Chapter 13
“Please, Mum.”
It was a last-ditch attempt, and Anton knew it was futile even as the words left his mouth. Mum’s face twisted, but she sighed and reached out to hug him anyway, stroking her fingers lightly through his hair.
“You have to go, sweetheart.”
“He’s—he’ll—Mum, he knows.”
“He would have found out anyway, honey. You were going to tell him—and even if you weren’t, you wouldn’t have been able to go out with him very long before he worked it out.”
“But—not like that.”
“I know,” Mum said soothingly, and stepped back to squeeze his shoulders. “But Kerry talked to him, and we both think he’s a nice enough boy. I don’t think he’s going to go telling all your friends.”
It wasn’t that. It weirdly, bizarrely, wasn’t that at all—although that was there, of course, in the ba
