Page 47 of Enemies Under One Roof

Would leave no lasting damage, like all his relationships.

He sagged back against the bedhead, still oddly unsettled as he put his glass down, knocking it against a small bell he hadn’t noticed before.

Grateful to have something to focus on other than the tormented tangle of emotions remembering his parents always elicited, he picked it up.

‘Is this yours? WillowGlen isn’t known to have room service.’ Amusement crept into his voice as he rang the dainty bell. ‘Although hopefully someone will bring me coffee.’

‘It was my mum’s.’ Annie reached over and carefully took it from him.

Oh, crap. He opened his mouth to apologise.

‘She loved bells. Our house was full of them. It drove my dad batty, but he knew better than to complain. I eventually rehomed all of them, except this one,’ she said softly, her expression wistful. His chest tightened painfully.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you sad.’ He gently nudged his foot against hers.

‘It’s okay.’ She put the bell on the bedside table next to her. ‘I take it everywhere with me. It’s the last thing I see when I close my eyes at night and the first thing I look at in the morning.’ She crossed her arms and shivered, like she was suddenly cold. ‘What about your mum? What did she like?’

Ethan leant down and tugged the silk duvet up to cover Ivy and in the process himself, cocooning them both in its warmth, genuinely touched by Annie’s openness and moved by her heartbreaking connection to her mum.

In the wake of that, did he want to open this can of worms and talk about his own mother? Naturally, he conversed with the women he slept with, about work, theirs and his, and a range of general topics. Anything personal, including his parents or upbringing, was always off limits. Yet this was different, he and Annie were together living in the same house for starters. That’s why he wanted to share his past with her.

Decision made, he rolled his shoulders and answered with total honesty. ‘Jewellery. Rings, to be specific. She wore lots of them, all the time. She said they were gifts from ex-lovers. That always made her and my dad share a look I didn’t understand, still don’t understand, and then they’d both laugh.’

There were so many things he didn’t get about them, why his father, in light of his mother’s constant cheating and absences, had never stood up for himself and left.

Her brow furrowed and she nudged his foot this time. ‘That is hard to understand. You okay?’

‘Yeah, I long gave up trying to piece together the intricacies of their dysfunctional relationship.’ It would never happen to him. He’d never again stand there pining, waiting for someone to come home to him, to keep their promise, nor live through the utter devastation of realising you were never enough for someone. ‘I haven’t kept any of her rings. I sold them all when I turned twenty-one. Privately, so it wouldn’t turn into a circus, and split the funds between my favourite charities.’ He would have made more money from a public auction but hadn’t had the stomach for it.

‘Not only is that generous, it’s a thoughtful way to bring new life to them, rather than just sitting in a vault, and I’m sure the charities were grateful.’

Like a balm to his wounds, her words helped. ‘Thanks.’

‘Do you regret selling them? Now you’re older?’

It had been surprisingly hard to get rid of them. It had been like losing another piece of his mother, especially as the only time he could ever remember having her full attention, when there’d been no camera crew around, was one day when his father had been sick in bed. Ethan and his mother had gone into the cinema room to watch her latest movie, which in hindsight was totally inappropriate for a child of his age, and he’d sat next to her, playing with the rings on her fingers as she cuddled him. He’d waited years for that to happen again, constantly looking for clues that it had meant something special to her as well. But it was never repeated, never mentioned, and the rings had simply become another painful reminder that he’d never been enough. Selling them had meant the funds raised would help people in need.

‘Not at all.’

‘What was your mum like, other than a bell lover?’ he asked, wanting to hear more about her family, her upbringing, and not only because he wanted to stop thinking about his own.

‘She was so messy. The kitchen after she cooked, my goodness, what a sight.’ She shuddered and made a funny face. ‘Dad was the opposite.’

He glanced around her room, spotless, except for the clothes they’d torn off each other, which were strewn over the floor. ‘So, you’re more like your dad.’

She grinned. ‘Yep, Mum was devastated I wasn’t messier. She sorely wanted an ally to counteract the neat freak.’ She slanted him a teasing look. ‘You, Ethan, are more like my mum, but nowhere near as bad.’

He pressed a hand to his chest. ‘That’s a relief.’ He sighed dramatically.

She snorted.

‘What about your dad, what was he like?’ he asked. Now he’d started with the questions, he couldn’t seem to stop. Relaxed, but not sleepy, wallowing in the aftermath of unbelievable sex, he reasoned, questions were completely allowable.

She brought her knees up to her chest and hugged them. ‘He loved science fiction. He knew each movie of a certain well-known franchise word for word, which drove my mum and me totally bonkers. But on his birthday, we’d do a movie marathon, and he’d recite every line until we could take it no more and we’d start ad-libbing. I’ve got to say we were quite inventive.’ She laughed and so did he, completely transfixed by her memories of a family totally opposite to his own, and her animated face as she recalled them. It was like another layer of Annie had been peeled back, and he liked it, a lot.

‘They were happy?’ he asked, unable to hide the thread of amazement and intrigue at such an idea. Of course, he knew some couples seemed so, but then again so did his parents, on paper.

‘Very. Every year from the age of ten, I made them dinner for their anniversary and then we’d all share dessert, which was always pavlova. Looking back, I imagine they probably didn’t want me hanging around, but they never made me think that at the time. Anyway, over dessert, they’d recount the tale of how they’d met, volunteering at an animal shelter in Sydney. They were rostered on the same shift and that was it. Love at first sight over hosing out the enclosures.’ Her eyes watered and she sniffed.