AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Erm, that’s really kind of you, Chloe. But I don’t think so.’
Chloe looked truly astonished, as though she hadn’t for a second expected that I would refuse her offer. She ran her hand exasperatedly through her hair. There were a few strands of silver threaded through the blonde bob these days, and perhaps more curves on her small frame than there had been ten years before, but she still looked very much like the woman who’d won the heart of the man I had once wanted to marry. Beside her I felt angular and unwomanly.
‘Why won’t you stay with us?’
Because sleeping in the guest bedroom of a house that with a different roll of the dice could have been mine was too much to ask of any friendship. Especially ours.I answered her question with one of my own. ‘And what does Ryan think of the idea of me moving in with you?’
She had blushed a deep and not unbecoming rose colour. I had forgotten how easily she did that. ‘He thinks it’s a great idea.’ Chloe was good at a great many things, but lying wasn’t one of them.
‘No, he doesn’t,’ I had said assuredly.
She had winced, as though I’d just trodden on her toe. It must be beyond infuriating to have someone know your husband almost as well as you did yourself.
‘Okay, so he might have the odd reservation or two,’ she had admitted. ‘But it’s more important that you have somewhere to go where there are people who can look after you.’
I had shaken my head so vehemently my long dark hair swished from side to side like the tail of an irate horse.
‘If the doctors think I’m strong enough to leave here, then I’m strong enough to live on my own.’
‘And where exactly would that be?’ Chloe had challenged, with more steel in her voice than I remembered.
‘I’ll figure something out.’
But, in the end, I didn’t have to. I had been side-swiping through a variety of rental properties online, as though it were a dating site, when a dark shadow had fallen over the screen of my laptop. I was sitting in the visitor’s chair beside my bed. It wasn’t particularly low, and yet it still seemed to take quite a while for my gaze to travel up from the oversized boots, past the dark jeans and checked lumberjack shirt he liked to wear, before I finally reached his smile. At least I assumed he was smiling, Mitch’s beard and hair seemed to be in a competition to cover as much of his face as possible. Which was a shame really, because it was actually rather a nice face.
‘Thinking of buying a house?’ he asked, simultaneously dropping a kiss on my cheek and a bunch of sunflowers into my lap.
I smiled as I picked up the bouquet. ‘You must have spent an absolute fortune on sunflowers from your friend’s nursery over the last decade.’
Mitch was a blusher, even more than Chloe was. And it would seem he had got no better at controlling that habit in the years when I had been sleeping.
‘Not really. I get them at mate’s rates.’
I didn’t believe him, and to be honest I was still a little overwhelmed to discover that while I remained locked in my coma, Mitch had continued to bring me flowers. Every single week. Sunflowers had, and always would be, our ‘thing’. He was a great friend and one I felt lucky to have.
‘So why are you looking at properties?’ Mitch asked, pulling out a second chair and lowering himself onto it. The foam cushion seat gave a whisper of protest under his weight, like a reluctant whoopee cushion.
‘I’ve got to find somewhere new to live,’ I reasoned, clicking shut the laptop.
Mitch frowned, and his truly impressive eyebrows drew together to form a confused monobrow.
‘What’s wrong with the place you have?’
I looked around the small hospital room which had been my address longer than any other since my childhood. ‘They’re finally kicking me out of here.’
Mitch shook his head, and his shaggy, long-past-due-for-a-cut hair made him look like a bear battling with a wasp. ‘I don’t mean here. I mean my grandmother’s flat – or ratheryourflat. Why do you want to move?’
?
‘I can’t believe he kept this place waiting for you for all these years,’ said Chloe, neatly parking her car in a tight space directly outside the large Victorian property. I looked through the windscreen at the home I hadn’t seen for ten years, and the enormity of Mitch’s gesture hit me all over again.
‘Neither can I. He must have lost out on a fortune by not renting the flat while I was in hospital. I offered to pay him back for the rent he’d lost.’
‘You did? That would have made a big dent in your insurance payout money, wouldn’t it? What did Mitch say to that?’
I gave a twisted smile. ‘What do you think? He said no, of course.’
The sun felt like a warm embrace on my back as we climbed out of the car. I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed the simple pleasure of inhaling fresh air, and it was hard to resist sucking it down now in greedy gulps. Chloe and I simultaneously reached into the boot for my holdall, but she beat me to it by a second or two. Short of engaging in a very undignified tug-of-war in the street, I gave in and allowed her to carry my bag up the black and white tiled path to my old ground floor flat. As well as my case, I had spotted two sturdy cardboard boxes in the back of her car; one filled with cleaning materials and the other with groceries.
