Wanting a new lease of life before I faced my demons, Carol kindly indulged my need to get rid of the pink in my hair and after two hours and a few glasses of wine, I was standing in her living room, no longer imitating a rebellious schoolgirl. I’d gone back to my roots, dark, and I’d never looked more like my mother in my life. It took a long while to be able to look in the mirror and like what I saw.
Over the week, Carol had been in and out of the flat in Islington, along with a cleaning company to do the things I couldn’t, and when we both stepped inside for the last of the packing, there was not a single smell or trace of death, the windows had been thrown wide, the recliner no longer haunting me from the corner of the living room.
“Just pack up what you need. Fred’s going to bring a van around tomorrow and get you moved into the other place. No sense in sticking around here.”
We’d brought boxes, I had a suitcase or two stashed away under my bed, they would be enough as there wasn’t much to pack. I only needed my personal belongings, along with a few household things. The rest could stay and get tossed or kept for when the next tenant arrived.
I stopped outside mum’s bedroom door after an hour of sorting through useless stuff like towels and bedding that had seen better days, knowing I needed to go in there and take anything personal she may have had.
“Let’s do this.” Carol pushed the door wide, and I walked inside, my heart heavier than it had ever been. Over the course of forty minutes, we found six bottles of whisky with varied amounts inside, and very little else that could tell you who Julie Summers was. A single photo album was all she’d had stuffed in the bottom drawer of a dresser, full of old pictures I hadn’t seen in years. Pictures of her when she looked healthy and beautiful, of me and my dad when we’d been happy, and when life had been simpler. I sat on the floor and cried with Carol as we flicked through the pages of a life forgotten.
“They looked like they really loved one another.”
“Until they didn’t.” The truth of it was right there. They had loved passionately, and I could never figure out what had broken them. I’d understood long ago she’d used me as an excuse but the reasoning she forever threw in my direction had made no sense, especially not when I poured over the pictures of what appeared to be a perfectly normal and happy family. He didn’t love me, she’d said. He’d left because I was too difficult, she’d said. He’d never wanted me, she’d said, just to stick the knife in further when she was being particularly cruel.
I took the album, along with the wedding ring the undertaker had already given me. They were all I wanted of this woman. I closed the door on her room, shutting the memories of my mother inside.
Two days later I was in my new flat and making plans to get back to work. The agency had allowed me the two weeks’ compassionate leave I’d asked for, only one with full pay, which was generous of them considering they had no legal requirement to pay me at all. There would be a gap in my wages, three days working wasn’t much and with a funeral to pay for with very little savings and a credit card I was reluctant to use again, I deliberated signing up for the full five at the agency. There were always contracts to pick up, the agency asked often enough for cover on the days I didn’t normally work. But I enjoyed working for Bill and didn’t want to leave Caulder’s, so eventually I settled on keeping to what I had. It worked, no point in fixing what wasn’t broken, and if I got caught short, I could always beg for an extra shift somewhere.
Only after speaking to Bill about returning, did I give myself time to think about Yannick Ischmov and why I’d walked out of that hotel room in such a hurry after the time we’d shared. Or rather, the sex we’d had.
The fact he had a wife gnawed at me, though it wasn’t the crux of the problem because I’d gone with him with my eyes wide open, accepting and ignoring he was married. He’d said it had been an arrangement, a contract, but hey… married was married, and I’d slept with him anyway. So much for the moral high ground I’d taken with Jared.
I wasn’t into lies and deceit, never had been, and while I didn’t think that’s what Yannick was doing, there was still something niggling at me other than my own misgivings over the few hours we’d spent naked together. His confession about not having
