Sticks and Stones

by Susie Tate

  Dylan closed his eyes in frustration at the interruption, and when he opened them Benji was still looking straight at him, his eyebrows raised imperiously as if demanding an answer. Dylan had come across Tom’s nephew a few times now, and to say the five-year-old was a loose cannon was an understatement.

  ‘We were…um…talking,’ Dylan said evasively. ‘Shouldn’t you be in bed?’

  ‘You weren’t talking a minute ago,’ Benji said, narrowing his eyes, ‘and you were both making funny noises.’ Dylan ground his teeth, wondering why at midnight on New Year’s Eve he was being given the third degree by a kindergartener.

  ‘Well?’ Benji asked, lifting his eyebrows again.

  ‘I’m going to go and get your mum and dad,’ Dylan replied, feeling that this ridiculous conversation had gone far enough.

  ‘Okay,’ Benji said nonchalantly, his too-intelligent eyes lighting with amusement, and a smug smile on his face. Dylan was about to turn back into the living room to find Rob and Sarah so they could put the little shit to bed, but at the sound of Benji’s easy agreement he paused.

  *****

  Benji watched as Dylan swung back to face him. Ha! Now he’s getting it, he thought. If there was one thing Benji knew it was when adults were trying to hide something. He was guessing that Dylan would not want Mummy and Daddy to know that he had been cuddling Lou against the wall and making funny noises. Gathering information was one of Benji’s specialties, as was negotiation.

  ‘Benji, how about we keep all this between ourselves for now?’

  Benji bit his lip to stop himself smiling, this was working out fantastically. ‘Well…’ he started, pretending to be considering his options, ‘I guess I could keep it a secret.’

  ‘Great,’ Dylan smiled at him. ‘Well, no need to get your mum and dad then. Off you go to bed, I’ll just…’ Benji watched as Dylan looked up and down the corridor, obviously not having noticed that Lou left ages ago. Benji had noticed, but then there weren’t many things that Benji missed.

  ‘Keeping secrets makes me a bit hungry though,’ Benji told Dylan who had been starting to subtly move away. Dylan turned to face him again with a resigned look on his face.

  ‘Just tell me what you want Benji.’

  ‘A bowl of those profiteroles I saw Mummy making with Auntie Frankie earlier, a Mars bar (Uncle Tom keeps a secret supply in the top left cupboard in the kitchen) and a can of coke (but not that yucky diet stuff Auntie Frankie drinks).’ Dylan stared at him for a minute then looked up to the ceiling.

  ‘Anything else?’ he asked sarcastically.

  Benji considered this for a moment. ‘Throw in a bag of Haribo and we’ll call it quits,’ he said magnanimously.

  ‘Fine,’ Dylan bit out.

  Benji smirked and leaned back against the stairs, happy with his victory. He had a feeling that if he kept a close eye on Lou and Dylan in the future that he might be able to do pretty well for himself.

  Chapter 5

  Friends can kiss

  Lou was blessed. She had an amazing ability, which was widely admired throughout her time at medical school; she never, ever suffered with hangovers. This was indeed a blessing, but could also be a curse. There were drawbacks to being the only functioning person the morning after the night before. One of the biggest was putting up with a load of hung-over zombies who seemed incapable of even making themselves cups of tea.

  Now, Lou herself was a doer. She almost never sat around feeling sorry for herself (in fact the only times she really gave into self pity was during her pining sessions for Dylan) and she certainly was not given to wasting whole days lying about channel surfing in a onesie, sucking back fat coke and munching on crisps. Therefore it had always been in her best interests to attempt to revive her hung-over friends so they would be jumpstarted for the day.

  As everyone knows, the best way to jumpstart hung-over people is with grease and stodge, and over the years Lou became renowned for her cooked breakfasts. So, despite the crying she had done the night before after sneaking out of the party and walking back to the flat alone, she’d woken up early and got to work on breakfast.

  The front door slammed just as she was pulling a huge tray of sausages out of the oven, causing her to lose her grip for a second. Hot shooting pain went up her forearm as the tray clattered to the floor, together with the glass lid which shattered on the tiles.

  ‘Argh!’ She jumped up clutching her forearm and looking down at the angry red weal, which had already started to form. Lifting her foot cautiously she tried to find a way through the sausages and broken glass surrounding her. Just as she was about to attempt a leap to safety she heard heavy shoes crunching through the glass, and turned her head in shock to see Dylan standing behind her.

  He looked around at the destruction then at her arm. ‘”I think the phrase rhythms with clucking bell”.’ Even though he was the last person she wanted to see and her arm was throbbing uncontrollably, Lou still cracked a small smile.

  ‘”Blackadder Goes Forth”.’

  ‘Episode?’ he asked as his large hands landed on both sides of her hips. She sucked in a huge breath, and then stopped breathing all together as he lifted her clean off her feet and straight up into the air. He deposited her in front of the sink, away from any of the detritus, turned on the cold tap, and held her arm under running water.

  ‘Babes?’ he breathed.

  One of his big hands was cupping her elbow and the other was holding hers to keep her forearm outstretched under the water. Lou shivered even though the water wasn’t yet that cold.

  ‘”Goodbyee”,’ she said finally, after pulling herself and her thoughts together.

  ‘What?’ Dylan’s mouth was touching her temple as he stood behind her, and she could swear she felt his nose nuzzle her hair. She was suddenly very aware of how little she was wearing. Frankie might like to wear huge t-shirts (most of these used to be filched from Dylan, but Lou had noticed with some amusement that Tom had carefully replaced them all with his own) and tracky bums to bed, but Lou was a satin and lace kind of a girl. Dylan had always joked that she looked like some sort of burlesque queen about to put on a show rather than about to go to sleep, but now with just her small, thin satin shorts and lacy vest top on, and Dylan’s big body pressing her against the counter, it didn’t seem so funny anymore.

  ‘Oh no!’ Lou and Dylan jumped as they heard Frankie’s voice from across the flat. Then Lou felt the sudden cold at her back as Dylan stepped back and dropped her arm. ‘What are you doing here?’ Frankie continued, her voice still croaky from sleep. ‘If you’ve touched that ruddy cake I’ll – ‘

  ‘Relax ladies,’ Dylan said, seeming completely composed. ‘I’m well aware of your complicated cake rules.’

  ‘One rule Dylan. One Rule: don’t eat the blinking cakes.’

  Lou had been focusing on the water still running out of the tap and trying to control her breathing throughout this exchange. The pain in her arm had eased to a dull throb, but she could still feel the heat in her cheeks. Not much could make Louise Sands blush. She needed to get it together before she turned around, or Frankie would smell a rat.

  ‘Oh my goodness me!’ Frankie exclaimed and Lou risked a look at her over her shoulder. Frankie had moved around the counter into the kitchen area and was staring at the glass and sausages on the floor. ‘Jeepers creepers Louey. You okay?’

  Lou took in Frankie’s rumpled appearance: one side of her dark hair was flat, the other looked as though it had been backcombed vigorously, she was wearing one of Tom’s huge t-shirts and ugly tartan pyjama bottoms, her eyes were bloodshot and she had no makeup on, but she looked, as always, completely adorable. She loved Frankie to pieces, but felt a familiar clench in her chest when she thought of how the only person she had ever really wanted preferred dark, natural and cute, to blonde, over-the-top and outrageous. Preferred someone who would say ‘jeepers creepers’ and ‘goodness me’ rather than a girl who swore like a sailor most of the time.

&nb
sp; ‘What’s all the goddamn shouting about?’ Tom looked about as worse for wear as Frankie. He was basically wearing the same outfit as her, the only difference being that the t-shirt was stretched across his broad chest rather than falling down to his knees like it was on Frankie, and he hadn’t had to fold the bottom of the pajamas up several times. ‘Jesus, Frankie get away from the kitchen. Your feet will get ripped to shreds,’ he barked as he rounded the corner.

  Lou rolled her eyes. Frankie’s feet were nowhere near the glass but she knew Mr Overprotective wouldn’t be happy until she was well away, preferably in another room, in case her precious feet should –

  ‘Babes! Do not fucking move,’ barked Dylan, just as Lou had lifted her foot again to step away from the sink. She startled and her foot came down on a rogue shard of glass

  ‘Bollocks!’ Balancing on one foot, Lou was about to grab the other when she found herself lifted clean off her feet again and deposited on the kitchen counter, with a frowning Dylan inspecting the cut as though it were a potentially mortal wound.

  ‘Frankie, get the first aid kit,’ he ordered.

  ‘Oh for Christ’s sake Dildo,’ Lou attempted grab back her foot but Dylan kept a firm hold of it with both hands, ‘it’s probably just a little nick.’

  ‘Well as the only surgeon here,’ Dylan said, causing Lou to look up at the ceiling, seeking patience, ‘I think we should let me be the judge of that.’ When Lou looked back down she could see Tom watching them closely. As she caught his eye a slow smile spread over his face, which only became wider with her answering scowl.

  *****

  Dylan looked up from his huge bowl of bacon and eggs (Lou made the best scrambled eggs on the planet, something about adding some sort of fancy cheese) when he heard a loud crash against the door of the flat. After Dylan had cleaned and dressed her foot, and Tom had swept up the glass, she had insisted on getting back to making breakfast.

  Dylan himself thought that she should be off her foot, which she’d bloody well ripped open, but apparently he was making a ‘ridiculous fuss’. She barely even let him clean and dress it (okay so the bulky bandage he’d put on might have been overkill, but you couldn’t be too careful), so there was no way she was going to be confined to the sofa. He had managed to get her to wear slippers, and was relieved when she put on a dressing gown as well; he wasn’t sure how much more of her body on display in those ludicrously tiny pajamas he could take.

  There was another crash at the door, and Frankie jumped down from the stool she was perched on at the breakfast bar to hurry across the room. As she opened the door three blonde children fell through it onto the welcome mat. Fortunately Finlay, who was only two, was at the top of the pile with the two older boys, Benji and Jack, underneath.

  ‘I told you not to try to bulldoze the door,’ Jack shouted at Benji whilst scrambling to his feet. When Benji managed to get to his, Jack gave him a hard shove. ‘You can’t break down a door anyway, you’re too small.’

  ‘I am not too small,’ Benji shouted back, giving Jack an equally hard shove. ‘I’m big and strong like Mummy says.’

  ‘You’re so stupid. Mummy only says that to make you eat your broccoli and you fall for it every time ‘cause you’re stupid, stupid, STUPID.’

  Benji stood stock still for a moment, his face screwed up and turning an alarming shade of red, before he pounced on his older brother. Finlay, who Dylan knew was partial to some rough and tumble, was delighted by this turn of events, and started jumping up and down and clapping, before launching himself headfirst into the fray. Frankie was dancing round the writhing tangle of boys looking slightly lost. Tom, well used to his nephews’ antics by now, carried on eating his eggs, completely unconcerned.

  ‘Finlay, cuddle?’ Lou called from the kitchen counter. Finlay’s little blonde head poked up from the mass of flying limbs, and after seeing Lou he scrambled to his feet, scampered across the living room, and barreled straight into her legs shouting, ‘Cuccol! Cuccol!’

  Lou jumped off her stool and Dylan noticed her wince as her foot hit the ground. Christ, she was stubborn. Would it have killed her to put her feet up on the sofa for a couple of hours? At least then the wound could dry and have some chance of healing. He watched as she scooped Finlay up, nuzzled his hair, and, much to Finlay’s delight, blew a raspberry into his neck.

  ‘eppa ig,’ Finlay demanded through his giggles.

  ‘Don’t you dare Lou,’ Tom warned, his mouth still full of eggs. Finlay squirmed in Lou’s arms until she let him down. He then proceeded to push her legs in the direction of the sofa.

  ‘Eppa ig, cuccol, loc-loc.’

  Before Tom could stop them, Lou and Finlay were cuddled up on the sofa, with Finlay happily munching on a Malteaser and Peppa Pig on the telly. A long overdue Sarah, with baby Thomas strapped to her front, came barreling in just after they’d got settled. She stepped over Benji and Jack, who were still rolling around on the floor, without even sparing them a glance and moved in to give Frankie a warm hug with baby Thomas squished between them.

  ‘I tried to – ‘ Frankie started, indicating towards the boys and Sarah shook her head.

  ‘Best just to let them roll around for a while I find,’ she said briskly. ‘Just have to make sure there’s no – ‘ she lifted the tall lamp near the door, putting it a safe distance away, just before the boys were about to careen into it, ‘- breakables in their way,’ she finished.

  ‘Hey boys, lovely Lou.’ She smiled as she surveyed the scene on the sofa. ‘Spoiling the cute one again I see. Oooh! Eggs.’ She moved to the counter and grabbed Tom’s fork off him. He made a low, feral sounding growl in the back of his throat and attempted to shield his plate (Lou’s eggs were just that good), but Sarah had the advantage of a baby strapped to her front, and short of elbowing a newborn in the face, there wasn’t much Tom could do as she stole his food.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Lou chirped from the sofa. ‘I’ll make more for you and the boys honey.’ Finlay made a mewl of protest as Lou shifted, preparing to stand. Dylan had no doubt that she planned on cooking another round of breakfasts, on her feet with a toddler attached to her hip just for extra weight through her legs.

  ‘Sit down,’ he growled. ‘I’ll make them. Stay on the bloody sofa you stubborn woman.’ Everyone turned their shocked eyes to him. Even the boys stopped scrapping on the floor.

  ‘You’re going to cook?’ Sarah asked, her eyebrows practically in her hairline.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, throwing out his arm in frustration. ‘I’m going to cook; you and the maniacs are going to eat. What is not going to happen is Lou standing any longer on her goddamn foot. Got it?’

  Dylan started clattering with various saucepans, not entirely sure how to approach this particular challenge. He could see everyone exchanging confused, curious looks out of the corner of his eye but he chose to ignore it.

  Just as he was about to serve some rather worse for wear eggs and burnt bacon he felt a tugging at his trousers. He looked down to see Benji’s small intelligent face peering up at him.

  ‘Do you look after Louey?’ he asked. Everyone else was engaged in a lively X-Factor debate, which Dylan had been heartily glad to avoid, so this conversation was relatively private.

  ‘What do you mean squirt?’

  Benji sighed with impatience, ‘Mummy and Daddy look after Jack, Finlay, Thomas and me, and each other. Uncle Tom looks after Frankie, and she looks after him. I look after Stanley – ‘

  ‘Who’s Stanley?’

  ‘My lizard.’

  ‘Right, of course.’

  ‘Well?’ Benji prompted.

  ‘Well what?’

  Benji huffed again, squinting up at Dylan with an impatient frown, ‘Do you look after Louey?’

  ‘Look Benji.’ Dylan was raking his brain for a good explanation. ‘She’s my friend so yes, I do look after her…sometimes.’

  ‘But not all the time?’

  ‘No.’

  Unfortunately Benji was not tha
t easily put off. ‘If you’re her friend then why did you kiss her?’

  This kid was like some kind of bloodhound. They should use him to question terror suspects; he’d crack them in no time.

  ‘Friends can kiss,’ Dylan told Benji.

  ‘Not like you kissed Louey they don’t. I know cause Annabelle Evans kissed me on the lips at school during kiss chase, and everyone said that made her my girlfriend.’ Benji’s nose was crinkled in disgust; clearly this turn of events was not welcomed.

  ‘Lou’s not my girlfriend Benji,’ Dylan could feel his patience slipping at this increasingly bizarre conversation, and the hollow feeling he had at this denial wasn’t helping. Benji crossed his arms over his small but puffed up chest.

  ‘Just so you know,’ he told Dylan. ‘I’ve decided to marry Louey when I grow up. She’s funny, she makes great eggs, she reads great stories, and she tickles really well.’

  ‘Okay,’ Dylan said slowly, fighting a smile. Benji’s criteria for a wife might not be that extensive but Dylan thought he’d got a lot of the important stuff covered. ‘Don’t worry little man, I won’t stand in your way.’

  Benji narrowed his eyes at him.

  ‘So if I was to tell Mummy and Auntie Frankie about you kissing Louey…’

  Dylan sighed. ‘What do you want kid?’

  ‘Well, there was this new hot wheel track…’ Benji looked up at Dylan expectantly.

  ‘Fine,’ Dylan snapped, digging in his pocket and producing a pound coin. Benji looked at Dylan’s extended hand with disgust.

  ‘That wouldn’t even buy a hot wheel car.’

  Dylan huffed and fished out a tenner, but Benji just lifted one eyebrow (how a kid of five could pull off an eyebrow raise Dylan had no idea) and kept his arms crossed across his chest. Dylan swore under his breath and managed to find a second tenner in his wallet. Benji lowered his eyebrow, snatched both tenners out of Dylan’s hand, and, after throwing his a supremely smug look, sauntered out of the kitchen to settle in next to his future wife on the sofa.