She tucked her knees to her chest and squeezed them into a tight hug, staring at the door, where her work ID lanyard and keys hung on a hook with her hi-vis yard-duty vest. That’s who she had to be today. Netta the teacher. Netta the suddenly single, probably infertile, almost forty-year-old on the verge of an existential crisis would have to wait until three thirty.
***
Netta let herself into Freya’s house after work and found her friend in the front room, breastfeeding baby Jed on the worn-out couch. The day had stretched out forever, her heart pulling and straining as though strapped to a medieval rack, her limbs distractingly light, like they weren’t quite connected to her. The happy mask she’d determinedly fixed to her face had shattered as soon as she’d gotten back to the car after work, and she’d ugly-cried the entire way from school to Freya’s house in Newport. She looked like shit.
‘Oh my God,’ said Freya, taking in her friend’s puffy, tear-streaked face. ‘What’s going on? Sit, sit.’ She patted the couch and Netta sank down beside her in a jangle of classroom keys, briefly interrupting Jed’s noisy slurping. Freya wrapped her free arm around Netta’s shoulder. ‘What’s happened? Tell me.’
Netta took a deep, shaky breath. ‘Pete and I. We broke up.’
‘Oh, hon.’ Freya’s face crumpled in empathy. ‘What happened? Are you okay?’
Freya squeezed her tighter as Netta sniffed noisily and told her the whole sorry story, the fury and revulsion on Freya’s face growing with every detail.
‘That fucking snake!’ she said. ‘I’ll kill him!’
‘It’s not just Tracey, though. I’ve felt really lonely, lately. He’s always at work and when he’s home, he’s usually chained to the desk.’ Netta paused to allow Freya a snort of derision. ‘And him being so unbothered when the tests came back negative every month was starting to really hurt, because it killed me every time. Makes sense now, I guess. Tracey is just the cherry on top.’
‘Pretty big cherry.’
‘Yeah,’ Netta said miserably.
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Freya. ‘You can’t stay in that house with him for another second.’
‘Oh God, I have no idea.’ Her living arrangements hadn’t even occurred to her amid the fog of the day. There was no way she could stay at Pete’s.
‘Why don’t you move back into your apartment?’ suggested Freya.
‘Honestly? I can’t afford to live there anymore,’ said Netta. ‘And even if I could, I’d have to give the tenants at least four weeks’ notice, and that would be a pretty harsh thing to do at this time of year when Christmas is just around the corner.’
Freya pulled her closer. ‘You can stay here with us in the crazy house until you work something out if you like.’
Netta smiled gratefully. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course! You can look after the plant morgue for me,’ Freya said, eyeing the fiddle leaf fig corpse in the corner of the room.
‘I think I’m in trouble, Frey. I can’t cover my mortgage on my own. Not since interest rates went up. I’m already paying the difference between the tenant’s rent and the weekly payments. Even if I just go and rent a crappy studio or a room in a share house somewhere, I won’t be able to pay my rentandmake up the shortfall on the mortgage. I’ll probably have to sell it. I’mscrewed, Freya. I’ve lost Pete. I’ve probably lost my chance at ever having a baby. And now I’m going to lose my beautiful little apartment too.’ Netta slumped deeper into the couch and closed her eyes. ‘A lottery win would be amazing right about now.’
‘Yeah, the lottery would be great,’ agreed Freya, switching Jed to her other breast. ‘Or, I don’t know—and this might sound nuts, but hear me out—what about if you got an offer ofa lotof money from, say,Morrison Maplestone, to return a book to London? Oh, wait …’
Netta fixed her friend with a worn-out expression. ‘Don’t. I can’t do it. I can’t go back there.’
‘Not even if it meant you could keep the apartment?’
Netta felt she was wedged between a wall of fire and a bottomless cliff. Neither direction was going to end well. ‘I don’t know …’
‘Look, I know London is a no-go zone for you,’ said Freya softly. ‘But right now, I reckon you’ve got more to lose bynotgoing. Maybe you need to weigh up what’s scarier.’
Netta knew Freya was right. But Freya also had no idea what going back to London would do to her. How it would curdle her straight back into the scrambled mess she’d been when she’d left. And right now, she was already about as messy as she could get without having a complete breakdown.
‘I hear what you’re saying,’ she said. ‘But it’s not that simple. Anyway, the lottery isn’t my only option, you know.’ Netta attempted a smile. ‘There’s always OnlyFans if things get desperate.’
Freya snorted. ‘Now there’s a good side hustle for a primary school teacher. You shoulddefinitelydo that.’
Despite herself, Netta laughed. She rested her head on Freya’s shoulder and sighed, gently stroking the hair of the milk-sozzled baby nestled in her friend’s arms.
The brief moment of peace was shattered by Kit squealing from the next room and Maisie shrieking, ‘Mummy! Kit’s biting on my Barbie again so I whacked him!’
Freya rolled her eyes. ‘Last week he bit Elsa’s head right off and stuck it on Anna’s foot like a shoe. She has reason to be overprotective.’
