Read Online Beautiful Monster by Kate McCaffrey - Free Book Online Page B

tub’s side. Only 50 calories. She rips open the foil lid and starts gulping it down. The sourness and fruit make her lips pucker, but her stomach howls for more. She looks up to see Ned watching her.
    â€˜You gunna eat all of that?’ he asks.
    She pauses, the spoon midway into the container. ‘I guess. It’s not a lot and I haven’t eaten anything today.’
    â€˜You’ll be sorry,’ he warns.
    â€˜What do you mean?’ She puts the container down, as if it will infect her.
    â€˜Later, when you’re moaning over how bad you look. When you blame yourself for being so worthless. You’ll think about this—the overindulgence—and regret it. Really regret it.’
    Suddenly she feels sick: she knows he’s right. She picks up a handful of leaves and sticks them into the milky surface, to stop herself wanting any more.
    â€˜You’ll be glad you did that, Tess. Take control. Be strong, not weak—it’ll make you happier.’
    As they get up, she pitches the apple long and hard into the bushes surrounding the oval. ‘And the birds can eat that,’ she says, grinning.
    She walks through the front door. Nero rushes up to greet her, his tail wagging hard, and immediately she senses the emptiness. There’s no one home. She drops her bag in the hallway, longing for the time when this would cause her mum to complain—and order her to pick it up and put it away. She opens the fridge door, stares for a long time and then slams it shut, repulsed by her desire for food. At the sink, she fills a tall glass with water and noisily gulps it down. Then a second glass. Her stomach is full.
    There’s a piece of paper on the table, a note in her dad’s handwriting:
    Visiting Brodie. Back at 5.
    She sits down hard on the chair. Hurt and lonely. They went without her. It’s like she doesn’t even exist. Didn’t they care that she might want to go, too? She fights back the tears, feels so tired.
    On the kitchen bench is the cake she made yesterday. She knows what she must do.
    At five minutes after five she hears the key in the lock.
    â€˜Tess?’ her dad calls. ‘We’re back.’
    He walks in, her mother behind him, and stops in surprise. Streamers hang from the ceiling and balloons bob in the corners of the room. Tess has painted a sign, Happy Birthday Brodie, and stuck it to the wall. In the centre of the table is his birthday cake, the candles unlit, surrounded by the rest of the food she’d made over the last hour and a half. It had been difficult to select the ingredients and make up the plates of sandwiches, spring rolls and mini pizzas, when every time she opened the fridge or the pantry the sight of the food made her anxious. She’d had no distraction, no Aunty Sue to take her mind off the job, but she’d forced herself to do it, convinced this would help them all.
    â€˜What’s this?’ Her dad sounds nervous.
    â€˜I thought we should celebrate.’ Tess is now panicking, thinking she’s done the wrong thing. ‘Brodie’s birthday?’
    Her mum steps forward, her hands shaking. ‘Tess, what a lovely idea. Yes, we should.’
    They sit around the table. Liam pours them each a glass of wine and they pick at the food. Like Tess, no one seems to have much of an appetite.
    â€˜Remember when Brodie raced his skateboard down the driveway?’ Tess ventures finally.
    â€˜And smashed into the brick wall?’ her mum says. ‘Fifteen stitches across his forehead!’
    â€˜He never knew where the brakes were,’ Liam says, taking a sandwich off a plate.
    â€˜What about when he told all the neighbours Dad was a trucker?’ Annelise smiles.
    â€˜No, Mum—he said frucker,’ Tess corrects.
    â€˜And they thought he was a foul-mouthed five- year-old.’ Her dad is laughing hard.
    â€˜And then,’ Tess remembers, gasping at the funniness, ‘when Dad was