Читать книгу You Let Me In - Lucy Clarke - Страница 12

Sitting in the passenger seat of her mother’s old Renault, Elle turned the silver star stud through the cartilage at the top of her ear. Around and around she twisted it, like a rosary, as she ran through each of her worries. Would her new housemates like her? Would she be homesick? Had she chosen the right course? Was her outfit okay?

She didn’t know then, as she wound down the window, pushing her face into the salty, marshy breeze as they crossed the Severn Bridge, that none of those questions were the ones she needed to ask.

The event that would change everything was marked out for later. For a time when she was settled and happy, her life ready to bloom.

That’s when it would blindside her.

Elle arrived first. They pulled up on the pavement, leaving the hazard lights blinking as they trooped back and forth with Elle’s belongings: a duvet spilling from a torn bin liner, a cardboard box heavy with food raided from the cupboards at home, a lava lamp wrapped in a towel, a duffle bag bulging with clothes, two posters rolled into tubes that had bent in the car.

She didn’t mind the dreary pebbledash student house that backed onto a trainline, or the stretch of damp on the wall behind her bed. She looked at her student house and saw freedom.

Her mother helped her tack up posters of Bob Marley and Lenny Kravitz, and postcards from Fiona who was interning at a news desk in Santiago.

‘You’re going to be so happy here,’ her mother said, holding Elle’s face in her hands. ‘I’m so proud of you. I hope I tell you that often enough.’

Elle could sense the emotion brooked in her mother. It was the first time in two decades that her mother would be returning to an empty flat.

‘You know, Mum, you could do this, too. Study. Make more time to write. You could get a student loan …’

Her mother had waved a hand through the air. ‘This is your time. You enjoy every moment of it.’

And Elle would do.

Until she met him.