Chapter 18: Serious?

“I can’t believe she threw all this over me,” Tony stood in the utility while June pulled off his sticky, sugar-encrusted clothes to put them straight in the machine.

“It’s what you deserved, calling her that.” June wondered if perhaps some of Lara’s challenging ways were rubbing off.

“I just wanted to pull her up and make her think.”

“You wanted to make her feel bad. That’s the only reason anyone uses that word.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did, because you were losing the argument. So you used it to put her down.”

“It’s just a word, she completely overreacted.”

“She reacted to you trying to put her down, on that crappy basis. She knows she’s entitled to respect, and she fought for it. You should be proud, not denigrating her and threatening to beat her up.”

“I didn’t threaten to beat her up! I chased her, and then I stopped. I was going to grab her and shout at her or something, but I must have looked too scary. I wish I hadn’t. I didn’t mean to scare her like that and I’d never hurt her. Ever. I never have, have I? Not one smack, ever, and I never would.”

“You wanted to win, any way you could, even bullying. You couldn’t win the argument so you used a sexist insult and your size. You deserved to have stuff thrown over you. Right. Shower. Do you want a towel to cover yourself, in case someone in your family sees your naughty bits?”

“You’re getting as bad as her. No I don’t then, Mrs Sarcastic!” He went through into the kitchen, just as Lara and the others arrived.

“Oooh Daddy,” June watched Lara pick up on his discomfiture instantly, and her mood change equally instantly. “What a bod! Do a twirl for me.”

Tony, hands over his privates, fled into the hall and upstairs without saying anything. June followed at a slower pace, smiling to herself at Lara’s instinct to exact revenge, and contemplating her own tactics. She called into Lara’s room and found the blue stretch mini and tube top on a chair. She offered them up, they went less than half way round, doubled, so she borrowed them.

Tony came out of the shower to find June lying on her side on the bed, pretending to read her phone, wearing Lara’s small, skin-tight clothes. It was inappropriate and disconcerting. It reinforced the sense of them being united against him. The skirt and top were so revealing and young; those legs seemed to go on forever. The fabric was thin.

She looked amazing. His adolescent son obviously would jump at the chance, as Lara had said - whether it was this stunning body in the clothes or his sexy sister’s.

He wondered what he should say. “You needn’t think you’re going to get round me like that,” was what popped out.

“I just think you should take a bit of time to work out what you want, and what’s possible,” June ignored it anyway. “Who will you replace us with? What will your experiences be like with them? Will you really have more loyalty, because they don’t do it with anyone else? If they dote on your every word and never defy you will you find that more satisfying? Will you bully them, because they let you? Will you wonder what your children are up to? Anyway I have something serious to tell you.”

“Oh really. Serious? As opposed to my entire extended family keeping me out of things while they have incest every which way all summer. What can it be? An asteroid is about to destroy the earth? Vladimir Putin has assassinated the Queen?”

“I wanted you to remember how young we were when we met,” June smiled, indicating her teen clothing, “and how we were at University and that students have multiple relationships, typically.”

“Yeees?” he said. He saw her becoming nervous, which made him nervous too. She sat up, fidgeting.

“Well,” she gulped, “when I met you ... I was in love with someone. I didn’t intend to find someone else, I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with him. But then we met and fell in love. And I chose you, obviously...”

“But...” Tony prompted.

“It took me a little while to disentangle myself from the other relationship...”

He stared at her for some seconds. “Lara.”

“It was so intense with Michael. I couldn’t believe there was anything stronger. I couldn’t let it go, for a while. Then by the time I knew, that you were the one, even more, and I’d missed my period, I was with you and he wouldn’t talk to me and it could have been either of yours...”

Tony’s mind raced as he tried to remember the detail of those first weeks. Intense was the word. Nothing would have been allowed to stand in the way. Nothing. He’d have battered down any barrier to be with June; and she had felt the same way, he was sure.

It was no surprise some other guy had been in love with her, of course: she’d been a sensation. A bit intimidating in fact. Brains and beauty and style ... And an affectionate person who could easily love too.

He’d known she wasn’t a virgin. The whole world had seen her in underwear, even. He hadn’t felt possessive then, because that hadn’t been possible. But she’d kept sleeping with this other guy...

As for Lara ... well perhaps in a corner of his mind he’d been aware that physically she didn’t take after him and his side of the family at all. Though there could be lots of reasons of course - genetics wasn’t simple. And now just brazenly argumentative and defying him. Mind you, some of that could come from June perhaps, the way things were going...

Still, was he going to say that loving her and bringing her up was just egocentrically loving his own genes? Didn’t he love the person? That he’d watched being born and then nurtured all these years? But who’d actually poisoned him to keep him out of the outrageous...

“I’m going for a walk,” he told June. Without another word he dressed and walked out.

“Where’s Dad?” Lara asked her mother three hours later when she got back with Mark. Their uncles had dropped them off and gone to sort out their houses.

“He’s gone for a walk, to think things over.”

“I suppose he’s upset.”

“He’s very upset, of course. He doesn’t understand and he’s used to being in charge. The only people who challenge him are his business partners and customers and even then they’re circumspect about it. And he feels rejected and conspired against and humiliated. I’ve betrayed him, twice, in the beginning and again now, and he doesn’t know who to trust any more. His children have gone against him and rejected his way of seeing the world, which is very organised and respectable. He likes to be looked up to. It’s completely alien, your way of doing what you feel like and how everything that gets in the way is an obstacle to be overcome.”