It Sounded Better in My Head - Nina Kenwood Page 0,1

and poured vinegar all over our sugary sweetness.

Ten months. They’ve been lying to me for so long I am momentarily dizzy trying to comprehend it.

‘Your father and I are still friends, Natalie. Good friends. We are going to stay in each other’s lives. We just don’t want to be married anymore.’

Mum seems to be under the mistaken impression that I consider their friendship a worthwhile consolation prize.

‘But it doesn’t make any sense. And why did you wait so long to tell me?’ I wish I was hysterical and crying, but their calmness is a blanket dampening my angry fire. It’s probably a part of their strategy. Don’t let her make a scene. If we stay calm, so will she. Things are only as big a deal as you let them be. Mum, in particular, loves to throw around that last line, especially when I’m having a bad-skin day and she wants me to go outside.

Unbelievably, Mum goes to bite her apple again, but I snatch it out of her hands.

‘Can you stop eating for one second, please?’ I’m getting much closer to shouting.

Mum moves and sits next to me on the couch. She puts her arm around me and smooths my hair down, like I’m an animal that needs to be calmed. I want to gnash my teeth, struggle out of her grip and run howling down the street.

‘We wanted to wait until you were finished school. We didn’t want to disrupt your studies during such an important year.’

‘We love you, honey,’ Dad says, scooching the beanbag closer. It makes an unpleasant farting noise against the wooden floorboards, which we all pretend not to hear.

‘So, you’ve been lying to me all year?’

‘Not lying. Pretending a little. Omitting details.’

‘Avoiding the inevitable,’ Dad says.

‘Your father and I have grown apart.’

‘We wanted to be completely sure before we told you.’

‘It’s just one of those things.’

‘The guilt of not telling you has been eating us up inside.’

I can tell they’ve rehearsed all these lines. Written them down maybe, practised in front a mirror. Read it off a piece of paper like a script. Do I look sad enough, I imagine Mum asking Dad. Speed it up to sound more natural, I imagine him saying back. And don’t forget to tell her we’ll still be friends.

‘No one is to blame here.’

Dad has got to stop saying that if he wants me to believe it.

‘We love you,’ Mum says.

This is no comfort. I’m their only child. They have to love me.

‘Who am I going to live with?’ I ask. What I mean is, Are you at least fighting over me?

‘You can live with whoever you want,’ Dad says, voice bright, as though he’s handing me a present.

That’s not the plan though. The plan was for me to keep living at home, in this house, with both of them, when I go to university next year, and after that. I would remain here for the foreseeable future. There was no end date on our situation. That’s our plan. That’s been our plan from the beginning.

‘I don’t want to move.’ My voice shakes a little, and I sound whiny and pathetic instead of firm.

‘Honey, no matter what happens, you’ll always have a home,’ Mum says, which is the kind of vague wording designed to comfort but only raises more questions. No matter what happens? What else is going to happen?

‘You’ll have two homes,’ Dad says, in his most upbeat voice.

I don’t want two homes. Who wants two homes? Home only makes sense in singular form.

I look at them both, with their identical please-adjust-quickly-to-our-terrible-news fake smiles, and I feel a sense of dread.

This is the end of life as I know it.

2

My Face and Other Problems

I was a cute child. I don’t say this as a boast, but as a matter of truth. A woman once came up to my mother and asked if she had thought about getting me into child modelling.

‘Your daughter would be perfect for our catalogue. She’s got the right look.’

The woman was talking about a catalogue for a chain of discount chemists, and the ‘right look’ probably meant ordinary, gap-toothed and relatable, so we’re not talking high glamour, but the point is that my face was once considered photogenic. I had shiny dark hair. Chubby, unmarked cheeks. Twinkling brown eyes. (Okay, I don’t know if they were ever actually twinkling but it’s certainly possible that they were in the right light.) My favourite clothes were my purple glitter sneakers and a T-shirt with a