Page 109 of Darkest Obsession

“Thanks, mum.”

She doesn’t smile, but she doesn’t look angry either. I think that’s just how she looks these days. It’s just this blank expression she hides all her sadness behind. I’ve seen that sadness somewhere else, in another person who I can’t seem to ever get out of my fucking mind.

The house looks different. She must have had some remodeling done. Considering they spent £14 million on the last remodel, I imagine she’s burned through quite a chunk of change. And my mother, ever so knowledgeable about her son, puts her hand on my shoulder.

“I know you’ve come for money,” she says, gesturing to a chair in the parlor. I sink into the recently reupholstered antique chair, missing the scent of cigarettes that usually accompanied sinking into this particular chair. Mum always hated his smoking.

“Will you allow me some money?”

She prefers I ask my father about these things, but she’s my parent too. She doesn’t have to run every choice by my father.

“You have to talk to your father at some point,” she says stiffly, stirring three cubes of sugar into her tea.

I really don’t have to talk to my father. I don’t want to. After everything, I want him behind bars. I don’t want to have tea with him or pretend he’s not a fucking criminal. I know mum disagrees. He’s still your dad. When I point out that hasn’t stopped her from divorcing him, she reminds me that it’s different. But how? He’s a fucking dick. He doesn’t deserve a wife or kids.

“I need money urgently. A lot.”

“For what?”

It’s our family rule. You can have whatever money you want as long as you’re honest. There’s no hiding from our accountants. Each one served over two decades accounting for the British crown. I’ve never hidden anything from my mum, not even terrible things. Fuck, she’s heard worse from my brothers by now, I’m sure.

They’re off at boarding school or the house would surely be filled with screeching by now.

“I’m going to kill someone,” I tell my mother and she takes her hand off my shoulder.

“I thought you got that out of your system.”

“I didn’t murder Amelia.”

“What you did wasn’t any different from murder, Thomas.”

That’s the deal, isn’t it? We don’t sugarcoat the truth from each other. Our parents love us. Our parents trust us to make the right choices. She’s my mum and I know she’s supposed to be hard on me, but with everything that’s happened, it’s hard to keep my cool.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter that I've been clean for a year?”

Mum doesn’t hesitate with a response. I can tell she’s been sitting on these criticisms my entire semester away.

She responds calmly, but firmly, “You stuck a needle into her arm.”

That first night together was almost as traumatizing as the night she died. She’d never done it before. She didn’t want to. Things got weird between us. Really weird. She got me so hard and then… I couldn’t. Not with her. She wasn’t right. I distracted her with drugs. I couldn’t be with her, so I got her high instead. I didn’t just ruin Amelia’s life, I ended it.

“I only gave her the first needle myself,” I whisper, as if that makes what I did any fucking better.

Sylvia never looked at me the same when she found out. She promised not to tell Clover, but I can’t hide this from Clover forever, can I? If my dad’s taught me anything useful, it’s that all our dark, dirty secrets eventually spill out. It doesn’t matter how much money you have or how stiff you keep your upper lip. Secrets find the light.

“You drugged her, Thomas. If you’re going to avoid becoming like him, you’ll have to be honest with yourself.”

“I am honest with myself.”

“Good. Then there’s no other girl in the picture?”

I squirm in my seat. I love Clover, but she isn’t exactly in the picture, is she? I want her to belong to me, but she isn’t mine.

“No mum.”

“Think about that night, Thomas,” my mother says, trying to hide the fact that she fears me. I hate that I scare her. She’s my fucking mum. She doesn’t have to worry about me anyway. I’ll never forget that night with Amelia.

We were together. We were drinking. We were doing things we shouldn’t have been doing. I dared her to get even higher. I dared her to drag me to the edge of glory. She was the only one who fell.