She spun around to face the opposite wall. “And there was a chestnut Renaissance wall cabinet,” she continued. “Easily worth more than a couple thousand pounds if sold properly. The detailing on it was done by—”
“I remember,” I said, joining her in the middle of the room. “She had an old rocking chair in that corner.”
“Not just any old rocking chair,” Glenn huffed. “It was Hitchcock’s rocking chair.”
“Right,” I agreed.
“They took it all?” Glenn despaired. “How could they take it all?”
“How could they not tell you they took it all?” I echoed.
Parents were simply the worst sometimes, I decided. The emptiness of the room did make it easier to come to terms with the idea of moving in, however. Mama Jones’ ghost was long gone, the only scent left in this room was from stuffiness and mildew; after only a few minutes of standing in the middle of it, I itched to scratch my nose. We’d need to give it a good scrub, that’s for sure.
“So, how much do you pay for the utility bills?” I wondered, squeezing my eyes shut in anticipation of the number. I didn’t know why, because she’d clearly been able to afford it on her antique shop assistant salary so far.
“You would only need to cover it until I find something new,” Glen wriggled, avoiding the answer. “Then we’d split it.”
“How much is it?” I asked again.
“About six hundred per month,” she mumbled.
Holy shit! She’d been paying almost all of her salary to the energy bills alone to keep this flat. I’d been looking to rent for about the same price, but already owning a place and still paying this much every month? That sounded like thievery.
“We might need to look into that,” I decided.
There ought to be cheaper providers, but that wasn’t the priority just now. We talked about the move and planned everything out as much as we could until the sun began to set.
“Okay, since I’m not really officially living here yet,” I said, standing up from her sofa to stretch, “I need to get going before my parents come knocking, or decide to call the police about a missing twenty-five year old.”
Glen snorted. She was in a much better mood than when I’d first arrived. “They wouldn’t! Your mum would lose her credibility with the authorities if she went crying wolf every time you stayed out past midnight.”
I laughed. “You know her as well as I do. Nothing would stop her from giving me a house arrest despite the fact I’m not a child anymore.”
“To her you’ll always be a child.”
The short trip to Glen’s bedroom revealed that neither of us had thought to pick up my wet clothes from where I’d left them. Crumpled up as they were, they hadn’t only remained wet but also acquired a strong stench.
Wrinkling my nose, I picked them up and threw them in the washing machine in the kitchen along with a few random things piling up in Glen’s laundry basket.
“I don’t suppose you have anything more... presentable to borrow?” I wondered, giving Glen a hopeful look while batting my eyes.
“You saw the laundry,” she replied. “I’ll be happy to find a clean pair of knickers for myself in the morning.”
“You will not be working tomorrow, though.”
Glen flinched. This topic was still raw. I got it, losing a job sucked, but I wasn’t going to pick my wet clothes back out of the washing machine, and I wasn’t going to traipse through the city in pyjamas either.
I was wrong.Glen had said there’d be hardly anyone out this late, which had persuaded me to leave her flat, gripping my phone in one hand and keys in the other, still wearing a cat pattern all over my body. I’d trusted her like I would an older and wiser sister had I had one, so it came to me as a total surprise when only two floors down from her place the lift yanked to a stop.
The ding of the doors opening carried an ominous air. There were three other flats on this floor, and for a second I held onto the hope that the person on the other side of the opening doors was anyone else buthim. That hope died with the first crack in the metal enclosure as a familiar figure standing on the other side came into view.
I held my breath as Mr Umbrella slid his gaze over my outfit with a spark of amusement lighting up his eyes.
“I’m not sure this is an improvement on your previous outfit,” he said, stepping into the tight space and pushing all the oxygen out into the hallway in the process. “Your boyfriend didn’t have any of his clothes to spare? A knee-length T with those heels could convince a casual passerby you were headed to a bar or a club, but this?” He shook his head, grinning. “This’ll not convince anybody.”
I was not going to correct him on the facts he’d gotten wrong any more than I was going to give his handsomely smug face the attention he clearly craved. So, I huffed out a breath and faced the dials on the side wall, following the trail of the numbers lighting up and dimming as we descended.
“Right. Not in the mood to talk. I get it,” Mr Umbrella said, and it took every ounce of me to remain nonchalant. I would not look at him. The reminder of his smile already seemed to be tattooed on my brain, and a refreshment would only make it fade slower. “It’s cute, you know, the PJs. It’s the heels that ruin the look.”
