Читать книгу Do You Really Want to Yurt Me? - Daisy Tate - Страница 5

[Text message from Freya]

999!!!! Just got off the phone w/ Charlotte. Oli wants divorce. She doesn’t sound great. We’re off camping in Wales at the weekend. Convinced Lotte to join us. Any chance you girls want to come along too? There for a week and a bit. A friend in need, ladies

[Emily]

Wot? The ass. Does she have friends with her? (Is Izzy on this loop?).

[Freya]

We’re the friends, idiot. You & Izz in the loop. Will send postcode for campsite. It’s easy to find. Drive to Wales, reach ocean, see tents. Will text more deets asap.

[Emily]

Soz. Have back to back surgeries until the end of time. What do you people have against hotels? Surely Charlotte doesn’t want to drown her sorrows on an airbed.

[Izzy]

Oliver’s an idiot. Van acting up. Maybe next weekend?? How long you staying? Xx

[Freya]

MONTY! Pull your effing socks up! The car won’t pack itself! Charlotte’s defo coming now. Begging Izz and Emms to come along. Izz being vague. Emms is lying about back-to-back surgeries. I know for a fact she was taking time off with Callum.

[Emily]

Well fuck you very much my friend. Have just changed an eighty-year-old woman’s hip into a titanium wonder, thank you very much!

[Freya]

Soz! Obviously intended for Monty. You’re all fabulous and I’ll love you all until the end of time. ESPECIALLY if you come. Izz? You can bring Bonzer. They love dogs as long as you clean up after them #bringpoobags. Emily. Come to Wales! We’re wild camping. Mobile detox! Chop firewood! Catch fish! Get in touch with your inner … ermmm … Chinese person. xxx

[Emily]

Okay, Mao. Thanks for the reminder of decades of enforced labour my grandparents endured so I could have a carefree life staying in HOTELS like a good little Tiger Baby.

[Izzy]

Is wild camping like a rave? Are children allowed? Will have to sneak Luna in even if non-age-appropriate. Have negotiated a truce with van. Will aim for day trip over weekend. Looney has school until then.

[Emily]

Have begged Evil Nemesis Surgeon to cover. No joy. Sorry girlies. Not looking good.

[Freya]

BYO pillow, Izz. Our car will be stuffed to the hilt. BYO tent if you have one. If you want anything beyond lukewarm, cheap plonk bring that, too. ()@£&%)!! Monty bound to forget ice. *deep breath* Emms – please come. I promise to paint your toes. You do remember this is about Charlotte’s husband being a total plonker, right?

[Emily]

Vomit face and Fu Man Chu for nails plz. Will try. No promises. Just read weather report. Major suckage incoming from Ireland. Still time to reconsider and meet in London instead.

[Izz]

Will bring bongos for child-friendly mini-rave. Please can we film Charlotte on the bongos? #PromiseNotToExploitHerGriefForComedicEffect Need snowsuit. Forgot how bloody cold it was here in summer.

[Freya]

Monty???? WTF? Hurry. Up. No sex for a week – not even a BJ if you aren’t back in five.

[Emily]

Freya. Please. There’s only so much we want to know about your private life.

[Freya]

My humiliation is complete.

Charlotte shook away the cloud of washing-up bubbles and stared at her rings.

She should leave soon if she was going to beat the traffic to meet up with Freya. She also should’ve packed. Should’ve baked a cake. Packed a hamper. It was very unlike her not to be prepared. It was also a very unusual day. Her very first as an about-to-be-divorcée.

Oli had waited until she’d gone downstairs to start his packing. A strange courtesy considering he hadn’t really left much to the imagination when he’d explained why he’d been ‘forced to do this.’ As he spoke the words – not in love any more, fenced-in, someone with more drive – Charlotte wondered if the buzzing in her head would ever stop.

It had. But the new sounds were every bit as bewildering. Step, step, step from the chest of drawers to the suitcase. This as she’d gone through the motions down in the kitchen, getting some breakfast together for the pair of them. Breakfast. As if it were just another day. Scritch, scritch went the hangars as shirt after shirt came out of the wardrobe. He’d taken an awful lot of toiletries, judging from all the clatter coming from the en suite. The methodical cadence of it all had put her in a sort of stupor. One she’d best snap out of now that ‘Xanthe and the baby were his priorities’. And the children, he’d hastily added. Charlotte, of course, had now officially been dropped off the list.

She stared at the rings again.

What did one do in this scenario?

Take them off straight away, or feign, as she had the past couple of months, that everything in her life was perfectly perfect?

What a fool she’d been. Believing Oliver wanted to make a go of things.

At least she was getting out of this wretched house for a bit of perspective. It had been her pride and joy when the children were young and she’d bustled about like Doris Day. Now it was little more than a show home for a beautiful but meaningless life.

She glanced out the window to where Oli’s car had been, chiding herself for having been so acquiescent about the whole thing. She’d just sat there and listened. Accepted everything he’d said, as if it would be sheer madness to express any sort of opinion about the fact he’d pulled the grenade pin on her life.

She tried to channel her friends to see if that would help. Freya, Izzy and Emily were all so different but each of them seemed to possess a core strength she herself lacked.

If she had been more like Freya, she would’ve made a proper show of things. Thrown something. Strode out to the recently relaid stone patio after Oli announced his ‘slight’ change of heart and, one by one, dropped the rings into the well with some sort of pithy comment about how they were most likely blood diamonds anyway. Heaven knew he’d sucked her dry.

Emily would’ve quirked an eyebrow and said, ‘Get out your chequebook.’

Lady Venetia might very likely have done the same. Charlotte made a quick note to ring her to say she wouldn’t be coming into the shop this week. Part of her still couldn’t believe her birthday glamping trip that had reunited her with her besties from university had brought her the most unexpected of presents. A new friend and mentor. Lady V sold honey produced from her own hives from a ramshackle hut in the car park of the Sittingstone Estate glampsite, alongside a few suspect baked goods. When she’d suggested to Charlotte that she might like to have a go at redesigning the whole place and turning it into a micro-farm shop, Charlotte had leapt at the chance. It was a proper shop now. The Sittingstone Larder. There was a part of her that wanted to be there right now. Pour the mounting pressure-cooker of unspent emotion into making it even better, but in her heart she knew what she needed most was to see her friends.

She wasn’t entirely sure what Izzy would have done after Oliver had finished his speech (rehearsed, from the sounds of it). Laughed? Told Oli that if his spirit animal was guiding him elsewhere then to go for it?

She hadn’t done any of those things. Of course. She’d sat and nodded and, when Oliver had finished, offered to make up the guest room with fresh sheets, only to end up sleeping there herself as Oli found the room too draughty.

She scrubbed at a plate, suddenly furious with herself for not having left him on her birthday. After the whole mess with the cake (when a somewhat tipsy Freya had hurled it straight into Oli’s face after having heard enough of his patronizing speech), it had taken Charlotte well over a fortnight to get back into his good books. As if a bit of wayward buttercream had wreaked more havoc in their marriage than the stark truth that her husband had impregnated his law firm’s most active Instragrammer, the ludicrously named Xanthe. CheekyLawGirl if she was going for full accuracy. Not that Charlotte had been cyber-stalking her. Much.

She put the dish on the rack and sighed. She felt doubly foolish now. Not acting on that instinct to take her children and go.

She stared at the wrinkled pads of her fingers, then turned them over. She would keep the eternity ring. That was for the children and it wasn’t their fault their father had a changeable heart.

Earlier, when Oli had been hungrily polishing off a bit of toast as if he were popping out for another one of his charity golf weekends (how often had she fallen for that one?), she’d considered hurling the engagement ring out of the window, but had been overcome with panic that a magpie would swallow it and die, leaving a nest full of orphaned chicks unable to fend for themselves. In reality she knew it was well past nesting season. The recent advent of July would’ve seen all the little fledglings out and off into the world by now. Just like her two little travellers. Poppy had gone to the South of France (Cannes!) for language submersion, and Jack was in Namibia for she wasn’t entirely sure what sort of ‘formative cultural experience’.

Would either trip prepare them for parents en route to a divorce? En route … Poppy’s French submersion would definitely come in handy. A mother who sat listening to her husband devalue the last fifteen years of their lives together as ‘non-progressive’ would not.

A question she’d asked herself with increasingly regularity popped into her mind. What would Lady Venetia do?

Her new, slightly formidable friend and mentor had stayed and toed the line when her own husband had strayed, but Charlotte no longer had that option. Lady Venetia had hardly bowed her head and just ‘got on with things’. She’d taken charge of her own life, refusing to pin her happiness to her husband’s. She’d travelled widely. Joined all sorts of clubs. Got a second and then a third degree in subjects that had precisely nothing to do with one another. She’d simply been curious. The same way she’d been curious to see what Charlotte might be able to turn their ‘little snack shack’ into, if given a bit of time and a few resources.

A rather bustling business, as it turned out. The Sittingstone Larder had been transfigured. Once a bit of an eyesore, it was now the very first, bunting-clad piece of magic that visitors to Sittingstone Estate’s glampsite laid eyes on. Gone was the akimbo shed; in its place was a gently greying Sussex barn that Peter the manager – known as Whiffy to everyone on the estate – had found stacked up in bits in one of their much larger barns and carefully rebuilt. They still sold Lady V’s honey, of course. Charlotte had tweaked a few of her own recipes into ‘glampcakes’. There were other items, of course – largely designed for forgetful packers or those who might want to bring a gift home to remember their weekend by. Jams, preserves, pickled onions, cheeses (hard and soft). The village bakery had started making some particularly delicious rolls (sausage and bacon), which the Londoners in particular seemed to be mad for.

Though it had all been a great success, Charlotte could see where she’d gone wrong now. Rather than truly seeing her time at the Larder as a means of expanding her own world, she’d used it as the perfect way to avoid the truth. Her marriage hadn’t stood a chance of weathering the storm.

Now, she supposed, it was time to find if she could.

Before her children returned home, she would need to acquire a spine. Particularly for her poor little Poppy, still stinging from a rather bruising year settling in at boarding school. Oli had brushed Charlotte off when she’d suggested, perhaps, taking Poppy out of the school and keeping her home for another year. As usual she’d demurred, but perhaps now they were getting divorced she would get a bit more say in these things. Or less. She supposed it was up to her how that worked.

She would love to see an end to Poppy’s almost permanently locked bedroom door for endless hours on social media. She hoped she wasn’t being bullied on one of those … what did they call them? Platforms. A shudder jolted through her. Sounded too much like the setting for a public hanging.

Perhaps she shouldn’t have waited for Poppy to come to her. Since when did a child ever volunteer information? It was down to the parent to chisel it out of them. Charlotte had let Oli take the lead in so many things, she’d virtually forgotten it was completely possible to act of her own free will.

Either way, she supposed Oli did have a point regarding the timing of his announcement that he was destroying her life. Breaking his news whilst the children were away gave her time to ‘draw up a party line’. (His suggestion.) There was still the August holiday in Italy with the Pickerings to consider. They’d pre-paid a breathtaking sum for the villa. He wouldn’t want her to miss out on their last holiday as a family, he’d said.

His thoughtfulness knew no bounds.

Her rings glinted under the LED lighting they’d installed over the sink. Oli had thought the one tiny window would be sufficient, though this particular corner of the kitchen was always a bit of a cave, even on a bright summer’s day like today. When his mother had deigned to wash a teacup a few years back and deemed the area a black hole, workmen had appeared the next day.

Perhaps there were enough magpies in the world.

She slid the final breakfast plate into one of the top slots of the drying rack, flinching as the china grated against the slim steel rungs.

The plates – *ahem!* – dinnerware that had been ‘recommended’ by his mother were grey. Pebble-stone, if anyone was asking. Her mother-in-law had been her guiding light as they (she) had put together the wedding list all those years ago. Advice she had craved like air. Only now was she beginning to realize just how suffocating it had actually been. There was barely a single item in the house that her mother-in-law hadn’t had a hand in.

Lately – since her birthday, in fact – each time Charlotte made a cottage pie, as she had last night (just a small one in the racing green stoneware dish she knew Oli preferred to the cobalt), she thought of her own mother’s battered enamel pie dishes. The tins had been the only things in the house that had matched. More than likely she’d been given them by her own parents. A wedding gift? A freebie, more like, for signing up with a building society.

A sudden, painful longing for the pans tore at her. Not replicas of the pans. Not Jamie’s version of the pans. Nigella’s or Gordon’s. But those exact, battered, paint-chipped, never-entirely-clean enamel pans that her mother had brought to the table weighted with toad-in-the-hole or poor man’s steak pie (a strangely moreish concoction of mince, onions and gravy granules). A rhubarb crumble when she’d had a good day.

She dried her hands on a duck-motifed hand towel and hung it, crisply refolded, on one of the rungs of the range, then pushed it a bit to the right so that it was centred.

More than likely the pans were clogging up a landfill site now. Her aunt had come in and swept the place clean after her mother had died. Binned the lot before Charlotte had had a chance to go up to Sheffield and select an item or two that Oli wouldn’t object to.

All of which left her as the sole remaining proof her parents had done something with their lives.

She put away last night’s wine glasses. Delicate crystal stemware matched to the wine. A Chablis that Oli had been given by a grateful client. He’d picked it out for them last night because he hadn’t been convinced it was ‘up to’ sharing with guests, even though it had had excellent reviews. Back at the sink she stared at last night’s dinner plates, this morning’s breakfast plates, the egg and coffee cups. All roosting on top of the drying rack. It looked like an Instagram photo.

In one swift move she swept the entire lot onto the hard, unforgiving floor.

So, this was what Old Mother Hubbard felt like.

Freya shook the contactless payment device as if it were one of her children’s piggy banks. This, in lieu of closing the shop, going home and murdering her husband. Seriously? Monty couldn’t find one measly pound to put in the shopping trolley so he wanted her to go to the shops? She was at work. That thing that kept them out of debtors’ prison?

She tapped out a text. Sofa cushions. Trouser pockets. Bottom of the laundry basket. Felix’s bed. The spotty mug with the pens in it. When she finished she slammed the phone down so hard her solitary customer yelped.

‘Sorry.’ She made a lame flexing gesture. ‘Didn’t know my own strength. Anything I can help you find? Unicorns are just over there.’ She pointed at her most popular line, as if the woman couldn’t actually make her own way around the shop. It was hardly vast.

When she’d signed the lease some fifteen years ago, it had felt huge. Like a dreamy, brick-lined Aladdin’s cave. Her very own blank canvas, glowing with limitless possibility.

‘Are there any of the raccoon T-shirts left?’

Freya’s mouth stretched back into an apologetic wince. ‘Sorry. We’re off camping tomorrow and I didn’t get another run in.’

The young woman hauled her dreadlocks over her shoulder, interested. ‘What festival are you going to?’

Freya laughed. As if. Buying tickets for her entire family to go to a festival was not an option. ‘Just camping.’

The woman’s half-hearted smile faded before it’d had a chance to catch purchase.

Freya soldiered on. ‘Sorry about the shirts. You know how it is. End of term. Sports days. Flute concerts.’ She’d actually missed both. Monty had taken videos. ‘Anyway, we love camping, with or without the face painting.’ She was losing the girl fast. ‘Any interest in the unicorn range?’

The woman glanced at the door as if targeting an emergency exit. ‘Not really.’

She took her chance to flee when a gaggle of Japanese tourists bundled in. They looked as if they were from one of those futuristic films that Felix adored, all candy-floss-coloured hair in quirky ponytails and jet-black, razor-sharp bobs. Giggly and raving about something one minute, dismissively silent the next.

They looked at the walls more than the T-shirts, which was a shame.

The previous lessee, a joss-stick vendor who’d decided she’d rather live in Bali where ‘the energy just spoke to her’, had painted the interior gold. When Freya had finally got some time and money together a few years later, they’d all bundled in on a Monday and got to work. The exacting plan Freya had drawn up – immaculate white walls with painted anthropomorphized animals ‘wearing’ the T-shirts – had almost instantly degenerated into one of those wacky painting scenes reserved for rom-coms. Dabbing one another on the nose. The ear. The hair. Until, inevitably, it had ended up as a paint fight. She’d been furious at first then, as ever, Monty had made it fun and she’d decided to keep the paint-splattered interior. When Monty had taken the children to the zoo the following day, she had tactically accented an area or two to heighten the Pollack-esque effect.

She didn’t need to know Japanese to absorb the fact that the shop needed rejuvenating. Fresh paint. A new presentation style. Gallery lighting rather than the filament bulbs they’d all been obsessed with back in the day. Lighting she should have installed in the first place because she had always hoped, one day, to ease out the money-spinning T-shirts and start showing her own more high-end designs. Designs she simply didn’t have the resources to make any more. Funny T-shirts that no one seemed to want – or that weren’t funny?

The Japanese squad headed towards the door. ‘The #Impeach hoodies are half price!’ Freya called out.

They left without a second glance.

She should’ve moved to the shop opposite the Amy Winehouse statue when she’d had the chance. The rent was astronomical, but the footfall would’ve had her back in the black in no time.

She stared at her empty shop, then dropped her head into her hands and moaned as another ‘where is …?’ text popped through from Monty.

One week. It was all she was asking for. One week without being responsible for anything other than enjoying her family. Lazing about by the seaside. Eating burnt sausages. Foraging for seafood suppers. Board games in the tent if it poured down with rain. They were, after all, going to Wales.

The empty shop was soul-destroying. Particularly after Charlotte’s text from last week. How, after only two months of ‘dabbling’, Charlotte had managed to turn Lady V’s ‘micro-business’ into the talk of West Sussex … Charlotte was glowing in the Waitrose Weekend article, even if it did look as though Venetia had forced her into posing alongside her. If Freya had any money, she’d ask Charlotte to her shop and get her consultancy advice. Wookies ❤ WonderWomen sleeveless vests weren’t really bringing home the bacon any more. Had she lost sight of her customer base? Had she lost sight of everything?

Blanking the piles of T-shirts that needed stock-taking, the invoices that needed tending to and the lack of customers, ignoring the piles of t-shirts that needed stock taking, the stacks of invoices, the lack of customers, Freya glared at her mobile, willing Monty to make good on something – for both of their sakes. She knew he did a lot of juggling between looking after the kids and her and, of course, the finances, but maybe it was time they had a proper sit-down and talked about moving on from Instagram portraiture. It had yet to reel in a solitary pound coin with which he might then be able to do the ruddy shopping.

Just last night, Freya had pulled Monty down to the bottom of the garden and not so subtly suggested he start pulling his discarded projects out of the loft and putting them on eBay. Regan could benefit from extra violin tuition judging by the last week’s concert, Felix’s school trip kept rearing its ugly head on the ParentPay website. She didn’t want her children to go without because their father might fancy making probiotic yoghurt again. Or because you can’t face up to things either, whispered the little voice in her head.

He’d started to say something about his parents and she’d cut him short. No loans. He was a grown man. It was time to start behaving like one.

Her erstwhile assistant Fallon flounced into the shop in a cloud of tonka bean and myrrh, fresh from a flirting session with the chap who sold upcycled ‘art’ a few shops up the cobbled lane.

‘OMG. Total tomb in here. It’s buzzing everywhere else.’

Freya resisted making a narky comment about hubcap sconces. ‘Just nipping out for a second.’

‘I thought you wanted to stock-take.’

She opened her mouth, about to launch into an oft-rehearsed speech. Freya wanted a lot of things. Financial stability. A job that afforded more creativity than exploiting unicorns and Star Wars characters. A son who didn’t have to worry about whether or not he could have a fun wee trip with his school friends. Peace on earth. She bit her tongue.

‘Back in a mo.’

She wove her way through the crowds, past the four-hundred-odd competing vendors, and made a quick stop at her guilty pleasure, the Himalayan Coffee Man stall. (Guilty, because she’d given Monty a right earful about spending money on ridiculously overpriced coffees the other day.) Her pace slowed as she reached Camden Canal, found a bench and pulled out her phone. They were off camping tomorrow and they would have fun if it killed her.

M – if you can’t find pound, please could you finishing packing? Most stuff in roof box already … These for back of the car. NB: leave room for dog.

Sleeping bags (airing in Regan’s room)

Inflater thingy that plugs into car (shed)

Tent pegs (Think they somehow got mixed up with Christmas decorations, check red box by tree stand)

Ground cloth

Fly sheet (the waterproof thing that goes on top)

Folding camping chairs (not the blue one, it’s broken)

Knives (the one with the brown handle and the one with the jagged edge)

Playing cards

Spatula (the one that gets right under the pancakes)

Cool boxes (air please, and if there’s mould in them make sure you wipe with the non-toxic spray not bleach)

Get children to pack BEFORE they hit Netflix otherwise no bargaining chip.

One onesie each – but not the ones Nanna B gave them this last Christmas. xxF

Freya stared at the email before pressing send. It didn’t read quite as jauntily as she’d hoped. Frankly it was downright bossy, but she knew how Monty’s brain worked. Attention span of a gnat when it came to things like packing. Her mind drifted to her feminista tank-top collection. One slogan in particular pinged out. I’m not with him, he’s with me. It hadn’t been selling all that well either. Was she crushing Monty with the weight of her dreams at the expense of his? She looked at the phone again and tacked on a quick:

PS – make sure you take a portrait of yourself! Fxx

‘I don’t want to go to school!’ Luna pushed her bowl of cereal away, her accompanying wail leaving no doubt as to how she felt about the matter.

‘C’mon Booboo. There’s rules about this sort of thing.’ Izzy shifted tack. ‘Can’t have you turning out a surf bum like your old moms, eh? Anyway, I’ve gotta go out and find a new way to keep you in Honey Nut Loops, yeah?’

Luna pulled Bonzer up onto her lap, her little eyebrows scrunching up tight. ‘I liked our old life.’

Izzy had too. Once.

‘I know Looney. But life comes in all different shapes and sizes and we’re trying on a new one. C’mon. Bonzer loves walking to school.’

‘No he doesn’t! He hates it too.’ Izzy’s daughter blinked away her tears, the tightly cuddled, increasingly large Bonzer masking the bulk of her expression. ‘The other kids won’t make friends with me.’

Izzy’s heart contracted. Sugar.

She knew that feeling. Thanks to her own mother’s wandering ways, she’d been in more than her share of new schools. She’d played the chameleon to make things easier, hence the weird accent. It had worked to an extent, but she hadn’t wanted that life for Luna. It was one of the reasons why she’d set up the surf school. Best-laid plans and all that.

She gave her head a scrub, trying to clear away yesteryear so that she could focus on the here and now.

School.

Mrs Jones, the head teacher at Luna’s new school, had seemed lovely; an experienced, Welsh earth-mother who’d welcomed Luna with open arms.

‘You can tell the other pupils all about what Hawaii is like. I don’t think we’ve ever had a child who’s lived on an island in the Pacific before, how exciting!’

Izzy had convinced herself that the wonderful Mrs Jones and Luna’s equally nice teacher would make everything all right, while she went about the increasingly urgent task of finding a job.

Izzy swept her daughter’s curls to one side and planted a kiss on her forehead.

‘Sometimes it takes a little while to make friends, Boo Boo. They’ll love you every bit as much as I do.’ They wouldn’t. ‘Just give it a bit more time.’

‘One of the boys laughed at the way I said tomato at lunch time,’ Luna sniffed, burying her head in Bonzer’s ample fluff.

Song lyrics wafted across Izzy’s brain, ‘You say tom-ay-to, I say tom-ah-to …’

‘He’s probably just jealous. You’re a world traveller and he probably hasn’t even been to Cardiff.’ She resisted the temptation to hurl insults at the little blighter. Mocking her daughter. How very dare he?

‘I don’t wanna go.’ Luna’s bottom lip was still projecting into the room but Izzy could sense her daughter’s resolve waning.

‘Here baby. Why don’t you wear this?’ She handed her a ratty old tutu. Luckily it fitted over the insipid grey uniform.

Luna tugged it on then gave her hand a squeeze. They still held hands. Izzy was already scared for the day when she might not want to any more. ‘Are we poor?’

‘Poor? Us? No. Why do you ask?’ They weren’t actually. They were simply living … thriftily. It was important. She’d been given a couple of unexpected gifts in life – a savings account she hadn’t realized her mother had been keeping for her and, of course, Ash Cottage from the father she’d never met. Izzy tried not to think about how long the money her mother had left her would last, but it wouldn’t be for ever. She’d never been one to think about the future. Other people did that. She was more of an in-the-moment kinda gal, but this time there was no getting away from it: she’d have to get a job.

‘Some of the kids were saying because we moved from Hawaii to here it must mean that we’re poor.’

Izzy looked out of the window and laughed. Today was a rare sunny day. Apart from the insanely beautiful May bank holiday with Charlotte and the gang (chocolate cake would never be the same again), they’d pretty much enjoyed grey, drizzly, British seaside weather every day. Not that they were anywhere near the sea. The village itself was perfectly serviceable, but heaven knew why her mother and father had picked it. It was near absolutely nothing. Perhaps that had been the point. On Maui everything felt close. In a good way. The twenty-mile drive to Cardiff – or ten to the sea – seemed crazy long after living on an island you could circumnavigate in under two hours. Or maybe it was the constant fear that her van would break down and they’d be stranded. Friendless. With no one to call. She thought of Freya’s invite to go camping and Emily’s regular check-ins. No one within one hundred miles, anyway.

Her daughter was still looking at her expectantly.

‘I can see where they’re coming from, Booboo. Hawaii was pretty amazing, but they’ve got castles here. And … umm … other things. We’re good. Don’t you worry about that.’

‘Then why did we move?’

It was a good question. And one she really didn’t want to answer.

‘To be near friends.’ It wasn’t entirely a lie.

‘But … Auntie Emms lives in London and Freya does too and Charlotte’s getting divorced.’

Izzy squatted down and swept her daughter’s hair away from her eyes. ‘You don’t miss much, do you? Look, just because Charlotte’s getting a divorce doesn’t mean we aren’t going to see her again. In fact we’ll probably see more of her.’

‘Good.’ Izzy grinned. ‘Bonzer likes her.’ She scooped up Bonzer with a grunt and patted his huge paw on Izzy’s cheek. ‘Bonzer loves ice cream.’

‘Well, isn’t that lucky?’ Izzy pulled them both in for a cuddle. ‘There just happens to be an ice cream shop on the way home from school.’

‘Still don’t wanna go.’

‘Loons.’ Izzy held up her hand and showed four fingers. ‘School breaks up in this many. If you finish the rest of the week, how about we jump into the van and drive up to meet Freya and Charlotte on their crazy wild camping trip?

Luna’s blue eyes lit up instantly. ‘Really? Can we bring Bonzer?’

‘Of course we can!’ Izzy crossed her fingers behind her back, desperately trying to remember if Freya had said he was welcome. His incarceration at Sittingstone Castle had led to meeting Charlotte’s new mentor, Lady Venetia, but losing Looney for the two hours before the dowager countess had discovered both child and dog asleep in the castle kennels had scared the living daylights out of her. No chance she was going through that again. If the worst came to the worst, she’d stick Bonzer in a pair of cargoes and vest and pretend he was her husband.

‘Yay!’ Luna jumped up and down, her long, coiled hair flying around her head like a whirling dervish.

‘Right, time to get dressed!’

As Luna ran upstairs to her room, Izzy spied the letter she’d tucked behind the fruit bowl, away from little girl eyes. Every time she caught a glimpse of it she shrank a little, knowing the longer she ignored it, the worse things might be. Or better. There was always a possibility.

She looked around her at the cottage, its patches of peeling plaster, its lack of central heating, the damp that seemed to permeate the whole house even though summer had well and truly arrived.

It hadn’t even occurred to her to sell it as, apart from a small savings account, this was all she had left of her mum (and dad), but how on earth could she have known it was going to be like this?

She should’ve sold it the second she found out about it and moved to Bristol instead. Tantalizingly close, just across the mouth of the Severn River, and yet, oh so far.

She’d been so busy the past few months. Packing up what she could afford to bring on the plane. Selling or Craigslisting the rest. Answering the barrage of emails from Emily as best she could. Wishing Nr Cardiff was Nr-er to Bristol, or that Cardiff wasn’t so insanely far away from London. Why couldn’t her parents have had an affair in Brighton? Bloomsbury. Paris, even. They’d both been artistic types. What was the allure of Nr Cardiff?

The romance of penury? The fact it was so cold that bed was the only place to get cosy? The mould?

Who knew? Her mother’s tastes had always eluded her, and too late Izzy had realized the millions of questions she should have asked her before she’d died. At least her father had thought of her in his will. She’d done her best to make the flint stone cottage seem the tiniest bit like their simple but perfect beach house they’d left behind in Hawaii, all the while trying to ignore the growing fear that the mould she smelt (and saw) was toxic.

That. And, of course, The Other Thing. She nudged the letter out from between the bowl and the wall, eyes glued as it fell open, the name of the hospital and the department in bright blue lettering at the top of the page, glowing like a neon sign.

Oncology Department

She could hear Emily’s voice in her head, ‘Deal with it. Now!’

Bonzer batted at her chest. It was like he knew.

Izzy shoved the letter in the pocket of her cut-off jeans. She’d look at it later.

‘Wait. What? Who?’ Emily was properly regretting taking Callum’s call. His love life was definitely not an emergency. The fact he wanted her to move out, however, was.

‘A boy-friend.’ Callum said it really slowly, as if she were a thicko. Then, ‘He’s called Ernesto. He’s Spanish.’ Callum made a trill of his tongue wrapped up with a click of the fingers and an Olé!

‘Bueno,’ she said flatly, then, ‘I thought you were in Vienna today.’

‘Yes indeed. We met at the Regenbogen parade. He’s a musician. That’s why we need your room. So he can set up his studio.’

Puta madre. Trust Callum to have his ‘some enchanted evening’ with Barcelona’s answer to Moby. If she’d gone on his Euro Pride Tour with him as requested, she’d very likely not be in this mess. On the flipside, if she’d gone she’d no doubt be in some sort of other mess. Her mother had recently friended her on Facebook and Twitter, marking a dramatic curtailment to her already half-assed #lovinglife presence on social media. Which is why she’d stayed home and done double shifts. Yesterday, after her mother ‘waved’, she’d taken an ironic panorama of the dim sum across the street to a sign outside the hospital warning people about viral gastroenteritis. Her mother had rung immediately and told her not to bother, there was a better place down the road with far better dumplings.

All that genius … wasted.

‘You’ll like him,’ Callum gushed. ‘I can’t wait for you two to meet.’

As he yammered on about the perfect place in Soho to eat because he thought meeting at the flat would be awkward all things considered, she shook the phone, praying something, anything, would magically change the fact that Callum was dumping her by FaceTime. Why couldn’t he have text-dumped her like a normal person? Not that it was really dumping seeing as they were only friends, but … even so …

Sigh. She should’ve answered more of those WhatsApp things from the girls. Then she’d have gained some ‘bitch about Callum’ credits.

She stomped down the road to her appointment. How was she going to find somewhere new to live by the end of the month?

There was always her parents’ place. The basement ‘granny flat’ was kept in pristine condition for her inevitable return to care for them in their dotage like a good little spinster daughter.

‘You’ll really like him, Emms. Ernesto’s …’ Callum went all doe-eyed. Gross. Men over six foot tall should never go dewy over anyone or anything. Except, perhaps, puppies. She gave out the odd free card for puppies. Even though she’d never want one herself, obviously. It would die of loneliness. A bit like her, she supposed.

‘Emms? A little feedback would be nice.’ Callum was openly plaintive.

She tried to rustle up some enthusiasm but couldn’t. Instead she decided to rub in just how completely unfair this all was. ‘Soo … you need me out by the end of July? If I’m working and packing, how much time does that leave us for Brighton?’

Callum put on his apology face. It needed work. ‘About Brighton … Ernesto’s never been and with only the one room booked—’

She made a screeching noise. ‘No. Please. I get it.’ Emily didn’t need Callum to spell it out. Boyfriend trumped flatmate. Ex-flatmate. Whatever.

‘You okay, Emms?’

Oh, now he cared.

‘Brilliant. I’m on my way to a meeting. Better go.

‘Emmzzzz. C’mon, baby. I know there’s some hurt going on in there.’

‘What do you want me to say? That I’m devastated? Okay, I’m devastated - happy?’

‘Emmmmzzz.’

This was becoming plain irritating.

‘What? You’ve met me. I’m not going to cry. I don’t have feelings.’ She had loads of feelings. She just didn’t want to show them. ‘I’ll leave my boa for you on the kitchen table. Make good use of it.’

Callum began protesting and placating and everything else that she found freaking annoying. Bloody overemotional gay man. Why had she ever thought he was the ying to her Cristina Yang? And still he jabbered on.

Maybe she’d go and see Izzy.

Emily thought about their last text exchange.

Emz! Reeeeeeks of mould in here. There’re big, dark stains on the ceilings.

Thought it was the dog.

Bonzer has his moments, but he’s not pooping on the ceiling … yet! Any chance you could come out with a Petri dish or something sometime? It’d be a shame to die before … you know … it’s time to die. Love to Callum. xx

A shudder ran down Emily’s spine. Euuurgh. Wales. Thank god ‘gay time’ moved at an exponential rate of knots and the standard two-year relationship could be boiled down to a fortnight. She would stay in one of the on-call rooms. Callum’s whole ‘I’ve met the love of my life’ thing would blow over soon enough.

‘Got another call coming in. Have a great time! Kisses to Ernesto!’ No one in their right mind would’ve thought she sounded sincere.