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‘When I was a kid, you know who my hero was?’ Alex asked.

Leigh smiled. ‘Who?’

‘Dolly Parton.’

Leigh laughed. ‘Seriously? You a big country music fan?’

‘I can’t stand country music,’ Alex told her. ‘But the thing about Dolly Parton is that she grew up dirt poor. Literally. She lived in a shack with no running water or electricity. You can’t get much poorer than that. And she sang her way into millions and millions of dollars. It sounds impossible. But she did it.’

‘Andyouwant to do that? Can you sing?’ Leigh asked.

‘I’m tone deaf,’ Alex told her. ‘But that’s not the point. When I was a kid, I heard about her, and I thought, I want to do that. I want to spin gold out of straw. Take nothing and turn it into something.’

‘Nothing?’

‘I mean, yeah, kind of. We had taps with running water in them. But not much more than that. My dad… Well, Mum made money, and Dad spent it,’ Alex said.

‘On what?’ Leigh asked.

‘Horses, mainly. Greyhounds sometimes. He even went through a stage of betting on camel races.’

Leighs frowned. ‘That sounds stressful.’

‘My mum’s blood pressure was through the bloody roof. She should have just left him.’

‘Do you know why she didn’t?’

‘I don’t know. I kind of always felt like she didn’t want to break up the family.Herparents got a divorce that was quite rough. So, instead of leaving him, she would hide money and pretend it was all gonna be fine. But he always found it. She was kind of a gambler, too, I guess. She bet on him and lost big.’

Leigh let out a long sigh. ‘They still together?’

‘Nope. They split about three months after I left home. She really was just seeing it through,’ Alex said. It was crazy. She never talked about this. But Leigh made it easy somehow. ‘I wish she would have just kicked him out and been less unhappy. I think that probably would have been better.’

‘Yeah, probably. Same in my house. They should have just called it quits. Would have saved everyone a lot of trouble.’

‘Why didn’t they?’ Alex asked.

‘Addicted to the drama? I don’t know,’ Leigh shrugged.

‘They split?’

‘Last I checked, it was still going. They moved to a new house for a fresh start. As if a building could make them both grow up. It’s still them living in the bloody thing.’

Alex smiled. ‘We didn’t have good models for adulthood, did we?’

‘No. Think we’re screwed?’ Leigh asked.

Alex didn’t know if she was kidding or not but decided a glib answer was best. ‘Yeah, totally.’

‘You don’t think we can learn from them? As cautionary tales, I mean?’ Leigh asked.

Looking at Leigh in the cheap, loud bar, Alex wondered. This was supposed to be settled for her. She was supposed to be cynical and dead inside. She didn’t want love. It was a lie, a trade-off people made because they were frightened to go it alone.

But Leigh’s smile, her eyes, the way she talked, open and honest… Alex could feel herself getting stupid for her. It scared the hell out of her. But she couldn’t have backed away from it if she tried.

Now

Alex’s trip down memory lane was interrupted by her phone ringing through the car’s Bluetooth. It was Isabelle. Alex knew what the subject of the call was going to be, but she reluctantly accepted it.