answer, her whole body hesitating as she took a breath. Then her thumb touched it to take the call.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Thank you.”
“Yes.”
“I’m fine.”
“Working.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
“Say, hi, to Mum.”
“Yes.”
“Goodbye.”
Her pitch had changed when she was on the cell. It got more arrogant, and British. Her dad was British. I knew that too.
She colored up a bit as she leaned over and put her cell back on the side, saying nothing.
God, I had to ask. “Portia, your parents are rich, right? Why the hell are you working at the magazine and living here?” My free arm thrust out to highlight the inadequacy of the shithole she was in.
She turned an even brighter red when she looked at me. Sirens blared on the film to mark another victim’s death. Taken down.
“The money’s my parents, not mine.”
Well, yeah, but I’d have thought they’d have sorted her out somehow so she lived a little better than this. If I had money, I’d want to help my family. Our gazes held for a moment, but then she looked back at the film and her lip caught in her teeth for a second.
“You, okay?”
She nodded but she wasn’t.
“What did he say?”
She turned back and smiled at me. “Happy Birthday.”
I was moving forward without thinking, and I gripped her arm. “It’s your birthday? Why didn’t you say? I’d have got you something. No wonder you were bored alone. We should do something. Go out…”
“I want to watch films.” That pretty pout was back.
“I could have bought you cake.”
“You didn’t have to buy cake and you did get me something, you bought M&Ms, popcorn and vodka.”
I ignored that. She was just changing the subject. “Are you seeing them?”
“No, they’re in Switzerland.”
“Really? Were they here for New Year?”
“No.”
“You didn’t see them the whole of the holidays?”
“Nope, nor Thanksgiving. I see them in the summer when they come over to LA.”
“In the summer?”
She looked at me with a flat gaze that said, so. It wasn’t abnormal for her.
If this was a rich kid’s life, I was glad all those wishes I’d made on birthday candles as a boy hadn’t come true. “What about when you were a girl?”
“I was in boarding school, I stayed there.”
Her expression said she didn’t care. But she’d grown up on her own. A frown crushed my brow––I’d got her wrong in the office. But now she did look like the girl I’d worked with for a year. Her lips had pouted and her chin was up, in that aggressive bitch like expression I knew well.
“How much did you see them?” My hand ran over my hair, back and forth, as I said it. I was still knee deep in shock.
“A few weeks every year.”
A few weeks? Well that had probably been as much as I’d seen Dad when he was meant to be with us, but that was because he didn’t give a shit and was in and out of jail––what about her parents then….
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