Page 112 of One Summer

‘You wanted me to be settled down by now, and married to Max,’ I say.

‘No, we didn’t,’ Mum says, aghast. ‘We were delighted when you split up with Max. We both thought he was awful.’

‘What? I thought you loved Max? You kept asking if we were thinking about getting hitched.’

‘Only because we were worried that you’d take it into your head to run off to Las Vegas or something,’ she says. ‘We knew he wasn’t the one for you when he binned those old curtains you loved so much. Controlling git.’

‘Mum!’ I say, laughing through my tears.

‘We just worry about you, Lindy, and want to see you settled and happy,’ my dad says. ‘We sensed there was something wrong with your relationship with Max, but we didn’t want to pry. We were dreading you telling us you were engaged.’

Max wasn’t the one for me. They knew it, and so did I.

But Caleb? I’d have settled down with him. We might have even been happy.

I can feel myself beginning to cry again.

‘Are you missing your snakes?’ Dad asks, worried.

‘A bit,’ I say, thinking of the fright Cedric gave me when he slithered out of his vivarium and went wandering around the house. It feels weird that I’ll never hang out with him again. We’d got into the habit of listening to podcasts together, him curled up in my lap or inside my dressing gown, and it felt weirdly comforting to have him there.

‘Well, at least you have Ted to keep you company until his owners get back from their travels.’

‘I can’t believe I’m never going back to Loor again. It started to feel like home. I know I was only there a few months, but it just felt right.’

‘It’s okay, darling,’ Mum says. ‘You stay here with us for as long as you need. And who knows what the future might hold?’

AUGUST

Ninety-Five

Home

For the first time since I hit adolescence, I actually enjoy spending time with my parents.

I finally find myself motivated to work on some of my jewellery designs. Part of my creative block was fear of failing to get any stockists to take them, but now that I’m here with my parents, I have flow, and the designs for the sea glass gems I’ve collected on Loor spring out of my fingertips onto my sketchpad.

I feel a pang of guilt as I remember how I left the island. I never gave Caleb a chance to explain. I never got closure. But he should have told me what was going on. We had feelings for each other. Why did he choose to hide so much instead of trusting me with the truth?

Desperate, I channel Betty and pull up the fake Wordle app on my phone, looking for inspiration. I’ll do three games and let them guide my next move.

The first word is Bound.

Island-bound? On Billy Bound’s boat? Maybe it means I should be going back to Loor?

Love-bound? Uggh, yes.

Bound in chains of my own emotional limitations? Tick, tick, tick.

Okay, so ‘Bound’ is relevant but not diagnostic.

Next game. The word is Pulse.

I check my pulse and it’s racing. Again, still relevant but not exactly definitive.

My third word is Happy.

I stare at it. It seems to speak for itself. In a mocking kind of way, because I’m not happy. Maybe I could have been happy if Caleb didn’t have a wife, but he does, and she’s beautiful and funny and buys him uncool clothes that he wears anyway. That’s love. That’s happiness.

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