Page 8 of Match Point

‘Hailey, I—’

I’m interrupted by a crackling noise followed by classical hold music. Closing my eyes in despair, I slump against the counter and run a hand through my hair. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. This CANNOT BE HAPPENING.

I jump at the sound of the front door slamming. Creeping out the kitchen, I peer into the living room to find it empty. I breathe a sigh of relief. Kieran must have seen sense and decided to come back later. At least I’ve got that jerk out my hair.

‘Miss Hendrix?’ Hailey says, coming back on the line after a couple of minutes.

I grip the phone tightly. ‘Yes, hi, I’m here.’

‘My manager isn’t available to talk right now, but he’s going to give you a call to offer a full explanation and answer all your questions. Once again, we apologise for this inconvenience and hope this won’t affect your booking with us again in the future. Thank you for your understanding.’

She hangs up.

Now what am I going to do?

2

This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. I’m supposed to be getting away from London so I can finally feel in control again, start feeling like I’m doing something with my life rather than wasting away in a flat on my own with no real job and no purpose in a city where I have no friends other than Iris. After a terrible start to the year, this was supposed to be the turning point. I needed this escape. I was going to come back to the city feeling refreshed and excited for whatever lay ahead. With my graphic novel underway, I was going to apply for jobs at art galleries and publishers, jobs that I’d feel passionate about. I had a plan.

And now it’s gone to shit.

I let myself have a moment or two to wallow, moving my half-filled case and lying face down across the bed to scream into my duvet, before I tell myself to get my arse up and start looking for somewhere else to go for the next few weeks. There has to be somewhere else I can go in the Lake District – there’s always last-minute deals, surely I’ll be able to snag one.

Setting my laptop up at the kitchen table, I start looking up other companies that rent houses in Keswick, but everything I find is completely booked up for the summer. I widen my search, but have no luck. No cottages, no apartments, no suitable hotel rooms available across the next four weeks. Pushing my laptop back, I groan, folding forwards and resting my forehead on the table. This is a disaster. A complete and utter disaster.

Choking back tears, I know the one person who I need to talk to right now is Iris.

It’s strange to think that our friendship is still relatively new. When Jonah left and I could barely leave my bed, let alone the house, it was Iris who came over uninvited and sat with me while I cried, who listened to me talk over and over about my heartbreak and stroked my hair and said everything was going to be okay. She ordered me expensive takeaways that I could only pick at, too upset to eat, but she never made me feel bad about how much money and food I must have wasted. She kept coming over whenever she could to check in on me. At my absolute lowest, she made me feel less alone.

That meant everything.

I’ve always tried to pretend like I don’t mind not having a family I can depend on. When I was at school and I’d go round to friends’ houses and see how much their mums and dads did for them, I’d tell myself that it was good to be responsible. I was proud to be self-sufficient and cook for myself because my mum wasn’t there when I got home and I had no idea where she was or who she was with. It was a good thing to learn how to take care of myself. I would be the one who had the advantage in life when we left school and were sent off into the big wide world. That’s what I told myself.

I almost believed it.

And while I’d had a lot of anger at my father for leaving me with Mum when he knew about her growing addiction issues, I’d learnt to handle it, thanks to therapy. I’d learnt to communicate my anger and I’d learnt to forgive him. Things are fine between us, we just don’t have anything in common and he’s emotionally distant from me. On the rare occasions we talk, it’s stilted and dry, neither of us ever saying anything important. But I was grateful to him for offering me financial help when I really needed it. That was his way of showing he cared, and I accepted that.

This year has felt like a test. I know you shouldn’t depend on someone else as much as I did with Jonah, but when you don’t have family, you want to create one and that’s what I thought we were doing. He was everything to me. I desperately wanted to be everything to him, so I accepted his finely tuned criticisms, and resolved to be what he needed, no matter the cost to myself. His ultimate rejection was earth-shattering. I’ve never felt more worthless and undeserving. That’s why Iris would never fully understand how much she helped just by being there. Just by checking in and letting me know that someone cared, that was the glimmer of light I needed to pull me back from misery to see sense and regain a determination to put one foot in front of the other and carry on muddling through.

Slowly, I’ve spent the last six months finding myself again. I’ve looked after myself, bought nice clothes and products, had my hair and my nails done when I wanted. I started listening to the feel-good pop songs that Jonah always sneered at, and those songs made me feel so happy and uplifted that I would physically shudder at the thought of being with someone who could be so miserable, pompous and try-hard that they would loudly dismiss and demean such joyful music. Life is too short to be so pretentious.

I’ve proudly got to the stage where I want to try to create my comic book. Jonah made it clear that I didn’t have what it takes, but he’s been wrong about so many things that I was hoping he might be wrong about me. I can’t give up on this now, not when I’ve come so far. I need to make this work and even though it looks like everything is falling to pieces, I don’t want to give up quite yet.

I just need someone else to tell me that too.

Iris answers after the first ring.

‘Hey, Flora,’ she says brightly, music and people chatting in the background. ‘Are you on your way already?’

‘It’s all gone wrong.’

‘What? Hang on. I can’t really hear you, one second.’ I wait as she moves and the noise in the background dims. ‘Sorry, I’ve headed out to the pub for lunch and it’s busy in that beer garden. What did you say?’

‘The roof collapsed.’

‘WHAT? Oh my God, are you okay?!’

‘Not this one. The Keswick one.’

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