“Hmm?”
“Would you like some coffee?”
I didn’t quite have it in me to answer, but Oliver made me some anyway. Which was one of those things that felt like real love.
Putting his arms around me, Oliver kissed me gently on the back of the neck. “We prepared for this.”
“Wetalkedabout this,” I replied, “we didn’tpreparefor it. You can’t.”
“No,” agreed Oliver.
And for a while we just stood there like that, him holding me and me resting against him, like there was nothing but the two of us in all the world. I tried not to think about how in a bit over an hour, that would be one step closer to being true. At least there’d be only the two of us in all the house.
Well, us and Spud.
We were interrupted by a sound of disgust coming from Jaz. Disgust of the older-people-I-live-with-are-showing-affection kind. Not the homophobic kind. “Are you two finished being shit?”
Oliver turned his head fractionally towards her. “No.”
I disentangled myself from him and tried to avoid bursting into tears. “And we never will be.”
Jaz pushed past us, grabbed a couple of slices of bread, and popped them in the toaster. She’d been out of the yoink-two-slices-and-vanish habit for at least a year. When her toast popped up, she buttered it, then retrieved a packet of Maldon Sea Salt from the cupboard and sprinkled a few flakes artfully over the top. “So,” she began. There was an edge in her voice that, even after all this time, I didn’t think I’d ever heard. “This is weird, right?”
I suddenly had no idea what to do with my hands. “I’mtryingnot to be.”
“We’re very glad that Maisie is able to take you back,” said Oliver more levelly. “But that doesn’t mean we won’t also miss you.”
Jaz looked very fixedly at her toast. “Yeah, well. You said. Yesterday. And the day before.”
“And we still mean it today,” replied Oliver.
I didn’t reply anything. I was beginning to find it a bit difficult to get words out.
Scuffing one foot on the floor, Jaz lapsed into a still-characteristic silence. “Yeah,” she finally repeated. “Well.”
We sort of avoided talking from then until the doorbell went.Spud ran to it, yapping, and I spared a thought for how much he’d miss Jaz as well. In some ways, he’d been closer to her than any of us.
Holding out a faint, desperate hope that this would actually be Next Door’s Kid’s Parents popping up with some last-minute complaint, I rested for a second with my hand on the latch. Oliver and Jaz lined up behind me, and Spud scampered around my feet, totally oblivious about what was going on. And then, when I couldn’t delay any longer, I opened the door.
It wasn’t Next Door’s Kid’s Parents. It was Maisie. Which meant it was over.
“Hi,” she said, in that very specific tone people got when they knew they were happy about something you were sad about.
Oliver and I hi-ed back, and Jaz—who I didn’t think wastryingto give the impression that she was desperate to get rid of us—started gathering up all the bags she’d packed in advance. The suitcase she’d taken on her year eleven geography field trip. The laptop bag we’d got her for the laptop we’d got her to replace the one she’d had from Bellefield when it inevitably broke. The guitar my mum had stolen from Brian May. The sports bag Jaz no longer had to use for her PE kit because she was somehow starting her A levels already and so would never have mandatory football ever again.
It was terrifying how many memories you could build in just a couple of years.
“Thanks,” Maisie went on, only slightly awkwardly. “For, y’know, looking after her.”
“It’s fine.” It was the most not-falling-apart tone I could manage. “Literally the job description.”
“It was our pleasure,” added Oliver.
Jaz turned and gave him athe fuck it waslook. “The fuck it was.”
“Jasmine,” warned Maisie. It had taken me a while to get used to the fact that Maisie actually did always call her daughter by herfull name, and that Jaz didn’t seem to mind it from her. But it made sense when I thought about it. “Don’t be a prick.”
Thankfully Oliver, always ready with a slightly-too-formal response to anything, just smiled. “It’s fine.” Then he turned to Jaz. “I hope this won’t be too sentimental, but I assure you, these last two years have been the most rewarding of my life.”
