Ruined By My Brother's Best Friend novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Tired

Sunday dinner was chicken, because it was always chicken.

Lev carved, because Mum had made him carve since his first Christmas, when he'd done it so neatly she'd said he must have trained as a surgeon.

Freddie sat at the far end in a T-shirt, not the new suit.

The envelope sat in the middle of the table between the gravy and the roast potatoes.

Nobody had moved it.

"Pass the gravy, love," Mum said to Lev.

He passed it.

"Careful," he said, "it's hot."

I kicked him under the table.

He didn't even blink.

Then Mum put her knife and fork down.

"I want to talk about the letter," she said.

Everybody stopped chewing.

"I'm fifty-two," Mum said. "I've been behind that counter since I was nineteen. I've been up at half past four every day for thirty-three years. My knees are gone. My back is gone. And every month, for six years, I've opened a letter from the bank and felt sick."

She looked at me.

"Four hundred thousand pounds, Hollie. I could pay it all. I could sleep past five."

"And Haddow's would be a hole in the ground."

"Haddow's is a shop."

"It's Dad's shop. It's his grandad's shop."

"It's my shop," Mum said, very quietly. "And I'm tired."

I'd never heard her say that.

Not once. Not even the week Dad died.

The kitchen went silent. Even Freddie looked at his plate.

I put my hand flat on the table.

"Then let me run it."

Mum blinked at me.

"I already do the kitchen," I said. "I do the orders. I do the flour van, and the rota, and the wholesale on Wednesdays. Let me do the counter and the books too. You sleep till eight. You come down when you want."

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