Once I’ve got myself organized, I’ve checked out the jacuzzi and the rest of the miniscule property, I slump down on the couch in the living room and wait for something interesting to happen.
It doesn’t.
“How long are we here for again?”
“One week, Landon.”
How is it exactly that no matter where they are, parents never seem to get bored? Rachel’s waltzing around the kitchen like she’s been here a thousand times already, something on the stove and God knows what else already in the oven, and Dad’s found an armchair, and a stack of maps and tourist pamphlets in a drawer, he’s busy strategically going through.
“One week. Remind me exactly what it is we are doing here? I can’t even get cell phone reception.”
“What do you need your cell phone for?”
“To connect with the world.”
Rachel doesn’t seem at all impressed by that.
“Landon! Look at this place. It’s incredibly beautiful. We are surrounded by countryside, nature, trees, this is the world.”
“The world has people in it.”
“Why don’t you go and find your sister if you’re looking for something to do, maybe you two can play a board game or something.”
I don’t even dignify that comment with a response.
“Look, I don’t know what you did when you were my age, but people these days need their cell phones, they need the internet. I didn’t even think there were places in the world where you couldn’t get a cell phone reception.”
“You can last a week without Facebook, it’ll do you good.”
This is going to be harder than I thought it would be. Less than an hour in, and I’m already bored. Maybe I should go and find Tilly, at least I’d have someone to tease. She clearly doesn’t like me, although I have absolutely no idea why, which means that teasing her and entertaining myself in the process is going to be ten times as easy as it would be if she were drooling all over me like ninety five percent of the rest of the female population. Now that would be complicated. Even if my body wasn’t on temporary lockdown, and in some kind of strange alternate universe I wanted her, step-sister is clearly a classic and perennial no go zone. Imagine that one in the papers. That wouldn’t just bench me for a couple of years, that might end my burgeoning model career too.
It’s a good job she’s not my type. Of course, I can’t help it if she’s attracted to me, which would go some way to explaining her weird mood, but at least like this it’s going to be much easier to get through this period of forced abstinence.
I’ve no idea when I’m going to get the chance again, and seeing as there’s little else to do here, I’m going to make the most of the week I get to have a little sister. She’s going to be doing absolutely everything I want, and I’m not going to give her a choice about it either. Of course, as we all know, every younger sister idolizes their big brother. They naturally want to please them in everything they do. That’s just the science of evolution.
“What?”
Tilly’s reappeared at the french windows, her hands on her hips, staring at me staring at her. It could be worse. With the light behind her she actually looks alright. I wonder if she knows her dress is a little see-through, and not only can I tell the color of her panties, I think I even recognize the brand.
“Nothing”, I say. “I was just thinking about evolutionary traits.”
Tilly flashes me a look of mistrust, and then she ignores me completely.
“There’s a dead bird at the end of the garden.”
“Welcome to the real world”, I say.
Tilly looks for somewhere to sit, and disinclined to share the tiny sofa with me, she hovers for a while, pretending to be occupied by something important, before finally disappearing into our bedroom. I keep my eyes on her, because I know she’s going to come straight out of it again.
“There’s stuff on my bed.”
Her comment is directed at me, even though she’s not looking at me directly.
“Mom.”
“A dead bird, I know. Maybe there are foxes.”
“Foxes live in cities”, Dad says without looking up from one of his brochures.
“Not the bird, the bed”, Tilly says, repeating herself. “The room is full of Landon’s exercise equipment.”
Rachel looks from her daughter, to me. I put my hands up passively. In this T-shirt, I know I look ripped, and I’m not letting the irony get lost.
“I thought you were sleeping in here.”
“I still need the mattress, Landon.”
She really is uptight.
“I’ll move the stuff before you need it, don’t worry.”
“I can’t even sit down.”
“Sit down in here”, I tell her. “I thought this was meant to be a family holiday anyway. We can get to know each other.”
“Exactly”, Rachel adds.
Tilly looks infuriated and very uncomfortable. It makes her look cute.
“Sit here if you want”, I offer, the size of the space to my side clearly just big enough for her to wedge herself into.
“I’ll sit on the decking”, Tilly says. “We don’t even fit in here.”
“Suit yourself.”
“One hundred and sixty nine kilometres of tracks around here”, Dad says, finally looking up from his stack of leaflets. “There are owls too. I think we should take a walk tomorrow.”
“You do what you like tomorrow, I’m going to sit here and watch movies all day.”
“You can sit inside in the city all you like, you shouldn’t waste the opportunity while you’ve got it. A walk might do you good, a bit of country air.”
Country air is not what I need to get me through the summer. Landon Maddox is not the kind of guy to pull on gumboots and track animals through the trees. Hunting girls? Yes. Hunting animals? No.
“I’ve done alright without it so far, city air is just as good.”
“You’ll be the one missing out.”
I can’t be bothered to argue. Family holiday to please the coach, the owners, Rachel and Dad. I can cope with that. I owe them that for not making the wedding. I can stay out of trouble here, even if it bores me senseless. Seven days putting up with Dad’s idiosyncrasies, Rachel’s relentless enthusiasm and Tilly’s teenage mood swings. In agreeing to come, it buys me brownie points with the club, which are likely to come in useful if anything happens next year. It gives me the opportunity to demonstrate to my new mother-in-law that I’m not the Landon Maddox of the magazines and the vast newspaper column inches and it gives me the opportunity to finally find out what it’s like to have a girl in my life I’m not allowed to sleep with, although with this fix I’m in, I guess that every single girl in the world falls into that category.