Читать книгу I Heart Hawaii - Lindsey Kelk - Страница 6

‘Angela? Are you up?’

I was not up. I had no interest in being up.

‘Come on. You can’t stay in bed all day.’

Slowly, very, very slowly, I prised open one eye as I tried to work out where I was.

The ceiling was too low, the window was in the wrong place and I couldn’t hear a single car horn honking. Not to mention the fact my bed was altogether too small and too empty.

‘Angela.’

Two taps on the door of my childhood bedroom before it opened, my mum’s face popping inside without waiting for an invitation.

‘Why aren’t you dressed? It’s nearly eight.’

Today was the day.

‘I just woke up,’ I croaked in response, raking a hand through the bird’s nest on top of my head. Everything came rushing back: where I was, why I was here, what had to be done today, and the steady thrum of nerves that had been beating in my chest since I got on the plane found its rhythm once again.

‘Well, I know we had a lazy one yesterday but you can’t lie around in bed all day today. The sooner you get up and start getting on with things, the better you’ll feel.’

I pulled the duvet up over my face.

‘Come on,’ she said, her voice softening outside my blanket fort. ‘Kettle’s just boiled. I’ll bring you up a cup of tea.’

‘Thanks, Mum,’ I whispered from underneath the covers as the door clicked shut behind her.

From the day you left home, the prospect of waking up in your childhood bedroom was never a welcome one. Best-case scenario, it was Christmas. Worst-case scenario, your life had completely fallen apart. I wondered where my current predicament fell on that scale.

With a groan, I tossed away the duvet and rolled over to stare into the eyes of the Care Bear printed on my pillowcase. It had to have been at least thirty years old but Mum always put it on the bed when I came home, even when it was last minute, even when it wasn’t planned. Pressing my cheek against the cool, soft fabric, I sighed. Poor Tenderheart Bear, he had already seen so much in his many years of service and now, here he was, offering his services as a stand-in for the person who should be lying in bed beside me.

Alex.

I glanced over at my phone, thought about it for just a second and then pushed the idea out of my head. No, not yet.

Save the torn-out pages of the NME I’d left stapled to the walls, my room still looked exactly the same as it did the day I left. Every time Dad redecorated, Mum insisted they keep the colours the same. Maybe there was a different duvet on my double bed but my Care Bear pillow and the crocheted blanket from my grandmother’s house were always there. Same pine wardrobe and chest of drawers. Same dressing table with the same scorch marks from my teenage pyromaniac phase. Terracotta essential oil burner from the Body Shop on the windowsill, pink plastic cassette case sitting beside my incredibly cool zebra-striped ghetto blaster. All this familiarity should have made me feel better but it just made me feel further and further away. Like my years in New York had been a dream. Like I’d imagined Alex and Jenny and James and Delia and Erin and all the rest of it.

As though none of it had ever happened.

‘But it did,’ I whispered, turning my engagement and wedding rings around and around on my finger and waiting for a genie to appear. ‘It did, it did, it did.’

‘Only me.’

The door opened again, all the way this time, as my mum marched in bearing a steaming mug of tea and not one, but two, biscuits.

Oh my. Things really were serious.

‘The sooner you get up, the sooner you can get this day started.’

‘And the sooner I can come back to bed?’ I added hopefully.

‘Oh, Angela,’ she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed and smoothing my messy hair down on the top of my head. ‘Don’t overreact, you’re making it worse than it is. Everything is going to be fine. When has your mother ever steered you wrong?’

This didn’t seem like a question that needed answering with a tremendous degree of honesty.

‘Drink your tea, jump in the shower and I’ll have your breakfast waiting. Your dad is raring to go.’

‘Classic Dad,’ I replied as she walked around the bed and tore open all the curtains. This day was coming in whether I liked it or not. ‘I don’t know if I can do this.’

I should have known not to push my luck. The sympathetic lift of her eyebrows folded in on itself until it evolved into its final form; Annette Clark’s trademark glare. I shrank back against the pillow. It worked when I threw a tantrum in Woolworths when I was three and it worked now.

‘Angela Clark, I will not have this attitude,’ Mum declared from the doorway, hands on hips, frown on face. ‘Downstairs in ten minutes. Today is a big day. You need to be up and dressed before everyone gets here. Whatever you’ve convinced yourself of, things aren’t going to go better with you in your bed, are they?’

With one last forceful look, she closed the door and left me alone. I might have left home when I was eighteen but I would know the sound of Mum’s purposeful march down the stairs anywhere with my eyes closed.

And I also knew when she was right.

Stretching my legs, I pushed away my blankets and felt for the floor with my toes.

It was all going to be fine, Mum said.

I put one foot on the floor, followed by the other. There, I was officially standing. The day had officially started. All I had to do was get up, get dressed and meet the day head on.

No turning back now.