That had been Emily’s cue to be gracious, conciliatory. Instead she chose the lowest road. “I’m sorry I’m such a massive disappointment to you guys,” she said, “but you were the ones who adopted a kid from fuck knows where. If you wanted perfection then maybe you should’ve left me where I was.”
Juliet had recoiled as if slapped. “That is not fair, Emily. And you know it.”
Emily did know it, but there was a spark of truth in what she’d said. Plus, she always got a kick out of seeing her saintly mother snap. What, no jolly silver lining for me? Oh, how sad. This time, though, the look on Juliet’s face had been somewhat less satisfying.
After a few moments, Emily replaced the phone in her bag. The river stretched out beneath her, full and fat. Lazy waves licked the cold stone walls and slapped the undersides of party boats, and Emily had a fleeting urge to throw herself in. Life just felt … too big. She was supposedly an adult, but for some reason she struggled to deal with, well, anything really. She didn’t understand her rental agreements. Tax returns were like cryptic crosswords to her. Conversations about mortgages and small-business loans (very rare in her life, but they did crop up occasionally) might as well have been in Urdu for all the sense they made to her. She seemed to spend most of her days feeling baffled and overwhelmed. Which, she mused, perhaps explained why she now found herself broke and unemployed, standing alone on a bridge with only half her shopping.
Sighing heavily, she picked up her bag and turned away from the water, heading instead for home.
* * *
As usual, the door of Emily’s building got stuck on the bulging carpet, and she was forced to squeeze her body sideways through the gap. Her cardigan snagged on the latch, which pulled a small hole in the weave. “Crap,” she muttered, trying unsuccessfully to shove the door shut again. She gave it a kick. The doorknob fell off.
She trudged up the stairs, brushing a film of dust off the bannister with her sleeve. Inside the flat, the ever-present smell of curry, courtesy of the Indian restaurant below, was today enriched by an acrid tang of burned toast. Spencer must be cooking.
She poked her head into the kitchen, expecting to find her flatmate in his favorite spot at the table, bent over a packet of tobacco and some rolling papers. He wasn’t, but the evidence suggested he’d only just left. An ashtray full of roll-up stubs smoldered on the table, and a thin haze of smoke hung in the air. A tub of margarine sat lidless and sweaty next to greasy plates and, in the corner, takeout boxes spilled from the bin.
Curling her lip in disgust, Emily returned the margarine to the fridge, opened a window, and then picked her way over to the countertop to search for a clean glass—one that didn’t have a small pool of alcohol at the bottom. Something caught her eye as she rummaged. Among the debris was an oil-spattered note.
Guess what, it said in Spencer’s lazy scrawl, rent bounced again, landlord lost his shit. We’ve got four weeks.
Emily sat at the table and cradled her head in both hands. She racked her brains, running through a mental list of friends who might have a spare room or even a sofa she could crash on for a few weeks but, surprisingly, she came up with nothing.
How is that even possible? I have friends, don’t I?
She did, but many of them had thrown in the towel and moved away from London to get married and have kids. Now they were all scattered across the country, moving on with their lives, sending invitations to events that made absolutely no sense to her. Tupperware parties. Gender-reveal parties. She had no idea what these things even meant. Whenever she’d made the effort to visit, she’d found that she had nothing to say, nothing to contribute. It was as if they’d all flown off to the moon and left her behind.
Of the friends who had stuck around, she could only think of two who might have had space for her, but Louise had sublet her room while she was away on tour and Rhea’s father had just died, so the time probably wasn’t the right time to ask for favors. That, and Rhea’s place was like a drug den. The last time Emily had stayed over she’d woken up in the living room at 8 A.M., hungover as fuck, surrounded by bearded men and bong smoke. She hadn’t the courage to ask who they were or where they’d come from, so she’d fronted it out, sitting up and pretending everything was normal. The TV had been on, spitting out news story after gruesome news story, the men all staring with glassy eyes at grim accounts of domestic violence and mass shootings, child abuse and murders, and she’d sat and watched with them for over half an hour before she’d felt brave enough to stand up and leave the room.
And then Rhea had appeared, gray-faced and groggy, insisting that Emily come with her to her niece’s second birthday party. “Please, Em,” she’d pleaded, “I can’t face it on my own.” So, off they’d trudged to a clean white house in Putney where cake-faced kids literally ran rings around them. Emily had never felt so dirty in all her life. That was three years ago, and she hadn’t been back to Rhea’s house since.
Of course, there were her parents, but the thought of moving back in with Juliet and Peter, even temporarily, almost made her retch. There was another option there, but it was only marginally less horrendous. Over the past five or six years, Emily had called her mother countless times and asked to borrow money; always Juliet and never Peter, who told anyone who would listen that kids these days would only learn self-sufficiency when they were thrown into the churning waters of adulthood with no life jacket. Juliet, on the other hand, always caved, but would it be different this time?
Emily hadn’t spoken to either parent since her last visit, so naturally a repeat performance would go down like a shit sandwich. But what was the alternative? Live in a box on the street? She was fairly certain that her mother would rather part with some cash than see her sleep in a doorway. Eighty percent certain, anyway. Maybe seventy-five.
Emily looked at her phone. Her mouth was bone dry.
Just do it.
She picked it up and pressed the call button.
Juliet picked up after six long rings. “Hello, Emily? Is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me. Hi.”
“Darling, hello! I’m so glad you called! Listen, let me just … hang on, I can’t quite…”
“Hello? Are you there?” There was a lot of noise in the background, clinking and laughter and music.
“Hold on,” Juliet was saying, “I’m just…” There was a squeak and a bang, and the chatter was instantly muffled. “Ah, that’s better! Sorry, I’m in a restaurant. You know the one on the corner where the old bank used to be? They’ve done it up. It’s very nice, the food is superb.”
“That’s nice.” Emily took a breath. “Listen, I just wanted to apologize for, you know, the thing at your house. The way we left things … I’ve been feeling bad.”
“Oh. Well. Thank you, darling, I appreciate that.” Juliet paused. “How about we just forget it happened, okay?”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“Okay. So, we’re good?”
“Yes, sweetheart, we’re good.”
“Cool.” Emily picked at a dry smear of egg yolk on the tabletop. “So … how’ve you been?”