stethoscope on top of my chest and listened for my heartbeat. It was still going which was something of an achievement in itself.
‘Hello?’
The handle of the waiting-room door turned and the door knocked against the latch. Sitting up, I wobbled for a moment, almost falling off the table before catching myself, wiping my face and giving a loud, satisfying sniff.
‘Just a moment,’ I called through the door as I splashed my face with cold water. ‘I’m almost ready, Mr Harries.’
Just three more appointments, just one more hour to get through.
With a deep breath that stuck in my throat, I pushed myself out of my mind and opened the door. A sandy-haired older gentleman carrying a long-haired black cat in a shopping bag held up his hand politely as he walked in. The cat was wearing a hand-knitted jumper with a picture of what I took to be Olaf from Frozen emblazoned on the back.
‘Mr Harries, I thought we’d talked about getting rid of Jeremy’s woolly jumpers?’ I said as gently as possible, turning away to dab my runny nose with my sleeve. ‘They’re what’s causing all the hairballs.’
‘But he loves them,’ Mr Harries protested. ‘What am I supposed to do?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, sharing a despairing glance with poor Jeremy. ‘I really don’t know.’
‘And that’s how I blew up the microwave,’ Dad finished his story with pride. ‘It was only a small fire and I put it right out, no problems. Scorched the curtain a bit but you can’t tell unless you look.’
‘It was time we replaced that microwave anyway,’ Chris said, waving his hand as he laid down his decree. ‘I’ll get you a new one, a better one. Mine’s brilliant, does everything except wipe your arse. Amazing.’
‘You could get a gold-plated microwave that shits unicorn droppings, it’ll still blow up if you put metal in it,’ I pointed out.
‘I still can’t understand why you were trying to heat up a yoghurt.’
’I wanted to know what would happen,’ Dad replied. ‘Now I do.’
‘You should sue them,’ Chris went on. ‘It should say on it that you’re not supposed to microwave yoghurt pots.’
‘You can’t sue the manufacturers for human error,’ I said. ‘I think you just need to be more careful, Dad.’
‘And I think you shouldn’t take legal advice from a law school dropout.’ Chris twisted around in Mum’s favourite armchair to give me the full benefit of his smug, older-brother expression. ‘I’ll get a new microwave sent over before Mum gets back. She’ll never know.’
‘She doesn’t use it any more anyway.’ Dad merrily ignored the pair of us, having done a wonderful job of developing selective hearing over the years. ‘I’ll tell her I got rid of it because of the radiation. She’ll be made up.’
‘I’ll get you a good one,’ Chris said, already looking at microwaves on his phone. ‘Can’t have you and Mum getting into accidents. We probably ought to replace the whole kitchen.’
‘We’re not senile quite yet,’ Dad said, pushing himself up to his feet as the doorbell rang. ‘You don’t need to put a catch on the toilet to stop me falling in.’
‘He was dicking about with a microwave, not trying to burn the house down,’ I whispered after he left the room. ‘Stop patronizing him, they don’t want a new kitchen.’
‘Calm down, Ad.’ Chris popped the top on a bottle of beer, wrinkling his nose at my provided beverages. He only drank craft ales so I’d brought Bud Light with Lime. It was the little things that got you through the difficult days. ‘You shouldn’t feel inferior because I’m in a position to help them out.’
‘If they wanted a new kitchen, they’d buy a new kitchen,’ I replied, turning my phone over to check the time. Between the night on the settee, the Mexican jet lag and whatever the hell had happened with Liv, I was dying on my arse.
‘And if I want to help my parents out, I will,’ he replied with serial killer calm. ‘Maybe if they hadn’t spent half their savings on paying for the barrister’s qualification you jacked in a year before you finished, they might have bought themselves a new kitchen before now. Or at least had a lawyer son who could afford to buy one for them.’
‘Oh, fuck off.’ I burrowed backwards, praying for the settee to swallow me whole ‘They don’t want a new kitchen, Chris.’
‘You’re very touchy this evening.’ He leaned forward over his designer denim-covered knees and fixed me with a smile. ‘Anything to do with the distinct lack of a post-Mexico engagement?’
‘Nope,’ I replied, sipping my beer with great difficulty. It really did taste like piss. ‘And I don’t want to talk about that here.’
‘She say no?’
‘Fairly certain I just said I didn’t want to talk about it.’
‘Shame that,’ Chris said with a deep, satisfied sigh. ‘Especially since Cassie was on the phone to Liv when I left. What’s all this about a break?’
When my brother started going out with Liv’s best friend, I was wary. He’d come to Long Harrington for my birthday and Liv had thrown me a party and warned Cassie and Abigail, her two best friends, not to touch him with a ten-foot pole. Abi listened, Cass did not. Chris had always been a bit of a shit with the ladies – well, a shit in general – but that had been even more of a worry than usual. I didn’t want to get in trouble with Liv when he inevitably broke her best friend’s heart. We hadn’t been going out that long and my brother had never been able to keep it in his pants for more than three months at a time and, try as I might, I could not see a scenario in which his relationship went well for me. What I couldn’t have predicted was Chris falling head over heels in love with Cass, leaving London and buying a house in the village after three months, proposing after six, then getting married and knocking out a baby less than a year later. Whatever magical spell Cassie had worked on my brother had worked and he was a new man. At least for her, anyway. Where the rest of the world was concerned he was still a total prick.
‘What did she say?’ I asked, taking another sip of my disgusting drink. Hoisted by my own lime-flavoured petard. I was happy it had worked out but it was massively annoying that he always seemed to know what was going on in my life before I did. Cassie and Liv were constantly texting each other, updating one another on every last little thing that went on. I’d tried to read their texts but since I couldn’t speak emoji I couldn’t understand most of it anyway.
‘I can’t believe you brought this piss; I don’t know if it’s cat’s, gnat’s or rat’s but I’m not drinking it.’ He took one more drink then put the half-full bottle on the fireplace. ‘She said you and Liv had some sort of barney and now you’re taking a break. What’s going on? I thought you had it all planned.’
‘I did,’ I said, fixing my eyes on a photo of the village millpond that Dad had taken when me and Chris were kids and visiting our grandparents.
