She followed the smell to discover her flatmate, Val, elbows-deep in a giant bowl. “Hiya,” chirruped Val.
“Hiya,” replied Lucy, far less enthusiastically. “What are you making?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but whatever it was, the flat would undoubtedly smell like rancid feet for days to come.
“Cheese.”
Well that explained it—somewhat. Weren’t there a thousand different kinds of cheese?
“Right, well, I’ve had quite the day and I’m opening some wine. Would you like a glass?” she offered.
“Always,” grinned Val.
“Hmm.” Val was always up for drinking a glass of wine, just never actually purchasing said wine. Lucy pulled a bottle of chenin blanc from the mini fridge under the counter and retrieved two glasses from the shelf above the sink. She poured two equal, but generous glasses and took hers to the sofa, while Val bustled about the kitchen.
The smell seemed less intense now than when Lucy first got home. She sighed involuntarily as she sank into the seat and propped her feet up on the pouffe. She sipped her wine, starting to feel the tension release from her shoulder muscles, and surveyed the flat. Every now and then, she liked to take stock of her lovely home and after a day like today, it was a calming ritual—a bit like the wine.
The garden flat was south facing with high ceilings and lots of windows, and it was filled with natural light on days when the sun dared to show its face. The main room was spacious enough for a modular sofa, a square coffee table—thank you, Mum and Dad, for the flat-warming gift—and a long, low TV cabinet along the wall. A four-chair dining suite sat in the corner near the glass-paned door to the small conservatory.
The kitchen was compact but most of the fixtures were new, including the hob, the oven, and the backsplash of white subway tiles. Lucy had sprung for an updated kitchen and bathroom when she’d bought the flat, unwilling to put up with the Victorian plumbing, which had been patched up so many times over the years, it had been on its last leg. In Lucy’s mind, a decent bath and shower were not luxuries, contrary to how she’d been raised.
That said, the updates had cost a bit and though she was exceptionally good with money, she’d stretched herself as thin financially as she was willing to go—which was far more comfortable than most people—and had got herself a flatmate to offset the mortgage.
Val was a friend of a friend of a friend and she’d been living with Lucy almost a year now. She was a nice person, Lucy’s primary criterion, but she was also a bit of a homebody, which meant that Lucy was rarely alone in her own home.
And now it smelled like feet.
“So, what was particularly difficult about your day?” asked Val. A cream-coloured blob wrapped in muslin hung from the wooden spoon she was now balancing over the bowl. Val looked well-pleased with herself and Lucy supposed it was fair when she’d made cheese—from scratch.
Lucy sighed and took a hefty swig of wine. Did she want to go through the ins and outs of her shockingly bad day? And with Val? This was probably better nutted out with Chloe, or even Jules. But Val was there, and she was a good listener—as she’d evidenced many times. And, really, it would probably feel good to tell someone.
“It’s my manager …” she began. Val set the bowl to the side, washed her hands, and came and joined Lucy on the sofa, bringing her wine with her.
“Is this the woman you said you’re unsure about? The one that just started?”
“Yes, that’s right, her.”
“So, what’s happened, then?” Val peered at her intently.
“Well, I thought we were just finding our way with each other, you know, testing the waters? But after today, it’s clear that she thinks I’m an incompetent nitwit.”
As Lucy spoke, Val leapt up for top-ups from time to time until she’d shaken the last drops from the bottle and dropped it into the recycling bin. She listened without interruption to Lucy’s litany of workplace crimes—all perpetrated by a woman called Angela, who tended towards micro-management, belittling Lucy in senior meetings and, today, undermining Lucy in front of her team.
“Hmm,” Val said, when Lucy had exhausted her tales of woe. She tapped her chin and seemed to mull over her response thoughtfully before settling on, “She sounds like a proper cow.”
It was said with such earnestness that Lucy found it incredibly funny—or perhaps it was the wine that caused the eruption of giggles. Either way, both women succumbed to fits of laugher and soon Lucy was wiping away tears—the good kind.
“Ooh,” she said, expelling a long breath. “I needed that. Thanks, Val. It did help to talk it through.”
“No need to thank me, Lucy. I feel awful for you. You love your job—well, you did. I hope it all gets sorted soon.” It was a nice sentiment, but Lucy doubted it.
While Lucy had worked in the finance department of the legal firm for eleven years, Angela had only just been hired and, apparently, she was there to “shake things up”. Lucy was starting to wonder if that was just corporate speak for “make everybody miserable”.
“Shall I order a curry?” asked Val. “Or something else? It’s on me.”
Well, this was a first. “That sounds great, Val. I don’t even have the energy to heat up a Marks & Sparks ready meal.”
“How about you run a bath while I get it sorted.”
Val’s so lovely, she thought, as she leapt off the sofa to run a bath.
Chapter 2
Jules
Boulder, Colorado
“Well, damned if I know,” she muttered to herself. Jules let her face fall into her hands,
