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“HE WANTED TO HELP YOU!” Dad yells, but I shake my head.
“Sure he did. Yeah.”
“Of course I want to help you, Ells,” Connor says, with his sad mewling voice. “I love you, babe.”
“GET OUT!” I shout. “FUCK OFF! NOW!”
“No way!” he says. “I’m here for you.”
Jesus fucking Christ almighty.
Mum and Dad are looking at him like he’s some kind of fucking angel, risen from the ashes of them thinking he was a prick, too. They really believe his bullshit. They fucking believe him.
Connor has the audacity to brush past me and squeeze my mum’s shoulder in solidarity, and it’s a step too far. I jab a thumb over my shoulder towards the hall.
“He leaves or I do. I’m not joking.”
Dad points a trembling finger at me. “You aren’t going anywhere. Sit down, now!”
But I shake my head. I’m too old for this.
“I mean it, Dad. He leaves or I do.”
It’s a standoff, the three of them staring at me as though I’m the fucking idiot, without so much as a fair hearing, and screw it. Screw this.
“Call me when you want to talk. Without that traitorous, lying piece of shit in the room with us.”
“ELLA!” Dad shouts, and Mum wails again, but I’m off on a mission, my heels like lightning on the carpet as I walk away. Every step is hell. Every scrap of distance between me and my parents cuts like a knife, but I’m not being destroyed again, not for anything. Or anyone. Connor deserves to burn, not me.
“ELLA!” Dad shouts again, and I turn around.
I’m fiercer than I expect when I point straight at Connor. “THAT LYING PRICK OR ME, WHICH IS IT GOING TO BE?”
My parents aren’t used to seeing the flames in me, both of them wide-eyed.
“CLOCK’S TICKING!” I say. “Or I’ll love you and leave you. I swear to God, it’s love you, but I’m not doing this. Not with him here.”
Another standoff, and Connor holds his hands out, like he’s imploring me not to leave. He stands between my parents like a saviour. He may as well have a fake plastic halo on his smarmy head.
“Go, Connor. Please,” Dad says, and Connor looks like he’s been slapped.
“Sorry? What? We were going to address this together, the three of us.”
“We’ll talk later,” Dad says to him. “Go to the lobby or something.”
Connor stands still, so Dad takes his elbow and shunts him.
“Please, Connor, go. We’ll call you.”
Connor’s eyebrows are sky high.
“Alright, I’ll be in the lobby. Waiting.” He gives me pathetic puppy dog eyes on his way past, his jaw gritted. “I’m not leaving you, Ells. No way.”
“You already did, when it actually counted,” I tell him.
I wait until the door is closed behind him before I finally take a seat at the table opposite my mum. It feels insane not to be holding her tight as she cries, or grabbing Dad for a happy hug, but there is neither, just me sitting down at a table in Connor’s opulent suite.
Dad keeps pacing, his hands back in his hair.
