Chapter 5: 27th July 1991, Saturday: Part 5

A beautiful aroma wafted up George's nose as he pushed the large oak door open and entered the kitchen. All of God's tastiest creatures were using their irresistible fragrance to lure him towards the stove. Naturally, George wasn't going to resist the temptation. The smell only grew in potency as he neared the various frying pans cooking eggs, sausages and most importantly bacon. A dozen thick strips of back bacon were dancing in the sizzling oil, begging to be eaten. He reached out to grant these little piggies their final wish only to feel resistance pulling his arm back. Thwarted, George looked up to see Amanda with a concerned look on her face.

"Careful George, you could've burnt yourself."

Even though that oil was definitely able to give a normal person a pretty serious burn, George was one of the rare exceptions to the rule. In no doubt due to his unique physiology, George's skin was like asbestos. He could comfortably hold his hand over a naked flame without feeling the slightest bit of pain. Needless to say, he had a threshold where he would start to burn but boiling oil wasn't crossing it. This abnormality had successfully been kept secret, unlike his eyes, and was a great way of snatching some early grub before it was dished out.

"I'm sorry Amanda. It's your delicious food's fault, it's so irresistible."

Amanda lightly chuckled whilst turning over the sausages with a serving fork. Her soft heart always seemed to melt upon hearing George's compliments, easily absolving him of any minor rule-breaking. Her easy-to-please attitude is what gave him the confidence to steal food time and time again.

"Alright, sweet talker. Now make yourself useful and take those baked beans out of the microwave. I'll be dishing things out in a sec."

He gave a comical salute and sternly responded, "yes chef", before making his way over to the microwave. He was more than happy to join her staff if it meant serving the food ever so slightly faster.

When he had first been dropped off at the orphanage, George had only ever communicated with one other human being in his entire life. His patron had only bothered teaching him English so he could give feedback on experiments, it was not exactly a comprehensive education. It was fair to say that he had next to no social skills at the time, he could barely string a sentence together.

To supplement this deficiency, he had sat and observed everyone around him from a distance for hundreds of hours. Primary school was an especially affluent place for him to learn how to 'act his age'. There were so many children blindly running at random and gibbering on about nonsensical interests. After a while, George started to pick and choose the mannerisms which least repulsed him, such as the solute, and adopted them into his day-to-day life. After 11 months of practice, those actions had become second nature.

Once he had whipped the plastic tub of beans out of the microwave, George walked over to the two large ceramic plates intended for him and Dominic. Amanda had already laden those plates with all the components of a hearty English breakfast with one noticeable exception, the beans. With a wink of her eye, Amanda had given George the honour of pouring. He then proceeded to glaze the twin peaks of meat in the thick orange sauce until they were on the verge of overflowing. The cumulation of Amanda's culinary skill and the finest local ingredients had created what could only be described as a masterpiece.

Every cloud had its silver lining and living with the Linwoods did occasionally have its moments. The food was a massive improvement over his previous diet of watery oats and raw meat. It was assuredly the greatest advantage of going from rags to riches. Nothing quite washed away the trauma of Her Majesty's company like a piping hot plate of succulent muscle and fat.

The saliva pooling in George's mouth was threatening to overflow, he couldn't wait any longer to start devouring this meal. Just as he was about to make his way into the dining room with his plate, Amanda stopped him in his tracks.

"Did Dominic have his talk with you?"

With his way out of the kitchen blocked and his patience waning, George gave a half-hearted response and attempted to walk around her.

"Yeah we did, it's all good."

An arm sprang up like a bollard across the doorway. Clearly, George wasn't getting away that easily. This was why Amanda wasn't his most tolerated member of the family, she wouldn't just let things lie. Right now, she was staring down at him with suspicion written all over her squinting eyes.

"Really? Everything is sorted out between you and Ellie, just like that?"

"Really really. Now please Amanda, I don't want my breakfast to get cold."

Her scepticism hadn't abated but her arm did slowly begin to lower which George didn't hesitate to take full advantage of. He made sure to spin around on his exit and dumped the rest of this heart-to-heart on his foster father.

"As much as I would love to stay and chat, this full English isn't going to eat itself. Just ask Dominic later. He'll vouch for me."

"We'll see about that. This conversation is not over."

Knowing Amanda all too well, George knew that she wasn't joking. Matters like this were always blown way out of proportion and usually took days to fully settle. As far as he was aware, there was no magic combination of words that could satisfy her within a reasonable amount of time. At least for now, he could eat his breakfast in peace and focus on a vastly more important issue coming up.

George entered the dining room and found the two other members of the family already seated around the table. Ellie was digging into a stack of American-style pancakes whilst Dominic was reclined back in his chair, reading the local newspaper. Since Ellie's animalistic eating habit could be to a certain degree offputting, George sat opposite his foster father. Conveniently, neither of them appeared to have noticed him enter so he felt no shame in beginning the feast.

While George was in the midst of shovelling the fifth strip of bacon into his mouth, Amanda entered the room with her own and Dominic's plate. His foster father was of course eating the same meal as George whilst Amanda had a much more conservative scrambled egg on toast. Dominic would have likely eaten the same as his wife but the dynamic had shifted shortly after George moved in.

Perhaps due to a sense of inferiority, Dominic had felt it necessary to match the amount of food George ate every morning. It was a win-win situation because Dominic would always give his leftovers, basically half of the original amount served, to him.

Just like his sleeping habits, George ate more than the average boy his age. A lot more, roughly 3 times as much as the average adult man. This 'overeating' had come up during his visit to the hospital. The general practitioner had been understandably in disbelief and most likely assumed Amanda had exaggerated George's diet. A few tests concluded that his body fat percentage was low, even by a professional athlete's standards, and his insulin levels were high. To Amanda's surprise, the doctor diagnosed George with a fast metabolism and suggested increasing his portion sizes.

As the whole family were now present and enjoying their breakfast in relative silence, Amanda began her normal routine of starting a family discussion.

"So what do we all have planned for today? Ellie?"

The little girl in question paused stuffing a whole pancake into her chubby cheeks and stared questioningly at her mother. Amanda merely smiled at her and reworded the question.

"Do you have any plans for today? I could drive you to Tiffany's house if you like?"

Ellie swallowed and corrected her, "can't. She's gone on holiday to Cyprus for a week. She won't be back until Friday."

Amanda's smile faded slightly as she mumbled, "oh, I hadn't known. That's odd, Tiffany's mother hadn't mentioned that last time I saw her."

Her pondering had only lasted for a second before she put that niggling concern to one side and got back on topic.

"Anyway, is there anywhere else you would like to go today? Maybe the park?"

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A cheeky smile formed on Ellie's honey-stained face as she announced, "Dad's taking me to Blockbusters."

The newspaper lowered ever so slightly to reveal Dominic's perplexed gaze, he must have been secretly listening in on the conversation.

"Am I? When did I agree to that?", he asked in a gruff voice.

Ellie's face scrunched up in annoyance, "you forgot, didn't you."

Dominic folded up the paper and placed it neatly down on the table. This was his way of saying Ellie had his unbridled attention.

"Go on then, remind me. When did I promise to take you to Blockbusters?"

Ellie pulled a little glittery notepad out of thin air and began flicking through the pages. Her eyes lit up when she reached a particularly colourful page filled with messy pink handwriting.

"On the 2nd of July 1991, Dad bought a new car from a man with a wonky eye. At the time, he promised that he would take one Ellie Linwood in said car to Blockbusters next time the weather cleared up."

Ellie then gestured at the window before continuing, "since there is not a single cloud in the sky today, the terms of the agreement have been met. What do you say in your defence?"

Ellie had started writing a journal/diary after taking some inspiration from George's reading habits. Now it seemed that she was using it like a legally binding contract, which was a very Ellie thing to do.

Dominic listened to the whole recount from nearly a month ago and appeared to be quite impressed by his daughter's ingenuity.

"I stand corrected. It seems that I had indeed agreed to take Ellie out today."

Ellie maintained her smug grin as she stuffed another pancake into her mouth whilst spluttering, "I told you so."

Amanda decided to chip in at that moment, "how about George goes with you as well?"

Suddenly all the eyes were on George who was just swallowing the last mushroom on his plate. He had been in deep thought for the past few minutes and hadn't been following the presumed-to-be pointless small talk.

"What do you think George? Would you like to go out with Dominic and Ellie to Blockbusters? You could pick out a film for us to watch tonight", Amanda insisted.

George smiled but declined, "sorry, I'm busy. Maybe another time."

"Got another book to read by any chance?", Ellie said snidely.

Amanda admonished his step-sister, "Ellie! Be nice, he doesn't have to go if he doesn't want to."

George locked eyes with Ellie and indulged her, "as a matter of fact I have. I'm currently learning Latin."

"Why would you want to learn Latin? Isn't it a dead language", Dominic inquired.

"I'm just curious. You never know when it might be useful", George nonchalantly lied.

"Say something funny in Latin!", Ellie suddenly demanded whilst flicking honey across the table.

Amanda stepped in to relieve some of the pressure, "don't pester your brother. Can't you see he's been bothered enough by..."

George thought of something 'funny' and cut Amanda off, "it's okay. How about this Ellie? Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus."

Ellie looked somewhere between excited and confused by George's butchering of the Latin language.

"What does it mean? Draco… Dormiens…"

George chuckled and answered, "it's Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus, and it means never tickle a sleeping dragon."

At that moment, a loud electronic beeping rang out from beside Dominic's newspaper. The noise was coming from one of two pagers both foster parents carried around the house at all times. They would beep non-stop if someone had set off one of the many motion sensor alarms around the property. This was all part of an elaborate security system Dominic had apparently fitted the farmhouse with well before George had arrived. He had just assumed that his foster parents must have been a little paranoid since they lived in the middle of nowhere.

All the attention in the room was captured by the constant beeping, effectively killing the family's small talk. Dominic immediately picked the pager up and checked the digital screen, it would display which sensor had been activated.

"Someone's coming up the driveway", he declared.

Dominic then looked at Amanda with an unusually serious expression, "are we expecting anyone?"

She shook her head which was what George had anticipated. No one had ever visited the Linwood house unannounced, at least for the time George had been living there. His foster parents didn't seem to have any close friends or family who visited and letter deliveries were made at the post box at the very end of the driveway. An anomaly turning up with no invitation would have been highly unusual any other week. But not this week, especially not this week. George had a good idea who this might be. It seemed that the 11 months of waiting had finally come to an end.

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