"Shadows"


Chapter Three

He turned slowly around, because not to do so would be more hassle than it was worth, and faced the middle-aged woman below. Recently turned forty and yet she looked at least a decade younger. Some of that was natural but a lot of it was cosmetic. Face creams that defied age, lotions that stretched out tired old skin, face-peels that stripped away wrinkles. For her birthday the previous year she had been rewarded with Botox treatment from her husband and she had been thrilled. Her forehead hadn’t moved for three whole months.

There was nothing very natural left of his mother now, Justin mused as he looked down the stairs at her. Her hair had been dyed a nasty cocoa colour, her eyebrows shaved away and drawn on with pencil, her lips enhanced with silicone during a time Justin couldn’t even remember. Her face was always a different shade to her neck, and eyes that might once have been beautiful were dogged down with thick layers of mascara and powder.

Today she was wearing a pair of hip-hugging white jeans that even a fifteen year old wouldn’t have got away with, coupled with a low-cut maroon T-shirt. There was a heavy gold watch circling her left wrist, and three rings on her fingers. Justin wondered, not for the first time, if his mother had ever had lyposuction too. She certainly wasn’t dressed for DIY, anyway. And the men were all staring at her as if she was a jewel. Perhaps in her day she had been dazzling but not anymore. She’d rubbed away her true self. He wondered if she still had a fingerprint left on her digits or if that had been erased too.

Upon seeing Justin, she sighed and put her hands on her hips. The men on the floor practically groaned out their arousal and Justin rolled his eyes away. There was nothing worse than watching his own mother getting drooled over by the scum who lived in the worst areas of Waywater. She was going to be wank material for weeks. He shuddered.

“Why did you not say hello to me?” she asked. “I am your mother!”

She was always so hysterical. Everything was a drama. Even Justin trying to make his way up to his own room at the end of a long day at school was an attack on her. She was exhausting.

“You wouldn’t have heard me anyway,” he mumbled.

Perfect timing as always, Justin’s father stepped out of his office at the foot of the stairs and heard Justin’s mumbled statement. His eyes narrowed, his brow furrowed. Justin rolled his eyes away again.

His father was not royalty and never had been. He’d got a German princess pregnant and had been lumbered with her and her expensive tastes ever since. He’d had to work twice as hard as he’d planned just to keep her in the luxury she was accustomed to and since Justin had turned sixteen he had decided to take out that wasted life on his son.

Today was no different.

“Don’t speak to your mother like that,” he growled up the stairs. “Show some damn respect! We let you stay in this house rent-free and you can’t even speak nicely to your mother?”

Justin’s mind turned cold and blank. It was the same way every time his parents spoke to him. Every time he was reminded that to them he was not their son, their youngest child, heir to their fortune and the only one able to carry on their precious family name. Instead, he was just a boy who lived in their house. A nuisance, a presence best ignored – not even an acquaintance.

Seeing that he wasn’t getting through to his son, Justin’s father waved his hand, dismissing Justin with a cruel, “Get out of my face.”

Turning on his heel, Justin headed up the stairs and moved across the hallway, blanking out his father’s angry words. He told himself they meant nothing to him, and that they couldn’t upset him because he didn’t even love his parents. Except he knew it was a lie. Of course he loved them. That was something beyond his control. It didn’t mean he had to like them, though. But whether he liked his mother and father or not, he still craved their love and approval. He still hadn’t found a way to rid himself of that weakness yet.

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