Page 8 of Charlie Sunshine (Close Proximity #2)

He laughs before turning to my mum. “I’m so sorry. I’d have said no but we’re really short staffed at the moment,” he says earnestly. “Shall we do it another time?”

She smiles and shakes her head. “It’s absolutely fine, love. Probably best if I do this one alone anyway.”

I narrow my eyes. What is going on?

I don’t get the chance to ask as he grabs his keys and leaves, shouting a cheerful goodbye.

“You staying for a while?” my mum asks from the seat at the head of the table. Even after all these years, I feel a tiny pang of surprise. It was my dad’s chair, and I can still see him there, his dark hair wild with him pushing his hand through it and laughing loudly. He was always laughing.

I blink the thought away and focus on her question. “Of course I’m staying. You summoned me, didn’t you?”

She sighs. “That makes you sound like a bloody demon.” She looks me up and down disapprovingly. “At least take your jacket off, Misha. You look like you’re about to approve me for a mortgage.”

“You do actually know what I do, don’t you?” I say, standing up so I can hang my jacket on the back of the chair.

She waves her hand airily. “It’s something to do with money. Anything else is a bit of a mystery. Sounds a bit like a gardening job.”

“I’m a hedge fund manager, not Alan Titchmarsh,” I say snidely.

She laughs, not a bit affected by my scowl. “Aunt Ava still asks if you can go round and trim her bush.”

“Good God,” I say and then falter because there are no words for the image she just conjured in my head.

I spot Peter, the battered old toy dog, sitting on the sideboard amidst a jumbled mass of craft projects that we did as children. His fur is rubbed clean in places through kisses, and the sight of him makes my brain come back into gear.

“Why have we got a family meeting?” I ask, shooting my mum a glance.

“There are two things on the agenda.”

“Well, that’s just wonderful. I do so love our family problems. Thank goodness there’s more than one. What’s the first?”

She grimaces. “Anya got suspended.”

“What ?” I say far too loudly, and she hushes me quickly. “What for?” I say in a lower tone.

“She handcuffed herself to some railings at school.”

“She handcuffed herself to railings ?”

“Are you going to repeat everything I say tonight?” she asks.

“Probably, if every statement is going to be as ridiculous as that one. Why the fuck did she chain herself to railings? Is she Emmeline Pankhurst?”

“No, but she’s very passionate about climate change.”

“Oh my God,” I groan. “I might have known. Is it the plight of the penguins this week, or the mating grounds of the lesser spotted pink whistled puffin?”

“Anya is very concerned about the world, Misha.”

“How about she becomes concerned about the plight of the stressed-out banker? I don’t see her chaining herself to any railings over me.”

She laughs, and I sit back in my chair and stare at her over the teapot. This situation is so familiar to me. I’ve lost track of the number of times we’ve sat here together with tea and biscuits trying to sort out family situations.

There’s a noise at the door, and Charlie comes in, grinning at my mum.

I look at that smile and feel the tight muscles inside me relax.

Charlie’s family might have kept our house running, but it was Charlie who saw me through.

He’s lived next door to me since we came here, and it feels like I’ve always had him in my life.

I first met him when I was six and we moved into this house. I poked my head over the garden fence and found a blond boy lying completely still and spread-eagled on the grass.

“I’m Misha. Are you dead?” I hissed, displaying a strong streak of callousness.

He opened one eye. “I’m Charlie, and I’m still breathing,” he said earnestly, even then showing his special talent for blatant obviousness.

“But you’re so still.”

“Don’t you ever lie still?”

I tried to think of an occasion but then gave up. “No,” I admitted.

He smiled at me, and it filled his whole face, showing a gap in his teeth. “Come over, then, and lie down.”

I immediately clambered over the fence and found myself in a long messy garden. I flung myself next to him and looked at him. “What are we doing?” I asked.

“I read in a book that the grass whispered. I’m trying to hear it.”

We lay there for a few minutes before my dad’s voice rose up from the house.

Charlie sat up. “Is he speaking a foreign language?”

“He’s Russian,” I said in a resigned tone. “And he’s this noisy all the time,” I warned him. I looked up at his house. “Do you live with your mum and dad?”

“My dad and his boyfriend live in the upstairs flat, and my mum’s got the downstairs one with her boyfriend.” He shot me a look that contained a fair degree of trepidation and an expectation that I’d take the piss.

Instead, I considered the information and then shrugged. “That’s brilliant. Another two grown-ups to buy presents. How wicked is that?”

He smiled happily at me, and we lay back down for a few more minutes.

After a bit, he sighed. “I can’t hear anything from the grass,” he said.

“ Books !” I said in a suitably disgusted voice. I paused. “Our shed’s falling down. Do you want to get some sticks and hit it until it collapses?”

His face lit up, and as he nodded eagerly, I knew I’d found a friend .

And that was it for us. He carried on reading, and I carried on trying to draw him into escapades that got progressively naughtier.

I stuck up for him when kids tried to take the piss about his dad, and he smoothed the way every time we got into trouble.

One look at his angelic countenance and most adults caved.

We were never really apart. We walked to school and back every day, and I was over his fence and in his garden before we’d even been home for half an hour.

We practically lived in each other’s houses.

I’ve always had a gift for making friends, but there’s never been anybody like Charlie for me.

He eases me in some strange way and makes me happy.

And we fit together and balance each other.

He adds his sweetness to my salty personality, and I like to think there’s a particular snap in his humour that’s totally down to me.

Men come and go—boyfriends in his case, hook-ups in mine.

But at the heart of my world is him, and I hope that never changes.

I smile at him. “Where’s the housebreaking mole?” I ask.

He washes his hands at the sink. “We put him at the bottom of the garden. Poor little sod was absolutely petrified.”

“Oh no,” I say mockingly. “Oh, how I hope that he’ll recover his equilibrium and then he can go back to making those ginormous bloody holes that fuck the lawnmower up.”

“Misha,” Teddy says reprovingly as she comes into the kitchen. “Poor little mole. Don’t be mean.”

“You look serious,” Charlie says, bending down to get a hug from my mum.

“Anya has been suspended,” I say grimly.

“Shit,” he says.

I smirk. “How very wordy and literate of you, Charlie. I can tell you’re a librarian.”

“Why was she suspended?” he asks, ignoring me.

“Climate change,” I say shortly. His eyes brighten immediately, and I shake my head as he opens his mouth to undoubtedly give me a lecture on the environment.

“Don’t bother,” I say sourly. “She’ll be down soon and you can join your eco voices in harmonious concert.

Just give me a chance to put my earplugs in first.”

I grab the sad-looking soft toy and put him in the centre of the table. “Okay, Peter the Puppy Dog is in position and the billionth meeting of Dad’s Do-Over is in session. Teddy, please call Anya to the table.”

She blanches and dashes off, and we sit listening to her feet thundering upstairs and the indistinct muttering of the girls’ conversation.

Dad Do-Overs are our family board meetings.

My father was always very keen on them, saying he was from a country whose people were ruled harshly and he didn’t intend to conduct his family like that.

They started small, but the one rule was always total honesty, and whoever held the wooden spoon had the floor and couldn’t be interrupted.

When he died, we swapped the wooden spoon for Peter Puppy Dog, a soft toy he’d bought the girls, but they understood that the total honesty rule still applied.

Even now, it works. It’s what he would have expected of us and none of us want to ever disappoint him. It also serves in some small way to keep him with us.

Charlie looks at me. “Shall I wait in the lounge?”

“No,” I say quickly, grabbing his hand. “Stay.”

I see my mum shoot us a dewy sort of glance and mentally sigh. She’s been shipping Charlie and me ever since we both announced that we were gay.

“These meetings are personal,” Charlie says, looking at my mum. “Anya might not want me to hear her business.”

Mum pats him on the arm affectionately. “Stay. Anya thinks of you as a brother.”

“How lucky for you, Charlie. Maybe we could compare ulcer remedies,” I say dryly, but they ignore me as usual.

“She knows Misha will just tell you everything anyway,” my mum says to Charlie. She shrugs. “Plus, you keep Misha calm. It’s either you or Valium.”

“Or crack,” I observe.

“That’s banned from a Dad Do-Over, and well you know it,” my mum says serenely. “Or I’d have smoked it years ago.”

There’s a clatter of footsteps on the stairs. “Showtime,” my mum says happily.

I sit back on my chair as Anya blows into the room.

And blow is the right word. She’s glowering and stomping while muttering under her breath.

Her previously long black hair has been dyed a bright red, and it’s a tangled mess.

She also seems to be allergic to the colour wheel as she’s dressed entirely in black.

She looks surly and like a typical teenager, but I still have to repress a smile, as no matter how crabby she seems, she won’t go against the family meeting. It’s like our superpower.

“Are you okay, Anya? Is your asthma playing up?” I ask silkily.