Free Summer at the Lake by Erica James Page B

street. He had a long loping stride and an air of vague distraction about him.
    Two days later when she had shown a customer where to find the descaling products, she felt someone tapping her on the shoulder.
    It was him.
    ‘Hello,’ he said, ‘I’d like a mousetrap, please. And before you get uppity with me, today I’m in the fortunate position to offer you seventy-five pence of the sovereign realm. God save the Queen!’
    In spite of the excruciating memory she had of his previous visit, and how small and mean she had felt for the rest of the day, she smiled.
    The transaction completed, he said, ‘What time do you get off work? Or does your father keep you here overnight stocking shelves?’
    By the end of the school holiday not only had they become friends but Floriana’s father had agreed that he could work Saturdays in the shop.
    Seb and his mother had moved to Stanhurst following her divorce and he described their situation in terms of living in genteel penury. It was an expression which Floriana had come to know as being a typical Seb remark, in that it was loaded with sufficient exaggeration and irony to appear comical, but in actual fact belied just how difficult things were. It was a defence mechanism, she came to realise.
    He’d apologised for trying to steal the mousetrap, explaining that he and his mother had been in their new house less than twenty-four hours when they’d discovered they had company. With his mother screaming hysterically every time a mouse poked its head out of a drawer or a cupboard and her bank account seriously in the red, Seb had taken matters into his own hands. And failed. ‘Clearly I’m not cut out for a life of crime,’ he’d joked, adding more seriously, ‘any more than my mother is cut out for marriage and motherhood.’
    This was his mother’s second marriage to end in divorce. Seb’s father – Husband Number One – had long ago remarried and contributed haphazardly to his son’s well-being, the money mostly going towards paying the fees for the private school he attended. Husband Number Two felt no inclination to support a child that wasn’t his. ‘I can’t say I blame him,’ Seb said of the man, ‘why should he just because he married my mother?’
    Although Seb was the same age as Floriana, he seemed older and altogether more worldly and astute. He claimed he was steeped in cynicism and that tricked people into thinking he was smarter than he really was. ‘Put it this way, I’ve been on a steep learning curve,’ he said one day when she asked him how he always managed to sound so positive and pragmatic.
    ‘Since when?’ she’d asked.
    ‘Since I was born.’
    Of his mother he said, matter-of-factly, ‘It’s a shame, but she’s not very good at being married. The trouble is, she’s not very good at being on her own either.’
    It didn’t take long for Floriana to realise that Seb had his hands full taking care of his mother, who in Floriana’s opinion was a lazy, selfish woman who needed to stop moaning about how unfair life was. Some days she stayed in bed, awash in her own misery, not giving a thought to Seb who was left to fend for himself. Not once did he ever criticise or complain; he just accepted the situation and got on with it.
    It didn’t even bother him when, six months after moving to Stanhurst, his father wrote to say he could no longer afford to pay Seb’s school fees. At the start of the next term he transferred to the comprehensive which Floriana attended, and where her sister had also been a student – a model student as was pointed out to her all too often. It was then that Floriana more or less dropped her immediate circle of friends and she and Seb became inseparable and were dubbed the Gang of Two.
    Floriana’s mother adored Seb and made him an honorary member of the family, saying he was welcome any time he wanted. Unbeknown to Floriana, she was regularly sneaking food parcels into his bag to take home with him. Floriana