Chapter 3
Three
ELI
“And you’re sure that having a flatmate doesn’t bother you?
Not even a little bit? You can tell me if it does.
I can make other arrangements. We did offer this to you first.” Vivi asked this from the doorway of the kitchen, where she was taking a break from being the best landlord I had ever had by helping me move all my shit into an apartment she was letting me live in for peanuts.
Vivi had double, triple, quadruple checked with me about this flatmate situation every day since she had brought it up a week ago while I was packing my life in Manchester up.
I smiled as I plugged my coffee machine into its new home in London. “Positive, Vivi. I appreciate the concern, but my answer hasn’t changed. I can deal with a flatmate.”
The part I left unspoken was that I had felt insurmountable levels of relief when she had brought it up, surrounded by all the boxes that made up my life. There weren’t that many.
There was a lot that terrified me about moving back to London after so long away, but the main thing was that I was scared to live alone.
Adult life so far had meant that for most of it, I had other people in my living space.
It was comforting that there was always someone else’s energy around.
It made the transition from a hectic kitchen back home a lot easier.
There was an emptiness associated with walking into the darkness of a space that only you inhabited.
No ambient sound to let you know that someone was around.
No mumbled ‘hellos’ or ‘how are yous’. No shared meals or random conversations about the news or a neighbour or your days.
I’d been doing that for the last three months, and I hated it. Too much time with my own thoughts.
A flatmate was good. It was preferable. Especially now that I was back in London, which was both my home city and the one that haunted me.
“I’m so happy to hear you say that. Adrienne has so much to think about, what with moving back across the Atlantic, I thought it would be a good idea to take the pressure off her having to find somewhere to live.
I mean, there is always room for her at our house, but I know that she would prefer not to live with her parents and be a bit closer to her sister. ”
I paused for a moment. This was the first time Vivienne had mentioned who I 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.