* * *
I walked backto Fatima and Morgan’s house with the others, then took Jack’s car home, promising to pick him up the next morning before work. We didn’t technically share the car– it was his beloved Land Rover that he’d fixed up by hand– but he acted as if we did, which was annoyingly generous of him. As I drove myself home, I mentally tallied up how much money I still needed to save before I could get a car of my own. Not that my social life was particularly busy, but it was annoying to have to rely on Jack’s schedule, or Mum’s at a pinch. It made me feel even more like a tag-along than I already did.
But I was constantly balancing in my mind the cost of a car versus the cost of getting my own place. Not buying– I had no idea where I wanted to be long-term, and I was tens of thousands in savings away from being able to afford a deposit– but just to get out from under Mum and Dad’s thumb. They were good to me, but Mum especially could be a lot.
I’d moved away about three years ago, after it became abundantly clear that my social life in my hometown was dead. The only school friends I had that hadn’t moved away had settled down, and we had precious little in common anymore. And after things went south with Jack’s friends– with Phil, specifically– I just wanted to be anywhere else. So I’d moved in with my uni mate Niamh in Manchester, got a job, and started building a life. I’d even met someone, thought I’d fallen in love, and moved in with him.
But then we’d broken up. I actually preferred to say I broke up with him, because that’s technically how it had happened. But he hadn’t exactly asked me not to, and I’d found him in bed with my supposed best friend, so maybe it would have been more accurate to say it was mutual? Either way, I’d come home with my tail between my legs, and I’d been in a sort of stasis since then. I’d picked up enough virtual assistant work and admin hours at Dad’s contracting business to build up a tiny bit of savings, but I had very little else going on in my life, which was incredibly depressing if I let myself think too hard about it.
I pulled into the drive and parked behind Mum’s Subaru, grateful that at least I wouldn’t have to walk down to Jack’s to get the car in the morning. He technically lived on the farm with us, but on his own slice of the land about a quarter mile further down the drive, in a house he’d built himself when he’d moved home a few years ago. Then again, none of us lived on the farm, really. Dad’s brother John owned the farm and his own house over the hill, and Mum and Dad lived in the old stone farmhouse. Not that we saw much of Uncle John; his house was even further away than Chloe’s parents’ house, which wasn’t quite visible from ours.
I walked through the front door, unsurprised to find Mum watching TV in the lounge.
“How was your game?” she asked as I slipped off my shoes and dropped Jack’s keys on the hall table. “Did you win?”
“I don’t think it’s the type of game you win,” I said, walking into the lounge and sinking into Dad’s armchair since he was nowhere to be seen.
“What kind of game is it then?”
“The kind where I annoy Phil to no end apparently.”
“Well, you always were good at that.”
I laughed. “How wasMasterchef?”
“Good. My money’s on that Brin.”
“If you say so,” I said, though I’d already stopped paying attention, thinking instead about the notification I’d dismissed earlier. It was the third email I’d gotten from Chris this week, and I needed to deal with it eventually. But after the way things had ended, with me having to leave Manchester to get away from the whole situation, I just didn’t want to open up that can of worms.
Though I was already thinking about it plenty, so he’d kind of already won, hadn’t he? Maybe I could just do a reading to figure out what this was all about instead of actually having to talk to him?
“What do you think?” Mum asked, and I blinked myself back into the room.
“Sorry, about what?”
“Head in the stars again?”
“Something like that,” I muttered. Mum was the last person I would tell about Chris reaching out; she didn’t know exactly what had happened between us, and I just knew she’d tell me to give him another chance, which wasnotan option.
“I asked if you wanted to come along to one of the rewilding expeditions this summer,” she repeated. “We’re short on volunteers, and I think you’d really enjoy it.”
Mum had volunteered for the local rewilding trust for years now, and she was so serious about it. I was pretty sure the scope of their work extended to planting wildflowers on verges, but she acted like it was this intense job.
“I really don’t think I would,” I said. Jack had been her little flower child, paying rapt attention when she named every plant and every bird on our camping trips growing up. It had never really appealed to me.
“Suit yourself,” she said, then turned her gaze back to the TV and turned up the volume. I hated how disappointed she sounded, but the last thing I wanted was to start volunteering with Mum and stay stuck in the same holding pattern I’d been in for the last few months. Living with my parents, working crappy online jobs whilst having to beg my own father for hours at the family business, tagging along with my brother and his friends when they hung out.
Not that I had any idea what I should be doing instead, of course.
I said goodnight to Mum and took myself upstairs to my childhood bedroom where, even after months, most of my belongings still sat packed in boxes around me. I didn’t want to get too comfortable in my situation, because I didn’t trust myself to be able to get anything done if I did.
I undertook the most aspirational version of my bedtime routine, every skincare step giving me a few seconds where I didn’t have to deal with the emails waiting for me. But eventually I ran out of K-beauty products, and I sat down on my bed, bracing myself for whatever nonsense Chris was bringing with him on his way out of the woodwork.
From: [email protected]
Subject: URGENT - please don’t ignore this
