Page 97 of The Wedding Pact
Chapter 72
August
At that moment, actually, August was sleeping. It was one in the morning in the UK, and August had spent her Saturday doing two things she couldn’t have even imagined doing a few months ago.
One was that during the week she had landed her first audiobook to record in her new booth – an eerie thriller – and today was the day she’d been planning to get started. Or, get started again, because she only realised after five chapters in the day before that her jewellery was making a load of background tinkles in an otherwise tense scene and she had to remove it all and start over.
And two was that she spent the day hanging out with the landlady and her son.
Moments before shutting the door of her booth on Saturday morning and closing out the sounds of the world, August had heard Abe on the stairs with his mum, a full week after she’d last seen him. August dived from the booth, leaving behind the audiobook and oh-so-subtly zoomed from her flat to run into them as they descended.
Mrs Haverley was slow, gripping the railing with the determination of someone who might bite your head clean off and spit it down the hill if you so much as muttered the suggestion of a chair lift being installed. Abe walked beside her, carrying her bag, holding an arm aloft in case she needed it. Mrs Haverley looked up at the sound of August tumbling out of her door below them. ‘Is that August or Callie?’ she barked, keeping her eyes on the stairs.
Abe glanced down and met August’s eye, a smile spreading across his face that she echoed. ‘Hello,’ he said, greeting her with a warm tone, like hot chocolate.
‘Hey, welcome back,’ she replied.
‘Oi,’ Mrs Haverley hissed at her son, not very quietly. ‘She’s married, you know. Now give me that arm.’
‘Mum, I know,’ Abe cried, and August held back a chuckle. ‘We’re heading down into town, to the Fashion Museum. Mum wants me to pick her out a funeral gown.’
‘I do not, stupid boy.’ She thwacked him one, but August could hear the gentle teasing in both of their voices. Mrs Haverley rounded the staircase onto her landing at that moment and looked her up and down, taking in her lime green leggings, baggy grey sweatshirt with huge Disney castle motif, and neon yellow hoop earrings. ‘You look like a girl who appreciates … fashion … would you care to come with?’
‘Oh,’ August tugged on her sweater. ‘I think I’m actually very unfashionable, but what I do appreciate is colour.’
‘Then you’ll enjoy the frocks, let me tell you,’ Mrs Haverley said, and without a pause, she continued her descent and barked, ‘Come along.’
August glanced at Abe who shrugged and continued after his mother down the stairs, but when she didn’t move he turned back and whispered with a smirk, ‘Come along!’
She didn’t feel at all dressed for a fashion museum, and she really had some work to do, but after only a moment’s dilly-dallying August grabbed her coat and her ankle boots, and hopped down the stairs after them.
‘Were you going somewhere?’ Abe asked as the three of them took a slow walk down Elizabeth Street towards the town.
‘When? Now? Am I not coming with you?’ August asked.
‘No, before. You looked like you were just leaving your flat before we accosted you.’
‘Oh right. Erm. No, I was just going to run outside and see what the temperature was like.’ What a lame excuse – Abe knew full well she had windows in her flat.
‘Right,’ he answered. ‘How’s Flynn getting on in Japan?’
‘Flynn is in Japan?’ Mrs Haverley shrieked as if she’d never heard such madness. ‘That’s the other side of the world! Has he left you?’
‘No, no,’ August replied, keeping her eyes forward. ‘His family lives out there and he was taking a business trip, so … ’
‘When will he be home?’
‘Another couple of weeks, actually.’
Mrs Haverley tutted, but didn’t follow it up with any more comments, so perhaps she hadn’t quite known why she’d done so any more than the rest of them.
‘Have you been all right?’ Abe asked, seeming to choose his words carefully.
August waved him away. ‘Yeah, fine. How are you? How was your week in London?’
‘All right, same old. I went on a Jack the Ripper walking tour on Wednesday evening.’
‘You did?’ asked August. ‘I played one of his victims once, in an am-dram play on the street in Whitechapel. It was quite gory, really, now I think about it.’
