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CHAPTER2
Later that evening, after two helpings of Rowena’s excellent lasagne, Felicity lay on her bed with a full stomach and a fully charged phone and messaged her parents.
At Alice’s. Flight was fine. Perth is beautiful. Sunny and sparkly.She didn’t expect to hear back. Dad would be out checking the pigs were snuggled up warm against the February cold, and Mum had a show planned with the Potters from Poole, as she called her group of tweedy artsy friends. It was quite possible Mum hadn’t even noticed Felicity had left for Australia, she got super vague when she was planning to exhibit her ceramics. So, it was kind of a surprise when Mum came back withLovely, darling. Have fun. Dad’s putting extra hay into the pig pens, but he’ll be happy to hear you’re there.
Next, she texted Henry, who came straight back with,Super! Finishing all the last minute bits and bobs. Gabe and I still can’t believe we’re on the plane in a few hours.
The thought of her uncle and his husband Gabe arriving in Australia in two days made Felicity’s heart glow warm. If she was honest, she was closer to Henry than she was to her parents. An only child, she’d spent many summer holidays at the imposing Georgian house near Cambridge, where Henry was an English professor. She’d make up dance routines down by the river next to the Weeping Willows. Wiled away hours in Henry’s book-lined library, reading the classics and inventing her own versions of Shakespeare’s plays. And stayed there for months in between her hospitalisations and her lengthy recovery. When she’d discovered that Henry had a long-lost daughter in Australia and that they had been born within a year of each other, it had been hard at first. And yes, briefly there, she’d admit she’d felt usurped, as though Alice’s existence would dilute her very special bond with her uncle. But then she’d met Alice when she visited England last year, and realised she’d lost nothing. Just gained the most wonderful cousin. Besides, how could her bond with Henry be weakened? He’d been her guardian angel through the three worst years of her life, and nothing could take that away from her.
“You’ll be strong at the broken places when you get through this,” he’d whispered to her one day when the pain had all felt too much and she’d lain with her face against the wall. But after he’d left the hospital that day, she’d scribbled those words in her journal and tucked them deep into her soul.
And Henry, dear, wise,kindHenry had been right, of course.
Sure, she was damaged on the outside, but inside she was strong. She’d chosen laughter over tears, courage over fear. Besides, without those dark times she’d never have met Evie and Felix, her closest friends, or got to share a cramped basement flat in Islington, crammed full of sculpting equipment (Evie’s), plant cuttings (Felix’s) and sequins and finger paints (hers). Not to mention a rather grand scratching pole (Digby’s, the tortoiseshell cat who’d arrived one stormy night and never left).
Thinking of them all, she justhadto FaceTime Evie.
Evie picked up with what looked like a World War II gas mask on her face and a tuft of bright pink hair sticking out the top.
Felicity burst out laughing. “What the frig are you wearing?”
Evie pulled the contraption off her face. There were grooves from the mask around her mouth that made her look like a badger. “Fume mitigator,” she explained. “I don’t want the toxins from the resin to alter my DNA.”
“Sensible,” Felicity agreed. “You’re working late.”
“It’s only midday in sunny Islington. Thoughsurprise, there has been no actual sun since you left. How’s Australia?”
Right now, Felicity couldn’t imagine anything but the warm balmy evening and a bunch of pink parakeets squawking as they settled in the gum tree in the back garden. No chirpy little sparrows here. Aussie birds were the big guns.
Perversely, her eyelids suddenly felt like lead weights. She blinked, yawned. “Sunny. And amazingly beautiful. The sunset looked like a tropical island and we ate out on the back veranda as the moon rose behind a eucalypt tree.”
“Bee-atch. I am eaten up with envy. Tell me, what’s it like being catapulted 20,000 miles from the epicentre of the universe?”
“London isn’t the epicentre of the universe.”
“No, hon, I mean me and Felix. We’re missing you and you’ve only been gone two days.”
“Is Digby missing me too?”
“Wouldn’t care as long as somebody feeds him. Narcissistic flea-bag.”
Felicity grinned at that. “I miss you too—well, I will in a day or so.” She wouldn’t miss the patch of mould in the bathroom, the way the central heating whooshed you awake at six in the morning, or the Rastafarian music booming out of number forty-six in the wee small hours. Nope, she wasn’t missing that at all.
“Say hi to Felix for me,” she managed through another yawn. There was no point trying to call Felix, since he barely ever turned on his phone except for work. He was worse than her with technology.
“Did Alice pick you up?”
“No, Oliver did—Aaron’s older brother.” Suddenly she was wide awake. “He’s a male model who drives a Porsche.”
Evie grunted. “Impressed, not.”
“He’s actually a finance wizard who drives a Porsche.”
“A merchant wanker? Please don’t say yes!”
“He writes books on financial freedom for millennials and retirees and the like. He doesusefulstuff.”
“Marginal improvement, but drop the Porsche.”
