Joined at the Hip

by Natasha West

  ‘I don’t care if you beat me at thumb wars. It’s stupid.’

  Max hesitated for a moment before he said ‘Is this about Molly?’

  Henry looked up sharply.

  ‘What about Molly?’

  ‘Your big, honking crush on her?’

  Henry’s eyes went as round as ping pong balls.

  ‘What are you talking about? Crush? Ha!’ he cried out. ‘Me? No way.’

  Max wasn’t stupid but even if he’d been as thick as pig shit, he still wouldn’t have bought that sad little performance. But he decided not to push. They sat in silence for a few seconds before Henry casually asked ‘What makes you think I have a crush on Molly, anyway? Just out of curiosity.’

  Max gave Henry a lop sided smile and replied ‘Because… Whenever you think no one’s looking, you’re always staring at her.’

  ‘What?! No, I’m not!’ Henry protested loudly.

  Another brief silence.

  ‘You don’t think Molly’s noticed, do you?’

  ‘Nah. Don’t sweat it. I think she’s probably been a bit side-tracked. What with being cursed to knock about with my sister until the end of her life.’

  Henry was relieved for a second. Until he remembered that the Molly and Jamie thing was all his fault. How was he ever going to get Molly to like him now?

  His Dad had told him once that when he first started going out with his Mum, he thought he’d blown it with her when he unknowingly gave her genital warts. But somehow, she’d forgiven him. Henry supposed that story was meant to convey the depth of love between them. And in a way, it was quite comforting. But what Henry had done to Molly was probably worse than an STI. And he’d had a lot less fun giving it to her.

  The car door was abruptly pulled open and Molly climbed into the front passenger seat. Jamie joined her in the driver’s seat.

  They’d managed to get out of the house without dealing with Molly’s Mum again, but they were both feeling low, in their different ways, from the encounter.

  Jamie turned to the back seat. ‘Belt up. We don’t need any more police attention.’

  Max and Henry followed orders. But Molly didn’t move. She was staring into the foot well.

  ‘Hey’ Jamie asked, quietly. ‘Did you catch that?’

  ‘Mmm?’ Molly asked, surprised out of her reverie. ‘Oh, yeah. Sure.’ She clicked her the belt into place.

  Jamie pulled out into the road. She wondered if it was worth pressing Molly on the Mum incident. But Jamie didn’t feel like she had any right to quiz her. They weren’t exactly friends.

  Twelve

  They’d been on the motorway for about three hours and everyone was fed up. The air in the car was stale and oppressive.

  Jamie was starting to get a headache from the first driving shift. Molly couldn’t stop thinking about that last conversation with her Mum. Henry was switching between wondering how to make things up to Molly and what the hell he was going to say to his Grandad, whom he’d never met. The two were intertwined. If he could get his Grandad to cancel this thing he’d done, maybe it would be a start?

  Overall, the mood in the car was dour.

  Even the normally buoyant Max was flagging. He wondered if it was too soon to request a toilet stop? But something about the vibe in the SUV told him that he should probably wait it out. Ten minutes later, however, his body spoke for him. Jamie picked it up first. She sniffed the air suspiciously.

  ‘Max? Have you farted?’

  ‘No!’ he said automatically.

  ‘You have. I know your brand. Do you want me to pull over?’

  ‘No. I’m fine.’

  ‘Are you sure? Because we don’t want another incident like the shart of twenty-twelve’ Jamie said without thinking.

  ‘Shut up, would ya?! The gang doesn’t need to hear that I shat myself when I was sixteen!’

  Henry perked up at that. At twenty, four years older than Henry, Max seemed very cool to him. He had a confident, lazy swagger that Henry could never imagine achieving. But was it possible that when Max had been his age, he’d been the kind of person that could crap his own pants? It was a heartening thought.

  ‘Right! I’m pulling in at the next services’ Jamie declared.

  Molly turned and said ‘Do we have to? I just want to get there and get this sorted as soon as humanly possible.’

  ‘Trust me. If you knew what I was saving your nose from, you’d kiss my arse with gratitude’ Jamie assured her.

  Molly snorted with involuntary laughter as Max rolled his eyes in the back. Jamie was taken by surprise. It was as close as she and Molly had so far come to anything approximating a warm moment.

  ‘OK. I guess I could do with a drink’ Molly said.

  At Dizzy Cook’s restaurant (Grapston Service Area, exit 12) the group were sitting around a laminated table, sipping fizzy drinks and eating crap sandwiches.

  Max decided in the silence that, as they were going on this journey together, perhaps it was time for some group bonding. The disparate people he was sat with would probably not instigate such a thing themselves. But that didn’t mean that he couldn’t give it a go.

  ‘So… Molly!’ he began.

  Molly looked up, taken by surprise.

  ‘Tell us about yourself. I mean, we know what you do for a living. Obviously’ he said with a side eye at Jamie, who responded with a casual bird flip. ‘But what else? Who is Molly?’ he finished, dramatically.

  Christ, Molly thought. What is it with this guy? Can’t he take a little silence?

  But Molly knew that Max was essentially a nice guy, armed robberies aside. Molly couldn’t bring herself to be rude to him. He was practically the only reason that she and Jamie hadn’t yet murdered each other.

  ‘Err… I guess I like to read?’

  ‘Yep, alright. I can work with that. Who are your favourite authors?’

  ‘I like the Russians.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yeah. Dostoevsky in particular. Crime and Punishment.’

  Jamie, who’d been listening to all this with a little interest, felt Molly’s book choice was yet another swipe at her. And she was tired of it. A few hours earlier and she would have blown her top about it. She almost did. But something stopped her.

  She was starting to feel bad about what she’d done to Molly. Or tried to do. Molly had done her a serious solid earlier when she’d taken the blame for the robbery. And Jamie knew she hadn’t deserved it. She’d not been very nice to Molly during all this tumult. Yet Molly had saved her arse anyway.

  ‘Fine. You win. I’m sorry. Ok? I really and truly wish I hadn’t tried to rob you. And not just because I ended up getting cursed. It was fucked up.’

  Molly turned to Jamie in surprise. She hadn’t been having a dig at all. It really was her favourite book. But a genuine apology from Jamie? Somehow, it did mean something.

  ‘Alright. Fair enough’ Molly said mildly.

  ‘Do you actually mean that?’ Jamie asked, taken aback. Molly’s clemency had come a little too easy after all the backbiting.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just… It was pretty bad, what we… Well… I did. If you hadn’t been such a badass, we might have really freaked you out.’

  Molly felt her mouth starting to turn up at the corners but she pushed the smile down. Jamie had just called her a ‘Badass’. Coming from someone like her, someone who seemed like they lived every single day of their lives as a genuine law-breaking rebel, it felt good to earn the title. Even her arse kicking moment had only been the result of a bad mood that was redirected from her Mother onto the two buffoons that had walked into the shop in silly masks.

  ‘Well, I guess you’re lucky I’m so hard-core then’ Molly said, trying to brush off her pleasure. ‘Apology accepted.’

  She turned back to her tuna mayo sarnie and took a bite while Jamie sipped her diet coke. She was astounded and slightly elated. Was it always this easy to earn forgiveness? Did it really only take
a genuine apology to make up for some of her more stupid and rash moves? It was a mind blowing concept.

  Max watched his sister and Molly seemingly getting along and he gave himself an inner high five. He’d done that. Actually, no he hadn’t. But he’d kind of started the conversation that had led to it. So there was a little credit to be snatched.

  Henry was less pleased. Jamie and Molly were bonding. How could he get Molly to bond with him? He tried to think of something they had in common, something they could talk about. The Russians were no good. He’d tried to read Notes from the Underground once, (it was one of the short ones) but he hadn’t got past the first page. What else?

  It was only then that Henry started to realise that he didn’t really know anything about Molly.

  ‘We better get back on the road if we’re going to get that last ferry’ Jamie said. ‘Max, you’re driving.’

  ‘Yes, boss’ Max replied as he caught the keys Jamie threw to him. He couldn’t wait to drive. Being a passenger was dull.

  An hour later, stuck in teatime traffic, Max wanted to bang his head against the steering wheel. Was it possible that Jamie had planned this? That she knew he’d get the stops and starts of the traffic jam? Maybe that was doing his sister a disservice, he decided.

  Jamie, drifting to sleep in the back, would have loved to laugh in her brother’s face and admit that she had very much thought this through. But she decided to be content with the small, private victory.

  Next to her in the backseat was Molly, who was also starting to feel rather drowsy. There was still some time left on the road before they reached the port, several hours in fact. Maybe she could just grab a few Z’s while she had the chance?

  Forty minutes later, Molly began to blink awake. She wasn’t sure where she was, but she felt quite cosy. As she began to wake fully, she remembered her location. In a car, travelling to a ferry. Blonde hair was draped across her face, which confused her for a moment. Had she gotten a dye job and forgotten about it? And then she realised that it wasn’t her hair. She was asleep on Jamie’s shoulder, snuggled close into her neck.

  Molly sat quickly upright, embarrassed. How had that happened? She’d gone to sleep on the other side of the car. Jamie, who’d been sleeping peacefully, was jolted by Molly’s sudden movement and awoke too. Molly wondered if she knew they’d been cuddling. She passionately hoped not.

  One glance at the rear view mirror in the front of the car told her that even if Jamie didn’t know, Max hadn’t missed it. He was looking at her with a cheeky crinkle in his eyes.

  ‘Did you sleep well?’ he asked Jamie.

  Jamie began to stretch her arms out, yawning.

  ‘Surprisingly, yes’ Jamie said.

  ‘Must have been your human cushion’ Max said.

  Molly began to blush a deep red. Jamie was confused by her brother’s mysterious comment.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  Max decided not to humiliate Molly any further. He’d watched with interest as she had unconsciously began to creep over from her side of the car, to his snoozing sister. But no surprise. His sister was catnip to women. Even sleeping women.

  What had amazed him was how receptive sleeping Jamie had been. They’d just seemed to slot in together like they’d done it a million times. It was weird. They’d only just stopped arguing with each other. But maybe their unconscious minds knew something that they couldn’t accept when they were awake, Max posited. Wouldn’t that just be classic? He was stuck driving in traffic while his sister pulled while fast asleep.

  ‘Sorry’ Max said. ‘I’m delirious from the traffic. Talking crap.’

  Molly was beginning to shake off her awkwardness. Jamie didn’t know about the snuggles and Max had obviously decided to shut his trap, thankfully.

  But Jamie hadn’t forgotten her brother’s odd comment. And when she found a chestnut brown hair on her top a few seconds later, it all fell into place. She wasn’t sure what to think about it. She didn’t remember snuggling with Molly. Angry, argumentative Molly. The girl who thought she was just a dumb thief. So why had she been sleeping on her? Presumably it had just been an accident. Best not to read too much into it, she decided.

  But still, Jamie found herself stealing glances at Molly. She never looked back. Her gaze was fixed on the view from the window (pitch black nothingness) as she straightened her clothing and pushed her glasses back up her nose.

  Luckily for Henry, he’d nodded off too. He didn’t find out that his one true love was in the arms of another. He would have been deeply upset to know it.

  Thirteen

  ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ Jamie cried as she climbed out of the car, sitting a mile from the docks. There it went, sailing across the ocean, now a small dot in the distance. The last ferry of the night.

  Max, sitting in the driver’s side, could only shrug at his sister. He couldn’t control traffic.

  ‘We should never had done that stop’ Molly grumbled from the back.

  Jamie shot her a look as she got back in the car but she didn’t say anything.

  ‘The next ferry goes in the small hours of the morning. We just need to hole up for the night and wait’ Max said, trying to bring comfort to the group.

  ‘Henry, you should probably text your parents and tell them what’s up’ Molly said.

  Henry got his phone out to comply. But he wished his Dad hadn’t put Molly in charge of him like this. It was making it very difficult to transition into the smooth and masculine sixteen-year-old he desperately needed to be if he was going to catch Molly’s eye. Like Max he thought, looking to the man himself.

  But Molly’s mind wasn’t on romance. She was wondering where they were going to stay for the night.

  ‘Why don’t we all just kip in the car?’ Jamie said, as though reading her mind. ‘We can sleep here till the sun comes up. It’s not the Hilton but it’ll do for now.’

  ‘No’ Molly said, instantly. She couldn’t risk her sleeping body betraying her again with Jamie. ‘It’s too cramped in here. Can’t we just find a hotel?’

  ‘I don’t know about you but I’m strapped’ Jamie said. ‘I just about scraped the petrol money together. That and the ferry fare and I’m tapped out. Can you cover it?’

  Molly was about to reply that yes she could. And then she remembered that she had about twelve pence in her account right now. Ordinarily, she was quite careful with money. But last week, she’d bought a very fancy, very expensive phone that had drained her account. She didn’t usually make big purchases but she was sick of being stuck in the shop and never really having anything to show for all the hours she worked. And a new gadget had seemed like it might alleviate the tedium and make the dreadful hours feel a smidgen more worthwhile. It had worked for about ten minutes before Molly realised that it was just a phone. It was not the answer to anything.

  And then Jamie had broken the pricey gadget like a Kit-Kit.

  ‘I’m broke too’ Molly admitted.

  ‘So much for the working girl’ Jamie snarked.

  ‘Actually’ Molly retorted ‘I did have money. I bought myself a nice phone with it. A phone which you broke. And don’t think I’ve forgotten that. I expect to be compensated when all this is over!’

  Jamie turned to her and said ‘I thought we were past that? Is this how much your forgiveness is actually worth? The price of a mobile?’

  Molly tutted and tried to think of a good retort. But it was tough. She had said she was over it and then whipped it out to use as a weapon when it suited her. Kind of shitty, she had to admit.

  ‘Sorry’ she mumbled quickly.

  ‘Didn’t quite catch that’ Jamie said, cupping her ear sarcastically.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ Molly said loudly. But even though she sounded very angry at having to apologise, Jamie knew that was because it was a real apology. Her own apology had probably sounded somewhat similar. Maybe Henry had been right last night. Were they actually kind of alike?

  ‘Alright. Then we’re st
uck in the car’ Max said. And then jumped in his seat and shrieked as someone tapped his window. He turned around to see a policeman standing there. In the moment that his eyes met the policeman’s, he was very glad that Jamie had allowed him a toilet stop.

  But he quickly slapped a smile on his face and wound down the window while the rest of the car waited with baited breath.