Please Don't Leave Me Here by Tania Chandler Read Free Book Online Page B

Rosie.’
    Rosie pushes the biscuits away. ‘Thanks. I’m taking good care of myself these days.’
    The short haircut, cropped around her face, accentuates her huge brown eyes. Ryan was right: she does look like a stick insect. ‘It’s important to be healthy as we get older.’ Rosie’s eyes flick down and up Brigitte’s body. Assessing her?
    â€˜Yes. Apparently all sorts of things start to change when you get to forty.’ Brigitte takes a biscuit. ‘So I’ve heard.’
    â€˜I wish Ryan would do something healthy. He’s really packing on the weight.’
    â€˜He walks a lot. He’s OK.’ And quite a bit younger than you.
    Rosie raises her eyebrows. There’s an awkward silence.
    â€˜How’s Georgia going at kinder this year?’
    â€˜Well, you know — Georgia’s always going to be difficult. Ryan lets her get away with too much.’ She waves a hand dismissively. ‘I seriously don’t know how you can stand staying home looking after kids all day, Brigitte.’
    â€˜I work, too.’
    Rosie ignores her; writing is not a real job to Rosie. ‘In some ways, it’s lucky Ryan’s unemployed — so he can do it.’
    â€˜He’s not unemployed,’ Brigitte says. ‘He’s got some work on. And auditions.’
    Rosie laughs — a fake laugh — and pretends to choke on her tea. She leaves her half-empty cup on the breakfast bar, and goes to her room. Brigitte has another biscuit, and loads the dishwasher.
    Rosie comes out in her lycra gear and trainers, ready for a run around the island. ‘You should come, Brigitte.’ She fills a water bottle at the sink.
    â€˜No, thanks.’
    â€˜Sorry, I forgot you can’t …’ she says, with a look that’s not quite pity.
    Rosie jogs off, and Brigitte takes a book out to read on the porch couch — the book Rosie gave her last Christmas: Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood. She can’t concentrate, and keeps reading the same page. She thinks about opening the wine in the fridge.
    Where are the boys and the kids? Rosie gets back before they do. She showers, and stays in her room with the door shut.
    Sam and Ryan come back with alcohol on their breath; the kids have ice-cream all over their faces and T-shirts. Ryan holds a slab of beer under his arm. Brigitte closes her book and follows them inside.
    â€˜What’s for dinner, Little Sis?’ Ryan jokes, putting the slab on the breakfast bar and an arm around her shoulder.
    â€˜Go away. You’ve been at the pub. You stink of beer. Both of you.’
    â€˜Just kidding. Sam and I’ll go back across and get fish and chips.’ He hiccups. ‘Where’s Rosie?’
    â€˜In your room.’
    He goes to her. Sam puts the beers in the fridge. ‘Want one?’
    â€˜OK.’
    They take their drinks outside. The kids are riding bikes around the yard. Sam kisses Brigitte against a pole on the porch, his hand up under her T-shirt. She turns her face, and looks around his shoulder.
    â€˜What’s wrong?’
    â€˜Ryan,’ she whispers. He’s standing in the doorway, clearing his throat. Brigitte pushes Sam away and straightens her T-shirt.
    â€˜Everything OK?’ she says.
    â€˜Yep. Rosie’s resting.’ He takes the plastic cover off the pool table, and plugs in the ancient yellow-and-aqua CD player that nobody can remember bringing here. Every time they come down, they speculate about where it came from. Ryan reckons Nana and Papa left it as a gift for the ‘young people’. Brigitte knows where it came from, but says Joan must have brought a boyfriend down for a dirty weekend and left it here.
    Rosie comes out an hour or so later, and screws up her nose at the fish and chips on the porch, the grease soaking into the paper. Sam and Ryan are playing pool, and Brigitte’s watching the kids dance with glow sticks on the