Sam had stopped folding the next box to gauge her daughter’s reaction. ‘I thought you’d be furious I was making you leave here.’ She looked suspicious, her default look.
‘I don’t exactly have a choice – no point getting annoyed.’ She was only happy that sending her away meant she got her phone back because Sam couldn’t stand the thought of her daughter being so far away yet not able to communicate with her. She liked to stay in control, and without a phone, Audrey would be free to float around wherever the wind took her.
‘I think this will do us both good,’ said Sam.
‘Whatever.’
‘See, this is what I mean.’ She wrestled with the last box, the flaps refusing to bend the way she wanted. ‘One minute you talk to me, the next you’re rude. I don’t know where I stand half the time.’
‘Welcome to parenting.’ If the doorway wasn’t blocked with these cardboard boxes, she’d go shut herself in her room. It was bad enough she was going to have to sit in a car for more than three hours with her mum this afternoon. ‘When am I coming back here then?’ Audrey asked. ‘At the end of the summer break? Mum?’ She knew that look, there was something she wasn’t telling her.
‘I’ve got no choice but to sell this house, Audrey. The mortgage is crippling, which was one thing when I had a job but totally another when I don’t.’
‘But you’ll buy another one, right?’ She wasn’t sure she could handle living with an old lady she didn’t even know indefinitely.
‘I might rent for a while.’
‘Rent?’
‘Yes, Audrey. Plenty of people do it,’ she snapped.
Audrey dragged the boxes upstairs, refusing any help from her mum. She’d go away for the summer, then come back up here to whatever pit her mum found for them to stay in, but deep down she couldn’t wait to put her own plans into action as soon as she could, then she’d be free from this; she’d do things on her own terms.
‘Mum, please, you have to go back,’ Audrey insisted. They’d only gone ten minutes down the road.
‘Why? What did you forget?’
‘One of my books, I’m in the middle of reading it.’
‘We’re already late – I told your gran when we’d be there and I still have to get petrol. I’ll send it on to you, I really don’t mind, or read something else and you can come back to it when you’re home again.’
‘No, I want to go back and get it.’
‘For goodness’ sake, Audrey. Tell me where it is, I’ll post it.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ she grumped. There was no way she was going to tell her mum what the book was.
The journey took a little over three hours and Audrey swung between being annoyed they hadn’t gone back as she’d asked, talking about Mapleberry to pass the time – it didn’t sound all that exciting a place but at least it had a café and a few shops – and shutting her eyes to be with her own thoughts. She wondered what Sid was up to now. She hoped he would lie low over the summer and not run into the mean girls from school who liked to go to the local bowling alley as much as Audrey and Sid did. The Wotsits sounded tame, but they were nasty. She hoped they wouldn’t up the ante with Sid; they laughed at him with his dyslexia and taunted him when he got extra time in school tests, and the last time they’d gone bowling and Sid slipped on the shiny floor and banged his head, that had made their day.
As they got closer and followed the signs into Mapleberry, Audrey sat up and took interest. Mapleberry was pretty, she supposed, albeit in a dull sort of way. As you drove in at one end of the village, there were rolling fields on either side of the road that narrowed and went into single lane over a bridge with walls low enough to see a winding stream below. A thatched-roofed house with enormous gates came next, then a pub, then shops on either side of a street with black iron lampposts dotted at intervals, each with a garden bed at the base, full of colourful flowers.
They drove past a playground, two kids on a seesaw, and then the road bent back round and passed it in the opposite direction before they pulled up outside Gran’s house.
The house was well kept with its cute front garden and prim flowerbeds. Audrey had a vague memory of the inside being clean too, not a thing out of place. At least her gran wasn’t living in squalor or was one of those hoarders you saw on the news – imagine trying to add in those big boxes on the back seat and in the boot if she was – although from what her mum had mentioned, Audrey deduced she was somewhat of a recluse. Loosely translated, that meant she didn’t like people and didn’t have any friends. What a fun summer this was going to be.
‘Come on, Mum,’ Audrey urged, but Sam couldn’t seem to bring herself to get out of the car.
Audrey got fed up waiting and went to ring the doorbell herself. If she waited for her mum to get herself together, she could be standing there until the summer was over.
The front door opened slowly and her gran smiled, although it looked a little forced. ‘Audrey, so lovely to see you again, come in.’ Very formal. Her eyes darted to the car and then down the street and again in the opposite direction as though she suspected someone was lurking waiting to pounce.
Audrey couldn’t remember her gran being much of a hugger so she didn’t even try. ‘Mum’s coming, she must be on the phone or something.’ She wasn’t, but it felt rude to imply that perhaps Sam simply
