Chapter 40
Chapter Forty
The next night at work, I go through the familiar motions, my head heavy with the lack of sleep.
I spent the night after the gala staring at the ceiling in my room as if solutions to my problems would float down at any moment.
Around me, a party thumped on from downstairs, like the entire city celebrated on Saturday night.
Instead of joining in, I sidestepped my new housemates and hid in my room.
I go to the back and fill up another wooden crate with Moet & Chandon champagne and head blindly around the corner leading to the doorway back to the bar. Which is when I collide with my boss, Alexander.
In the commotion, I drop the crate, which lands on its side in a dramatic, loud explosion of glass and fizz, soaking our trousers. Every bottle breaks. I freeze amid the broken glass.
Instantly, Alexander explodes too. His tone is haughty and crisp. “That’s the final straw, Matty. You’re fired—”
“I’m so sorry, it’s an accident.” Wide-eyed, I stare at him. “I can clean this up right away. I’ll pay for the champagne—”
It’s a lot of money. More than anything else, I want to make things right, even if it takes a good part of my pay. Fuck. I need this job. I can’t lose my job. Everything relies on this job.
“No.” Alexander stares me down and eviscerates me with his sharp gaze.
I gulp. “No?”
“Go home, Matty. Thank you kindly for your service this summer. We’ll send you final payment for your time.”
“I—”
“Now.”
Staring at the hardened expression of Alexander, who looms over me, I nod, my shoulders slumping. “Okay.”
Avoiding any further eye contact with him as my face burns in shame, I collect my light jacket over my arm and head out the back to avoid my coworkers at the bar. I’m sure Alexander wouldn’t want me traipsing through soggy and covered in glass. He must be so thrilled to finally get rid of me.
Going home on the tube, I feel sick to my stomach. London’s definitely not for me. I tried. I failed. When I get home by 10:00 p.m., nauseous and vibrating with nerves, I text my mum that I’m coming back home to Glynde the next day.
For good.
In the morning, on the verge of a panic attack, I hurriedly pack my two suitcases full once more, plus the two suits I own.
With my chest too tight to get a deep breath in, I return my tux from Saturday night’s gala first thing, then head back to my London room one last time to collect my bags for the station.
I transfer the following week’s rent and text my landlord that I’m leaving.
Which isn’t any great loss. The electricity is paid with coins on a meter.
My room has rising damp along the walls, with a faintly musty scent I’m not sure whether it comes from the walls or the old carpet.
Or something else growing or dying somewhere.
At any rate, I can’t afford the room, even a terrible room, not without a job.
I get myself to Euston Station and the Northern Line to London Bridge, and then take a train that heads south. I’ll need to change trains at some point on the journey, lifting my heaving suitcases from platform to platform.
As I leave London, I know I’m running away, but I also feel freer.
I haven’t been home for any amount of time, not since Easter.
After finishing uni, I went straight to London because Arran needed a flat sitter.
Seeing London slip away and green countryside take over is a huge relief.
From the train, I message my mum again my arrival time at Glynde Rail Station.
When the train glides to a stop at my destination, the station’s familiar low brick building, now transformed into another village pub, nearly has me weeping for joy. I disembark, with the strap of the suit bags across my body and a rolling suitcase in each hand.
Out front, my parents’ familiar old Volkswagen’s parked to the side.
The van belongs to my dad, and it’s the newer, more reliable family vehicle that can take all six of us.
My mum, Letty to just about everyone else, gets out and gives me a big hug, and it’s everything I can do not to break down on her shoulder.
She has long ginger hair and a scattering of freckles.
Meanwhile, I feel sick, from everything that’s happened and the lack of sleep. Gazing at her, I could weep real tears if I let myself.
“Matty,” Mum says, giving me another squeeze, “it’s so good to see you. It’s been too long. Though I must say I’m surprised to see you.”
I nod, opening the back hatch and going through the process of laying down the seats and loading in my bags. “I didn’t expect to be back, to be honest. Not like this,” I admit, closing the back.
We get into the car, and she navigates the short drive home in the village not far from our popular pub.
“Well, it’s not actually bad timing, actually, coming in on a Monday,” Mum offers into the silence, glancing over at me. “The pub’s quiet. Your dad’s at work, and the girls are off at school. Ready for some lunch?”
I nod, and my shoulders ease with relief when we pull up through the gate along the gravel lane that leads to our two-story eighteenth-century brick Victorian cottage.
It’s on a generous lot with leafy trees and hedges and lavender wisteria, which has grown across the front of the cottage and blooms in the spring, while the entwined climbing rose vines carry fragrant soft pink blooms. The cottage has been extended at the back, and it’s surprisingly roomy.
Mum parks in front of the standalone double garage further down the lane beside the cottage.
We get out and each take a suitcase, and I sling the suits over my shoulder.
We walk inside moments later. There are the familiar timbered ceilings painted in white, the large casement windows overlooking the lush gardens. My spirits start to lift, and my shoulders ease. I’m finally home. It feels like I’ve been away for a century rather than a few months.
We leave the bags in the entry, and after I freshen up, I join my mum in the kitchen. She already has the kettle on the giant cast-iron AGA stove. I pull out two mugs from the cupboard as Mum fixes up a pot of black tea.
“So, what’s happened, then?” Mum asks at last, giving me a sidelong glance as she waits for the kettle and leans against the counter in the wide galley kitchen.
Behind her, the view stretches over the broad garden to the surrounding pastures and rolling hills.
“It looks like you’re coming to stay for a while. ”
Mum knows me too well to pull off any convincing lie. Not that I want to lie to my mum. “I got sacked from my job.”
She blinks. “Oh? The bartending job?”
“That one,” I agree. “I dropped and broke some expensive champagne. Like a lot of expensive champagne. I… know what I’m doing, usually, but I get so nervous in London. Like everyone can see I’m from a village and they wonder what I’m doing in the city.”
Mum smiles. “No one would know you’re from a village on sight.”
“I think it’s imprinted in my DNA.” It sounds silly out loud, but it feels like a fatal flaw.
She chuckles, pouring the hot water into the teapot. “I think there’s a chance of the village DNA being true. But, listen, darling: this is only a temporary setback. You can find another job. Remember why you went to London in the first place?”
“For my painting?”
“Yes. How’s that going?”
I sigh, drooping as I lean on the counter opposite my mum. I shove my trembling hands into my pockets. “It’s not. I haven’t done anything since leaving Brighton.” And then my expression falls, because I think of the Rose, and Florian, and how everything was so promising there for a while.
She looks surprised. “I thought you were painting, love.”
I shake my head, caught out. “No. I’ve been too busy trying to work and pay rent. I… went to an art event, and I tutored someone briefly in drawing. That’s it. No painting.”
“The tutoring sounds promising,” she encourages. “What happened to the tutoring work?”
“It was a onetime arrangement.”
Mum puts the tea things on a tray. We go over to the broad wooden table at the end of the kitchen, set in a corner with windows on both sides. Sunlight floods the room. She studies me.
Pensive, I chew my lip. “And I met someone, and it didn’t work out.”
Mum’s expression softens. “Ah.”
I bury my head in my hands. The nearby clock on the wall ticks.
The window’s wide open for the fresh air, and outside, songbirds continue to sing.
I hear the sound of my mum pouring the tea a couple of minutes later, the sound of the spoon against ceramic as she adds sugar to mine.
When I lift my head again, a cup’s in front of me and a plate of my mum’s baking, slices of banana bread. “Thanks.”
“Please tell me more about what happened.”
I sigh, shaking my head. “I’ve just felt out of place the whole time I was in London. Like everyone could see I didn’t belong.”
“You know Michael’s in London too,” she prompts.
“Yeah. We met up once. I forgot he was there until recently, to be honest.”
Mum gives me a wry smile. “Matty.”
“I was so busy with everything. And Arran was busy too. Plus, most people have time in the evenings, and I was picking up every evening shift I could get, so the schedules didn’t line up. And I met Florian. By dumping drinks on him.”
She laughed. “Did he deserve it?”
“Probably,” I say darkly, then relent. “No. Not really. It was an accident. Another one. I didn’t mean to. Anyway, turns out he’s my total opposite, and it would never work out. All I want to do is hide out for a million years.”
“That’s an awfully long time.” Mum’s voice carries her amusement.
“It’s not funny,” I protest, but I’m smiling. Mum has a way of making me feel better, even if I’m nearly twenty-three years old. “I’ve just felt so disconnected from everything and everyone. I needed to come home to find myself again. To see if I even want to paint anymore.”
She blinks, frowning. “Why wouldn’t you want to paint? Everything of yours is up in the loft as you left it.”
The loft was my old bedroom, now the guest room, at the top of the house. It was adjacent to another room in the loft where I had my studio, complete with two skylights to vent oil paint fumes and keep my canvases, materials, and paint.
“Leila decided to keep her old room, and the twins want to stay sharing the same room, so nothing’s changed.” Mum gazes at me. “It’s as you left it.”
I drink my tea, soothing and tasting of home, an Earl Grey and breakfast tea blend. I nod.
“You know you’re welcome home anytime,” Mum says, which is what she told me last night via text. “While you’re here, you can get your bearings once again and see then how you feel about art. You’re usually so passionate about painting. This isn’t like you.”
“Yeah.” I swallow hard, thinking about the Rose and that I should reach out to Noah soon to see the impact of Florian’s plans.
What good is art if a developer’s always going to win and take our spaces?
Or have our paintings end up in some oligarch’s vault, even if an artist makes it to the top? Who’s it all for?
“And, if you’re up to it later, you can go down to the pub to give your dad a hand. We have the usual August summer traffic, and we’re down a person,” Mum suggests, her fingers wrapped around her tea. “I’m sure he’d be thrilled to see you and have experienced help.”
“Can’t promise I won’t ruin something.”
“Matty.” Mum looks at me, shaking her head, giving me an appraising look. “It will be fine.”
Except everything feels very not fine. And I don’t know how to make things feel fine again. Right now, it feels like I’ve failed at everything: London, art, and dating.