Damage by PJ Adams Page B

their mother in the early stages of her cancer, while she had still had a chance. When those chances had fizzled out, so too had all of their father’s fight.
    “You think there’s anything you can do about that?”
    Holly shrugged. “Legally, not really. The eviction letter doesn’t have any legal standing, but if there’s any problem the Estate can apply to court for a formal eviction notice and because we’ve missed rent we don’t have a leg to stand on. And then there’s the back-rent we owe, too. We really are stuffed.”
    “So maybe Dad’s just being practical?”
    Maybe. But Ruby hadn’t seen him this morning. She hadn’t seen that deadness behind his eyes, the emptiness of a man who has given up.
    “ She’d have fought it,” Holly said now. “She’d have gone to Nicholas Blunt’s front door and smooth-talked him around, and he’d never even have a clue how she’d done it.”
    “Maybe you should do that. You’re a lot like her. You’re always prepared to take on a cause. You’re always looking out for other people.”
    Holly looked at her sister, surprised. No one had ever told her she was like her mother before.
    “Maybe you should stop doing that, though,” Ruby went on. “Maybe you should think about what you want for a change. Not what Dad wants, or what Mum would have wanted. Not what Robert wants, or Karen. Or Tommy. What do you want, Holly? Do you even know?”
    §
    She dwelled on her sister’s words throughout the journey home, as the bus wound its way through narrow, twisting Cotswold roads, passing between high hedgerows and honey-stoned picture-book cottages.
    There was a double edge to what Ruby had said, she realized now. So Holly always tried to do what other people wanted, always looking out for others; that was good, but did it also mean she interfered too much? Was Ruby having a dig, or simply advising her to look out for her own interests, too?
    She felt guilty about her sister, and she’d never really raised that subject with her. When their mother’s illness had become worse their father had wanted to shield Ruby. She was too young to have to deal with all that, he had insisted. Holly had gone along with him, looking after her mother and, increasingly, her father, while at the same time sheltering Ruby from the seriousness of the situation.
    When their mother had passed away, Ruby went off the rails completely, moving out and getting into a world of drink and drugs and brushes with the police.
    Just how much of that had been a reaction to Holly and her father distancing her from her dying mother?
    Some, at least, she was sure.
    And so, she spent that journey home worrying about her sister, confirming Ruby’s point that she spent far too long thinking about what was best for other people, and not enough time looking out for herself.
    What did she want?
    At one time, the answer would have been easy: a family, a career in the arts, a sense of being part of a community. But now? It seemed like such a long time since she had thought in those terms. Instead, she had focused, moved forward, and dealt with the shit one step at a time.
    §
    Back at home, her father was in his usual chair in the front room, his paper opened at the crossword on his knee. For a moment she thought he was talking to himself, then, as she paused in the doorway she saw him there, perched on the edge of the sofa, his knees drawn up as he leaned forward to listen.
    Him : Nicholas Blunt.
    He looked up, and his only change in expression was a slight lift of the eyebrows. Surprise? Or was that a hint of challenge in the look? A ‘what are you going to do about it’ questioning?
    She’d never known anyone as guarded and difficult to read as Nicholas Blunt.
    She stood there, said nothing, and for a moment she wondered who was going to break first. Then her father noticed her and stopped mid-sentence. Smiling, he said, “And there she is. My Holly. Holly: have you met Nicholas Blunt? He’s from the