The Last Breath Of Reggie Warrington

Chapter 15: Rat Catcher

"She's fine, they're all fine." Mum finally spoke and for the first time in ages, I could breathe a sigh of relief, but, hold on a minute, did Mum just say all fine?

It was Indie who questioned her on the word, "what do you mean, all, Mrs L?"

"I mean Maddison and her twins are fine. She's just having a chat with the midwife and they're booking her in for her first scan, but they're all really healthy."

"Twins? Wow! That's amazing." Indie replied, but my mind was stuck on their father.

He needed to know or, in a few years time, could walk past his own twins in the street and not know who they were. It wasn't right. Morally, it wasn't right to stop kids from knowing who their father was, even if when they were older they chose not to have anything to do with him. At least they should have been given that choice.

With the excuse of needing the toilet, I left Mum and Indie to talk. They had arrived by taxi earlier and Mum offered to give Indie a lift back home. I stood up and nipped in the direction Mum came from and it didn't take me long to spot Maddison leaving one of the clinics, her hands full of leaflets on topics such as breastfeeding, giving birth and other things.

"Maddie," I called. She turned around and smiled at me.

"Hi Sis, you ok? How was the interview?" She asked as she stuffed the leaflets into her red velvet rucksack style bag.

I returned the smile, "it was fine, Mummy." I laughed, first time I'd actually found something to smile about in what seemed life forever.

"Mum told you then?"

I nodded, "but I'd never have thought it would be twins. Another set of twins in the family."

Maddison flung one strap of her bag back on one shoulder, "yeah I know."

As we wandered back to Mum and Indie, I knew I had to say something about the Dad. Not just because the twins deserved to know he existed, but out of sisterly curiosity. From how Indie had described him, he sounded like an utter fruitcake, nowhere near good enough for my sister.

"Does he know?" I asked, pretending as if Indira hadn't already answered my question.

Maddison shook her head, "it was one night, Chloe. I didn't even know how to contact him. He didn't give me his number or anything."

"Do you know where he works?" I asked, "does he have a job?"

She shrugged her shoulders, "I don't know. I don't know where he works, or if he works."

I couldn't help but roll my eyes, I get what they did together, but for goodness sake, she should have at least got his phone number, in case of emergency.
"Fine, address? You're my sister, you obviously don't go for the whole homeless hobo type and he must live somewhere..."

She thought for a moment and I watched as the cogs spun around and around inside her mind as she struggled to think back to that night. How drunk was she exactly, was what I began to wonder?

"Bumblebee..." she suddenly blurted out, "Bumblebee, something, close, no, street." Maddison rummaged around in her bag, before pulling out a small piece of paper.

"What do you think? Does it say street or road or...?"

She passed me the note, which, to be honest looked as if a chimp had written it. I'd never seen handwriting like it. I always thought, well my grandma always told me, you could tell a lot about a person from the quality of their handwriting. So obviously the guy must have either been a chimp-human hybrid weird thing, or the Neanderthals hadn't quite died out and there was an actual one living in Cranbourne.