Chapter 27
Twenty-seven
Corey
“He’s dead.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
The surprise in Nash’s voice mirrors my own shock, and I can’t bring myself to speak. The voices in the background, wherever he is, go quiet, and I can only assume his words have drawn the attention of his family.
“H-he’s dead,” I repeat, barely able to believe the overwhelming relief I feel at that reality. “T-the police found him in his parents’ holiday home in the Cotswolds. H-he wasn’t there when they looked before, but he must have gone back, and they found him there. H-he overdosed.”
“Fuck, baby. Are you OK?” Nash’s concern brings tears to my eyes, and while I’m sure it makes me a shitty person, they’re tears not of sadness, but of joy. I can go home. To Nash, to my friends. To my family.
“It’s over. It’s really over,” I say, my words gushing out of me in relief.
I cry down the phone, and Nash just lets me.
He holds space for me even when we’re miles apart.
And selfishly, the only thing I could focus on when I was speaking to DI Martin was that we don’t need to be miles apart anymore.
“It’s over, baby. I’m so relieved. You must be, too?” he asks. I can hear his footsteps, and the background noise recedes as he walks away from wherever he was when I called.
“Where are you?”
“We were in the pub, but I’ve just stepped out, and I’m leaning on the fence by the duck pond.” I can see the image so clearly in my mind, and it makes me ache. “Where are you?”
“I’m in my room. DI Martin rang while John’s cooking dinner, and I came upstairs and called you straight away.”
“I’m glad you did,” he says, warmth and affection emanating from his voice.
“Nash?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“I want to come home.” He breathes out a sigh that sounds as though it’s been held inside for months.
“Fuck, I want you to come home, too. I miss you so fucking much.” Vulnerability laces his tone. “What do we need to do to make that happen?” Here he is, my favourite planner and organiser, an Enneagram 8 to his very core.
“Well… about that,” I hedge, the plan Emma and I have been hatching together on the tip of my tongue. “Have you found anyone to be your mother’s help yet, babe?”
“Umm, no… but baby, I don’t think it would be appropriate for you t—”
“Not me,” I interrupt. “What about Emma?” He’s silent for a moment, and I can almost hear the cogs whirring.
“Emma? She wants to move here with you?” I smile.
“Yeah. She loved it there when we visited. She gets on like a house on fire with Rain – a little too well, if you ask me – and she thought we could get a place together to rent maybe, and then we were chatting about things the other day, and we realised that she’d be kind of—”
“Perfect,” Nash exclaims. “She’d be fucking perfect. Nancy already knows and loves her, I trust her and know she’s experienced, and she completely blew my mind with all that Steiner education she was talking about, and I’ve been down a bit of a rabbit hole with it, if I’m honest.”
I laugh, a raw, throaty laugh that feels as though it’s been hibernating in my gut since I left this man behind.
“I’m not in the least bit surprised about that. So, do you want to interview her or…?”
“No, I don’t need to. We can work out a schedule that works for all of us—”
“She’s already said she’ll do whatever you need. She’s just looking forward to a bit of a change. And if you didn’t hire her, she was going to apply to get back into teaching anyway.”
“It sounds ideal.”
“You know, Rain told me something his mum used to say to him. What’s for you won’t go by you, and Nash, right now, I think that’s the truest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I do too, baby. Now let’s get a list together of what we need to do and get you home.”
And so, we do just that. The next couple of weeks are a blur of video-call house viewings – not that there’s a whole heap of property available to rent at a price we can afford in such a small village – packing, and booking a mover to drive us over with all our stuff.
Emma and I both get a bit panicked when our planned moving date creeps closer and closer, and we still don’t have anywhere to live, but then I get a surprise phone call from Poppy.
“Hello?”
“Corey? Hi, it’s Poppy,” she says, her slightly husky voice smooth, like French coffee on a Sunday morning.
“Oh,” I say in surprise. “Hi, Poppy, how are you?”
“I’m good, hun. I saw Nash this morning, and he told me the news. You’re coming back soon?”
“Yeah, we are. My friend Emma is coming with me too.”
“Oh yes,” she says, excitement filling her voice. “She’s going to work with Nash, right? Give him a hand around the house and with Nancy?”
“That’s the plan,” I say. “We’re just frantically trying to find somewhere to rent together. I don’t think Rain and Aidan will want us both crashing with them.” That, and I’ve heard Rain orgasm more than enough times in the few months I lived with them already, thank you very much.
“Well, that’s sort of why I’m ringing,” she hedges, and I sit up straight.
“What d’you mean?” I ask.
“Well, Chris and I realised that there’s a perfectly good flat above the café that we currently use to store cake boxes and old, broken-down kitchen equipment. We could give it a clear out and a spruce up?”
“Poppy,” I say nervously, hoping to God she means what I think she means. “What are you saying?”
“We’d be happy to rent the flat to you and Emma. Full disclosure, it would only be for six months. After that, we’ll…” she trails off. “Well, we’ll need it back by then. But it would give you somewhere to stay while you look for something more permanent?”
“Oh my God, Poppy. That would be amazing. Are you sure?”
“Of course. It’s a bit shabby right now, so we’ll keep the rent low, but we’ll spruce it up before you get here.
It has two bedrooms, a kitchen/diner, a living room, and one bathroom, so it’s small, but the bedrooms are both nice.
Chris has already cleared out the loft, and that was the worst of it. You’ll be here next Saturday, right?”
“That was the plan, but we can—”
“No,” she interrupts. “Next Saturday will be fine. There are plenty of people who are looking forward to you guys getting here sooner rather than later, so it’ll be ready. All the utilities are tied up with the café, so we’ll just include them in the rent. That OK?”
I can’t believe my ears. This offer genuinely couldn’t have come at a better time, and if we can stay there til Christmas, then we’ll have time for some new options to come on the market for rent.
“More than OK. I’m so excited. Thank you, Poppy. You don’t know what this means to me. To us, I mean.”
“Oh, I think I do. See you next week, sweetheart.”
The second I hang up the phone, I pull on my Converse and race out the front door.
I jog all the way to the gym, a decision I almost instantly regret.
This heatwave is unrelenting. I don’t know what it is about heatwaves in the Midlands, but fuck, they hit differently.
The air feels thick, tangible, as though you should be able to push through it like water, and the humidity weighs heavy like a blanket that smothers every breeze that tries and fails to cool the city.
I’m sweating by the time I pull open the door to Fitness for All and step into the bliss of air conditioning. Emma looks up sharply from her stool behind reception at my abrupt entrance, eyebrows almost reaching her hairline.
“What the—”
“Poppy called. We have a flat,” I pant, battling between exhaustion and excitement to get my words out.
“What? Babe, sit down before you fall down, eh? I’ll get ye some water.
” She goes into the small staff kitchen and opens the fridge, grabbing a bottle of Scottish mineral water she and John insist we stock, even though it’s 50% more expensive than some of the others available in Costco.
I gave up that argument a while ago. If I had to listen to the pair of them expound on how Scottish water is superior one more time, I was going to drown them both in one of their precious lochs, I swear to fucking God.
She chucks the cold bottle at me, the rapidly forming condensation making it slippery, and I sort of break its fall rather than catch it. “Right, what are you babbling about? Poppy rang you?”
I take a healthy swig of the water, then breathe deeply, my heart rate finally slowing. Jesus, for someone who works in a gym, I am criminally unfit.
“Yes, Poppy called me. She said that she and Chris were talking to Nash, and he told them how we were struggling to find somewhere to live, and then they talked and realised the café has a flat above that is basically just storage at the moment, and that we can rent it from them.”
“Really? Fuck, that’s great. Did she say what the rent would be?”
“She just said that it would be cheap because it’s a bit shabby, I guess, but I didn’t think you’d care?
” Emma shakes her head, so I know I got that right.
“And because it’s all in the same building as the café, the utilities will be included.
It has to be cheaper than some of the places we’ve seen, right? ”
“Definitely. I’m not fussy, I live in a tiny flat now, so it makes no odds to me. Ohmigod yay,” she bounces on her feet – fucking Crocs. “It’s a fucking good job ’nd all ’cause I handed in my notice to my landlord last week.” She grimaces, then laughs.
I roll my eyes at her, but it’s hard to rain on her parade.
Emma is so ready for this move. She tends to get itchy feet, but she told me, as we were packing, it’s because she hasn’t ever really found anywhere that felt like home.
But as soon as we got back to Coventry after being in Fenside Common for Nash’s birthday, she wanted to go back.
She said she finally knew where home was.
Same, girl. Same.
***