fixedly at the balls he’d racked.
Curtis couldn’t think of a better plan than to lean over the table and hope the triangle of balls was as easy to hit as it looked.
He’d just slammed his cue into the white ball to send it hard into the pack, balls spinning angrily in all directions except the pockets, when Natasha blundered up the stairs, cheeks tear-streaked. ‘Did Jordan tell you?’ Her voice wavered thinly.
Jordan heaved an exaggerated sigh, lining up the white on the blue-stripe ball, one eyebrow curling angrily.
Curtis looked from sister to brother. ‘What?’
Natasha’s face puckered. ‘Our mum’s got some horrible boyfriend and she’s gone off with him to talk about the future. They’re going to have a baby!’ She began to cry in chest-heaving sobs, lips creasing back from her teeth.
The hay-fever eyes and Jordan’s scowl slammed into focus. Curtis felt a turning over in his stomach, an echo of the shock of when it had been his family that had been blowing itself apart. ‘That’s crappy.’
‘Curtis doesn’t need to hear this, Natasha.’ Jordan stabbed his cue at the white ball and it spat the blue-stripe into the pocket before ricocheting away.
Curtis leaned his cue against the table and moved a few uncertain steps closer to Natasha. She tugged at his heart, a drooping little figure standing alone and weeping. ‘My parents split up three years ago. It’s bad to start with.’
Jordan hurled his cue down onto the baize, balls crashing and clattering into each other. ‘Like it doesn’t stay being bad?’ he demanded aggressively, as if Curtis was somehow head of the parental split-ups department.
Curtis shrugged, though he went all hot at the anger ringing in Jordan’s voice. At least it had been the table Jordan had slammed the cue onto, not Curtis’s head. ‘Well, they stay split up but otherwise it’s OK. I hated it at first but it happens to everyone, doesn’t it?’ He went over to the kitchen alcove and pulled sheets off a roll of blue kitchen paper to hand to Natasha.
‘Thanks,’ she said, sniffing and scrubbing at her face. ‘But I don’t want them to split up.’
‘Too late,’ Jordan bit scornfully. ‘They did that weeks ago.’
Natasha’s tears began to fall faster. ‘Po-or Dad!’
Jordan turned his furiously flashing gaze on her. ‘Shut up, Gnasher! You give me shit ache.’
And all at once Curtis found himself fighting for control of his facial muscles. It totally wasn’t funny. Natasha was bawling and Jordan was obviously the kind of unhappy that made you want to smash things. The back of Curtis’s nose began to hurt as he tried to swallow the words that burned in his throat. But out they came on a gurgle of laughter. ‘How can your shit ache?’
Jordan switched his glare to Curtis. Then an unwilling smile tugged at its corner. ‘Things have to be really really crap.’
Natasha gave a huge revolting sniff and a giggle-sob. ‘You give me shit ache, too, Jordan. And so does Mum.’
‘She’s shit-ache central,’ allowed Jordan. His twitchy smile developed into a grin.
‘But, mostly, the horrible boyfriend.’
‘And the baby.’ Jordan picked up his cue just to slam it down again with a roar. ‘A freaking baby!’
Natasha wiped her face. ‘But it’s going to be our brother or sister.’
Natasha’s voice being hoarse with tears, Curtis decided no one would mind if he investigated the contents of the drinks fridge. Discovering a fat lemonade bottle, he reached for glasses from the draining board. ‘Surely all babies give you shit ache? They just scream all the time and go red and smell. Are you going to have to live with it?’
Jordan glazed over with horror. ‘Live with the baby? That’s proper shit ache. I bet we will. Did your mum have any more kids?’
Curtis watched the lemonade hiss up the sides of the glasses. ‘Nope. She lives with another bloke though, Darren.’
‘Yeurgh!’ Natasha’s face began to crumple anew. ‘What if Mum goes to live with whoever she’s having the baby with? What if we don’t like him? What if Dad gets someone new, too? We could have horrible step-parents and horrible stepbrothers and sisters and–’
Taking too huge a glug of lemonade Curtis belched loudly, surprising Natasha into a pause. He grinned as if he’d summoned the giant burp just to cheer her. He crossed to the big brown L-shaped sofa by the window and flopped down, looking out over the garden. From where he sat he could see the woods behind the annexe, laced with footpaths to the park. ‘But there are upsides. If either Mum or Dad has shit ache with me–’ he paused for them to snigger ‘– I can make an excuse to go stay with the other one. I get to go on two holidays. Last year it was the Dominican Republic with Mum and Darren, and coming here with Dad.’
‘That’s cool,’ Jordan admitted. He plumped down on the sofa, side-on to face Curtis. ‘We just come to France every year.’
‘Maybe that’ll change.’ Natasha pulled the sofa’s big end cushion onto the floor and plopped down onto it. ‘Maybe whoever Mum’s going with will take us somewhere else.’
‘Hasn’t your mum told you her boyfriend’s name?’ Curtis tried to think back to when his parents had split. Mum, brightly positive, had introduced him to Darren right from the first. Darren, who’d seemed a horrible intruder in those days, had been brightly positive, too, no matter how rude Curtis had been. Only Dad had been grave and quiet.
Natasha gave another big gross snorty sniff. ‘Dad just says it’s all out of his hands.’
‘Which is code for “It was her who wanted to split up, not me, so she can tell you.”’ added Jordan, gloomily. He cocked a considering eye at Curtis. ‘Richie at school says he gets loads more birthday and Christmas presents since his parents split.’
Curtis grinned. ‘’Sright. From Darren’s family I’ve got like a spare nan, grandad, aunts and uncles. They all give me stuff. And I get two Christmas Days, one with Mum and one with Dad.’
Natasha wiped her swollen eyes and dumped the tissue on the floor. ‘My friends Alicia and Rowan say the same. And at least we’ve got Auntie Leah here for the holiday.’
Jordan rolled his head back on the sofa. ‘Yeah, better than just being with Dad. He’s got enough shit ache for all of us.’
Unwilling to be in the house but not quite comfortable with closing herself off in La Petite Annexe, unconcerned about everyone else’s unhappiness, Leah lay on a garden lounger, a bottle of rosé pamplemousse nestling amongst ice in a blue plastic jug beside her, a good slug of its contents gleaming in her glass. Alister had taken himself off to brood in the silence of the salon, the kids were elsewhere in the gîte with Curtis, while Leah vibrated with the swimmy-trembly feeling of unreality that came with disaster as she attempted to assimilate the day’s events.
‘You kidnapped my boy?’
The voice mock-growling through the twilight made Leah jump, slopping her wine in a chilly splat onto her legs. She twitched around to find Ronan leaning over the fence. The last solitary ray of evening sun fired red lights in his dark hair.
‘I did ask Curtis to text you. He’s with Natasha and Jordan. He came to invite them to your house but Alister said would he mind being here, instead.’
‘He has an instant memory wipe available for such requests. Is he in your way?’
She shook her head. ‘Alister thought it might be good for the kids to have someone their own age to talk to.’ The tears tightening her throat made her words come out on a sort of gargle.
Ronan’s expression changed. ‘What’s up?’ He slung a leg over the wooden fence and landed on his feet on her side of it, though he winced