Free Bleak City by Marisa Taylor

nodded. ‘And no one knows it. Recipe for chaos. Family get-togethers are noisy, not like this.’
    ‘There’s only one boss in this family,’ Nathan said, speaking more quietly than he had been before.
    ‘Who’s that?’
    ‘Who do you think?’ he said and when she continued to look puzzled, ‘Grandmother Moorhouse. Haven’t you noticed how all the adults defer to her?’
    ‘I’ve only been around them at her house once,’ Alice said. ‘I thought they were all so polite because she’s old.’
    ‘No,’ Nathan said. ‘It’s cos they’re all terrified of her.’
    ‘But she’s tiny.’
    ‘I don’t mean that she’ll beat them up,’ Nathan said. ‘But they all want the land, so they don’t dare do anything to offend her.’
    Alice must have looked puzzled, because Nathan continued. ‘She owns that big block of land, river outlook, goes down to the old farmhouse. It’s all prime real estate, and subdivided would be worth millions. Whoever she leaves it to will clear the site, sell it off and make a fortune. Sorry, my mum’s a real estate agent, she knows what everyone’s properties are worth.’ Properties, not homes.
    ‘So they all try to keep her happy?’ Alice said.
    Nathan nodded. ‘And they’re all polite to one another, because great-grandmother expects everyone to get along. Pick a fight, not a fist fight, I mean start an argument or something, and you’re in her black books for months.’
    ‘And it just works out like that?’
    ‘Mostly. As long as no one has too much to drink. Might want to stay away if they start cracking open too much wine. Not pretty.’ He shot a glance back at the family gathered around the house, then got up, took their plates and headed back to the house. Alice turned to watch him go. At first, she had thought he was a bit dumb, but clearly there was more going on his head than just rugby. Interesting.
    The cousin closest to Alice’s age was Sean, he was Charlotte’s brother. He had just finished high school and was going to be studying law. He didn’t seem terribly interested in the subject, it sounded like something his parents were pushing him towards. They were both accountants, and, he said, thought law would be a good career choice. If his parents were making the career decisions in the family, Alice wondered what they would push Charlotte towards, and whether they would have any luck at all in getting her going in whatever direction they chose for her. Sean was gentle, easy-going, as relaxed as Charlotte was tightly wound. ‘She’s been like this since Mum and Dad got back together,’ Sean said when Alice mentioned it. Their parents had separated for a couple of years and this was their first summer back together.
    ‘Why?’ Alice said. ‘Are they fighting a lot?’
    ‘No, nothing like that,’ Sean said. ‘I don’t know what the story is, she’s just determined to be awful.’
    Thirteen was how old Alice was when Olivia was born. She remembered how invisible she had felt during the last weeks of Lindsay’s pregnancy. Life was going to change for the second time, and she felt like she was still adjusting to the first change. She didn’t particularly enjoy the first months after Olivia was born, too much crying, too many disgusting things she had been able to avoid thinking about before. Once Olivia became more interactive, Alice found it was actually pretty cool having a baby sister. But she had to work at it, not keeping to herself, making the effort to be part of the family in a new way. It was never going back to how it had been when it was just her and Lindsay, but when she thought about getting Olivia to laugh, watching her try new foods and how excited she got when someone said Dad was home, Alice decided things were actually pretty good.
    Maybe it was like that for Charlotte. Things had changed and maybe she had become used to it. Then they had changed again. It would have been frustrating, and then, as her parents had separated once