‘Dammit, Rebecca!’
Gerald sprang to his feet, driving his fist into the table. Padded in leather like it was, it didn’t make much of a sound, but he still obviously felt like it got his point across.
‘You’re being unreasonable!’ she shouted, throwing her own chair back and rising to her feet.
‘Because I want to spend time with my children?’
‘Because you don’t think I want to spend time with my children!’
‘Alright, alright,’ I said soothingly, alone in sitting at the table. ‘Let’s all take a deep breath before we say something–’
‘You never cared about them,’ Gerald spat through gritted teeth, his eyes beginning to glisten with tears.
‘Yeah, something like that would do it,’ I sighed, taking off my glasses so I could rub the bridge of my nose. I could hear my mother’s voice ringing in my head, telling me I should have become a local conveyancer servicing the Brighton area, instead of a divorce lawyer servicing the Brighton area.
‘Of course I care about them,’ Rebecca gasped, hand going to where her pearls would have been if she wasn’t trying to hide them from me as an asset. ‘I was always the one who fed them, clothed them, walked them–’
An alarm bell went off in the back of my head, and I put my glasses back on.
‘Taking them to sit next to you while you get a pastry at the local café doesn’t count as walking them!’ Gerald scoffed.
‘And I suppose working all weekend when you promised we’d take them to the park, that does?’
‘Just to confirm,’ I interjected dryly, ‘we’re talking about dogs, correct?’
‘Mimi and FooFoo,’ Gerald’s voice cracked. ‘Who else would we be talking about?’
‘Who else indeed,’ I muttered, scratching a note onto my legal pad. Rebecca frowned down at it.
‘Why did you just write the word “conveyancing”? she asked.
‘No reason,’ I said quickly, slamming the cover shut. ‘Is there any chance you two are still secretly in love and looking for someone to tell you that’s what’s going on?’
‘No!’ they shouted in unison.
‘Great,’ I smiled at them. ‘I quit.’
They didn’t move Maphira that night. She slept on the floor of the large conference room they’d shoved her in, and when the morning came, she was almost glad that today was the day of Project Bender’s test. So many nights of sleeping on rough carpet, without so much as a pillow. Not the worst sleeping conditions she’d ever experienced, but damn close.