Chapter 5 Mia #2
“On the contrary, love. Many, many times. My husband, you see, was gay. By marrying, we entered freedom.”
“Oh,” I say. “That’s fortunate.” I shift slightly in my chair. I don’t like to talk about romance or intimacy.
“Why don’t you open the mysterious box?” she asks.
“Because I intend to throw it away,” I say. “I don’t want any gifts, let alone from—um—her.”
“The lady with the Rolls-Royce,” she says, and I need a black hole to vanish in, right now.
“Don’t you worry,” she says and grasps my arm. “Who knows what will come of it?”
“I don’t want anything to come off it,” I say, take a sip of tea and add, “Mess is what’s coming off it, disruption, chaos.” Words just fall out of my mouth. Why am I like this? Divulging all my secrets to a stranger.
“I am eighty-seven, darling, allow me to tell you, the one thing I have learned in life. The most beautiful mornings are the ones after a heavy storm.”
I rub over my eyes with my free hand, and the other one keeps Pebbles on my lap. She sits there very interested in exploring the new territory with her eyes, and only waits for the millisecond I am distracted enough for her to launch off.
“Why don’t I open it?” says the old lady cheerfully.
“Sure,” I say.
She grabs her glasses from her head, slips them on, and slides open the box, revealing a book lying on satin.
“The Gifts of Imperfection,” she reads aloud. “Brené Brown. Oh, and it’s signed by the author with a personal note,” she says and holds it for me to read.
I grab the book, Pebbles takes her chance, and gone she is, but I don’t care right now.
Dear Victoria, thank you for our friendship. With love, Brené. I read it in my mind and stare blankly at the words. Of all the books she could have gifted me, it had to be this. A book by the woman I admire, the only book of hers I have yet to read.
My eyes wander to the envelope, and I reach for it hesitantly.
I pull out the card with a very playful, cursive handwriting, written in ink.
An ordinary life does not equal insignificance.
— Victoria
PS. Borrowed, not gifted.
Such well-chosen words. A smile hushes over my face. How considerate. This is not a gift to throw at me for the sake of giving; it's to give me something I can actually enjoy.
Does it frighten me a bit how much she knows or suspects about me? Absolutely. But she gave me a book I dearly wanted to read, and she entrusted me with the version from her personal collection.
“Not so bad, huh?” says the old lady, and rips me from my thoughts. I have completely forgotten where I am.
“Very considerate,” I say carefully, and the old lady smiles as she turns to fumble something in a drawer. Meanwhile, I turn the card, only to find a phone number written on it.
I don’t know what to make of it.
My mind is a mess.
A real mess.
Where is she getting at?
“Here, dearest,” says my neighbour and closes the drawer. “Key to your flat, Isabella gave it to me months ago after she locked herself out the third time in a week.”
I gape at her with wide eyes.
“You could’ve told me that before,” I say, “Would have calmed me down a bit.”
“I could,” she says, “But you wouldn’t have joined me for tea then.”
I don’t know if I am happy, sad or relieved, probably all three. I take the key.
“Well, now I have to find my cat,” I say.
Pebbles isn’t hard to find. She sits on an old armchair in the living room and presses her nose against an aquarium.
I grab her, she hisses, and we’re back to normal. I take my package, the letter, and the old lady opens the door for me.
“Just knock and ask,” I say, “Whenever you’d like to have some tea.”
“Oh, I’d love to,” she says cheerfully. “I have to know how your story ends.”
I laugh. “We’ll see to that. I don’t think there even is a story.”
I am pretty sure I am her highlight of the week, and I can’t help but wonder if I’ll be the same one day. Old and lonely, forced to lure in neighbours to have some change in my life.
No, I don’t think so, I tell myself in my head. As long as I have books and cats, I will be more than happy.
Bella’s father calls me the moment I am about to make myself an early dinner to tell me that she is awake.
I reach the hospital half an hour later. It takes me ages to find the room, because I am too proud to ask anyone for help. I don’t want to bother the people who work here.
I knock on the door when I find it, and Bella shouts.
“Come in!”
“Bells,” I say when I walk inside. She’s sitting on her bed, looks pale, and yet she has some rosy cheeks. The room smells like a bar.
“Hi, Mr Thorne,” I say quietly to Bella’s father, who’s standing at the window, apparently on a call. He always is.
“What the hell,” I whisper when I hug her.
She laughs.
It’s the appeasing laugh we do when parents are present.
“How are you?” I ask Bella as I sit down on her bed.
Bella signals to me with her eyes not to dare ask any questions, so I don’t.
“I have to tell you something,” I say, to get the conversation in a different direction.
“Does it have anything to do with Victoria Fitzroy?” Bella asks, ready for me to spill the tea.
I nod.
“Dad,” says Bella. “Can you get me a milkshake or something from the cafeteria? Anything with a bit of sustenance?”
Mr Thorne nods and leaves.
“Tell me,” Bella orders.
“You tell me first,” I say. “What the hell happened?”
“That guy,” Bella says, her voice almost indifferent. “Friends of his came over; they brought some party gifts.”
“Was it cocaine? Since when do you do drugs, Bells?”
“Yeah, well, sometimes it’s nice, gets my mind off things. I told the police that I was drunk, and the idiot made me take it—“
“Bella!” I shout. “You can’t lie—“
“Oh, I can. My mother will freak if she knows I took it on my own. Anyway. There were neurotoxins mixed in there to stretch it.”
I am speechless.
“That idiot died from it. Gave him a bj and he just collapsed. That’s when my mind got all fuzzy.”
Horror strikes through me as I stare at her with wide eyes.
“You look like you have seen a ghost,” Bella says.
“Because I bloody have,” I say. “You nearly died. I saw that dead guy—“
A shudder runs down my spine from the thought of it.
“Guess I owe you one,” Bella says, casually, completely unaffected. And she might be. With Bella, the big emotions surface months after they happened, after a night of too much alcohol.
“Let this be a lesson to you,” I tell her.
“Nah,” she says. “It was quite fun, best trip I ever had.”
“You almost died!”
“Yeah,” she says, and laughs. “Was quite the experience.”
I groan.
“Now, Victoria Fitzroy. Give me the tea,” Bella says, her eyes sparkling with excitement.
“She sent her driver with a gift,” I say. “A book I wanted dearly, from her personal collection, with a note,” I say and add hesitantly, “With her number on it.”
“Ohhhhhh,” says Bella knowingly, a grin appearing on her face. “And did you call her?”
“Of course not,” I say.
“Miaaaaa,” she says.
“What do you want me to tell her?” I snap at her.
“You could start with a thank you and see what comes of it?”
“And what should come of it?”
“You could finally meet someone, a woman.”
“She is bloody sixty!” I say.
“So what? Who cares, Mia? I fuck with people twenty years older than her.”
“But I don’t want to fuck. I want love. Romance.
Friendship. Peace. Quietness. Something low-key.
That woman is the opposite of everything.
She is a public figure. People recognise her.
She disrupts my peace, and she owns a strange club where people do god knows what. I don’t want anything to do with it!”
Bella grins and cocks an eyebrow.
“You seem awfully worked up for someone who is not interested.”
“Urgh!” I shout because whatever I say, it’ll all be used against me.
“Mia,” Bella says. “Just try it and dip a toe into the waters. This is your chance. You are being courted by the woman everybody wants.”
“She’s not courting me—“
“Are you bloody stupid?” asks Bella, and yes, I might be.
I get up and get a bag with two muffins from Bella’s favourite bakery I stopped at on my way here.
“Btw, your mother is on the way,” I say. “Did your dad tell you?”
Now it is Bella’s turn to groan.
“He didn’t,” she says with a growl.
“Here,” I say and hand her the bag. “Emotional support muffins.”
Bella laughs. “You’re the best.”
“Do you need anything?” I ask her as I aim to leave.
“Can’t you stay when my mother arrives?” she asks. “She’s so much nicer when you’re around.”
Yeah, another thing our mothers share.
“Sure,” I say and put my bag and coat back.
I watch Bella eat the muffins. She offers me a piece, but I don’t want anything. Mr Thorne returns with a milkshake.
I retell how I got the gift, and Bella laughs hard. I tell her about the neighbour, because we can’t talk about anything else.
“Write her,” Bella says. “What do you have to lose?”
“Everything,” I say.
“Not from a thank you.”
Bella is right. I should at least say thank you.
So I take my phone to type a message.
Bella smirks at me the entire time.
“Don’t,” I hiss at her. My finger hovers over the send button.
“Do it, Mia,” she says.
“I’ll hold you responsible for every mess this causes,” I say as I press send.
“I can deal with that,” she says. “But I know it will be epic.”
“Yeah, epic mess will.”
“Nah,” Bella says and pulls me close. “You’ll see. Growth and all.”
“How about you grow some responsibility?” I ask, making a face.
Bella laughs. “Nah, way too much fun,” she says. At that moment, the door opens, and Bella’s mother enters with an angry look on her face.
Well, that’ll be fun. I am just so glad that this is not my mother.