“I know,” I say. “Can you text her I’m alright, and my phone is broken. I need some quiet time. I can’t deal with her, either.”
“Sure,” Bella says and does it immediately. Bella and her phone are one entity at this point; it’s attached to her like a third arm.
“Bells, what am I going to do?” I ask her with my head resting back against the wall.
“What do you want to do?”
“I want peace and quiet, but I believe that’ll never come again. I might need to move somewhere else.”
“We could move to New York,” Bella says. “My mother recently acquired some flats there.”
I snort.
Moving to New York.
“I mean it, Mia. I’m gladly leaving London behind. If you truly think you need to leave and there is nothing that’s holding you here…”
“Don’t think I don’t realise what you’re playing at,” I say.
“Me?” she asks as innocently as possible. “I’m playing nothing here.”
“Uh-huh,” I say.
More silence passes. My mind is circling back to what has happened. To Victoria. The way she looked at me when I left. That feeling in my body. Last night. Her touch. The moment in the library?—
“You think I’m a fool, don’t you?” I ask Bella.
“I think you have issues like all of us, and they cloud your vision.”
“Oh, do tell, what issues do I have?”
“You are dishonest.”
“I am what?” I ask with anger showing in my voice.
“You try so hard to make everyone believe you don’t care about what others think of you, with your knitted stuff and everything, butyou do care. You care so much that you don’t go outside because you feel judged and unworthy.”
I draw back my shoulders.
“Thanks for nothing,” I say.
“I’m telling you that so you can grow,” she says.
“Because you grow so much of all the things I told you,” I say.
“Not the point.”
“Exactly the point, give that advice to yourself.”
“Were you happy?” asks Bella. “Before.”
“I—yes, I suppose.”
“You suppose?”
“I don’t want to be happy. I want peace.”
“And living every day of your life the same boring way is peace?”
