Limits by Susie Tate

Author:Susie Tate [Tate, Susie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2018-04-05T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

At least try to be normal

‘Yes, of course,’ Millie muttered as she closed her eyes and sank back into the sofa. Her hand, clamped around her phone, was starting to ache and she realised she’d been gripping it hard enough to cut off the circulation to her fingers. Beauty lumbered over to her and watched her tense face for a moment before heaving his great body up on the sofa and laying his huge head on her stomach. She started and let out a small bark of laughter.

‘Camilla?’ her mother’s shrill voice sounded into her ear. ‘What on earth is going on there? Are you listening to me?’

‘Yes, mother,’ Millie said, sinking her free hand into Beauty’s thick fur and letting out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. Seriously, this dog was like magic. He should be used as a therapy animal. The smell was something she needed to work on (Jamie had told Beauty earlier, quite accurately, that she ‘smelt of arse’), but anything that could make Millie feel even marginally better when she was speaking to her parents was a miracle.

‘Are you … are you with someone?’ Her mother’s tone was incredulous. Millie couldn’t exactly blame her: her whole life had been almost entirely devoid of social interactions. Her mother knew how bizarre it would be for her to be with a friend.

‘No,’ Millie sighed. ‘It’s just a dog.’

‘A dog?’ Her mother’s voice rose in horror. ‘Please don’t tell me you have gone and got yourself a bloody dog? What a ridicul–’

‘It’s not my dog, Mum. I’m … I’m at some else’s house.’

‘But … why?’

The assumption that Millie was not there in a social capacity, despite the fact that it was actually her birthday that day, for some reason made her chest tighten. She was surprised. Millie had become adept at letting her mother’s words wash over her for quite some time. They no longer had quite the power to inflict pain that they had when she was a child. She’d built up a tolerance to them. And anyway, compared to the poison her mother was capable of spouting, this was nothing. It was fair to assume Millie would be on her own on her birthday; she’d never spent any of her birthdays any other way.

‘I’m babysitting.’

‘You’re what? For Christ’s sake, Camilla. What is wrong with you? Why are you wasting your time babysitting? Is this purely to annoy me?’

Millie sighed again. Throughout her life her mother had constantly asked that question.

‘Have you made this purely to annoy me, Camilla?’ – in response to a card she made at school when she was six, which was covered in glitter and shed on her mother’s jumper.

‘Are these dolls on the floor purely to annoy me, darling?’ she’d said a year later, before scooping up the Barbies and dumping them in the rubbish whilst she muttered about gender stereotyping and pointless plastic crap (Gammy had given them to Millie and they were her favourite toys).

‘There’s dirt on

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