He hated the comparison. In that moment, he even hated his father, just a little. “I see.”
She sighed, reaching out and putting her hand on his. “Until I explained my circumstances to him properly,” she said with a shake of her head. “The thing is, I have a lot of debt.”
He braced, wondering if this was how it had begun. The part of his brain still capable of rational thought heard the line and tried to marry it with the woman opposite him, with a bald-faced request for help. But she sighed softly.
“I ran away from home, two years after my brother did. He was living on the streets of Melbourne when I arrived.”
He was frozen still, the confession the last thing he’d expected.
“I’d planned to get enrolled in school—I was fifteen and had no concept of the fact I’d need somewhere to live and food to eat. I was so naïve. And with Dale being on the streets, I just sort of fell into life beside him.”
Anastasios could have been knocked over with a feather. This was the last thing he’d been expecting.
The waiter returned to take their drink order and Anastasios barked a command for mineral water then thrust the menus back at him, telling him to bring whatever food the chefs recommended.
“So you lived on the streets, too?”
“Yes.” Her eyes had a faraway quality, and she focused on a point over his shoulder. For his part, Anastasios was filled with a need todosomething. To shout at someone, to punch something, at the very idea of this delicate, kind, beautiful young woman having ever found herself in those circumstances. “At first I thought it would just be a few weeks. I didn’t realise it at the time, but Dale was spending all our money—not very much, anyway—on drugs and alcohol. He’d become an addict, since I’d last seen him, and he was too far gone to simply break the habit.”
Anastasios swallowed a curse, leaning forward and doing the one thing he could, flipping his hand to capture hers, weaving their fingers together. “You must have been very scared.”
“Not at first, but as his addiction worsened, he’d disappear on me for nights at a time. He got in with some pretty dodgy blokes and I didn’t like spending time with them.” She shivered. “Mostly, I just felt really lonely,” she whispered.
Beneath the table, his spare hand gripped his leg, hard.
“And what did you do, when he was gone? Where did you sleep?”
She frowned, as if not understanding. “Where I always did. There’s a bridge, by the aquarium. We had a spot there.”
He swore under his breath, anger like a beam splitting him in two.
“One time, days and days went by and I hadn’t seen Dale. No one had. I feared the worst, went around to all the hospitals. He’d been clipped by a tram and fallen onto the tracks. Thank God, he wasn’t badly hurt—just a broken wrist. But the hospital had a social worker, and she offered to get him into rehab, and to try to help me. I really think she did try, Anastasios, but the systems aren’t easy to navigate, and there was no community housing available to a fifteen year old. I’d have had to go into foster care, and having just escaped my dad, I was terrified of who I’d end up living with.”
“So you stayed on the streets?” He tried to curb the disapproval from his voice but hell, he’d have moved heaven and earth to go back in time and make it so that she never had to face that awful decision.
“And Dale bounced in and out of rehab. After the first stint, I was able to get him into a private facility as a trial. I was desperate and idealistic. If they could just make him better, everything would be okay. I’d find a way to pay, somehow.”
He stared at her, fascinated and full of admiration for her decisions. “By then, I was eighteen. The social worker had found me a job—just taking payments at a service station, but it was enough. I could make some payments on the facility,”
“Instead of rent?” He interrupted.
“Yes,” she bit down on her lower lip.
“So you were still living rough?”
“I’d worked out how to live by then. I knew the safest spots, where I wouldn’t be bothered.”
“Christos.”
“It’s not as bad as you might think.”
“If that’s true, it’s simply a credit to your attitude, nothing more.”
She lifted her shoulders then paused, as their drinks appeared, along with an antipasto platter.
“Leave them,” Anastasios dismissed the waiter.
“Thank you,” Phoebe offered a bright smile to compensate for Anastasios’ shortness. “You know, if you’d spoken to me like that, I’d probably have spat in your food.”