I glance down at it with a little nod. “Yeah. Thanks.” It’s cute and it suits my love of reading and writing, but now it feels like a symbol of everything that’s wrong with my life. I pull it out of the box and clasp the chain around my neck. It sits low on my chest and I stare down at it, my head spinning.
“See, darling? You don’t want to move to New York,” Mum says. “Your whole life is here.”
I look around at my shitty flat and my body sags with disappointment. My whole life?Thisis my life? A job I don’t care about, a boyfriend who’s left me, parents who don’t understand me, this hideous flat. Hell, even my best friend doesn’t live here, she’s in Auckland. Travis was right: Iamliving a small life. I’m living a tiny, insignificant life—one that doesn’t even remotely measure up to what I imagined for myself at this age.
“Why don’t you get dressed,” Dad suggests, “then we can take you out for a birthday breakfast?”
Right now I want nothing more than to crawl under the covers and die, but they’re all looking at me hopefully and I feel another spasm of guilt. It’s hardly their fault I’ve fucked up my entire life, is it?
“Okay,” I mumble, pushing to my feet and shuffling off to the bathroom. The minute I’m out of the room I hear them start whispering, but I’m too hungover to care.
I slip the bathroom door closed behind me and stare at my reflection above the sink. I look dead. Actually, Ifeeldead. It’s not just the booze, or the fact that I did something incredibly stupid last night. It’s everything. I never expected I’d be here. I figured I’d be married by now, maybe with a kid or two. And that’s on top of my successful writing career.
But I don’t have any of those things. As Mum and Dad so clearly pointed out, I’m alone. Alone in this awful flat with no man, no career—and now, I don’t even have a job.
I’m just about to peel my clothes off when I notice I don’t have a clean towel. There’s another surge of misery through me at the injustice of it all. It’s likenothingis going right in my life.
With a gusty sigh, I open the door and step into the hallway. I go to grab a towel from the linen closet when Mum’s voice floats down the hall.
“That was close. Moving to New York, what a ridiculous idea!”
I can hear the kettle boiling as she makes a cup of tea, and from here I can see the back of Harriet’s head where she’s still sitting on the sofa. It must just be Mum and Dad in the kitchen. I know I probably shouldn’t stand here listening, but I’m rooted to the spot.
“And now she’s quit her job, the silly girl,” Mum continues. “Maybe I can call Julie and help her get her job back.”
Dad sighs. “I don’t think that’s what she wants.”
“That’s the problem with this girl! She wants things she can’t have. She gets one little job at the newspaper and next she thinks she can be an author. She goes on one date with a boy and she thinks they’ll be getting married. And now this moving to New York business? I swear, she lives her whole life in a fantasy.”
I stand frozen in the hallway, a cold, prickly sensation washing over me, suffocating the air from my lungs.
“I assumed she would have grown out of this by now. It’s those stupid bloody romance novels she reads,” Mum adds. I hear the fridge open and close. “They fill her head with nonsense. She just needs to learn that life isn’t like that, that it’s not realistic to expect—”
“Audrey,” Dad says soothingly, “why don’t we try and sit down with her—”
“That will never work. You know howsensitiveshe is. She’ll just fly off the handle.”
Tears sting my throat and I realize I’m almost shaking with shock. My parents have been saying this sort of thing to me for years—and I’vealwaysbeen derided for reading sappy romance novels—but there’s something about the way people speak about others when they think they’re not listening. Mum’s voice is laced with such disgust, such revulsion, that for the briefest second I wonder if she’s talking about someone else.
But she’s not. She’s talking about me.
I suck in a shaky breath and Harriet twists around on the sofa, her eyes locking with mine. And I can tell she knows I’ve heard everything.
I duck back into the bathroom, dropping down onto the edge of the bathtub. I’m reeling from the sting of Mum’s words, from the way she laid out everything I’ve secretly believed to be wrong with me and said, in no uncertain terms, that it is wrong—thatI’mwrong.
“Hey.” Harriet pops the door open, slipping inside. “You okay?”
I press my lips into a thin line and nod, unable to meet her gaze. I know if I do, I’ll start crying.
Oh look at that, my parents are right: too damn sensitive.
Harriet takes a tentative step towards me. “Don’t listen to them. You know Mum’s always a bit dramatic.”
I stare down at the tiles, replaying Mum’s words in my head. Because while Harriet’s right, I also know Mum wasn’t that far off. Ihadimagined I would be an author, that I was working towards that, eventually. And, as much as it hurts to admit this now, I had also imagined myself marrying Travis at some point in the future. Not just Travis; several previous boyfriends had dressed up in a tux and said heartfelt vows somewhere in the grand wedding venues of my daydreams.
And what happened? Nothing. It was all in my head.
A tear escapes down my cheek and I quickly brush it away. I have nothing to show for my life, but that’s not even the worst of it. The worst part is that I’d convinced myself, somehow, I did.
