Out of Time (Face the Music Book 3) Read Online Free

was also frowned on. She remembered coming home from sex ed at school with extra questions, only to be told that it was shameful and disgusting. For a while she’d believed her grandmother.
    ‘What if I don’t want a husband?’
    ‘You would deny me the chance to be a great grandmother?’
    Yes was not the right answer to say aloud. But it was tempting.
    One. Two. Three. Breathe.
    She swallowed the words and looked to her mother for support, but knew she wouldn’t get any. Her father would hear a modified version of this from his mother and then he’d speak to his wife and she’d bear the brunt of failing to keep her wilful daughter under control.
    ‘You expect me to live my life to please you? Do you realise how egocentric that is?’
    ‘I’m your elder. You have to listen and respect me.’ The old woman drew herself up, but still wasn’t as tall as Ava.
    The anger she’d been keeping hold of broke free. ‘Respect is earned.’
    Grandmother gasped and Ava walked away before she said anything else that she would regret. There would be trouble knocking soon enough. She shut her bedroom door and glanced around her room. An argument was now happening in the kitchen. Grandmother had been in Australia for over fifty years. Ava’s father had been born here. And yet coming home felt as though she was stepping back into the dark ages. She envied her Australian friends’ easy life. They dated and did what they wanted and no one caused them grief.
    While she’d had a secret boyfriend at uni, it had fallen apart because she didn’t want to sleep with him. No, she had wanted to sleep with him but it hadn’t felt right.
    Her only other boyfriends had been met at church and judged as acceptable by her family.
    She was tired of trying to obey and pleasing no one, least of all herself.
    She glanced around her room and wondered how many times her privacy had been invaded while she was at work. She needed a lock.
    No. She needed to move out.
    That would probably get her disowned.
    Her heart fluttered with excitement at the idea.
    She needed to start looking. She picked up her laptop and typed in the password. Then she changed the password, just in case. Grandmother wasn’t stupid and she could use a computer, even if she feigned otherwise.
    Ava didn’t notice when the fighting stopped, but she heard the tap on her door. It wouldn’t be Grandmother coming to make peace.
    ‘It’s me,’ her mother said through the door.
    ‘Come in, Mum.’
    Her mother opened the door and drew in a breath that was part resignation and part steeling herself for what needed to be said. Ava was used to it so she waited for her mother to speak.
    ‘You shouldn’t goad her.’ Her mother’s voice was calm, as though she hadn’t just been arguing with her mother-in-law about how she should be raising her daughters.
    ‘She shouldn’t be so nosy.’
    Her mother looked at the screen, but didn’t say anything. This wasn’t the first time Ava had looked at other places to live. But this time she meant it. She had money in the bank and she could actually do it.
    ‘She was out of line about the cup.’
    ‘You reckon? She is out of line and out of date and I’m tired of it. I’m tired of her trying to set me up and I’m tired of her meddling. I’m just done.’ Once it was said aloud she realised it was true. This wasn’t a hissy fit or a knee jerk reaction, or even about choosing her battles. She didn’t want to pick them, so she was packing up and leaving the battleground before she was ground down into the mud.
    ‘You don’t have to move out.’
    She didn’t have to, but for her own sanity she was going to. ‘Yeah I do. It’s time I did. I can’t live here forever.’
    ‘Only until you marry.’ But her mother was smiling. ‘Your father and I were introduced. No one is forcing you.’
    ‘I want to be able to date and do what I want, without her peering over my shoulder and going through my room.’
    ‘You can date.’
    ‘Can