Page 65 of Second Chances at the Board Game Café

*

Taylor sat on the sofa in a state of shock, sipping a ludicrously sweet cup of tea that Mr B had placed in her hands.

They had stood outside on the pavement for half an hour, waiting for the gas board to come and turn the mains off to make the house safe, and then Tarquin had arrived and told her she was a complete idiot and what the hell had she been thinking letting the bath overrun.

She didn’t think the bath had overrun, but was too stunned to say anything and why else had it come through the ceiling like that?

He had taken her keys from her – ‘just to be on the safe side,’ he’d said. A structural engineer would have to look at the property, as Mr B had suggested, and decide whether it would be safe for her to go back in and retrieve her things.

‘But what about my clothes?’ she’d cried.

‘Clothes? You’ve got clothes.’ He had looked pointedly down at the laundry basket, sitting at her feet on the pavement.

‘No, my other clothes. The ones for the show.’

‘You’ve caused the house to collapse and you’re worrying about clothes?’ Tarquin had said.

She thought she heard him mutter, ‘Women!’ under his breath, but Mr B had ushered her away then, calling a friend of his who’d come and given them a lift to his house in Essendale, where they were now sitting on two armchairs in his tiny but immaculate lounge. The laundry basket lay between them on the hearth rug.

‘I don’t think you’ll be moving back home any time soon,’ said Mr B. ‘Do you have somewhere you could stay?’

‘Yes, I can go to a friend’s.’

She wasn’t quite sure why she said that, as it wasn’t true. There wasn’t anyone she could ask; Harry and Kate were friends of sorts, but she didn’t know either of them well enough to ask such a huge favour. However, the last thing she wanted was Mr B feeling obliged to offer to put her and Max up. If the lounge was anything to go by, this was a very small house; clearly not big enough for three. She’d look for an Airbnb or a cheap hotel for the next couple of days, to tide them over whilst she looked for somewhere more long-term. There was sure to be somewhere. Weren’t the council obliged to help in situations like these? They couldn’t leave her homeless. Not when she had a child.

Tarquin’s words came back to her now – It’s very difficult to find a rental property at an affordable price in this valley – but she pushed them away.

‘I need to send them a message,’ she said, still referring to her imaginary friend with the spare room.

‘Of course,’ said Mr B. ‘I’ll leave you to sort yourself out. I could pop to the shops and buy you some bits and bobs. Toothbrushes. Toothpaste. A comb. Would that be helpful?’

She hadn’t even thought about things like that, the little items that you take for granted on a daily basis. ‘Thank you. Very helpful.’

When Mr B had gone, Taylor opened the Airbnb app on her phone. There was a place available in Hebbleswick, near her house in fact. It was affordable for a week or two, but not for much longer. She fired off a message to the host, explaining the circumstances, and asking if there might be any kind of discount for a two-week stay or even a month.

She could always take more sewing work, she thought, stay up even later working to pay the extra rent. Then she remembered that all her sewing equipment was locked in her own house. She didn’t have so much as a pin cushion.

*

‘What about my trains?’ said Max.

He had sulked initially, when she’d picked him up from school and told him they wouldn’t be returning to the old co-operative, so she’d taken him there to show him the damage, letting him peer through the huge front window. The kitchen was just as she’d left it, hours earlier, with the bath sitting in between the cupboards and splintered pieces of wood hanging down from the ceiling.

‘The lounge is okay,’ Max had said hopefully.

‘Darling, we can’t live in a house with no kitchen and no bathroom. Besides, it mightn’t be safe. The ceiling above the lounge might have been weakened, and could collapse too.’ She had no idea if that was true, but assumed that was why she wasn’t being allowed back in to return to collect the rest of their stuff.

They were sitting on the sofa now in the Airbnb – thankfully it had been available, and she’d been able to negotiate a deal for the next four weeks. She doubted that would be long enough to find somewhere more permanent, but it was the best she could do for now.

This place wasn’t bad. It was a ground-floor flat in an old mill, with two bedrooms, polished floorboards and a small patio at the back. There was a posh coffee machine that Taylor didn’t know how to use and shelves in one corner with a stash of books, DVDs and board games for tourists whose holidays were blighted by rainy days. Max seized upon the board games, reeling off the names.

‘Scrabble… Monopoly… Cluedo… Hungry Hippos… Exploding Kittens.’ He frowned ‘No Ticket to Ride.’

‘You can play with Sylvia on Monday.’

‘Will she come here?’

‘I hope so, Max. I’ve got the upcycling group. Oh, God, Max. What am I going to do? All my sewing stuff is in our old house and I’m not allowed in, but I can’t do any work without it. And all the clothes for the fashion show are there too. What if the rest of the house does collapse and everything’s ruined?’