Then life would be sweet once more.
Chapter 45
Now
Annie locked up the salon for the day, half wondering if it might be for the very last time. She was out of options.
Almost.
There was that one last roll of the dice, but she knew it was a long shot and one that she truly wouldn’t have even considered if not for the fact that she was absolutely desperate.
Getting into the car, she checked her phone again for a reply to the message she’d sent earlier, before throwing it onto the driver’s seat.
A few minutes later, she pulled into her friend Gemma’s driveway, glancing at her phone screen once again under the pretence of checking the time.
She was much later than usual again today, and she felt guilty that the stress and strain of all this was affecting her life in more ways than one.
‘Mum!’
Annie’s heart instinctively lifted as her little boy rushed out of the childminder’s house to greet her.
Charlie was always so happy to see her, and no matter how shitty she was feeling, his happy grin never failed to bring a smile to her face.He was full of chatter, having learned some new football move from Gemma’s son Callum, who was a few years older.
‘It’s called the seal dribble,’ he chattered animatedly in the driveway while Gemma waved at Annie from her front doorway. ‘You do it like this.’
Annie watched as he took his scuff-covered football and began to bounce it on his head repeatedly.
‘You see? You keep bouncing it like this while you run to the goal. I’m still trying to get it that I can keep an eye on target while I do it.’
‘That’s brilliant, love,’ Annie enthused as she ruffled his hair. She looked apologetically at Gemma. ‘I’m so sorry, I’m late again. There was a last-minute emergency at the salon and—’
‘It’s fine, sure he’s no bother. And I hope you don’t mind but Nick already told me something was going on.’
Nick’s sister was a very understanding friend, but Annie never wanted to take the piss. Gemma had been an absolute godsend to her the last few years, taking care of Charlie while she was off working like a demon, trying to get the business up and running.
But with everything that was going on now, Annie worried if she’d even be able to afford her anymore.
Luckily he’d started school last year, which meant that she really only needed a childminder in the afternoons, these days, but who knew how things could change in the future?
At this point, Annie wasn’t sure how she was going to get through even this month with the amount of money owed to suppliers and the staff and business overheads to pay.
She wasn’t going to let those worries show, she resolved, as she chatted with Gemma for a bit before bundling Charlie into the car. She wasn’t going to allow him to suffer because of her concerns about them, either.
When they reached home, Annie stared at the lovely house that had been theirs for the last two years. She’d never felt so proud as she did when #GlamSquad was doing well enough that she’d been able to get a mortgage on a place of their own.
She’d never really lived in a proper house before, not since she was a child at the O’Dohertys’, and when Charlie was a baby she’d been restricted to the poky flats offered to single mothers on welfare.
But through her hard work and efforts with the salon, she’d managed to get them out of social housing and into a place with a proper garden where her son could run around and play, where he could have his own room and she’d have a real kitchen – not a few inches separated from the living room by a foot of table.
She and Charlie had that now, but for how much longer?
‘Mum, what’s for dinner?’ he asked as he got out, tucked his football under his arm, and slammed the car door. No matter how many times she told him not to, he always did it.
‘I don’t know. I’ll have to see what’s in the fridge.’
‘But it’s Friday! Maybe a takeaway?’ he suggested with a grin that always had the power to melt her heart. ‘Pizza?’
His eyes sparkled with enthusiasm.
