“Hello?” she said.
“Hey, it’s Ryan, is that Fred?”
Her heart did a little skip.Shush!she warned it. “Oh, hey, what brings you here?”
She heard a horn honk three times quickly followed by one long blast.
“Well, a somewhat impatient man in a van has just pulled up beside me requiring entry…” Fred felt her shoulders slump with despondency. “And also,” Ryan continued, “you didn’t accidentally take my phone back with you last night, did you? I can’t find it anywhere and it’s out of battery, so I can’t look up its location.”
She thought back. Had she? She’d been quite drunk. Last night’s jeans were stuffed in a carrier bag in the back of the car. She pressed the release button to open the gates. “Come on in, and I’ll check.” Then she turned to her mum. “The van’s here with my stuff.”
“Okay then, let’s get this show on the road,” said her mum, laying down tools and opening the door. She called out, “Come along, slutty ecstatics, Fred’s life has just arrived!”
The aunts stubbed out their cigarillos and began to amble back toward the house.
“Ryan’s here too, he thinks I’ve got his phone,” said Fred, rubbing her temples.
“Honey, is everything okay?”
“Yep. Yes. I’m all good.” She wasn’t. She was about to be confronted with the most comprehensive proof so far that she had failed spectacularly at adulting, and she didn’t relish the idea of Ryan seeing her worldly belongings being spilled out onto the front lawn. She produced what she hoped was a convincing smile, and said, “Okay. Let’s do this.”
—
When they reachedthe front of the house, two men were stood by the front door, boxes in arms, ready to be let in. Bella did the honors, shouting directions of where they should take the heavy boxes, and the aunts followed behind them with some of the lighter items. Behind the van was Ryan in an old Land Rover. It strangely suited the new rugged version of the boy she once knew.
“Hi!” said Ryan, smiling broadly when he saw her.
Her stomach zinged.Dammit.This was Ryan, she would not allow her stomach to zing for him.
“Hi, yourself.”
“Ryan! Grab that TV, would you, and bring it in,” Aggie shouted back along the path.
“You know you don’t have to do that,” said Fred.
“Ha, have you tried saying no to your aunts?”
Fred sniggered. “I don’t think anyone has.”
“I don’t mind.” Ryan grinned.
“Well, of course you don’t, that’s their special brand of mind control.”
Ryan laughed and followed the aunts into the house with her flat screen in his arms and her flowery Cath Kidston rucksack on his back. Out of his elf costume, it was easier to see the changes the years had made to him. He had more hair for a start—dirty blond, chin length and tucked behind his ears—and the beard he’d abandoned for being too patchy in his teens was now fully grown in, softening what she knew to be a ridiculously sharp jawline. But behind the beard and the laughter lines, and the surprisingly broad shoulders—did he work out, these days?—he was still fundamentally Ryan Frost, her old partner in crime, the boy she’d last seen waving her off from his dad’s fishing boat as her mum drove her down the coast road and away to university and a life beyond Pine Bluff. The boy who’d made it clear that he would never think of herthatway.
Fred pulled herself back to the present and looked over at the bags and boxes on the ground, and the enormity of her situation steamrollered over her anew.
“Breathe it out, honey,” her mum said, taking her hand and squeezing it. “You’ve got this. And I’m here to pick up the bits that you haven’t.”
Like it or not, nobody could read her like her mum. She allowed herself to rest her head on her mum’s shoulder. “Thanks, Mum.”
With Ryan helping too, it didn’t take long to ferry everything into the house. She was on her third trip back to the van when she saw a motorbike pull up outside the gates. Shecarried on down the path and called out, “Can I help you?” The courier flipped up his visor and checked his phone.
“Ms. Fredricka Hallow-Hart?” he asked as he unclipped his messenger bag and pulled out a plain A4 manila envelope.
“Yes. Is this from Lockwood and Peters?”
Her final layoff documents hadn’t been ready before she’d left London, and the firm had promised to have them couriered up to her as soon as they were. With luck, the envelope would contain the severance offer she’d been negotiating. Their first offer had been almost offensively small, and she’d had to call in her union rep. They had finally agreed on a figure, but it had needed to be okayed by the head office first.
