Joined at the Hip

by Natasha West

  ‘You still wouldn’t have a hope in hell. Sorry.’

  Henry nodded wretchedly.

  ‘Give it a go now’ Max said quickly.

  ‘You’re not stuck together anymore’ Henry whispered, his face red.

  Molly and Jamie looked at each other, a glance of hope. Jamie stood and walked toward the cottage door. And then stopped abruptly, the tug on her waist strong as ever. The curse was still there.

  Molly knew what she had to do now. It was the nuclear option and she’d held it back. She knew full well it would break his little heart. But there was no choice. She had to say it.

  ‘I slept with Jamie last night, Henry. We had, you know… Sex.’

  Henry’s mouth fell open. If he’d looked hurt before, he was shattered now. Ronan suddenly began to fiddle with the teapot. Max looked at his sister with an epic eye roll and she could only shrug.

  ‘What?’ Henry said, looking back and forth between Jamie and Molly. From the looks on both their faces, it was true.

  ‘Yeah. Sorry Henry’ Jamie added. She’d only found out about his crush today. Still, it was hard to see him looking like that. He was a nice kid, as it turned out.

  ‘Why? Are you… are you a lesbian?’ Henry asked, confused and heartbroken.

  Molly’s eyes went wide. She hadn’t had time to ask herself that question yet. But Henry was cutting right to the heart of it.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. I can’t answer that yet. Maybe I’m not. Maybe it’s just Jamie’ she said. And then realised what had come out of her mouth.

  She looked at Jamie. Jamie was examining her, a small glimmer of something in her eyes that Molly couldn’t read.

  ‘Do you mean that?’ Jamie asked.

  ‘It doesn’t matter now. You’ve ruined my life’ Molly said angrily.

  ‘I know what I’ve done. I don’t expect you to forgive me. But did I ever have a real chance with you? Just tell me that?’ Jamie asked quietly.

  Molly looked at Jamie, astonished at the question.

  ‘I thought we were blowing off steam?’

  ‘I was just trying to be cool’ Jamie said ‘That’s what I do.’

  ‘You did a bang up job.’

  ‘So did you’ Jamie replied, a touch of defensiveness creeping into her tone.

  They both looked away, at the floor. This had gotten away from them. It wasn’t the point. The point was Henry. But one look at his red little face and they knew that they’d gotten him there. A tear rolled down Henry’s face and he gave a small, squeaky sob.

  ‘I release you’ he said with a quivering voice.

  The ground began to shake and rumble, and everyone grabbed the nearest piece of furniture for support. Eventually, the ground settled.

  Molly didn’t need to be sure it had worked. She knew. She jumped up from her chair and ran to the door, flinging it open. There was nothing to stop her from running straight through it. And she did.

  Jamie got up to follow, even though she didn’t need to anymore. She went to the doorway to watch Molly running for freedom. She wasn’t going anywhere, just running in zigs and zags around the overgrown wilds outside Ronan’s cottage. Thirty, forty, fifty feet. She was free.

  Jamie had imagined how this moment would feel. She’d thought there would only be relief. But that wasn’t how she felt. Molly was shot of her. And once they got back home, she’d probably never see her again.

  ‘Sorry it didn’t work out, Sis’ Max said as he joined her at the doorway to watch Molly run.

  ‘You know me, Maximillian’ Jamie said, trying to sound uncaring ‘Just another notch.’

  But Max wasn’t fooled. He’d seen his sister with a lot of girls. He knew exactly what it looked like when she didn’t care. And the way he’d seen her look at Molly, in the cottage before - and now - as she dashed about the grounds like an energetic puppy, it wasn’t that. It wasn’t that at all.

  Twenty

  Inside the cottage, Henry was trying to pull himself together, wiping the tears from his face. Ronan knew that look. He looked just like Aiden at his age, awkward, easily embarrassed.

  ‘I’m not going to say there’ll be more fish… or anything stupid like that’ he said to Henry. ‘But I can tell you something else. It’s simple but it’s true in a hundred percent of cases. One day, the way you’re feeling… It’ll pass. It feels like it couldn’t. But I swear to you, it will.’

  Henry looked up at his Grandad.

  ‘But what if it doesn’t.’

  Ronan laughed lightly.

  ‘It does and it will. Everyone goes through heartbreak. And it feels like the end of the world. But you’ll come through, lad.’

  Henry wiped his face, the last of the tears finally gone.

  ‘Grandad?’

  Ronan felt a swell in his chest to hear that word. He’d never thought he’d get the chance to meet his grandson, never mind earn that title.

  ‘Yes, Henry?’

  ‘Do you think I could stay here for a bit? I don’t really want to travel back with them. It feels a bit too…’

  ‘Of course you can.’

  ‘And then… Maybe you could take me home?’

  Ronan sighed. He knew what Henry was trying to do. But with his face all pink and sad, Ronan couldn’t have denied him if he’d wanted to. And in truth, he didn’t. He wanted to see Aiden again.

  ‘That seems like a good idea.’

  Henry smiled. It was his first real smile in days.

  Jamie, Molly and Max silently trouped back to the car, left on the main road. Now they were done with the curse they had other problems to deal with. Namely, Vera Kaminski and (to a lesser extent) Leo Jenson.

  It felt a little odd to be down to three now. They’d gotten used to Henry’s presence.

  ‘Anyone else miss Henry?’ Max asked.

  Jamie shrugged. ‘I guess.’

  ‘A bit’ Molly added.

  They’d had a deeply weird goodbye with him. Jamie had gone first, grabbing him in a hug he hadn’t been expecting and telling him ‘Sorry, Henry. About the Molly thing. But don’t worry, once you’re through the worst of this whole teenage thing, you’ll be fighting them off with a stick.’

  Henry still had a tinge of anger left for her, but he kind of liked what she’d said about fighting girls off. And it seemed she’d know all about that.

  Next, Molly had gone. She shook his hand and said. ‘Whatever horrible things I had to say to you today, I hope you know that I think you’re… alright.’

  Even though it hadn’t been the love confession he’d been dreaming of, it wasn’t nothing. Molly thought he was alright. He’d take that.

  ‘Thanks. Good luck with your Mum.’

  She nodded and then Max took his turn.

  ‘This is my number’ he said, slipping Henry a bit of paper. ‘If I don’t end up in prison, we should hang.’

  And that goodbye meant the most of all to Henry. He tried to hide his pleasure as he took the number and said, with every drop of the small reserve of cool he had in his possession, ‘Sweet, bro. I’ll text ya’ as he’d high fived him. Max hadn’t laughed in his face, so he thought he’d probably pulled it off.

  He’d lost a Molly. But he’d gained a Grandad, as well as a Max. And in truth, he didn’t really know Molly at all. She’d been a fantasy. He was starting to see that. Better to get a real friend than hold onto a fake love. He was willing to think he’d come out alright in the long run. Better than expected.

  And then Molly, Max and Jamie left him with his Grandad. He was glad. He wanted to hear all about his Dad’s youth. He thought that one day, if he got into trouble, the ammunition could really come in handy.

  The journey back to the car for the remaining members of the group was silent. The order along the narrow path was Jamie at the front, Molly at the back, Max between them. Even though the curse had been lifted, it felt to Max as though the tether was still there. The atmosphere between them was so thick, he was practically stewing in it.

  H
e considered making some kind of joke of it, but he had a sense it wouldn’t really lessen the tension. He let the silence sit undisturbed. He couldn’t have fixed Jamie and Molly if he’d tried. And he knew it.

  On the ferry back, Molly stayed in the car, in the underground car park. She needed time to figure out how to go on from here. Her Mum, the whole legal mess they were in, she wanted a moment’s peace to think about it. And it was her first moment to be truly alone in days.

  Jamie and Max didn’t argue with her desire for solitude. They left her in the SUV and went topside.

  Molly looked at the phone Max had lent her, trying to Google as much information as she could from what the press had said. But of course, they only had part of the story. The person who had another chunk of it was her Mum. It was time to talk to her. She called Vera’s mobile.

  ‘Hello’ said a quiet, tired Vera.

  ‘Mum! I’m on my way home’ she spat out quickly. She didn’t want to give her Mum a chance to respond. She had things to say. ‘I know what you did. And I love you for it. But I can’t let you do it. I’ve got to deal with it myself, because at least some of it is my mess. And none of it is yours. So you don’t have to worry about this. I’ll be alright, whatever happens. If I have to go to prison for a bit, then that’ll be OK. I promise.’

  ‘Molly, no… It’s done. You can’t do anything to change it’ Vera cried desperately.

  ‘I can and I will. I can’t let you sacrifice anything else for me. It’s enough now, Mum. Let me take the responsibility for this. It’s what I want to do.’

  And then Molly hung up. She turned the phone off so that her Mother couldn’t call back. The conversation was over. She’d said what she needed her Mother to hear.

  As Max and Jamie sat in the ferry café, drinking the same dishwatery tasting tea as yesterday, he looked beyond the window to the horizon. Birds were flying above the sea, squawking and fighting with each other.

  ‘I was thinking…’ he began.

  ‘That’s never good’ Jamie replied reflexively. But then she saw that he was trying to say something serious. She decided to shut her mouth while he said it.

  ‘It’s this thing with Dad. I don’t really want to go home just so he can chuck us out again. What’s the point in that?’

  ‘True’ Jamie said with a small serious nod. ‘So, what do you want to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. Where would we go?’

  Jamie shrugged. She really had no clue what they should do next. And she couldn’t stop thinking about how Molly must be feeling right now. Her situation was even worse than their potential homelessness.

  It was all such a mess.

  Twenty-One

  After the ferry ride was over and the journey back down the motorway was out of the way, Jamie, who was currently taking her turn at the wheel, turned the car in the direction of Molly’s house.

  ‘No, I’m not going that way.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Jamie asked, surprised.

  ‘James Street’ she said, casually.

  ‘What’s on James Street?’

  ‘Police station.’

  Jamie immediately parked the car up and she and Max turned around from the front to look at her, their eyes wide. ‘Why!?’ Max and Jamie asked in unison, alarmed.

  ‘Nothing like that, don’t worry. I’m not gonna name you or anything. I wouldn’t do that to you.’

  ‘Even though we deserve it?’ Jamie asked confused.

  ‘Is that how you feel?’ Molly asked tentatively.

  ‘Yeah. In fact, Max didn’t want to do it. He tried to talk me out of it. It was all me. I’m the reason your Mum’s in this mess.’

  Molly thought about it. It was true, of course. But at the end of the day, if she exposed Jamie, she’d go to prison, maybe for a really long time. It was technically armed robbery, after all. Jamie was unlikely to get a judge that would be sympathetic to her desperate crime.

  But if she told the other version of the story that she’d come up with, that she’d faked it to get back at her Mum for being such a slave driver, then yes, there could well be a stint in the pokey. But it would hopefully be brief. She’d rather that than see anyone else go down. She felt OK about it. She didn’t exactly relish the thought of prison, but she thought she could get through it. Maybe if she read a lot, the time would race by?

  ‘No. It’s alright’ Molly assured Jamie. ‘I’m taking the blame. You could get years and I’ll probably only get a few months. I’m gonna tell them the other story. The fake robbery thing.’

  Jamie didn’t know what to say. Even knowing the cost, Molly was still trying to take the blame for it.

  ‘Start the car. Take me to the police station’ Molly breathed. She was done with the conversation.

  ‘But-’

  ‘Just do it, Jamie. Please’ she added mildly. She was oddly calm.

  Jamie turned the engine over and drove toward the police station, her mind racing. How the hell could she let Molly do this? Couldn’t there be a solution where no-one had to do any confessing? But Molly was set on doing it, she could tell. She wouldn’t let her Mum face the music for her.

  As they reached the police station, Jamie parked a few hundred metres down the road from the ramshackle building.

  ‘Molly, I’m begging you-’

  ‘Forget it! It’s done, OK?’

  Molly got out of the car and began to walk toward the doors of the station, looking back only once to see Jamie in the car. She gave her the smallest of nods and turned back, walking on.

  Jamie watched her. Step by step, closer and closer to the police station and the trouble contained within. This was it. There were no more chances for Jamie. She didn’t have any more time to figure out how she felt about Molly or what she wanted to do about it. Time was officially up. Do or die.

  It was time for a Jamie Jenson special. A hot-headed move made in haste, a potential mistake that might cost her dearly. But this time, it was for something good. Something better.

  Jamie turned to her brother and said ‘Sorry, Max. Can’t let her do it’ and she jumped out of the SUV. Max watched her go, confused and worried. Should he stop her?

  Jamie reached Molly and fell into step beside her. She turned surprised. She’d thought this was it. Her big walk of solitude. The long march to the gallows. It was supposed to be a private moment. But here was Jamie. Curse or no curse, there was apparently no shaking her.

  ‘You can’t do this. I won’t let you!’ Jamie said urgently.

  ‘What are you going to do? Kidnap me again?’ Molly said with a small laugh. She wasn’t really taking Jamie seriously. She was going in, no matter what.

  ‘No. But I need to say something. Just hear it and then you can decide what you want to do with it.’

  Molly stopped walking and turned to Jamie, putting her hands on her hips.

  ‘You’ve got thirty seconds. Go.’

  ‘I don’t need that long. It’s pretty quick. I think I might be falling for you.’

  Molly’s hands dropped off her waist and her expression changed. But she didn’t look like her heart was melting. She was pissed off.

  ‘No, you don’t. You only think that because we got swept up in this crazy mess and it was all intense and mad. If you’d met me normally, you wouldn’t be saying this. You would have probably just tried to get me into bed. And if you’d managed it, you wouldn’t have wanted to know me afterwards.’

  Jamie shrugged, frustrated. Classic Molly. Never giving her an inch.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe that’s true. But I don’t think so. I’ve never met anyone like you. You’re the stubbornest person I’ve ever known. You don’t let me get away with anything. And for some fucking reason, I love that about you. So that’s why I can’t let you walk in there and take the blame for me. Not just because I want to keep you out of prison so that I can get you to go out with me. Christ, I know that’s never gonna happen. But you made me think about what kind of person I want to be. And I don’t kno
w who that is yet, but I do know that it’s not someone who would let you go in there and do this for me.’

  Molly tried not to be moved by Jamie’s speech. But that face, with those eyes, saying those words, it was hard. And Molly Kaminski was only human.

  ‘Look’ Molly said gently. ‘Let’s say I feel the same. I’m not saying I do’ she added quickly ‘but let’s just say for a second that I fell for you too. So what? The situation is what it is. And you must know that I wouldn’t let you go down for it. If I did happen to have, you know, those sort of feelings’ Molly finished, looking quickly at the ground.