Free Don't Get Me Wrong by Marianne Kavanagh

the violence he was used to, maybe. But a fighter nonetheless.
    Harry, straightening up, the tight muscles of his shouldersand arms hidden under an old hoodie, would pick up his sports bag. And he’d look over and nod.
    Nothing much, you might say.
    But to that boy, that thirteen-year-old, it was everything.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    â€œOf course she had a thing about cats.”
    â€œWhat kind of thing?
    â€œIt might be better to ask,” said her mother, “what kind of cats.”
    No wonder you moved to the South of France, thought Kim. Nunhead really wasn’t the right setting. The thin September sun, fighting its way through the window above the sink, showed up the chipped yellow paint, the scratched stainless steel, the scuffed lino. But then the light fell on Grace. She turned her face towards the sun like a film star sensing the camera. You could see the sheen of her skin, the intense blue of her eyes. Her white-blond hair was a dazzling halo.
    â€œLions,” said Grace. She was sitting right on the edge of her chair as if trying to minimize all contact with south London dirt. “Hundreds of them. Wandering round her house. Huge great African lions.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œShe was making a film. Called Roar . Took years and years and went wildly over budget. One of the cameramen nearly got killed.”
    â€œIs that what turned you off her?”
    Grace frowned.
    â€œYou changed your name. You called yourself Tippi for years. And then suddenly you didn’t.”
    Grace straightened up. “You’re imagining things.”
    No, thought Kim wearily. I’m remembering things. You wore a green suit and fur coat because of The Birds . We had a kitten called Forio because of the horse in Marnie . You were obsessed with Tippi Hedren. You were obsessed with Hitchcock blondes. Eva was named after Eva Marie Saint. I was named after Kim Novak. (I should be grateful. We could have been Janet and Doris.)
    You met a man on a plane once. Around the time Dad walked out. I remember standing in the kitchen, looking down the hall to where he stood, this stranger in a black cashmere coat, framed by the front door. You leant down and whispered, “Not a word!” Then you said, in a loud voice, “And this is my little sister! People say we look so alike!”
    You slipped into fiction so easily. If you got bored with reality, you just played a different part. And you were so good at it. People were often surprised to find you in a tatty London suburb. It was like finding bone china in IKEA. But they just assumed you were eccentric. Or had somehow lost the family fortune.
    That sharp ascent through the English social ranks wasn’t enough, though. You outgrew the British class system. You looked across to Europe, and then to the US. Becoming Grace Kelly was a stroke of genius. She was the one, after all, who ended up a princess.
    â€œSo what are we going to do?” said Grace.
    Kim forced herself back to the present. “About what?”
    Grace stared at her, wide-eyed. “I thought we were having a council of war.”
    You pretend to care. But you don’t. Eva’s baby is just another drama. You’ve never really enjoyed being a mother. Eva used to say, They married too young, that’s all. They had children before they’d grown up themselves. Which is why, one day, they woke up and looked at each other and thought, Is this all there is? Am I with the right person in the right life? And it frightened them so much they had to rush off and start again before it was all too late. So Dad left and moved in with Jia. And Mum moved to the South of France.
    â€œYour father hasn’t helped the situation. Putting the house on the market. But then what can you expect?” Grace shrugged. “He was always so selfish.”
    â€œThere’s been an offer already.”
    â€œWell, there would be, wouldn’t there? London property