Page 4 of Change My Mind
I paused for a moment. This was the first time Vivienne had mentionedwhoI would be living with. I’d also not asked because the prospect of a flatmate was just too good to pass up. It could have been anyone.
I knew Vivi had daughters. I recognised her and her husband (and my new boss), Darren, as the parents of Adrienne Henry. We had crossed paths on the occasional parents’ evenings because Adrienne and I had been in the same year at ‘partner’ secondary schools. Hers was all girls, mine all boys. Come GCSEs, we started mixing classes, and Adrienne had been in all of my core ones—English, maths, and science. And also, history.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that Adrienne Henry hated me for the two years that we spent in the same classes.
“Adrienne?” I said dumbly. There was no reason for her or Darren to remember me. We’d never spoken, and I had the mother of all growth spurts when I was eighteen and filled out, so I didn’t look the same as I did when I was fifteen. I didn’t even have the same last name anymore.
“Yes, my daughter. She went to Montreal for uni, and it kept a hold on her for the last twelve years. But my baby is coming back home,” Vivi said, a soft smile on her face.
It shouldn’t hurt. The way everything about Vivi seemed to radiate love and warmth at just the thought of her daughter. But it did.
It hurt in a visceral kind of way that had me feeling like I was free-falling without a parachute.
It had been so long since anyone had loved me in that way.
It had also been a while since I’d felt this unmoored by it.
I added ‘find a new therapist’ to my mental to-do list. Somewhere down the bottom.
I cleared my throat.
“When does she get back?”
“Not until the middle of next month. Oh, maybe I should give you her number. It might be nice for you to get to know each other better before you share a living space. I’m sure you two will get on just fine, but if you don’t, at least you could maybe figure that out before she lands back in London.”
I choked on a laugh that I turned into a cough to mask how ridiculous I found that idea.
I could still see the flare of her nostrils whenever I got something right before she had the chance, or the smug look on her face when she beat me. I remembered the way her hands gesticulated when she was really into whatever argument she made, and how she flicked her braids over her shoulders in annoyance whenever she noticed I got a better mark than she did on a test or in an essay.
I knew a lot of minor, arguably stupid, things about Adrienne already, including that no one riled her up more than me.
But Vivi might be right.
We might get on just fine now because we were adults with fully formed frontal cortexes who knew unequivocally that grades weren’t everything, and we could laugh about those years we competed with one another.
Or, we were going to learn that you never really stopped being a teenager on some level, that we’d jump back into her hating me while I pointlessly had the world’s biggest crush on the smartest woman I had ever met.
I wasn’t sure which option was worse.
Four
ADDIE
“And I’ve mentioned that you will have a flatmate?” Mum asked tentatively, in our first language, French, like she was worried this would be the thing that stopped me from moving back. Yes, I had lived alone for the last few years, but Mum owned a flat within walking distance of Hampstead Heath and I only had to pay bills. And now, I would be sharing those with someone else. A flatmate wasfine.
“You’ve mentioned it. It’s still not a dealbreaker,” I said, also in French, as I threw some clothes into one of the three suitcases I had lying on my bedroom floor before dropping onto the floor cross-legged.
When I thought about the prospect of moving back across the Atlantic, it terrified me. I had formed a life for myself in Montreal since I left my parents’ house the summer I turned eighteen, and so I assumed that I would have accumulated a lot of stuff. Especially in the last five years, having been fortunate enough to call one place home. But once I started making a plan of action, I realised that there wasn’tthatmuch that I had any significant attachment to outside of my bedroom.
“It’s the new chef at Vivi’s. I’ve given him your number, so you can get to know each other before you live together. He moved from Manchester but is a London native. He’s a nice young man, Eli Jenkins.”
My eye twitched at that name. I hadn’t crossed paths with anyone called Eli for years. A fairly impressive feat considering it had been fourteen years since I’d shared a classroom with someone called Elijah.
My Elijah had always taken great offence to any attempts to shorten his name, so naturally, I called him Eli all the time. Not one of my finest moments, but I was fifteen, and he was annoying. My Elijah also had the surname Vincent.
Calling Elijah Vincent my nemesis sounded petty, and at nearly thirty, Iknewviewing him as such was maybe the pettiest thing I had ever done. His only slight against me was being just as smart as I was.
I was the youngest of five incredibly intelligent girls, and I was also the smartest of us all, despite them having two years on me. I was, quite frankly, a dick about that fact. Being gifted and academically talented (a note I got every parents’ evening) wasmy thing.No one could beat me.
