Let's Get Lost by Sarra Manning

tomatoes to the side of the spaghetti hoops.
    “Isabel, could you stop that for a second, please?”
    I nudged the last tin into place, took a deep breath, and turned around with my face a perfect blank.
    He gestured with his hand to encapsulate the total spick and spannery of the kitchen. “You’ve done a wonderful job.” He sounded like I’d dragged the admission out of him with a pair of rusty pliers. “Though I recall, your moth— Should I be alarmed by this obsession with tidying?”

    “No, I’m not . . .” I protested, and then folded my arms so my hands would stop fluttering about. “I just like things to be neat, orderly.”
    “Do you remember the time you were being bullied by that awful creature—what was her name?
    Jasmine, Rose, something flowery . . .”
    “Daisy? In middle school.” I shuddered at the thought of the ten-stone ten-year-old who’d made me cry every day for six weeks.
    “We didn’t even know there was a problem, but you came home every day and insisted on laying the table with a ruler to measure the exact distance between each knife and fork.” He paused and gave me a considered look.
    Which I returned with knobs on. No way was I about to go into overshare mode about—well, any of it, really.
    “Anyone else would be pleased to have a daughter who’s not a total slob,” I pointed out. “This house would look like the inside of a trash can if I didn’t keep on top of it.”
    He nodded his head in acknowledgment of my kick-ass housekeeping skills. “I’ve been talking to Felix about the thorny topic of pocket money, or allowance as I understand it’s to be called. It seems that you received money straight into your bank account in return for certain chores?”
    “I got thirty quid a week for cleaning and doing the laundry and picking Felix up after school and—” I narrowed my eyes to see if he’d buy it and then continued— “and a hundred quid a month clothing and sundry allowance.”
    “A hundred pounds seems a little excessive,” he murmured, switching on the kettle. “Define sundries.”
    “Tampons, sanitary napkins,” I began, and smirked when I saw his pained expression. “Shoe repairs, books for school if there aren’t enough to go around, stuff for my face so I don’t break out . . .”
    He nodded his head. Sucker! “That seems reasonable, if you give me your bank details, I’ll set up the direct debit. I haven’t had a chance to do anything more than close the accounts.”
    He pressed his hand over his forehead as if he could rub out the frown lines, which seemed to be a permanent fixture—and it was so strange that we could be having this conversation and not mention her by name.
    “Cool,” I said. “Thanks.”
    “And please don’t keep stealing money from my wallet,” he added softly.
    I didn’t bother to deny it. I was too busy concentrating on the chilly feel of the goose bumps rising up on my arms, but I tilted my chin so I could look him in the eye.
    “I won’t.”
    “Good.” He sighed heavily. “This coldness between us . . . I don’t like it, Isabel, I don’t like it at all.”
    “I know.” My voice was this tiny squeak.
    And just like that, in a split second, in the blink of an eye, in the time it takes to draw breath and not even have a chance to let it out again, he straightened up and went from soft to hard.
    “I promised Felix that I’d spend some time with him this evening watching DVDs and ordering some takeout.” He curled his lip like Felix was going to force him to eat dirt. “If you think you can be pleasant company, you’re welcome to join us.”
    I could tell that he thought he was offering me, like, this huge olive branch. Maybe even a whole bloody olive tree. But an evening spent watching Shrek (Felix always wants to watch Shrek ) and pretending that I wasn’t gritting my teeth and digging my nails into my palms hard enough to draw blood because it was all bullshit and lies, wasn’t worth a hundred