Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
Now
Mae hated how natural it looked—Callie, in her living room, holding a mug. Twelve years, and she still fit too easily.
‘All right,’ Mae said, fixing her attention on the mug instead of Callie’s face. ‘So, you don’t care if I say no to another shoot day?’
‘No,’ Callie said. ‘But I hope you’re not just saying no because Neil’s a tosser. Or because I’m…’ She trailed off.
‘That’s nothing to do with it,’ Mae said flatly.
Callie blinked. ‘Okay. But… what about the money?’
Mae shrugged. ‘What about it? I’ve already gotten three and a half grand out of Neil.’
‘You could get more now,’ Callie pressed. ‘He’s on the ropes. And God knows he cheaps out everywhere else. He can afford to be shafted by you.’
‘I don’t care about that,’ Mae lied.
‘Mae, you’re running a small rural bakery during a recession. Of course you care,’ Callie said plainly.
Mae felt heat crawl up her neck. ‘That’s none of your business,’ she snapped, louder than she meant. ‘Just because you’re rich and fancy now doesn’t mean—’
Callie laughed.
Mae stiffened. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘You think I’m rich?’ Callie asked, still laughing.
Mae scowled. ‘You’re rolling in it. Don’t bullshit me.’
The laugh faded, replaced by something brittle. ‘If only. At this point, my “reality career” is three sponsored posts a month and praying no one notices they’re all for dodgy vitamin gummies.’
Mae frowned despite herself. ‘But you’re never off the telly. Second Choice Island, Coupled & Sunburned, Marriage Speedrun…’
Callie raised an eyebrow. ‘You can just reel off my credits?’
Mae cleared her throat. ‘I don’t watch any of it. I just hear about it. Jesus, a few years ago, people wouldn’t shut the fuck up about you at the bakery. I nearly put up a sign banning mention of you.’
Callie laughed. ‘Yeah, well, that was a few years ago.’ Her eyes dropped, not quite meeting Mae’s.
‘Then I just… stopped. Couldn’t get out of bed.
Couldn’t deal with people online deciding whether I’d gained weight or lost it or had a nose job or should get one.
’ She shrugged, small and helpless. ‘Depression doesn’t look very cute on camera. ’
Mae felt her anger drain away, replaced with something messier. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘No one did,’ Callie said quietly. ‘I’ve been trying to claw my way back ever since.
This show’s meant to keep me afloat. Otherwise, my landlord starts slipping “friendly reminders” through the door again.
’ A humourless smile. ‘I’m always one bad month away from moving back into Mum’s box room and doing cameos for twenty quid.
’ She sighed. ‘Not to mention the woman in question always has her hand out.’
Mae’s stomach tightened. ‘You give her money?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she says she needs it.’
‘But she’s got Brian now,’ Mae said. ‘She’s not a single mother anymore.’
Callie snorted softly. ‘She was never really that, was she?’
Mae hated that sympathy crept in anyway. ‘No. I suppose she wasn’t.’
‘She treated me like a spouse,’ Callie said, tired now. ‘Which apparently means I pay alimony.’
Mae muttered, ‘That woman,’ before she could stop herself.
This was the danger zone. Sympathy was a gateway drug that led to warmth. Mae felt sure that Callie would use this opportunity to slide in, be chummy, maybe try to reminisce about the good old days.
But Callie didn’t do that.
‘Anyway,’ Callie said, changing gears completely into something brisker and more businesslike, ‘that’s why I’m telling you, from bitter experience, that you don’t turn down easy money.’
Mae swallowed. ‘I just don’t want them in the bakery again. It’s chaos. They move everything. They get flour everywhere—’
Callie raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s a bakery. There’s always flour everywhere.’
Mae glared. ‘I hate the bother. It throws off the whole day. I don’t want to deal with it.’
Callie nodded slowly, indulgent. ‘Sure. Okay.’
Mae bristled. ‘Don’t do that.’
‘Do what?’
‘That look. Like you know better.’
‘Okay.’
‘I just don’t want it,’ she said more quietly. ‘That’s all.’
‘Mae,’ Callie said gently. ‘If this is about me, you can just say.’
Mae’s throat closed. She shook her head too hard. ‘It’s not.’
‘Okay.’
‘It’s not,’ she repeated, cheeks burning.
‘Mae…’ Callie hesitated. ‘If it means anything, I’m sorry—’
‘Don’t,’ Mae said, sharp as a warning.
Callie froze.
‘This is exactly why I don’t want all of this back in my bakery,’ Mae went on, voice tight. ‘Because I don’t want to talk about that.’
She expected Callie to retreat. She’d been careful with Mae since the moment she came back, like one wrong word might shatter something fragile.
But Callie’s mouth tightened, her jaw firming in a way that usually meant trouble. Her eyes sharpened. The easy, careful mask she had worn since she came back had cracked. ‘Well, maybe I do want to talk about it,’ she snapped, voice suddenly raised.
Mae’s pulse roared in her ears.
So that was how this was going to go.
Back Then
By the time Mae finished getting dressed for her date with Callie, her bedroom looked as if three different women had had three separate breakdowns in it.
She went with jeans in the end. And the nice blouse. Not the really nice blouse—that felt like tempting fate—but the soft blue one that made her look, hopefully, like someone who might go on a date on purpose.
She stared at herself in the mirror and tugged and pulled the outfit to its maximum presentability. ‘You’re going on a date with Callie,’ she told her reflection, as if it didn’t already know. ‘And she asked. Practically begged. You’re not the one who needs to be nervous, so just calm down.’
Her reflection did not calm down.
Mae took out her phone and read the message again.
It’s your afternoon off on Thursday, right? Thoughts on a picnic? You, me, our tree, no witnesses. x
Mae had stared at the words ‘our tree’ until they blurred.
It was just their same old tree. Nothing was so madly different. Except that now they might kiss under it.
Mae’s stomach flipped.
She grabbed her bag and shoved in her keys and phone. ‘I’m off, Dad!’ she yelled down.
‘Yep!’ he yelled back.
Outside, the afternoon was as blistering as it had been for weeks. Mae prayed not to sweat through her deodorant. It had never been more important that she not smell like a teenager. She needed to smell like a woman who was fully in charge of her sweat glands.
She gave herself one last subtle sniff as she reached the tree next to the pond. Nothing disastrous rose to meet her nostrils.
Callie was already there. Oh God, had she seen the sniff?
‘I saw that,’ Callie said.
‘No, you didn’t,’ Mae said.
Callie rose to meet her. Mae didn’t know if she was going to hug her or kiss her on the cheek. What did they normally do? Mae wasn’t sure. She’d never had to think about it.
But then Callie leant in and did a big, exaggerated sniff. ‘Pretty good.’
Mae swatted her on the shoulder. But she wasn’t really mad. She was grateful for some normality between them.
Mae saw that Callie had already laid out a blanket under the tree. There was a rucksack beside it, bulging in a suspiciously lumpy way.
Callie sat down. ‘You look nice,’ she said, patting the spot beside her.
Mae sat. ‘So do you,’ she said, because Callie did. She was also in jeans but paired with a T-shirt that she’d always said made her arms look hot. Which it did.
Which meant Callie was trying to look hot for her. For Mae. Christ. Mae didn’t know how she was gonna survive this.
Callie’s smile went crooked. ‘Can I try that greeting again?’ she leaned forward.
Mae leaned awkwardly towards her. They settled on a quick, awkward side-hug that went on a fraction too long for ‘just friends’ and a fraction too short for ‘it is now fine for me to casually mount you’.
‘Hi,’ Callie said when they separated.
‘Hi,’ Mae echoed, breathless.
Callie kept grinning at her and then seemed to realise it was going on too long. ‘Right. Got things to do.’ She turned to her bag. She began to unpack.
Mae glanced around her while Callie set to work, at the familiar village peeking beyond the hedge, the faint glimmer of the pond beside them, and the caterpillars dropping out of the tree every so often. It was all just the same.
The only thing that had changed was the girl sitting next to her. And really, not even that. So why did it feel like Mae was sitting on the moon?
Callie cleared her throat. ‘Right. Before we begin, I’d like to state for the record that I have attempted romance.’
Mae eyed the array in front of them.
There was a multipack of crisps, two sausage rolls in their plastic coffin, a loaf of sliced white that had seen better days, a sweating tub of coleslaw, and something that looked like an approximation of hummus.
‘Goodness,’ Mae said. ‘You really have.’
‘I know,’ Callie said. ‘It’s a sad situation.’
‘It’s nice,’ Mae lied.
‘In my defence,’ Callie went on, ‘every nice thing available in this village comes from your bakery, and I couldn’t exactly come in and ask your dad.’
Mae’s heart squeezed inconveniently. ‘You could’ve.’
‘Yeah, I thought about it. But I wasn’t sure… what you’d told him.’
‘Oh.’
Callie paused. ‘Have you told him? About us?’
‘Told him? I’ve only just told me!’ Mae exclaimed.
Callie laughed. ‘Well, you’ll have to be understanding about the limits then.’
She ripped the multipack open with a flourish and held it out. ‘Three separate flavours. Go nuts.’
Mae accepted some salt and vinegar, trying not to laugh. ‘I assume this is from the mini-mart?’ Mae asked.
‘Yes,’ Callie said with a little embarrassed head dip. ‘I would have taken the bus to the supermarket, but I didn’t want any of my mother’s till buddies reporting to her about it. She’s a nosy mare. She’d have put two and two together.’
‘Thank you,’ Mae said sincerely. ‘For trying.’ Mae tore open the packet of crisps and popped one into her mouth.
It was stale.
She chewed slowly, looking at Callie, who was watching her with comically intense anxiety.
‘You don’t look happy,’ Callie demanded. ‘Is something wrong with the crisps?’
‘They’re texturally… interesting,’ Mae said.
Callie groaned, throwing herself back on the blanket. ‘I knew it. I’ve ruined everything.’
Mae put the crisp packet down. ‘This is… It’s sweet, Callie.’
Callie turned her head, peering at her suspiciously from the blanket. ‘Sweet?’
‘You put thought into this,’ Mae said. ‘You went out of your way. You tried not to drag my dad into it. You picked our tree.’
Callie’s gaze flicked to the branches above them, then back. ‘Our tree. Yeah. I thought since it’s overseen us at all our other stages, it should see this one too.’
‘You thought right,’ Mae told her.
Mae reached for one of the sausage rolls, more out of solidarity than desire, and took a bite.
It was, as expected, dreadful. ‘Mmm. Better than expected,’ Mae said. But her face must have betrayed her.
‘Oh God,’ Callie said, sitting up. ‘Is it that bad?’ Callie dropped her head into her hands. ‘Brilliant. I am officially the worst girlfriend in the world.’
Mae almost choked, and not just because of the dry pastry. ‘Girlfriend?’
‘Oh, God,’ Callie moaned, horrified. ‘It’s too soon for that, isn’t it? I don’t know why I said it. I think I’m having a breakdown. The pressure of planning a date… I’ve never done it before.’
‘Right,’ Mae said, a sudden decision snapping into place. ‘Stay there.’ She stood and brushed crumbs from her hands.
Callie looked up, alarmed. ‘What? Why? Are you leaving?’
‘I’m going to get real food,’ Mae said, scrambling to her feet. ‘Do not move. I’ll be ten minutes.’
‘You don’t have to—’
‘I know what I have to do,’ Mae said. ‘You tried, and it was sweet. But no one should have to eat this when the bakery’s ten minutes away.’
Callie stared at her, wide-eyed. ‘You’re coming back?’
Mae rolled her eyes, heart jolting at how small Callie sounded. ‘Yes, I’m coming back. Don’t eat anything else.’
She turned and headed back home, determined to rescue the date.