I sat down, and so did Darcy and everyone else.
I glanced around the table; I didn’t want to cause a fight, but I also didn’t want to not say anything.
“Sean, did you know what Dustin planned to do with the doll?” I asked my brother.
He nodded reluctantly. “Yes, but he made Justin promise not to tell anyone, because he wanted it to be a surprise.”
I felt my eye twitch. “You didn’t think to clue meself or Darcy in on his plan? You knew we wouldn’t have told him we knew.”
Sean sighed from across the table. “That’s Ma’s fault, not mine.”
I flicked my narrowed eyes from my brother to my mother.
“What does he mean by that?” I asked.
My mother had a guilty look about her. “It’s been a long time since you and Darcy spent any time together, even if it was just to argue . . . I thought prolonging this doll thing would be good for you both.”
A light bulb went off in my head. That’s why Justin had been forbidden from helping me – our mothers didn’t want the war for the doll to end too soon. It was not because they didn’t want us to fight at Sean and Jess’s engagement party.
I trembled a little as anger rose within me, and tears of betrayal stung in my eyes.
Darcy humourlessly laughed next to me. “We almost killed one another for the stupid thing.”
My mother froze and said, “Sorry.”
Like that was any help.
I looked to Sean, who was gnawing on his lower lip.
“What about you? Are you sorry, Mammy’s boy?”
Sean grunted. “Yeah, I am.”
Doubtful.
I felt like I was in a sudden state of shock.
Darcy and I had fought tooth and nail for that bloody doll, and now I knew that if I had just let Darcy have it, both Dustin and Charli would have gotten what they wanted. I didn’t know where my family got their logic from, because they were all plain bloody stupid.
“It was a surprise, Neala.” Justin sighed. “Dustin made me promise not to tell, and since Sean, my ma, and Clare were in the room when he told me why he wanted the doll, he said they didn’t count. He made us pinkie swear.”
I went through hell over a pinkie swear?
I growled. “A . . . pinkie swear?”
“We took an oath too, if that helps,” Sean murmured.
I was about to speak again when Charli and Dustin barrelled into the dining room all dressed in their ‘dinner clothes,’ which consisted of plain t-shirts and trousers. If they got them dirty with food it wouldn’t matter, because they’d just change out of them and back into their Christmas clothes for picture time later.
“Auntie Neala?” Charli said as she sat in between Darcy and me.
I looked at her and forced a smile onto my face for her sake. “Yeah, baby?”
Charli tilted her head to the side. “Are you still sad?”
Everyone froze; then after a moment they looked at me. I avoided their gazes.
I swallowed. “What are you talking about, babes? I’m not sad.”
Charli clicked her tongue. “Yeah, you are. I heard you crying in your shower earlier when you came home.”
I stared at Charli with my mouth open.
I didn’t know what to say to her.
“She probably stubbed her toe is all, kid.” Darcy chuckled and nudged Charli.
Charli giggled; then she turned to me and asked, “Is it still sore?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “It’s still pretty sore.”
From the corner of my eye I caught Darcy looking at me. He knew I wasn’t talking about my toe.
I looked to Charli, who was still snuggling that godforsaken doll while Darcy scooped food onto her small plate.
“What’s her name?” I asked.
Charli giggled. “Her name in the film is Reni, but I’m changing it to Neala Girl, like what Uncle Darcy calls you. I love it.”
I felt everyone look at me but I refused to show any emotion.
I simply smiled and said, “Pretty name.”
Charli hugged her Neala Girl closely to her, and Dustin chuckled from across the table. I looked at him, and found him smiling as he watched Charli. In that moment he reminded me so much of the young Darcy who had fawned over me all the time . . . before the shit had hit the fan, of course.
I could tell from the look on Dustin’s face that he loved Charli; he just wouldn’t realise the emotion until he was older. They were so much like Darcy and me before we fell out. That knowledge warmed my heart.
I only hoped they wouldn’t let something so stupid and petty come between them; their friendship was too precious to lose.
I zoned out for a while, while everyone said grace and then tucked into their food. I wasn’t into it at all. I played with the potatoes on my plate and couldn’t even look at the meat without my stomach threatening to revolt. I felt like shite and I wanted nothing more than to just go up to bed.
I made it through dinner, though, and after, when everyone retired to the living room, I waited about thirty minutes before I told everyone I wanted to go up to my room to sleep for a while. I was just about to make my escape when I heard Sean and Justin exchange words outside in the hallway.
“She’s really down, man. I feel sick that we pretty much caused it,” Justin said, sighing.
Sean grunted and replied, “I know, but we never planned for it to go this far.”
Planned?
What the hell were they talking about?
I stepped into the hallway, and when Sean and Justin spotted me they both flinched and shook their heads.
“Bollocks.” Sean grunted.
Sean and Justin both walked by me into the living room and I quickly followed.
“What did you mean by that, Sean?” I asked him.
Sean walked over to my mother and leaned into her as he whispered in her ear.
My mother smacked his arm when he pulled back.
“What do you mean, you never planned it to go this far?” I asked Sean.
“He meant—”
I held my hand up in the air and cut my mother off – she couldn’t tell a lie if she didn’t speak.
“What did you mean, Sean?” I asked, my eyes narrowed.
“What’s going on?” Darcy chimed in.
I glanced to him. “I overheard Sean and Justin talking about me outside, about me being upset. They said they were the cause of it and that they never meant for it to go this far, and I want to know what the hell they’re talking about.”
Darcy stood up from the couch and came to my side, and turned to glare at our brothers.
“What the hell is going on?” he asked.
I didn’t want him to be in my corner, but whatever Sean had done involved him too.
Sean looked to my mother, my father, and then Justin before he looked back to me.
“It was just meant to be a joke . . . a prank, really. Like the ones you and Darcy pull on each other all the time.”
I swallowed down the bile that rose up my throat.
“What. Did. You. Do?” I snarled.
My father sighed. “Just tell them; it’s best they know the truth.”
I looked from Sean to my father then back to Sean.
What truth?
“Sean?” I pressed.
He lifted his arms and scrubbed his face with his hands.
“We buried you two in,” he said, avoiding eye contact. “Us and a few lads from the pub we paid to help.”
What?
“Excuse me?” Darcy growled.
Dustin whistled from the hallway. “Uh-oh. Uncle Darcy is mmaadddd.”
Sarah, Jess, Jimmy, and Charli walked into the sitting from the kitchen upon hearing raised voices.
Justin nudged Sarah, who moved next to him, and nodded towards the kids. “Take him and Charli up to her room and close the door, will you?”
This was serious if Justin didn’t want the kids in the room to hear the exchange.
&
nbsp; I kept quiet until Sarah had taken both Dustin and Charli upstairs and I heard Charli’s bedroom door click shut.
“Talk. Right now.”
Sean sighed and looked to our mother. “This was your idea; you tell her what you had us do.”
I began to tremble with fury.
My mother looked at Sean, then to me. “We just wanted to give you and Darcy a little . . . push. It’s not every day we can get you together, so we figured having you both in Darcy’s house for a few days would do you good.”
I blinked. “I don’t understand . . . I mean, I do, but you’d better be fucking joking. “
My mother looked down to her feet.
“We’re not, Neala.”
I snapped my head in my father’s direction and gaped at him. “What?”
My father shook his head. “It was a stupid idea, but both your mother and Darcy’s wanted to have one last attempt at trying to make you both get along.”
Hold the bloody phone.
They were really responsible for us being buried in Darcy’s house for days eating canned food, taking freezing cold baths, having zero fucking heat, and for Darcy almost dying?
I exploded. “You can’t force two people to get along! I am sick to bleeding death of you all trying to control our lives. If we wanted to be together, we would be together. That is up to us, not you!”
Everyone flinched as my voice rose.
“She’s right,” Darcy jumped in. “You’re all something bloody else. How dare you force us together like animals!”
I was shaking with anger while he spoke.
“It wasn’t meant to be like this. We thought you would both find it funny,” Justin protested.
I growled at him. “We’ve hated being in each other’s company for fifteen years. Do you understand that? Fifteen bleeding years! What makes you think four days would sort us out?”
Justin raised his eyebrows. “You slept together; hate was obviously not an issue between you in that house.”
My heart broke all over again with the reminder, and I was mortified that everyone close to me now knew what Darcy and I had got up to in private.
“Justin! Bloody hell, man!” Darcy bellowed as he paced behind me, his eyes burning with rage.
I wiped my eyes before any tears could fall. “Thank you for that reminder, Justin, and thank you for letting everyone know something so personal.”
Justin frowned, then grunted when his ma slapped his arm.
“What happened between us wasn’t even our choice. You forced us together and knew we would either sleep together or kill each other,” Darcy snapped at his mother.
Marie frowned. “We just wanted you both to get along—”
“We know!” Darcy screamed. “We know what you all bloody want, but what about what we want? Don’t make this out like you were doing this for anyone but yourselves. You all want us together so we can play happy families.”
I folded my arms across my chest and looked down as I started to sniffle.
“We’re not sheep; you can’t just round us up because you want to see us together.”
Sean cleared his throat. “I wasn’t aiming to get you together; I just wanted you to stop fighting all the time.”
I raised my hands to my temples and rubbed.
“How did you do it?” I asked.
My father was the one to answer me. “First, I want to apologise to you both. I didn’t like the idea, but I made the decision to go along with it and help out, and that was inexcusable. I’m very sorry,” he said.
“Same here,” Jimmy, Darcy’s father, chimed in. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have partaken in the scheme, as it was stupid and wrong. I hope you both can forgive me . . . forgive us.”
“I love how you’re all laying the blame at my and Clare’s feet!” Darcy’s mother snapped.
Sean scoffed, “It was the pair of you who came up with the idea. We were just the eejits who carried out the deed.”
I was now aware that both our fathers had helped bury us in Darcy’s house, but the people I was most furious with were our mothers and brothers. Our fathers would go along with our mothers just to keep the old bats happy, but our brothers wouldn’t have gotten much backlash if they’d said no to the idiotic idea. They’d wanted to do it for selfish reasons.
“We apologise to you all every single time we argue in your presence – we rarely even cause scenes anymore – so I don’t understand why you went to this extent,” I said, my voice like ice. “You do understand what you all did, right? You buried us inside a house and trapped us for days. Do you have any idea what it was like? It was scary, dark, freezing, and uncomfortable. We both fought the majority of the time there. I had to endure insults day and night from a parrot . . . a fucking parrot!”
Darcy placed his hand over his mouth, and I snarled in his direction.
“I’m not laughing,” he said quickly, and looked away from me.
Bastard!
I looked back to my father, who suddenly looked depressed. “Go on,” I snapped. “Tell us how you did it.”
He sighed. “After Darcy left the pub the night of the engagement party, I knew you were already on your way to his house. I mentioned it to your mother and told her I was going after you because I was worried you would get hurt and freeze your arse off going up the mountain. Your mother, and Darcy’s, came up with the idea that once you got inside the house, because we knew you would get in, we’d block all the exits, thus keeping you both together to . . . settle your differences.”
My father shook his head.
“Myself, Jimmy, Sean, and Justin and a few others from the pub headed up the mountain after you, but we kept our distance in case you caught on to us. After an hour or so we reached Darcy’s house and we could hear you both arguing inside. Sean went to the back door and said it was over the parrot, so we figured it was nothing serious.”
Nothing serious. Ha!
That fucking bird traumatised me.
“Go on. Don’t stop now,” Darcy growled.
Justin took over. “We got shovels from your shed and got to work – you should put a lock on that, by the way. The heavy snowfall made things easy. I was expecting Neala to storm out at some point and catch us, but she didn’t. We were very careful about how much noise we made and just piled the snow up until it covered everything. I really thought one of you would have heard us, but you didn’t. When we were finished we did have second thoughts, but we thought we’d just let it play out and see what would happen.”
I was insanely mad, but them – they were fucking crazy. I could not believe this group of idiots thought, even for a second, that what they had done was a good idea.
“You’re a bunch of eejits; I hope you realise that.”
Everyone hung their heads.
They knew.
“I hope you also realise that I almost suffocated trying to dig our way out through the fucking snow,” Darcy snapped.
Everyone but our brothers gasped.
“Yeah,” I chimed in. “The snow in the tunnel he made collapsed on him and I had to pull him out. You almost killed Darcy.”
I was telling the truth, but I added a touch of drama to my voice to really get my point across – and from the look on everyone’s face, it worked.
“I’m so sorry,” Darcy’s mother cried.
Legit cried. Real tears.
I had never seen Marie cry before, so I did a lot of staring. I even felt bad. Just for a minute, though, until I reminded myself what the group of eejits had orchestrated.
“I honestly can’t believe you trapped us in a house by burying the exits; is that even legal?”
My father huffed. “Pretty sure it’s not.”
Interesting.
“What? You’re going to have us arrested?” Sean asked me, his tone sarcastic.
I curled my lip in disgust. “It’s no more than you bloody deserve.”
Sean didn’t reply; he only looked down. Everyone seemed to favour looking
at their feet.
“What about the blackout? Did you cause that too?” Darcy growled.
Everyone shook their heads.
“That wasn’t our fault. The village power only came back on yesterday. The mountain houses and lodges should have power by Thursday – the council is working on it,” Justin explained.
Burying us in together was bad enough; I might have smashed something just then if they’d messed with the power too.
“From this moment on I never want to hear anyone mention my and Darcy’s names in a sentence together in a way that is suggestive to us being a couple or ever being a couple. I don’t want anyone trying to play matchmaker, and above all, don’t trap us anywhere together ever again. Got it?”
“Got it,” everyone replied in unison.
I nodded, then glanced to Darcy before looking back to everyone else.
“And for the last time, there will never be a Neala and Darcy relationship. He doesn’t want me . . . and I don’t want him.”
With that said I turned and walked out of the room, up the stairs and into my bedroom. My heart was pounding against my chest and my stomach churned.
I hated myself.
I hated liars and I hated lying.
Yet I had just told the biggest lie of all.
I was no better than the rest of my so-called family.
It seemed being a liar came naturally me.
To all of us.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Another, Darcy?” the owner of O’Leary’s Pub asked me in his thick Northern accent.
I looked up at Bob and nodded my head even though it was starting to spin. He sighed, rested his elbows on the countertop in front of me, and stared at me.
“What’s the matter, kid?” he asked me.
I liked a girl a hell of a lot and I missed her like fucking crazy.
“I fucked shite up with a moth I was seeing and I’m a bit gutted about it,” I said, and shook my head. “She’s a good girl and I was a prick to her.”
“You cheat on her?” Bob asked as he leaned back, picked up a beer glass, and wiped it out with a cloth.
I frowned at him. “No, I shagged her, then told her I regretted it when I really didn’t.”