“I do. And don’t.”
“Well, you know what Christine would have said. You had a deal. You can’t back out of it.”
“Okay. That’s it, Treen. We’re done with this conversation.”
“Fine. Thom’s just coming out of the changing rooms. See you Friday!” she said, as if we had just been talking about music or where she was going on holiday, or soap.
And I was left staring at the ceiling.
You had a deal.
Yeah. And look how that turned out.
• • •
For all Treen moaned at me, in the weeks that had passed since I’d come home I had made some progress. I’d stopped using the cane, which had made me feel around eighty-nine years old, and which I had managed to leave behind in almost every place I’d visited since coming home. Most mornings I took Granddad for a walk around the park, at Mum’s request. The
