6 - Lanees
‘Robert Loris Grafton, if you are not ready in seven minutes, you’ll walk all the way to school. I’m late,’ Lanees called out to her son from the bottom of the stairs of her two-floor house on Kastra II.
And I can’t be late, today of all days, she thought, tugging the long-sleeved white dress. The mirror in the foyer reassured her the zip on the front was fastened all the way up.
Robert replied from the top of the staircase, yelling, ‘COMING, MUMMY!’ He slid down the handrail. ‘I’m ready, see?’
Her son, eleven years old, the house’s pest, stood in front of her with his hair dishevelled.
‘What am I gonna do with you?’ Lanees pretended to be angry, but she smiled and the grin extended to her eyes while she combed his hair with her hands.
I love you and it’s too late to do an
