‘Can I get you a drink?’ I ask. ‘I have wine.’
‘Oooh, I’d love a glass.’ She bounces across the room and drops her skinny arse on to the small couch. She’s so slim. I take a peek over my shoulder to my curvy arse and frown. No amount of exercise can reduce it.
I pour two glasses and hand one to Lucy as I take a seat next to her. ‘Nice to meet you.’ I toast the air, and Lucy laughs, following suit before we both swig and let out collective sighs, laughing and falling back on to the couch. ‘Why does it seem like you’ve had a day like I have?’ I ask. She got a job. Surely she’s delighted.
Lucy snorts. ‘My morning was amazing. I got a job and went shopping to celebrate. My afternoon, not so much.’
‘Why?’
‘Both my parents showed up.’
‘Is that a bad thing?’ I’d love for both of my parents to just show up. Sadness washes over me, and I spend a few too many moments accepting that that will never happen. Dad, of course, is no longer with us and I’d be surprised if I could ever get my mum to leave the stifling confines of Helston to come and visit me.
Lucy drops her head to the side and looks at me tiredly. ‘It is when they’re trying to drag me back to the sticks.’
‘The sticks?’
‘The back of beyond. The deepest depths of the English countryside, where my only friends were pigs and fucking cows.’
I laugh. ‘Why do they want to drag you home?’
‘The natural progression.’ She sighs, taking another sip of her wine. ‘I’m destined to take over the family business, but I’d rather shove nails in my eyes.’
‘I get it,’ I reply quietly, sipping thoughtfully. She feels trapped, and I can totally relate to that.
‘There’s a big scary world out there,’ she continues, ‘and I want in.’
I smile, thinking Lucy and I could be great friends. Her circumstances might be different, but we’re so similar in our situation.
‘How about you? What brings you to London?’
‘An ex-boyfriend who I never want to see again.’ I smile tightly when she cringes, probably reading between the lines and reaching the right conclusion. ‘But above everything, like you, I want in to that big scary world, full of possibilities.’
‘Good for you.’ She clinks my glass. ‘How did your parents react to you flying the nest?’
‘My father passed away.’ Lucy’s face drops, but I smile, trying to ease her obvious discomfort. ‘The natural progression thing, I get that. I ran his business after he died. A little antique store. I use the word “antique” loosely.’ I laugh, seeing his face in my mind, concentrating as he talked me through what he was doing to an old clock when I was a little girl. Back then, I had no desire to venture far from my parents or the tiny antique store that seemed huge when I was a child. It was only when I started studying history, got lost in the hundreds of books at my library and gained a broader knowledge of the words ‘antique’ and ‘art’ that I saw beyond Dad’s idea of history. Now the hours, days, months, and years of reading, studying, and dreaming, seem like a stupid waste of my time. ‘I love history,’ I say quietly. ‘Just stuff with a bit more history than Dad managed to find.’
Lucy smiles sadly. ‘How did he die?’
‘Brain tumour. By the time they diagnosed it, it was too late.’
‘Oh, Eleanor, that’s terrible.’
I nod in silent agreement. I’ve drowned in the sympathy my father’s sudden death brought. Not a day went past without someone in my small village passing on their condolences, until I was certain there wasn’t anyone left to feel sorry for us. I was wrong. The looks, the whispers, the awkward silence that descended whenever I walked into a shop and people clocked me. It all became too much. It made the urge to flee Helston stronger, but the guilt was equally as strong. I couldn’t leave Mum. I couldn’t leave the shop. I couldn’t leave my boyfriend.
‘And the boyfriend?’ Lucy asks tentatively.
I jump up off the couch, keen to put this conversation to rest. ‘He drifted away from me and drifted closer to my best friend,’ I say bluntly, showing no emotion at all as I head into the kitchen. Grief makes you blind. And somehow, even though Amy ‘meant nothing’, she and David are still in orbit together. I know because my mother has mentioned seeing them together around town. So why the fuck is the bastard still calling me?
Snatching up the wine, I top up my glass. ‘More?’ I ask.
Downing the rest of her glass, Lucy holds it up to me. ‘Pour on,’ she orders, making me grin.
Perfect. I tip the remaining contents of the bottle into her glass.
A few hours later, we’re staring at three empty bottles. Having demolished the first bottle of wine within minutes, Lucy hotfooted it across the hall to her flat and grabbed anything alcoholic – which happened to be a bottle of red and some cheap sparkling stuff. We’ve really mixed it up, and our drunkenness is evidence. I haven’t eaten or showered, and my red hair is bunched messily in a huge knot on my head.
We’ve talked for England. We’ve covered every topic imaginable, put the world to rights, and laughed our way through it all. Lucy and I are now firm friends. We’re also prancing around my apartment to Whitney Houston’s ‘I’m Every Woman’ like a pair of overexcited, slightly sad, single nutjobs.
‘We should go out this weekend,’ Lucy sings. ‘Oh my God, we should totally paint the town red.’ She falls on to the couch and attempts to sit up while holding up her half-full glass so not to spill it. And fails. ‘Oopsie.’ She laughs, deciding to neck it before rolling off the couch on to the floor. ‘I think I’m a bit pissed.’ She hiccups and scrambles to her feet, swaying on the spot. ‘You, Eleanor Cole’ – she points her glass at me, hiccupping again – ‘are a bad influence.’ Hiccup. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and spends a while trying to focus on me. ‘I feel a bit sick.’ She starts circling her tummy with her palm, her face going a little green.
‘Oh no, you’re not going to throw up, are you?’ I sober up in a second, the thought of my new rug being decorated with Lucy’s vomit helping me along. I take her elbow and guide her to the bathroom. ‘Put your head over the loo.’
She collapses in front of the toilet, her head dangling lifelessly as she groans. ‘Ohhhh Godddd, I’m gonna . . .’ She jerks and throws up, grabbing the seat of the toilet while I try to hold back her hair. My face wrinkles in distaste as the smell wafts up and pollutes the air.
‘All right?’ I ask, transferring her blond hair into one hand so I can pinch my nose with the other. ‘Water?’