Page 112 of Falling for You
‘Yeah, but,’ I shrug, feeling my face burn, ‘that’s like the odd thing.’
She looks at me for a moment, narrowing her eyes. ‘Well,’ she says eventually. ‘I guess we need to celebrate, then!’ She pushes herself to her feet and makes her way back to the kitchen.
‘What are you doing?’ I call after her.
‘Champagne!’ she shouts back at me. ‘I’m sure we have some somewhere.’
‘It’s not even nine in the morning!’ I laugh.
I hear her tut and I roll my eyes, trying to shake the uneasiness that’s filling my body. I open my laptop as my phone vibrates and a message from an unknown number pops onto my screen.
Hi, Annie! My name is Max, Stevie gave me your number, we work in the clubs together (I’m a queen!). He said you made his costume, I’d love to work with you. Are you free this week for a coffee and chat?
I look down at the message, my skin feeling too small for my body. Normally, a message like this would fire me up. I’d be straight on the phone, and then spend hours all week designing and creating the perfect costume. But now, I just feel numb. If anything, I feel as though I could burst into tears.
‘Oh,’ Pam calls, breaking me out of my thoughts. ‘Isuppose I’ll ask Rodney to get some paperwork drawn up.’ She pokes her head around the door to the kitchen. ‘If you’re sure about this, Annie?’
I tuck my phone away, switching it to silent.
‘I’m sure.’
‘I don’t like this,’ Penny says, her eyes narrowed at me, ‘I don’t like this at all.’
I laugh, folding up another jumper and placing it in a box.
Pam gave me some time off before starting my new job, and it’s the week before the three of us leave our perfect little flat. So, instead of sitting around feeling sorry for myself and panicking about where I was going to live, I decided to go home and spend a week with my parents. I could give the clothes I made to Mum (after speaking to Pam, I couldn’t bring myself to drop them at a charity shop, never to see them again), and spend some time looking at flats online and working out my finances with Dad. Because that’s what dads are for, right?
But it does mean that I had to tell Tanya and Penny that I was moving out a week early. Which, needless to say, did not go down well.
‘Well, I don’t like it either,’ I say, trying to sound pragmatic. ‘But it just makes sense. If it were up to me then I’d stay in this flat with you both until we were eighty.’
‘Me too.’
I hit Penny with a pillow as she sticks her bottom lip out at me. ‘Shut up,’ I say. ‘You’re excited to live with Mike, and I’m excited for you! He’s great.’
‘He won’t be able to talk to me about my periods.’
‘He will if he’s a real man.’
‘Right!’ Tanya says, marching into my room with her label maker in one hand and a roll of packing tape in the other. ‘How can I help?’
‘What are you doing?’ Penny turns to her accusingly.
Tanya blinks back. ‘What?’
‘You’rehelpingher!’ Penny says incredulously. ‘You’re helping her move out a week early. We should be locking her in her room and stealing her purse so she can’t leave.’
I place a stack of books in a box. Obviously, I’m not planning on taking all my things with me on the train down to the Cotswolds. Paddington is bad enough as it is. But I’m trying to pack everything up, so when Mum and Dad come up with me at the weekend we can move out in some form of order. I owe it to them after they turned up to move me out of university in third year and found me asleep, unpacked, hungover, with absolutely no idea what they were doing there.
I just thank the lord there wasn’t anybody I had to stuff out of a bathroom window.
‘It’s just a label maker,’ Tanya says in a small voice. ‘Oh!’ she adds, spotting a Marian Keyes book. ‘Can I have this? Have you read it?’
‘Sure.’ I hand it to her.
‘You’ll have to finish it by Friday,’ Penny says stroppily.
‘Or you can post it back to me,’ I say.
