PART 1 — MY TURN
When Bree rang me crying because Tarek had finished it after six years and told her to find somewhere, I did not think about it for four seconds.
She turned up with two cases and about three hundred pounds.
“Stay until you’re sorted,” I said, and Gideon said it too, and he meant it.
The first week was fine.
Then she started coming downstairs after her shower in a towel and nothing else, and making coffee, and standing at that counter talking, with my husband sitting eight feet away with the paper.
The first time I let it go.
The second time I took her into the hall.
“Bree. Would you put a dressing gown on before you come down? Gideon’s usually in there.”
She laughed at me. “Rom. He’s your husband. He’s not fifteen.”
“I know. I’m asking because I don’t like it.”
She shrugged and said fine.
She did not stop. She got more obvious. One morning, with me four feet away, she asked him to get something down off the top cupboard for her.
Gideon picked his coffee up and left the room.
That night I said it again, properly.
And she rolled her eyes and said, “Why are you being so insecure?”
“I’m not. It’s my house and I’ve asked you once.”
And then she leaned back on that counter and said the thing.
“Honestly? Think of it as a test.”
“A test.”
“If your husband can be got at because a woman walks past him in a towel, wouldn’t you rather find out now?” And then: “And if he fails, that’s his problem.”
I could not make a sentence for about ten seconds.
I had put that woman in my spare room when she had nowhere. I was buying her food. She had my car three days a week for interviews.
And she had arranged it in her own head so that ignoring me was a favour.
I told Gideon what she had said that night and his jaw went, and then he said, “She’s your sister. I’ll stay out of it.”
Three more days. Same thing every morning.
Then Sunday.
She came into that kitchen in the towel like the previous fortnight had not happened, and I opened my mouth.
And Gideon put two fingers on my arm.
“Don’t.”
I looked at him. He was completely calm.
“My turn.”
And for the first time in three weeks he did not pick up his coffee and go.
He set the mug down on the counter and looked straight at her.
“You’ve been calling this a test all week.”
Bree gave him a little pleased smile. “Exactly.”
“Good. I’ve been running one of my own.”
Her smile stopped.
“What are you talking about?”
He reached for the thing that had been sitting beside his mug the whole time, which I had assumed was post.
It was an envelope.
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