‘Look, there’s no good crying over spilt milk,’ said her dad. ‘Eat your toast. Then why not go out for a walk with Barney in the fresh air – if you feel up to it?’
‘I think a walk might be a good idea. I’d prefer not to walk around the village, though.’ She didn’t have to explain why. Her parents had lived there for years and years. It was where she and her siblings had grown up, and although there had been some house moves in the village over the years, there were also plenty of neighbours who’d been there for as long as her parents had. Which inevitably meant awkward conversations if – when – she bumped into them.
I could just lie and say I’m visiting from London, thought Bridie. The problem was that they’d ask where Julian was. Unfortunately, Bridie had made rather a big deal of her life in London and her career on the stage. And her producer fiancé. It had been a big deal to her. She’d been so proud of the life she’d built for herself. She knew she wouldn’t be able to keep up the pretence in a small village. Sooner or later, they’d chat to her parents and find out she was back with no prospect of returning to the London stage in the near future.
She finished her toast. ‘I think I’ll just hang around the house today, if you don’t mind.’
‘What about Barney?’ her dad asked.
With so much on her mind, Bridie had forgotten that he’d mentioned someone called Barney. She licked marmalade from her fingers and looked at her mum and dad. ‘Who is Barney? Have you got a lodger I don’t know about?’ She turned in her chair and peered through the open doorway to the stairs expecting someone else to walk down the stairs and join them for breakfast.
‘Of course not,’ her father guffawed. ‘I did plan for my retirement, you know. That’s why I worked the extra five years, so that we wouldn’t be caught out with any surprises when I retire.’
‘Apart from me.’
‘Well, yes, but you’ll sort yourself out, sweetheart. Something will turn up, just you wait and see.’
Don’t count on it, thought Bridie. It was all well and good them talking about office and shop work, as though she could walk out of the house and into a job straight away, but she wondered if they had they seen the state of the economy. Had they even heard of Neets? She shouldn’t fall into that demographic,those not in education, employment or training, but she felt she was heading that way.
There were just no jobs – not like in her parents’ day, when people could walk out of one job they didn’t much like and into a new job the next day. Even the same day, so her parents said. It just wasn’t like that anymore. She thought it would be best to keep them in blissful ignorance in the short term, though. She might be living with them for some time.
Unless I go and stay with Grandad, she thought.
Bridie glanced at her mobile phone, which was sitting on the table, debating when to call her grandad to check he was okay, and let him know where she was.
‘No mobile phones at the table please, dear.’
Bridie looked up sharply. ‘I’m not twelve!’ In point of fact, at the age of twelve, she hadn’t had a mobile phone.
‘I know, dear. But we have rules in this house.’
Bridie slipped the phone off the table and into her jeans pocket.Oh, my god,she thought, I don’t know how long I’ll survive living with my parents. How many times throughout her teenage years had she heard those words from her mum?We have rules in this house.
She knew her parents only meant well, but it just reminded her that it wasn’t her house – it was theirs. Now she wished her grandad had been in. He didn’t do ‘rules’, which was probably the reason they hadn’t been that keen on their youngest teenage daughter moving out of the family home to live with him in London – although she had a feeling it had been less about her living with her grandad, and more about the prospect that she had moved there to get her ‘big break’.Fat lot of good that did me,she thought.
Now she wished something else – that they did have a lodger she could take a walk with. Which reminded her of her question once again. ‘So, who is Barney?’
Her mum rolled her eyes. ‘So, your dad’s colleagues pooled together and bought him a retirement present.’
‘Barney?’
They both nodded, her dad grinning.
‘What’s Barney then – a clock? That’s what people get when they retire, don’t they?’
‘No, Barney is …’ Her mum heaved a sigh, ‘is not at all what I imagined when he said we have to make some room for his retirement present. He brought it home on the train in a carrier.’
‘A carrier bag?’ Bridie rubbed her forehead. She’d felt tired already, before she’d sat down with her parents, but now she could feel a tension headache coming on.
‘No, a carrier. A pet carrier.’
Bridie’s eyes went wide. ‘Your colleagues bought you a pet for your retirement?’
‘A dog, to be precise.’
‘A dog?’
‘A puppy,’ said her dad.
