Skulduggery Pleasant_ Death Bringer - Derek Landy [118]
Valkyrie’s mother blinked. “Stephanie did all that?”
“She sure did,” said the nurse. She secured the bandage in place. “I’ll be right back with the paperwork.”
The nurse walked off. Valkyrie’s parents stared at her.
“What?” Valkyrie asked as innocently as she could. “I’ve been taking self-defence lessons at the gym. Hard Target Krav Maga type stuff. Combatives, things like that. It’s really not a big deal.”
“But he was a grown man,” her mother said.
“There’s not really a lot of point to self-defence if you can’t use it against just that type of person. Oh, Mum, your vase got broken. The one in the hall. Sorry.”
Her mum blinked. “That’s… quite all right. It was an ugly vase and I never liked it anyway.”
“See?” Valkyrie beamed. “It’s worked out well for everybody.”
“Are you sure you’re not in shock?”
“Honestly, I’m good. I’m just glad Dad wasn’t there or he’d have thrown him through another window.”
Her mum smiled, and hugged her husband. “I have a family of fighters,” she said. “Alice, it looks like it’s up to you and me to be the reasonable ones.”
Alice gurgled.
Her parents drove her home. It was weird, sitting in the back seat of a car. She almost felt like a kid. Music was playing and she started singing softly to Alison. Alison smiled, and Valkyrie laughed.
They got home and spent the evening cleaning up the mess. There was a knock on the door and her dad went to answer it. He came back in, paused, then spoke. “Fletcher’s here,” he said. “I told him if he’s here to argue with you, he should just walk away. But he said he’s not. Maybe you should talk to him.”
Her mum nodded. “He’s a nice boy. He deserves it.”
“Yeah,” Valkyrie said. “I know.” She took a breath, then walked into the hall. Fletcher stood in the doorway. She stuffed her hands in her jeans. “Hi,” she said.
He looked at her. “Go for a walk?”
“Sure.”
He turned, started walking down the path. She followed him out, closing the door behind her. They walked towards the park.
“Are you talking to me again?” she asked.
“I suppose I am,” he said. “You look like you’ve been in the wars.”
“You know me, always running into trouble.”
“And coming out the other side. That’s the important bit.” He kicked a pebble and it skittered away. “I don’t forgive you,” he said. “I’d like to. I’d like it if we could just forget about it all, get back together, carry on like before. But that’s not going to happen.”
“I know,” said Valkyrie quietly. “But I don’t want you to hate me, Fletch.”
“That’s a little out of your hands, though, isn’t it?”
“I suppose.”
“It’s kind of hard to stay angry at you. You probably don’t feel you did anything wrong, do you?”
“Of course I do. I cheated on you.”
“But why?”
“Because I was stupid, and I didn’t think about it, and—”
“No,” Fletcher said. He looked at her. “At the time, what was going through your head? Why did you do it?”
“How is this going to help anything?”
“It’ll help prove my point.”
Valkyrie sighed. “I thought, at the time, that you were being too… boyfriendy.”
“Is that the technical term for it?”
“You were being too protective. You were…”
“Go on.”
They were in the park now, sticking to the well-lit areas. There was nobody else around. “You were lecturing me. You were disapproving of the things I did. I thought it was all just too safe, you know?”
“And you turned to Caelan. Who is anything but safe.”
“I suppose.”
“So when you cheated on me, you knew why you were doing it. You could justify it.”
“To a degree.”
“So in your head, it was all my fault.”
“What? No, that’s not what I meant.”
“Val, you did what you did, you made those decisions, because you were doing what you thought was the right thing for you at the time. I try to be angry but I just… can’t. You did what you thought was best for you. That’s how you live. You never set about to be mean or cruel. These are just things that happen, kind of like a side-effect.”
“Because I’m selfish.”
“Yeah. Because you’re selfish. Maybe you’ll grow out of it in a few years. I don’t know. I hope you do.”
“That’d be nice,” she murmured.