Chapter thirty-four
Freya
I have not had a day that belongs entirely to me since before Christmas.
Christmas Day does not count, because Christmas Day was survival, not rest. It was staying in bed longer than necessary because if I didn’t move, the silence couldn’t swallow me whole.
It was eating ice cream before noon and pretending that was indulgent rather than compensatory.
It was watching a rom-com with the curtains half closed while my son played happy families somewhere else and telling myself this is modern co-parenting, this is healthy, this is fine.
And I didn’t tell anyone. Not Clara. Not Hannah.
Not a single soul. Because who wants to be the friend who texts on Christmas morning to say, actually this is awful?
So when Theo went back to school and I realised I had a few child-free hours that weren’t immediately swallowed by marking or PTA emails, I messaged Clara before I could talk myself out of it.
Freya: Coffee. Roses. Please. Now.
Clara: YES. I’ll be there in ten. Do NOT move.
I sit by the window, coat still on, hands wrapped around my mug, and let myself breathe without anyone asking me for snacks or phonics support. It feels rebellious, sitting still. Like I’m getting away with something.
Outside, the high street is doing its normal weekday thing, people walking too quickly with their collars up, someone with a pram negotiating the pavement like it’s a battlefield, a man carrying a dead Christmas tree like he’s been punished for not taking it down sooner.
Life carries on. It always does, even when you don’t.
Clara arrives full of commentary and warmth and slightly too much lip gloss for ten in the morning, cheeks pink from the cold, scarf half unravelled, eyes bright even before she’s seen me properly. She spots me and does that little wave.
“You look tired,” she says when she reaches the table, but softly. Not like a judgement. Like a fact she’s holding gently.
“I am tired,” I admit. I don’t even try to pretend. I don’t have the energy. “I feel like I’ve been holding my breath for weeks.”
Clara sets her bag down and shrugs her coat off, then sits opposite me and leans in. “You don’t have to hold it here,” she says.
Something in me relaxes in the way it does when someone gives you permission you didn’t realise you were begging for.
I swallow, stare down at my coffee, and then I tell her about Christmas Day properly this time.
About not opening the curtains. About how strange it felt to wake up without Theo launching himself onto the bed and demanding a snack within thirty seconds.
About hearing laughter from somewhere outside and realising it was Isla and Rory in the garden across the road and hating myself for looking.
“It didn’t even feel like Christmas,” I say, staring into the dark swirl of coffee like it might offer an explanation. “It just felt like… a Tuesday with fairy lights.”
Clara reaches across the table and squeezes my hand, her thumb rubbing once over my knuckles. “That sounds really lonely,” she says.
“It was fine,” I say immediately, because it’s easier to pretend it was. It’s an instinct, like blinking. “It was okay. It was… quiet. Which I needed.”
Clara doesn’t argue. She just gives me a look. The sort of look that says, I heard what you said, and I also heard everything you didn’t.
“You didn’t open the curtains, Freya.”
I roll my eyes like that’s the most normal thing in the world. “It was gloomy outside anyway. No point ruining the ambience.”
Clara’s mouth twitches. “Ambience. Right.” She rolls her eyes.
I shift in my seat, suddenly too aware of my own body, my own voice, the way I’m sitting like I’m still bracing for someone to walk in and catch me being sad. “Also,” I add quickly, because silence is dangerous, “Theo had a lovely day. He was happy. That’s what matters.”
Clara lifts her eyebrows. “And you?”
I exhale through my nose. “And I survived, which is basically the mum equivalent of thriving, isn’t it?”
Her look sharpens, and there it is again, that quiet insistence. Clara doesn’t let me turn everything into a joke and call it healing.
“Freya,” she says, not harsh, but firm. “Talk to me.”
So I do. Sort of. Half-truths and vague answers.
That’s my speciality. “I just… I didn’t want to make it a thing,” I say.
“Everyone had their own stuff going on. Hannah was ill, you had the in-laws, and I didn’t exactly want to be the friend who ruins Christmas because she’s feeling sorry for herself. ”
“You weren’t feeling sorry for yourself,” Clara says. “You were alone. Those are different things.”
I stare out of the window because if I look directly at her I might cry, and I cannot cry in Rose’s because I will then have to pretend I’ve got something in my eye and that will be humiliating.
Clara’s voice softens. “Was he there? Rory, I mean.”
My stomach does that little, irritating dip at his name. Like my body hears it before my brain has time to put up a wall.
“He was across the road,” I say too casually. “In the garden. Playing. Laughing. Being… Rory.”
Clara’s eyes narrow just slightly. “And you watched.”
“It was accidental,” I say immediately. “I just… heard it. And then I looked. Obviously I looked. I’m not a saint.”
“Did he see you?”
I shake my head. “No. He didn’t.”
Clara hums like she doesn’t quite believe me. “And how did that make you feel?”
Clara is going all therapist on me. I shrug too quickly, like I’m swatting away a fly. “Normal. It made me feel normal. Because we’re friends. It’s fine.”
There’s a beat of silence. Clara tilts her head, and her eyes flick across my face and her eyebrows raise.
“Freya,” she says gently, “you’re doing the thing.”
“What thing?”
“The thing where you say it’s fine in a voice that absolutely is not fine.”
I let out a laugh that is mostly breath. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I want you to say the truth,” she replies, and there’s no judgement in it. Just an invitation.
My fingers tighten around my mug. My nails tap the ceramic once, twice, like my body has to do something with the tension. “The truth,” I repeat, tasting the word like it’s risky. “The truth is… I didn’t like it.”
Clara’s grip on my hand tightens slightly, as if she’s saying, okay, keep going.
“I didn’t like hearing him,” I say quietly. “Being happy. Being normal. Like everything is… sorted. Like he didn’t almost…” I stop, because the rest of that sentence has teeth.
“Like he didn’t almost kiss you?” Clara supplies.
Heat crawls up my neck. “We’re not saying it like that.”
Clara’s mouth pulls into a half-smile. “We’re absolutely saying it like that.”
I glare at her, but there’s no bite in it. My glare is mostly desperation, like I’m trying to intimidate the truth back into hiding. “It’s fine,” I insist again, softer this time. Less convincing. “We agreed. Friends. That’s what we’re doing.”
Clara leans back slightly, studying me in that way she does when she’s weighing whether to push. Then she takes a slow sip of her latte and says, casually, “And is that working?”
Clara the sodding therapist is back.
I open my mouth and the automatic answer is right there, ready to launch.
Yes. Of course. It’s great. We’re mature adults.
But my throat tightens, because the truth is sitting behind my teeth.
Clara watches me with that look again. The one that says, don’t you dare lie to me.
“I’m fine,” I say anyway, because apparently I’m committed to the lie.
Clara’s eyes soften, but she doesn’t let it slide. She just tilts her head and says, “Freya.”
It’s not even a question. It’s my name as a mirror.
I look down at my coffee, at the little crescent of foam clinging to the edge, at the way my hands are wrapped around the mug like it’s keeping me upright.
Here’s the thing I don’t say out loud. I have to pretend things are fine because admitting they aren’t opens a door I’m terrified to walk through.
Because if I admit I’m not fine, then Clara will say the obvious thing.
She’ll say, you’re not over him. She’ll say, you still want him.
She’ll say, what are you doing about it?
And I don’t want to be doing anything about it.
Not yet. Not like that. Because “doing something about it” with Rory isn’t a casual decision.
It isn’t a coffee date. It’s not harmless.
It’s a mess waiting to happen. It’s school gates and Isla and history and that impossible pull that makes me feel fourteen and forty at the same time.
It’s risking Theo. It’s risking my sanity.
It’s risking the fragile balance I’ve built with my own hands, brick by brick, while everyone else assumed I’d be okay.
So I keep it small. I keep it manageable.
I keep it behind jokes and practicality and “it’s fine” because “it’s fine” is a lid, and if I take the lid off I don’t know how much will spill.
Clara is still watching me. I force a bright, fake smile and say, “He’s been… normal. Just friendly. Which is good.”
Clara’s mouth twists like she’s biting back an entire lecture. “Normal Rory.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re normal Freya.”
I nod, too quickly. “Exactly. Normal. Mature. Grown-up. Not at all emotionally deranged.”
Clara snorts. “Mmm.”
I poke my spoon into the little pot of sugar on the table just to have something to do, then realise I’m not even putting it in my coffee. I’m just… poking sugar like a woman with an extremely unstable nervous system.
Clara’s gaze flicks to my fingers. “Do you want another coffee?”
“Do I want another coffee?” I repeat, as if it’s a philosophical question. “I want to be sedated.”
Clara laughs, and some of the tension in my chest loosens. “Come on. Another coffee. And then we’ll walk for a bit. Fresh air. We can pretend we’re those women who do that for fun and not because they’re on the brink of collapse.”
“Perfect,” I say. “I love cosplay.”