Page 28 of The Wedding Pact
She looked around. ‘Well, I don’t think I’m moving therewithyou. I’m pretty sure that’s why we broke up.’
James nodded, lingering on her doorstep.
‘Are you okay?’ August asked.
‘Yep,’ he said, taking the box. ‘Thanks for this. See you later.’ With that, he left, and August found herself wondering if Flynn was that weird.
Then she asked herself,Why are you comparing Flynn to James?
Chapter 20
August
It was move-in Monday and August was on Elizabeth Street before the sun had even had time to reach the top of the sky. Having enlisted the help of Steve and Bel to help her shift her boxes of stuff over before they started work, including the beautiful, and ginormous, jade velvet armchair she’d inherited from her grandma, she was now seated upon her throne on the opposite pavement, in front of the wall, gazing lovingly towards her new home.
A curtain twitched inside the building, and was then flung open. A blonde woman visibly jumped from behind the glass on seeing a stranger in an armchair staring up at her apartment.
August shuffled to try and make herself appear less creepy, and looked instead down the street, searching for signs of Flynn. When she glanced back towards the window, the curtains were firmly closed again.
There were four storeys to the townhouse: a top floor, with windows that angled themselves towards the sky and had a sort of stone balcony running across in front of them, then three levels of big, rectangular windows. Below that were the whispers of a basement level, peeping out from behind the eyelashes of the wrought iron railing. August didn’t know if that was a whole separate flat, or part of the ground floor dwellings. The flat she and Flynn were moving into was one floor up, nestled in the middle. It currently had sunshine beaming against the panes of glass.
The front door of the house opened a crack, and the blonde woman poked her head out. ‘Hello?’ she called towards August, sitting with her belongings.
August scrambled from the armchair and waved. ‘Hello! Sorry, I’m not a weirdo, I’m just moving in today.’
‘Are you August?’
‘I am!’ She waved again, for good measure. ‘I’m just waiting for my – my – my – Flynn, he’s bringing the rest of, um, our things.’
‘Great,’ said blondie-head, and her head disappeared back in the door, only to reappear – along with the rest of her – a moment later, carrying two mugs, a bag of caster sugar dangling from her mouth. She set the mugs down on top of one of August’s boxes and said, ‘Sugar?’
‘Oh, um, no, thank you. Thank you so much!’
‘No problem,’ said the woman, who August could now see was probably in her forties, athletic looking with a tan, dressed in floppy yoga pants and a Detroit Red Wings T-shirt. ‘I’m Callie, your neighbour. I live up there with my mum.’
‘Your mum isn’t Mrs Haverley, is she?’ August joked, checking that not everybody she ran into at Number Eighteen, Elizabeth Street was one of Mrs Haverley’s offspring.
‘No, no, though they get on like a house on fire, those two.’
August couldn’t imagine the grumpy Mrs Haverley having a roaring time with anyone, but okay.
Callie continued. ‘Mrs H’s great, she let me move into Mum’s spare room about a year ago after my marriage broke down. Mum needs a little extra help anyway, though she’d be pissed off if she heard me admitting that to you, so it’s our little secret. Mrs H lives on the top floor.’
August looked up, surprised, shielding her eyes from the sunlight and looking at the top level of the house, with its skyward-windows. ‘Oh. I didn’t realise she actually lived in the building.’ Oh no. This could make things a lot more awkward than she’d promised Flynn.
‘Oh yeah, she loves this place. We all want her to move down to the ground floor though and swap with the couple that live there. They’re more than happy to switch, at least they say they are, and Mrs H could do with less bloody steps to climb every day, but she’s stubborn as anything. Don’t tellherI told youthat.’
‘Okay,’ laughed August.
At that moment, Flynn appeared, walking up the hill towards them. He rolled a large suitcase behind him and wore a bulging rucksack on his back. Compared to August’s great pile of clobber he looked like he was just going on a weekend away.
August put down her mug and reached for Flynn, pulling him straight into a hug and whispering in his ear, ‘Go with it.’
‘Hi, darling!’ she then said out loud.
Flynn looked from August to Callie and replied, ‘Hello … sweetheart.’
‘Callie, this is Flynn, Flynn, this is one of our neighbours, Callie.’ She squeezed Flynn’s hand. ‘Callie lives in the flat above ours, and Mrs Haverley lives on the top floor. In there. In our building.’
