“I’m fine, honestly.” Emily softened her words with a smile. “Thank you, though, for offering, and also for the tiffin. It really does look delicious.” She took the kettle out of the box, gave it a rinse, and then started to fill it.
“Shall we say seven for supper? Is that too late?”
“Not at all.” It gave her a few hours to unpack and sort, at least.
Finally, with a flutter of her fingers, Alice was gone, and Emily breathed a sigh of relief. She knew Alice meant well, of course she did, but it had been exhausting navigating so many invitations. Quickly she made the movers their tea, and then started shifting boxes.
There really weren’t too many—she’d always been one for economy, preferring the clean lines of an empty room than the chaotic disorder of a full one. Half of the boxes were her mother’s things, all loaded into the second bedroom for when—or, really, if—her mother ever showed up. Emily never knew when it would be, or for how long.
With a sigh she started emptying a box of books—business manuals and no-nonsense self-help guides that she considered suitable for show in the sitting room; her secret pleasure—sweeping, romantic epics—would go upstairs in her bedroom.
“Ta, love.” One of the movers came downstairs brandishing an empty mug. “We’re all done here.”
“Thank you very much.” Emily saw them out, with the requisite tip, before she resumed unpacking. It felt strange to put her familiar things in this new place. She’d been in her flat in Earl’s Court since her first pay cheque at Ellis Investments. Admittedly it had only been a let, and she hadn’t been particularly attached to the small, boxy flat with its tiny kitchen and even tinier bathroom, but it had been familiar and it had been hers, and right now Emily couldn’t keep from feeling a pang of sorrow at its loss.
“Stop it,” she told herself out loud, in the firm voice of a primary school teacher. “There is absolutely no reason to feel sorry for yourself. You’re extremely fortunate, you know.”
And she did know. She had a job that was secure and made her financially stable; she had a lovely cottage to call her home; she had a mother who loved her in her own chaotic way, and she was healthy and young and… Her blessings petered out and she blew out an impatient breath. She had this lovely cottage, she continued determinedly, and she was healthy…
She’d already listed those ones. Emily pulled a piece of packing tape off a box and it came away with a satisfyingly loud rip. She was done counting her blessings, as well as feeling sorry for herself, simply because she’d moved to a new place she wasn’t at all sure about. She had work to do.
Two hours later the unpacking was mostly done. Her streamlined grey sofa looked a bit out of place in the cosy sitting room, and her angular white dishes seemed rather austere in the glass-fronted cupboards, but Emily didn’t mind. She wasn’t a patchwork throw or colourful pottery type of person, after all, and she didn’t think she ever would be.
Upstairs she’d stacked her mother’s boxes in the second bedroom, undecided whether she should unpack them or not. Her mother might be irritated if she did, hurt if she didn’t. It was impossible ever to know what reaction she might provoke, or what mood she might find her mum in when she finally did turn up.
Which reminded her, she needed to ring Naomi and let her know her new details.
“Hello?” The musical voice sang out dreamily after the fifth ring, when Emily had been poised to leave a voicemail.
“Fiona? It’s Emily David. Naomi’s daughter?”
“Emily…” The woman’s spacey voice made Emily grit her teeth. Her mother’s latest best friend was a hippy in her sixties who somehow made a living selling hand-dipped candles in Camden Market. She also smoked a lot of cannabis.
“Could I talk to my mother, please?”
“I’m afraid she’s not here, darling.”
Annoyance as well as a tiny pinprick of alarm shivered along Emily’s spine as she registered Fiona’s insouciant, indifferent tone. “Do you know where she is?”
“No. She’s a grown woman, after all. I’m not her keeper, and neither are you.” Fiona was still speaking in that away-with-the-fairies voice that made Emily grit her teeth.
“That’s true, but you know she has medication she needs to take regularly, so—”
“Oh, medication.” Now Fiona sounded scoffing. “Conspiracies by big pharma, you mean.”
“Fiona, please—”
“Naomi is much, much better without all those pills,” Fiona said firmly. “She’s been so much freer, so much happier. You can’t have any idea the burdens she’d been under, which have just been lifted—”
Emily’s fingers tightened on her phone. “Are you saying she hasn’t been taking her medication?” Her voice unspooled like a thread of wire.
“You don’t need to worry about her,” Fiona declared, all airiness gone, and then she hung up. Emily closed her eyes.
Fiona was just the latest in a long line of her mother’s friends—men and women of all stripes and dispositions, drifters and grifters and other lost souls. Naomi picked them up like strays, or perhaps it was the other way around, and they were the ones picking her up. Emily didn’t know the ins and outs of each one—there had been far too many—but she knew enough to feel nervous, if her mother had gone off her medication again, even for a day. The last time, three years ago, had been disastrous. Emily did not want to go through something like that again.
And hopefully she wouldn’t have to. Fiona had sounded as if she’d had her head in the clouds, or at least in a cloud of cannabis smoke. Emily doubted she knew whether Naomi was taking her medication or not, and when she’d spoken to her mum before she’d left for Wychwood, she’d seemed fine. Fine. But where was she now?
Emily hesitated, wondering if she should call her father to let him know what
