Chapter 10: What Lydia Wants

The video clip was only a few seconds long, and it had six hundred thousand views by breakfast.

It showed an open door lit yellow in the dark, and two shapes in it that were clearly kissing.

The caption said: I only ever wanted to be family.

I read the comments standing in the hall in my socks.

Some of them said I was a gold digger who was sleeping with the staff.

Some of them said the staff was a very lucky man.

One of them said: she charged her SISTER for TISSUES??? and had four thousand likes.

My phone buzzed. It was Mason, from the other end of the house.

He had written: I'm sorry. I should have shut the door.

I wrote: I was holding the envelope. I'd have noticed.

Then I went to find Lydia.

She was in the orangery, sitting alone on a white iron bench among the lemon trees.

Her phone lay face down on her knee.

She did not look surprised to see me.

"You posted it," I said.

"I wanted people to know," she said, very softly. "I didn't say anything bad."

"You said you only wanted to be family. Over a video of me kissing a man."

"It's true."

I sat down on the other end of the bench.

I had planned a speech, but what came out of me was the simplest question I had.

"What do you want?"

She looked at the lemon trees.

"Your room," she said. "Your seat. Your name on the invitations, next to mine."

"My room?"

"It was mine for twenty-four years. Now it's yours."

"I don't want it," I said. "I'll sleep in the garage. Take it."

She turned her head.

"I'm serious. Name a price. The room, the seat, whatever you want."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Fake Sister Cried on Cue, So I Billed Her for the Tissues from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.