looks up at him sharply. ‘Sorry, Albs,’ Eddy says to his littlest one as the kettle comes to an angry boil. ‘I’m just going to take Mum a cup of tea, I’ll be back in a minute.’
Albie doesn’t lift his eyes from his magazine; he just nods as Eddy tucks the laptop under his arm and carries two cups of tea upstairs. Blake’s door is still closed – he’ll still be fast asleep – but Eddy doesn’t have long before Albie will need him again, he doesn’t have long to find out whatever it is Anna’s planning.
Anna’s sitting up in bed, blinking against the brightness of the day. She eyes the mug in Eddy’s hand. ‘Thanks, sweetie.’
He reaches to his side table for his glasses and sits on the edge of the bed. She smiles when she sees the laptop; she seems glad, flattered even, that he’s been poking around.
‘You read it?’ she asks.
‘Not yet.’ He puts on his glasses and starts reading. ‘“Petition to remove Sebastian Kent as head teacher from Waverly Community Secondary School.” Anna,’ he says, the vowels long and full of warning, ‘you want to get Seb fired?’
‘I was hoping he’d resign before it came to that,’ Anna says defensively.
For as long as Eddy can remember, Seb had always wanted to be head teacher. Eddy never understood it, even tried to turn Seb’s head by showing off his own larger paycheques, the company car, the flashy business trips. Seb had been appropriately impressed but had stuck to his course. When he’d told Eddy he’d got the head teacher job just a few months ago, they’d held on to each other’s arms and jumped about Eddy’s kitchen, whooping, until Blake came in and told them, smiling, that they were both acting like kids.
Now, Eddy is reading a document his wife has written to bring all that to an ignoble end. The petition reads like a fever dream; she hasn’t bothered with punctuation.
It’s a relief she doesn’t mention exactly what it is that Seb’s done, but still, it’s written to incriminate him, written to show him in the worst possible light.
‘Anna, you can’t really think he’s not safe to do his job …’
‘If he worked in a factory or was an IT guy, then sure, whatever. I wouldn’t care. But he doesn’t, does he? He’s a teacher, our son’s head teacher. He should be a role model, lead by example. He has a responsibility to our children, to our whole community, to act with integrity with …’
Eddy holds up his hand and interrupts, ‘Yes, fine. I agree, I do, but when he’s not at work then surely he can do what he likes as long as it’s legal. Think about that presenter guy who was caught messaging younger men at work, Max …’
‘Max Harting.’
‘That’s it. Didn’t you say that you didn’t like what he was doing, didn’t agree with it, but that it wasn’t illegal so never mind?’
He sounds desperate, but it isn’t fair, he wasn’t prepared, and Anna has been up thinking about this all night. She enunciates her words carefully as she says, ‘What if Seb was a far-right lunatic in his spare time, had a swastika tattoo and posted awful stuff online – would you want to know about that?’
Eddy pulls a face. ‘Of course I would,’ he says gruffly.
‘Yeah, but all that’s legal, so …’ Anna makes her eyes wide, shrugs, like, ‘what’s the problem?’ She’s made her point. ‘Well, I’d want to know if he slept with prostitutes, and I think other women would agree with me.’
Eddy stares dumbly at the laptop screen, silent for a moment. He doesn’t want to get into an argument about gender. About why this prostitute thing is worse, more offensive – or so Anna seems to be suggesting – to women. He’ll certainly lose.
Eddy knew some of his colleagues, on work trips to faraway places, would sometimes pay. But Eddy had never considered it; the best part had always been the chase, the ‘will we, won’t we?’ Paying for it – he imagined – took all the magic, all the sexiness away. But he won’t mention any of this to Anna. He needs to keep his own name as far away from all this as possible.
‘What does this mean, then, for our family, for Blake?’
‘Well, I think if we can’t get rid of Seb then we’re going to have to find somewhere else for Blake, even if it’s further away. Brighton has some good places …’
‘Brighton’s half an hour away!’