Chapter 698 My Sis-cest/Taboo:>>57

• Mike:
• The first time I met Max Elliot I wasn't that impressed; I suppose I was biased; Rys had always been the little princess in my life, my adored and adorable baby sister, and suddenly she was a grown woman, attracting grown men and dating them, and I didn't like it, I didn't like it at all, and that puzzled me. Carys was supposed to go out in to the world, it was what growing up was all about, she wasn't breaking any rules, and yet I still hated the idea. Watching them sitting at the table with mum and dad chit-chatting, watching them sharing private little inside jokes and meaningful glances and expressions seriously put my back up.
• I bit my tongue, sometimes literally, because this was who she'd chosen to be with, and from the tenor of the conversation I gradually gleaned the information that they were engaged; Max had asked her to marry him, and she'd said yes. And yet I didn't get any strong feeling of joyfulness from her; it almost seemed like she was working off some kind of internal tick-list: qualify, find a man, marry him, have his children, be a standard family with 2.5 kids and a 3-bedroom suburban semi-detached house, grow old together, and eventually be buried side-by-side in the local churchyard. Max seemed to be in a haze whenever his eyes alighted on her, I was in no doubt that he was absolutely smitten with her but strangely, I didn't get that from her at all, and that worried me deeply; was he forcing her, somehow?