Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
I exhaled as I sat on the single bed above Steamy Sips.
After unpacking my meagre belongings into the divan drawers, I looked around the small space and felt the first whisper of relief since opening Trevor’s email.
I’d set four goals for the day and, even though it was already dark, I only had one left to tick off.
The first three had been suspiciously simple.
If finding out who left me the property was as easy as everything else had been so far, I’d be out of here within a week. The thought of returning to London was elating, but something else had settled in my belly. A quiet weight that felt a lot like sadness. I grabbed my phone.
Me: Got a job!
Rick: No way! Where?
Me: Steamy Sips.
Rick: Brothel?
Me: If by brothel you mean café. Then yup!
Rick: OMG unlimited long blacks.
Me: No – unlimited FLAT WHITES!
Rick: Balla. How much does it pay?
Me: Nothing…
Rick: …
Me: Food and board.
Rick: Oh. I guess that’s okay? No more car camping. What’s the boss like?
Me: Weirdly, pretty cool.
Rick: That is weird. You NEVER think people are pretty cool.
Me: I know…
Rick: Like, how cool?
Me: Not as cool as you.
Rick: Good. Keep me posted. And stay away from the cats.
Me: It’s them that need to stay away from me!
Rick: Goodnight crazy cat lady
The smell of tomato and basil soup wafted down the hall from the slow cooker, and my stomach grumbled.
I’d cleaned the industrial-sized oven as soon as I arrived back today, and I was exhausted.
Breeze had insisted that I not start work until tomorrow, but I couldn't escape the fear of being a charity case.
It had been necessary for my sanity to do something helpful before I laid my head down.
I hadn’t realised the job would take hours, or that the commercial cleaner would make my eyes and nose run the whole time. A red rash had crept up both forearms.
There wasn’t an official cook that worked in the kitchen, and it was really only used by Breeze when she prepared our meals or the food that would fill the cabinets.
In her parents’ day, they’d served a breakfast and lunch menu too, but Breeze could not maintain the cost of the chef.
The kitchen hadn’t had a deep clean since then, and I cringed thinking of the food she prepared there.
Oh well. Even if I were only here for a few days, I’d get it gleaming.
One of the more useful additions to my thirties had been late-night stress cleaning. I’d shamelessly replaced drinking with the satisfying scrub of a dirty room. Hangovers had become long, drawn-out punishments I was no longer willing to sign up for.
Cross-legged on the floor with my spiral-bound notebook, I began a list of potential house donors.
It was surprisingly hard to come up with anything, so I put my headphones in my ears, switching on a slow rock playlist. Then I remembered something Dax had told his training group about brainstorming.
Write every idea down, even if it seems completely stupid.
It could lead to an actually good idea. Was I pleased that I’d retained something useful from my forced participation?
Nope. His arrogance caused my blood pressure to bubble.
I wrote Silly Ideas List and underlined it. Then I tried to channel a monk and let my mind clear.
Santa.
Mr Cringle.
Elton John.
The Pope.
Easter Bunny.
The inventor of the tambourine.
Trevor the lawyer.
I forced myself to write something serious. I couldn’t see how it would be him, but let’s face it, he was more likely than the Pope.
A teacher.
The worst house mother.
Now we were getting somewhere. What was her name again?
Miss Lissy.
The image of an overweight woman sitting on my chest and cackling as I stared at her in terror clawed its way out of the vault and played like a film reel in my mind.
Next, who else knew me and also knew I was placed in the children’s home? The next name I wrote was Dad.
June. Stupid, I know.
Some government officials that felt guilty. But why me out of everyone else that went there?
Another child who went there. But I didn’t have any friends at Bellamy House.
I stuck with June as solidly as the strict no-contact rules allowed.
I didn’t have any enemies either. Except for the adults, and their hatred seemed evenly spread amongst us.
Then another memory escaped from the vault like a note floating on the wind.
The sound of the door closing. My relief. Someone else’s screaming.
The nightmare I’d had several times a week since the death of my brother. Although they weren’t related.
Olivia.
I wrote her name. Then immediately wanted to scrub it out so I wouldn’t have to see her made real on the page.
Trevor, Miss Lissy, Dad, Olivia. Not a bad starting point.
A shifting shadow under the door caught my eye, and I pulled out my headphones.
“Breeze?” I called.
No reply. Something about the silence raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
A prickle spread across my armpits. Slowly, I reached for the doorknob and turned it.
Nothing there.
At eye level, anyway.
Then something scuttled over my socked feet and I screamed, jumping back onto the creaky single bed.
Adulting skills: zero.
Scary critter: one.
A filled-roll-sized dog looked up at me with large brown eyes. Her white fur was wiry, and the way her back legs hopped towards me showed her age.
“Ah, hello,” I said, not really accustomed to introducing myself to animals.
Her round eyes narrowed, and her mouth pulled back into a grimace. I crouched slowly onto the floor, trying not to scare her off, and held out my hand for her to sniff. She let me scratch her head, but skittered away any time I tried to pat her back.
“There you are, Taco!” Breeze called, walking past my open door. Steam drifted from the bathroom as she pulled her towel tighter around her chest. Taco’s eyes narrowed again, and her mouth curled back.
“She smiles,” Breeze explained, pointing at the dog’s face.
Be still, my heart. The tiny dog smiled at me. A rock of ice melted in my chest, leaving a warm pool behind. I scratched her behind the ears again.
“She was Mum’s. I inherited her along with everything else. She’s fifteen now, with arthritis and the hearing and vision of a ninety-year-old.”
“That’s why you don’t like being patted on your body,” I said as I rubbed the long wispy hair by Taco's ears through my fingers.
“Please tell me that's not a cleaning list? I can't have you outdoing me in work enthusiasm,” Breeze said, pointing to my notebook as she leaned her towel-wrapped body against the door frame.
I turned the embarrassingly small list in her direction.
She dipped her head. “At least you’ve stopped making lists of ways to murder Dax.”
“I’ve moved on to fantasies about Dax now,” I said.
Her eyebrows shot up.
“Murder fantasies,” I clarified.
Breeze rolled her eyes. “Who’s first on the list?”
I hesitated. Sharing personal information felt like standing naked in the middle of a busy street.
But I’d already half-started, and opening up had brought me this far.
I made a small internal contract with the part of my brain that was protesting at the words on my lips.
How about we trial sharing this with Breeze, and only her, just to see what happens, because we need help?
If she screws us over like we expect her to, then I promise you we will never share personal things with anyone new again.
It was a rather reasonable contract, I thought, and my brain had no reason to protest. But a little voice in the back of my brain reminded me that this too would turn to shit just like everything else.
I handed my notebook to Breeze, who pinched her chin as she read.
“Who’s Olivia?” she asked.
A wave rolled through my stomach, and my throat closed. I swallowed anyway.
“Just someone else who used to go there,” I said, immediately regretting it.
“You used to go there?” she gaped, her forehead softening as her eyes seemed to bore right into my soul.
Get out.
I took a slow breath. This was a trial, I reminded myself. If she hated me once she knew me, I’d lost nothing.
“I did.”
“God, Riley. That place was awful.” She bit her bottom lip, her gaze bouncing from the floor to my face and back again.
“It was.”
Just because I was practising vulnerability didn’t mean I had to spill my whole life across the floor. Taco climbed into my lap and curled into a warm little ball. I patted her teeny head again. The comfort of her made my eyes sting. Another tight knot in my chest loosened.
Breeze watched me for a moment longer, then straightened.
“Okay. Need help with any of this? Lifelong Glades Bay resident, at your service,” she said, striking a pose with her hands on her hips.
I smiled.
“Do you know any of these people? My dad excluded, because he lives twenty minutes out of town, and it’d be weird if you did.”
Breeze scanned the list again.
“I’d need a last name for Olivia? But Lissy, she’s a Glades Bay darling,” she said and handed the notebook back to me.
My stomach dropped through the floorboards at the mention of her name by someone else.
“Explain?”
“She's well known,” she shrugged. “Her family was one of the founding families of Glades Bay. Their name is on half the town. Fotherington Hall, Fotherington Park. It’s more of a name cred thing now though. I don’t think there’s any money left in the family, and all the buildings were donated decades ago. Plus, she's a snake.”
I shuddered at the idea of Miss Lissy being a town darling. Maybe that’s how people got away with so much in that place for so long.
“No one cared she worked at the children’s home, even after things came out?” I asked.
Breeze shrugged again. “It’s like being a movie star. If people love you, it’s hard for them to believe you could do anything wrong.”
I bit my bottom lip and tried not to think about it.
“Where can I find her?”
“With the enemy,” Breeze replied, crouching to call Taco to her. I felt a stab of sadness as the warmth on my lap disappeared.
“She starts her day at Bean There. Every morning. Like clockwork.”
“Let me guess. The only other café in town?”
Breeze nodded.
“I don’t know how my new boss will feel about me going there,” I teased. “Pretty sure I was bribed never to accept coffee from anyone else ever again.”
“Your boss sounds lovely,” Breeze smiled. “Although I’ve heard she hates being called that. And I doubt she’d mind—especially if you left a scathing review after.”
My mouth curled into an evil grin.
“Noted. I’m thinking the coffee’s burned, the service is terrible, and the rats in the women’s bathroom were off-putting.”
Breeze chuckled. “A tip? That woman will do anything for a free breakfast.”
Didn't I know it. Breeze scooped Taco carefully into her arms.
“Thanks!” I called as they pattered down the hallway towards the kitchen.
A sour taste curdled up from my stomach.
If someone had told me one month ago that I was going to spend some of the last money I had on Miss Lissy, I’d have laughed them out of the room.
Or punched them. Depends how much I’d had to drink.
I couldn’t let my brain entertain the idea of what it was going to feel like to see her again. She’d already taken so much.