showing a “vengeance film”! This time they’re killing paedophile vets who molest baby animals.’
Renton shrugged. ‘Already downloaded it. Gave it two-and-a-half poo-splosions on Backed-Up Toilet.com. Of course, over at my other review site, Best Movie of the Year, I said it was the best movie of the year.’
‘What about Sharks Don’t Sleep at Night? They say it’s a stunning contemporary fairytale that does for the Pacific Trash Gyre what Orson Welles did for Californian wines.’
Rose stood up. ‘I’m going to leave you guys to it.’
‘But Rose, there’s a Mnmskmo retrospective!’ Sarah said. ‘They’re showing The Hand that Holds the Hammer. You loved that film when you were a kid!’
‘Sounds good, Mum. Depends when it’s on.’
As she padded back down the hall, she heard her father’s voice: ‘Thanks for dinner.’
Rose smiled to herself.
‘And don’t forget the gas bill’s due on Wednesday.’
Rose stopped smiling.
‘And the internet,’ Renton added. ‘It’s meant to be an unlimited plan, but the dark web really burns through the gigs.’
They were still talking when she closed her bedroom door behind her.
Sitting on her bed to finish her tepid pad thai, Rose tried to push down her frustration. She hadn’t meant to end up the family breadwinner at age twenty two. And her parents hadn’t always been this poor. When she was growing up, they’d made a decent living from freelance cultural criticism. But now, the market for their kind of waffle had dried up. They often complained that society didn’t recognise their genius, but from what Rose could tell, there just wasn’t any money in writing 3000-word diatribes about the need for more Transformers of colour.
They hadn’t neglected Rose, exactly. She’d received an excellent humanities-based education. But Rose had a practical mind and a bent for problem-solving. From an early age, it became clear she just wasn’t temperamentally suited to the arts industry. For instance, when they’d all watched Pink Floyd’s The Wall together, Rose – who was eight – had made the mistake of saying she liked the wall.
‘No,’ Alan had gasped, ‘walls are bad!’
‘D’you want to be just another brick?’ said Renton.
‘But I like walls,’ Rose had insisted. ‘They hold up the ceiling, so the books don’t get wet.’
Now, she opened her computer. Renton’s torrent was still in progress. She thought about stopping it, but it wasn’t worth the stink he’d kick up later on. She texted Nicola – can u talk?
She still wasn’t sure of the time difference; how late was it in Tokyo? Nicola had travelled to Japan six months ago for a working holiday teaching English, and Rose really missed her best friend. Nicola was meant to be back by now, but she’d been offered an amazing job on a cutting-edge technology project. ‘It feels like the future over here,’ Nicola had said, ‘but the calendars still say 2019.’
When Nicola had described the job, it had sounded to Rose like the work would mostly involve translating youth slang about romance and sex. Then, a few weeks in, Nicola had confided to Rose that she was working with a scientific team writing software for a highly advanced robot. Rose had joked that Nicola was helping build a love robot; to her dismay, Nicola had simply nodded. But she assured Rose it was all above board, even if she was surrounded by middle-aged men in lab coats and computer geeks who – she claimed – would squeal in terror if she looked them in the eye.
At least they Skyped regularly, and they still hadn’t missed an episode of Grim Designs. Nicola liked the drama of watching yuppies fight as they restored barns in post-industrial rural Britain. Rose liked mocking their shoddy construction methods.
While she waited for Nicola’s reply, she picked up the book she was reading: a torrid Highland romance set in the eighteenth century. The brooding Earl of Dalwhinnie had just returned from the Far East to find that his trusty gamekeeper had died, and the gamekeeper’s fiery daughter had her own ideas about how to manage the estate.
She’d barely caught up with the story again when her laptop started burbling. She accepted the Skype call. ‘Nicola!’
The screen showed a young woman in a lab coat, with other scientists moving busily behind her.
‘I can’t talk long,’ her best friend said. ‘We’re getting the first batch of results back and I have to translate in real time.’ Her gaze dropped to the book in Rose’s hands. ‘I can’t believe you’re still reading that.’
‘What? The Earl with the Dragon Tattoo? I’m really getting into it. It’s almost as good as Gossip Earl.’
Nicola laughed, and quoted the back cover blurb: ‘In the court of King James, where knowledge was power, one man held all the strings.’
‘I get enough of my parents ragging on my reading tastes, thank you.’
‘Remember how they used to keep leaving copies of Infinite Jest around the house?’
‘That was actually useful – I turned two of them into a clamp.’
‘Speaking of clamps,’ said Nicola, ‘did you see the latest Grim Designs?’
‘I know, right!’ Rose said. ‘I knew that clamp wasn’t going to hold the wall, but I didn’t think it was going to fall on them during the wedding! Lucky they got the “till death do us part” line out in time.’
‘Can’t believe the mother-in-law wanted them to concrete over it,’ Nicola said.
‘She’s getting that house no matter what.’
Nicola laughed. ‘Totally. We’ve gotta make sure we’ve both got Sunday night free for the final reveal.’
‘You know,’ said Rose, ‘I might have to start watching these shows professionally.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I ran into one of the guys from TAFE down at Gruntings, and he got me a job on one of the shows they film here.’
Nicola beamed. ‘That’s great! You’ll be able to finally ditch Old Steve. That guy should have been retired ten years ago.’
‘I don’t want to ditch Old Steve,’ said Rose, ‘I just want to do more with my life than make nails. I’m not a blacksmith.’
‘It’s a shame Old Steve won’t live,’ mused Nicola, ‘but then again, who does?’ She held up a unicorn folded from tinfoil.
‘Old Steve’s seen things you wouldn’t believe,’ Rose said, ‘but he’s not nearly as helpless as he makes out. He just puts on that fake cough whenever he’s trying to guilt-trip me. These days I ignore it.’
‘I don’t care about him. You being on a reality show would be awesome!’
‘I guess,’ Rose said. ‘Grim Designs is the
