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“Sorry. It was all rather last-minute.”
Lucie watched as he cut the crispy fat off his bacon and pushed it aside. She stabbed it with her fork and ate it; there was no point wasting the best bit.
He laughed. “You haven’t changed.”
She gave him a cheeky grin, remembering all the times she’d done that growing up.
“So, what do you think you’ll do? Long-term, I mean,” she clarified.
“I’ll keep working until I drop. I’ve nowhere else to go.”
“You’ve got Gran’s house.”
“I can’t kick Mandy out of her home. She’s like family,” her dad protested.
Lucie groaned. “I meant you could move in with her, Dad. Geez.”
“What?” he said, with exaggerated alarm.
“Oh, come on. I can’t believe the two of you are still skirting around it.”
“We're good friends, that’s all.”
“Ten years I’ve been out of the country, and nothing has changed.” She frowned at him over the sausage on her fork. “Have you not seen the way she looks at you?”
His face lit up. “No. Does she?”
Lucie grinned at him. “Yes, and your face tells me you don’t have a problem with that. When she and I video-called, all she’d do was talk about you. And when we video-called, all you did was talk about her.”
His face pinked, and his attention moved to the newspaper beside him. “Well, you forget it,” he said, the corners of his mouth twitching. “As you said, it’s been a long time. If something was going to happen, then it would have. Some things aren’t meant to be.”
Lucie was about to protest that in order for something to happen, someone had to make it happen, but he cut in before she could.
“What are your plans for today?”
“I have an interview up at the hall.”
Her dad stopped, a forkful of baked beans halfway to his mouth.
“An interview? Already? I didn’t know you’d applied.”
“I emailed them my CV yesterday afternoon to ask if there were any elf positions left, and they replied immediately to ask if I could go in at midday today to discuss it,” Lucie said with a shrug. She was trying to keep it casual, but with no time to prepare, she was more than a little nervous.
“That’s great, love. I hope you get it.”
She suspected her dad wanted to finish his sentence with: At least that way you’re guaranteed to stick around until New Year. Instead, he buried his head in his newspaper, and she turned her attention to her phone.
After breakfast, Lucie headed for a shower and then began sifting through her wardrobe for something she could get away with at an interview. After she scrounged an old pair of smart-ish black jeans and a white T-shirt out of the back, she realised it wasn’t going to get any better than that. They were clean, but they would definitely need attacking with a scented spray.
A rummage through the bottom of her wardrobe revealed a pair of black Doc Martens and, beside them, a shoebox. She lifted it out and placed it on the bed, pausing a moment before she opened it. She knew what it held and how it would feel to see its contents again.
Setting the lid to one side, she hooked out her baby identification tag with a finger and set it down, then removed a collection of birthday cards from her first few years of life. Beneath lay a photograph of her cradled in her mum’s arms, just after her birth. She swallowed and put it down.
A handful of other photographs lay at the bottom, her mum’s handwriting looping across the reverse, noting Lucie’s first solid food and first steps. She brushed the ink with her thumb, knowing it was pointless but still feeling a connection to the tangible mark her mum had left in the world. The familiar ache of absence settled in her chest. How could you miss something you had never really known?
To one side, wrapped in tissue, was her mum’s silver necklace. It was the only piece of her jewellery Lucie had. Relieved to find it safe where she had left it, she let it sit in her palm, its coolness penetrating the warmth of her skin. Her eyes moistened as she breathed in the faint scent from the box. Time moved on, but some scents never faded.
She put everything back inside; this wasn’t the time. Her interview wasn’t far off, and she needed to pull herself together. Getting this job mattered. It would top up her savings and give her something to focus on — something that lay ahead of her rather than behind her.
