Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
MAISIE
At the exact moment when the corner clock of her desktop screen flipped to 16:00, Maisie signed out of the online portal tracking her working hours and stretched her arms out wide. The knot between her shoulder blades loosened up nicely as she said, “Let the weekend begin.”
Technically, being remote, she was able to log in and out whenever she liked, but since her only commute was from her bed to the living room, Maisie preferred to begin at eight o’clock and give herself an extra hour in the evening for working on her own business.
She flicked on the kettle in the kitchen and came back to the table she’d commandeered in the back corner of the living room, making a neat pile of her notebooks for her day job before sliding them into a box that she nudged beneath the table. Out of sight, out of mind.
Today had been an easy one. Her boss had given her a new brief for a vet clinic’s website which needed a complete overhaul of its outdated design. So after a long video call to iron out some details, she’d spent the afternoon formatting a couple of layouts and options for site maps to give back to the client. Creating a pitch for an update to the colour scheme had been the last task of the day, which Maisie sent to her boss at 15:59 on the dot.
With her profile status set to ‘Out of Office’ – aka, leave me alone – Maisie was free, finally, to enjoy the rest of her Friday night.
She could hear Vera milling about in her bedroom above, humming a tune Maisie didn’t know to the music playing on her beloved radio while she got dressed up for the evening. The fact that she’d broken her wrist in three places only a few weeks ago hadn’t slowed her down. Given Vera’s age, her doctor wanted the bright-purple cast to stay for another five weeks, but Vera’s tenacity had categorically told him four .
As it turned out, her grandma had a more active social life than Maisie had known of, which meant she was – given her uprooted circumstance – jealous. It was Friday night, and she had nowhere to go. No one to see.
What a life.
Cup of steaming tea prepared, she set it on the table and opened her spreadsheet that kept track of the stock for her online shop, including an ever-changing list of which jewellery items she needed to make more of. The extra income had been a lifeline back in London, though not substantial enough for Maisie to quit her actual job. Last November had been such a success in her pre-Christmas launch that the profits had paid for every present she’d bought and a good chunk of December’s rent, too.
Her spring collection was set to launch in March, and she needed to get ahead of making batches of earrings ready to go. The move from London to Wales disturbed her equilibrium, and her crafting had come to a bit of a sudden halt, but Maisie was ready to get back to business.
She recalibrated her mind to the fact that Vera’s lighting wasn’t the same hue as hers had been, that this table and chair weren’t the same height as hers used to be. She couldn’t reach out beside her anymore and automatically pull whatever she needed from the drawers that’d been arranged perfectly in her London flat for years. A couple of those thin, plastic sets of drawers had made their way to Wales and were squished up against the wall between a sideboard and a standing lamp. Realistically, Maisie couldn’t keep herself and her supplies organised without them.
She scrolled through her spreadsheet and decided that some daisy-shaped earrings would be straightforward enough to get a batch or two done tonight. She took out a few packets of yellow and white polymer from her colour-arranged drawer of clays and started to soften them up the best way that she knew how. “This is the only way that you are useful to me, ladies.” Dropping down the front of her polka-dot overalls, Maisie lifted her t-shirt and stuck the four packets of clay underneath her boobs.
Her bra had come off as soon as her video call meeting was over, and if the back-aching size of her breasts that her mother had gifted her with (begrudgingly) were useful for anything at all, it was their warmth. A hands-free method to soften up the clay whilst she grabbed her glass-cutting board and gathered various tools. She’d once forgotten about a packet under there and only realised when she’d woken up in the morning and panicked, thinking that she’d had some sort of gooey, green accident in the night.
After ten wasted minutes of deliberation deciding what film to watch in the background, the room fell silent. Then the familiar sound of her nain’s footsteps came down the stairs.
Maisie’s eyes landed on the swipe of rosy pink on Vera’s lips first. That pink lipstick was one of the most vivid memories of her childhood; she didn’t think that she’d ever seen the natural colour of her nain’s lips in all her life.
“What do you think of my frock?” Vera swished her hips so the frilly, knee-length hem of her navy dress, patterned with a print of gold filigree, bounced.
She looked beautiful, like always. The woman had been an avid runner for all her life and a member of a local hiking group now in her later years, which explained why her figure had always stayed willowy. If Maisie were more inclined to dislike her own body, she’d be envious of those slender legs.
“I love it,” she answered. “Where are you going tonight?”
Headlights of a car slowed outside of the bay window.
Vera took a long coat from the rack at the foot of the stairs and folded it over her uninjured arm. “Ronnie is picking me up, then we’re going to the Italian place in town. It’s a friend from my hiking group’s birthday today, so we’re celebrating.”
Maisie smiled from her seat. “Have fun.”
“No need to stay up for me, Moo Moo.”
“Don’t stay out too late.” Raising her mug to her lips, Maisie smirked. “And no kissing boys on street corners.”
Vera huffed lightly. “Well that scuppers my plan to sneak Ronald into the house then.”
Maisie coughed on her tea.
“He really is an excellent lover.”
“Ew, Nain, no!”
Vera’s laugh was straight from the soul as the doorbell rang. “That’ll be him, now.” She opened the front door where Ronnie stood with an umbrella held up, rain pit-pattering down on the canvas. His cream wool suit was sharp, and he’d covered his cropped grey hair with an adorable flat cap.
His eyes roamed and adored over Vera, his greeting a gasped – “My lovely, you look beautiful.”
Elbow sliding forwards on the table, Maisie swooned with her chin in her hand. She was glad that after her taid , Vera had let herself find someone to love her. Who would not? Vera was outgoing and as sharp as a knife, with an elegant, timeless vibe. They could be stood next to each other, Maisie’s Doc Martens next to her nain’s kitten heels, quirky beside classic, and anyone would assume that they weren’t related.
She could look at Vera and think: yes, any man would bend over backwards to give her what she wanted and treat her how she deserved. In Maisie’s experience though, the bending only went so far. It usually stopped when they found out that she wasn’t one for spontaneous, rampant nights of sex. She couldn’t fall into bed with just anybody. She couldn’t give herself over when the process of doing so hurt so much.
In the end, relationships always dwindled to her giving a lot more than she received just to keep a man happy. Then things would fall apart. There was only so much pleasure that she could fake on the receiving end of the mouths and tongues and fingers of boyfriends from years gone by before they grew bored with waiting for her.
She was too much work. Too much effort.
So they left.
Maisie didn’t realise that she’d made herself tear up at the sight of Ronnie, the quintessential gentleman helping Vera into her coat, until a warm droplet landed on her fingertip.
Oblivious to the twist of sadness in her stomach, Ronnie smiled at her. His sweet, pale cheeks that were always a little tickled pink meeting his blue eyes. “I’ll have her back before midnight.”
Maisie laughed and pretended that she wasn’t upset by her own thoughts at all. “Have a good evening.”
“I’ll see you in a bit, Moo Moo,” Vera called as they left, and Maisie wiggled her fingers in a goodbye.
The front door closed behind them, then silence filled the house once more.
Maisie swept her gaze slowly around the living room. She’d been staying here for two weeks, and already she itched to have some company other than Mister Roberts and these faded, floral wallpapered walls. Though Mister Roberts didn’t seem to enjoy her presence any more than Maisie actually wished that she was here.
Tapping her fingers to her upper arm, she checked her phone.
It was the sixteenth of January, the day that Faye, one of her best friends, moved up to Manchester to begin renovations for the new location of her bakery, Baked By The Dozen.
In some weird misalignment of fate, their friendship group that had been strong for the last ten years since their university days had lost two members to relocations in only two weeks. Their group chat was alive with messages; Bash giving updates on how things were going, with a strong undertone of how proud he was of his girlfriend for living her dreams; Freddy sending thumbs up emojis between his breaks at the art museum he worked for; and Sienna asking when she could travel up to visit the bakery.
Maisie had been a little too focussed today to contribute to the well wishes, so she added them in then and followed up with how much she missed everyone before getting on with the next four hours of work.
She worked on cutting and moulding a batch of daisy earrings right through the evening with Hairspray streaming on her computer and Mister Roberts glaring at her from the staircase, hiding between the wooden balustrades like some kind of criminal behind bars. The half an hour break for her dinner went by quickly, Vera’s homemade shepherd’s pie disappearing even quicker.
It was nine o’clock when Maisie sank down into a very bubbly bath and let all of her muscles relax. Surrounded by the fruity aroma of grapefruit and jasmine as she massaged a body brush over her skin, she was tempted to dip her fingers past her soft stomach and down between her legs, but the mental inclination just was not there. Not with Mister Roberts providing the soundtrack to her soaking by whining incessantly at the door. She’d learned, reluctantly, that the cat hated water, even if it wasn’t anywhere near him, hence the closed door. But still he sat there, making thuds on the panels with what Maisie could only assume was his giant black paw.
“Moo Moo, I’m home!” Vera’s voice rang out at a point where she’d lost track of time, the frosted window painted black outside.
“I’m in the bath,” she yelled back, loud enough to disturb her own peace and carry her voice down two flights of stairs. The door to the bathroom burst open a minute later. “Nain!”
“Hush, no need to cover everything up. I gave you all of your bits.”
Arghhh. That didn’t matter. Body autonomy was a thing and she’d rather not be looked at by anyone – not even her own grandma – like this.
Most of the bubbles had disappeared so Maisie had to make do with a face cloth covering the most touch-neglected part of her. Her arms weren’t enough to cover her breasts trying to float to the surface of the water like they thought she was drowning and in need of floatation devices, but they were better than nothing.
Vera sat herself on the closed lid of the toilet – one of those wooden-effect ones, barely three feet away – and pushed her hands out in the air. “I have had the greatest idea.”
Was she drunk or just happy? “Go on then.” Maisie held her breath.
“Moo, you have no friends here.” Harsh. “You should join my walking group.”
“What?” shot out of Maisie before she could keep it down.
The small, square facecloth attempting to protect her modesty bobbed up, and she snapped her hand to shove it back down, trapping a corner between her ample thighs.
“You should come hiking with us,” Vera said.
The enthusiastic suggestion was so absurd that Maisie laughed.
Was this her grandmother’s way of telling her that she needed to exercise? She exercised enough without being forced to do anything else. In London, she’d walked everywhere. She’d stood at her desk with a walking pad to keep her moving. Granted, Maisie couldn’t do that here, since the living room table she’d claimed as a desk was far too low, unless she wanted to give herself even more back ache than she already had thanks to these bloody buoys on her chest.
“Me?” she squeaked.
“Well who else? My friends all said tonight that they would love for you to join us.”
A chuckle still puffed out from Maisie’s throat.
“Moo Moo” — Vera looked at her sternly — “you cannot live here with only me to talk to. I’d like to see you make friends, and these are all lovely people.”
“It’s not the people, it's the hiking that I—” Her hand slapped the water to trap that bloody facecloth again. “I don’t think I’d be good at it.”
There was no point in denying she was a larger woman, and her knees ached just thinking of hills.
“Oh Moo Moo, we don’t race one another. We go for gentle strolls through the countryside, that’s all. And there’s always a café at the end.”
Maisie could not be bribed with the promise of food. Well not in this circumstance, anyway. Not when getting to that food required a few miles of rambling through the countryside first.
“But—but …”
Vera patted her arm and smiled. “Just come for the walk tomorrow? It’s only a short one, and I think you would enjoy it.”
Maisie sank a little lower into the bath. Her nain was right; she should try and make at least one friend whilst she was here, someone who could hopefully make her miss London a little less. She didn’t know much about Vera’s hiking buddies, but the odds were that she’d get along with at least one of them.
She sighed and pushed a reluctant smile onto her lips. “Okay. I’ll come tomorrow.” Once. That’s all she had to do. Then she could say hiking wasn’t for her and never go again.
“Excellent.” To see her grandma happy was a good enough motive. “Oh, I have some other news.” Just when Maisie thought she’d be given a little space, Vera said, “Lily’s granddaughter is moving up to Edinburgh.”
“Okay …” She didn’t know Lily, or her granddaughter. Or what this had to do with her .
“Which means that her flat will be available to rent.”
It took Maisie a second to realise why she was being told this. “You want me to move out?”
Vera’s delicate features put on an excellent show of being kind about it whilst Maisie’s pulse awoke. “I love you living here, Moo, but you need your own space.”
That was … well, true. But she’d only just gotten here. And she was only here because she was supposed to help and keep an eye on Vera, occasionally reporting back to her parents and siblings. How was she supposed to do that if she moved out?
“Where’s the flat?” she asked, hoping that it’d be far enough away, preferably in another town, for her to be able to counteract the suggestion.
“It’s above a shop in town.”
Fuck. Aberystwyth was only a couple of miles wide. There wasn’t enough distance for her to decline.
“Here, help me with this would you, dear? Lily sent me pictures of the place, but I can’t get them to open.” Vera pulled a phone out of her purse, and Maisie was even more acutely aware of how naked she was. She couldn’t entirely trust that her nain wouldn’t open the camera app to find those photos and accidentally take one of her in the bath instead.
“Could I look after I am done here?” Maisie swished the water with her toes. “Preferably wearing clothes?”
“Hm? Oh, yes. I’ll go and get out of this lot. Jammies are so much more comfortable than a thong.”
Fuck it. Maisie slid her hands over her eyes. Tits out. Stomach bared. Not caring if the bubbles stung or the facecloth floated away. Anything to erase the image of her grandma in a thong.
Alone, she dried herself and put on her own pyjamas, then ran through her long-winded routine of hair masks and oils to keep her red curls defined before tucking them into her silk bonnet.
She found Vera on the living room sofa with a cup of tea and a chat show on the telly. Maisie helped her find the photos that her friend had sent of the available flat and looked over them. It was clean, plain but cute, renovated within the last five or so years by the looks of the kitchen units. The rooms looked a little snug but maybe that was an illusion of the photos? The rent would definitely be cheaper than what Maisie was used to in London so she could afford to replace some of the furnishings.
Googling on her own phone, she found the flat was one of two above a bookshop on one of the main streets through town, barely a five-minute walk from the seafront and maybe a brisk ten to Vera’s.
Her boxes had invaded the house, so Maisie wasn’t surprised that her nain would want her own space back.
“It looks good,” she said with an attempt to hide her reticence.
“Really?”
“Yes. It’s well kept and clean. I have enough money saved to buy the extra furniture.”
“Oh that’s amazing!” Vera patted her knee. “I’ll call Lily and tell her that you’d like to look at it.”
“Great.” Her smile portrayed more enthusiasm than Maisie felt. Moving out would throw a whole spanner into the works, one she wasn’t prepared for, of finding out what Vera was hiding.