Half a Bed Between Us

Although I was definitely fifteen years old, my mum and dad still seemed to think that if they packed me upstairs to my room while they 'talked things through' in quiet, secretive voices, I wouldn't twig that anything was up. Which was why, around ten on Saturday evening, I'd pressed my face to a keyhole, trying to catch their muted whispering. "Well, they've admitted her to hospital." I frowned. That was my mum's voice. She sounded tense, and more than slightly panicked. "And nobody knows how long she'll stay in there, though they're guessing another month at least, maybe more." My dad coughed and the sofa squeaked, which told me he'd scooted across to sit next to my mum. I squeezed one eye and squinted through the keyhole, but I still couldn't get a decent look through the thin slit in the metal. "Look, Fiona, it'll all be fine," my dad hushed, trying to quiet my mum's soft crying. "Moira will be ok. And in the meantime, I've no problem taking Callum in for a bit... We're his Godparents, after all, so it's our responsibility." What? "Aye," my mum sniffed, twisting her hands together. "Why don't you go fetch him after we explain everything to Rory?" At the sound of my name I straightened up a wee bit... and shoved the door open by accident. "Um... Explain what?" I asked cautiously, trying hard to keep my face blank. Mum and dad both saw through the act at once and exchanged a panicked glance, wondering how much I'd heard. I let out a sigh. "Look, explain what? Who's Callum?" "How long had you been glued to that keyhole?" dad snapped. I gave him a look. He was clearly sidestepping the point, and I wasn't about to let him manage that. "Long enough," I muttered, shrugging like it was the most normal thing in the world. My dad, though, wasn't about to let me off that easily. "How long have you been at that? What if we'd been discussing something private?"