“You sure you don’t wanna come to the pub?” Chloe asked, batting her eyelashes at me and pulling her rosy lips into a puppy dog pout. “Just for one?”
Honestly, it was tempting. If I were ever going to take her up on her invite, now would be the time. I glanced around at the others; Fatima and Grey were in a side conversation, and Phil was in the kitchen cleaning up the cake tin he’d brought the brownies in. Only Jack was paying attention, and I caught his gaze for a brief moment – was there a bit of hope in it? – before he looked away.
I took in a deep breath to respond, but Jack interrupted me.
“Don’t pester her,” he said to Chloe. “You do this every week.” The breath whooshed out of me as my chest fell.
“She can answer for herself,” Chloe said, chucking a cork coaster across the table at Jack, who lifted his hands defensively. She looked back at me pleadingly again, but I’d got Jack’s message. I didn’t really want to go that much, anyway.
“I can indeed,” I said pointedly to Jack, then turned to Chloe. “But no thanks, I’d better get home.”
Chloe pressed her mouth into a disappointed line, but she nodded. “See you at work,” she said.
“Yeah, see you,” I said, slipping out the door, waving as I went; but they’d already moved on, and their laughter trailed out after me into the warm evening air.
* * *
Just as thelast of the light was leaving the sky, I pushed through the front gate of the tiny terraced house I had shared with Cara until yesterday. I checked the letterbox on the way in; there was a water bill I’d need to take a picture of and send to Cara’s mum, and a postcard from my mum. It was a vintage-looking blue and yellow Big Sur print, with a message scrawled on the back:
My darling Mo, today I woke up next to this view. Van life has its perks. Love mum xxx
I kicked off my shoes and felt myself exhale in relief; Mum might be living it up on the West Coast, but this house was my happy place.
But it was also the first workday I’d had since Cara left, and I immediately felt the gut punch of what was missing: her noisy greeting, asking about my evening and if I finally let Jack flirt with me; the smell of whatever she’d made for dinner wafting through the small space; the dulcet tones of Carole King singing theGilmore Girlstheme song in the background.
Cara’s parents had bought the house when she started uni nearby, and I’d found her post for a housemate on our university intranet, not wanting to brave the halls. Over the three years of uni and the four years since we’d graduated, we had made the place our own. There were not one, or even two, butthreedifferent rugs layered on the already-carpeted floor. The green velvet sofa we’d rescued from the side of the road was piled high with cross-stitched cushions and heirloom quilts. Fairy lights wound along the rod above the bay window, which was framed by thick, velvet brocade curtains and huge stacks of books, overflow from the bookshelves that flanked the wood-burning fireplace. It was my heaven.
Tonight, there was no noisy greeting, no homemade dinner, and no Lorelai and Rory, because Cara was gone. There was just me, and an empty bedroom upstairs I couldn’t even look at these last few days. Without her, the place felt empty. Which was saying something because of how aggressively full it was.
After a sad microwave risotto – Cara had always been the cook, so I’d have to learn how to feed myself properly – I settled down in my usual spot: the bench seat built into the bay window. I leaned back against some of the dozen or so cushions lining the seat and opened my tablet to resume the drawing I’d started during the game. But I’d lost interest, so I started scrolling on my phone instead. I scrolled past an ad for handbags (as if I had anywhere to take a handbag, or the inclination to use one even if I did), a reminder to take a deep breath to which I nodded along, but then got bored halfway through my inhale and kept scrolling, and a morning routine video that I bookmarked as if 5am was even remotely within my capability.
But my finger stopped swiping as I landed on a video of two best friends in the US entering their local Renaissance Faire hand-in-hand, dressed in cosplay from head to toe. The shorter of the two wore a green cloak fastened with a leaf-shaped brooch, whilst the tall one was clad in what looked like a chain mail tunic and plate armour. I’d seen enough of these videos to know it was probably all plastic, maybe even 3D-printed, but it looked pretty legit to me. The caption underneath said “Less than 4 months until Ren Faire is back!” with a faerie emoji and a litany of hashtags underneath.
Over the last few months, I’d been getting more and more videos about cosplay, and specifically about Renaissance Faires. I was sure it probably started from my many Google searches at the beginning of the year when I was first learning D&D – “paladin vs fighter” ; “what does 5e mean dungeons & dragons” (fifth edition, or 5e, it turned out, was the active edition of Dungeons & Dragons); “do fighters have spells 5e” (no); “which is better battle master or champion fighter 5e” – but by now it was taking up at least half of my social media real estate. It was pretty dreamy, to be fair, and my starry-eyed watching of every video served to me by the sacred algorithm probably had something to do with the volume I saw. I had dubbed this particular genre of content “nerd shit”. It was a broad genre with many sub-categories: people prancing around in fluffy dresses, inventing custom scenarios for their D&D games they called “homebrew” content, and even “great weapon workout routine” videos that involved people swinging around what looked like single-ended barbells.
This was how I’d been introduced to the concept of Ren Faires, and to say I was obsessed would have been an understatement. When I’d first tried to explain it to Cara, she’d just nodded and said “like a medieval festival?” referring to the dinky weekend affairs characteristic of small towns all across Britain.
“It’s nothing like that,” I’d said, mounting quite a passionate defence. “It’s like a whole medieval village, and everyone who works there is in character. They heckle you, and you can buy old-timey food and drinks, and people dress up in costumes.”
I wasn’t convinced she’d ever really understood the appeal, but she’d got excited anyway, immediately diving into the research needed to choose one for us to go to. For my birthday in March, she’d made a big deal out of gifting me a pair of elf ears and saying they were to tide me over until she could get us tickets to the Ren Faire.
But now that was off the table it seemed, which was probably for the best if she was only into it for my benefit. I’d just have to keep rolling the literal dice each week to see if anything as exciting as those videos would happen to me. Or to Captain Morgana, anyway.
I bookmarked the video, adding it to the graveyard of saved content I’d never revisit, and kept scrolling.
The internet quickly lost its allure, but I was still craving the adventurousness I’d felt during the game; the high of completing part of a mission. Of doing something epic. So I walked over to the bookshelf and picked up my worn copy of my favourite fantasy novel; one I’d read half a dozen times but never failed to make me feel that high. And for now, whilst my own adventures were limited to three-hour sessions on Monday evenings, that would have to do.
Chapter3
Jack
Ifought the urge to stare out the window as Dad went through the plans with the client for the third time. I knew why he did it – I’d heard him complain enough times about a poorly scoped job or a bad choice of materials – but it didn’t stop it from being boring as hell.
I’d got in trouble for staring out the window all through school, but it wasn’t my fault that what was happening inside was infinitely less interesting than what I could see outside. Even now, I could make out from the corner of my eye the blue of what I thought was the first cornflower of the season. It was a damn shame they’d be getting rid of half their lawn for a stupid extension; the house was more than big enough, and they had a veritable meadow out there. But that wasn’t my job to say.
It actually wasn’t my job to be there at all – until recently, I’d been just carpentry and joinery – but Dad had been taking me along for more and more quotes lately, and even taking the first stab at pulling them together, at least for small jobs like the extensions. It wasn’t my favourite, but he seemed satisfied enough, which was good; Dad was always in a better mood if I did a good job. He took a lot of pride in his work.
Back at the site, the guys had all left for the day, so we were just rounding up tools and cleaning up after them before heading home. I took advantage of Dad being round the other side of the house to check some messages on my phone; he hated phones being out on the job site, but Chloe and Phil had been trading jabs in our group chat, and it was entertaining as hell to read.
