Chloe - Freya North

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space, spouting a soliloquy peppered, as usual, with ‘I’ and ‘me’.

      ‘What’s cookin’? I’m starvin’.’ Chloë hates the way he drops his ‘g’s. She fiddles with picture frames and finds fluff on cushions. He checks the messages on his mobile phone. Something inside Chloë is burning and welling. It’s Jocelyn. It’s Mrs Andrews. ‘Look at him,’ they seem to be spurring Chloë, ‘the repugnant lump!’

      ‘Brett,’ Chloë hears her voice suddenly escape the safety of things left unsaid, ‘I have something to tell you. There’s something I need to say.’

      ‘Yeah?’ he twists his toes and burps under his breath.

      ‘You know bread?’ Chloë starts, shaking down a few locks of her hair to hide behind.

      ‘Huh?’ He regards her suspiciously, curling his lip. ‘Bread?’

      ‘Mm!’ she agrees, tucking the curls temporarily behind her ears. ‘Once it’s stale, it can never truly be revived. Not even if it was once quite tasty.’

      ‘I’m bloody star-vin’,’ Brett snaps, caressing his belly which rumbles like the thunder slowly etching its way across his brow. ‘Are you tellin’ me that’s all there is? Bread that’s gone off?’

      ‘That’s what it is. Was,’ Chloë reasons, suddenly radiant, ‘and well past its sell-by date.’

      It was only when Chloë heard the communal door bang downstairs that she allowed herself to sink into the chair and shake uncontrollably. After a while she picked up the photograph frame and chuckled; laughing out loud until tears of mirth oozed from the corners of her eyes and her ribs creaked for mercy.

       I did it!

      ‘Mrs A, I did it! I really, actually, did.’

      ‘You did indeed, dear. Metaphors and all.’

      Carefully, Chloë removed the photograph and tore it methodically into strips which she then twisted and coaxed into an origami star – a skill she learnt many years before not knowing quite when it would have its use. She contemplated the spiky form and rotated it, catching a little bit of Brett’s hand here, a nose and half a mouth there; an elbow, part of a tennis shoe, a palm frond. Capped teeth.

       In the ball of my hand, let alone under my thumb!

      ‘Bye-bye,’ she sang, tipping the origami from hand to hand. ‘The first time I ever stood up to you was ultimately the last too!’ She listens to the silence and loves the peace it promises. ‘Were you that “awful”?’ she whispers at Brett’s faceted face. ‘Yes, I suppose you were.’ Chloë went over to the window, peering intensely up at the ink-navy sky wishing for a star. ‘Bossy,’ she clarified, holding the origami star aloft and catching a glance of Brett’s mouth; ‘tactless,’ she shuddered, ‘chauvinistic, too.’ She crossed to the mirror and sprung ringlets of her hair through her fingers, remembering how Brett had referred to it, when wet, as ‘positively pubic’. Well Chloë, he’s losing his!

      She settled snugly into the armchair and contemplated the fractured photograph once more. ‘You were but a cheap processed oaf,’ she said, proud of the pun, ‘and I think, actually, I’d rather enjoy something more wholesome and nourishing now.’ With that, she tossed the splintered, diminished image of Brett deftly into the waste-paper basket.

      Just the ‘lousy’ job now, Chloë; time to free yourself from the self-obsessed shackles of the lowly paid and not very good inner London Polyversity where you’ve shouldered the role of student-communication-liaison-welfare-officer for four thankless years. Think of it! No more students-in-need, the Sins that frequently run amok in the already cramped Islington studio you’ve been renting.

      Chloë’s flat was presently overrun by an eighteen-year-old first-year anorexic, a second-year suicidal with girlfriend trouble and a third-year in the throes of a pre-finals breakdown. They littered her flat and demanded round-the-clock counselling and unrestricted access to fridge (apart from the anorexic) and telephone (often simultaneously). Demanding indeed, with pay and praise as paltry as they were.

      Finally, on a turbulent December afternoon just a day away from the end of term, bolstered by Jocelyn’s legacy and inspired by the map of the United Kingdom, Chloë has decided to resign. She has her eye on a moment to savour and worries that if she procrastinates, or changes into something more becoming, the moment would be lost. Then Lent term would be mercilessly upon her. And Wales would remain unopened. Wales would be forgotten. Closed.

      She could not possibly insult Jocelyn so.

      And there is no law against handing in one’s notice wearing jeans and trainers that should be restricted to solitary evenings safely inside.

      ‘But Chloë, the students need you – you’re their lifeline. If it’s a rise you want, we could, at a stretch, offer you one per cent over three years?’

      Chloë is surrounded by lino and melamine, strip lighting and orange plastic chairs. They are chipped and unsteady. Rain courses relentlessly down the steel-framed windows. A small puddle is forming on the flaking grey window-sill. It is unbelievably drab and depressing and Chloë feels all the more resolute for it. She rejects the pay rise and leaves guilt firmly in the room when she closes the door quietly behind her.

      Well, if Chloë Cadwallader is not to be a student-communication-liaison-welfare-officer, with a boyfriend called Brett and a rented studio in Islington, what is she to be?

      On Christmas Eve, she has absolutely no idea. And now there is no Jocelyn to turn to for advice. And yet, was not her godmother still overseeing Chloë’s education and welfare with as much concern and motivation during her death as she had during her life? Was not her legacy precisely that there was no better place for Chloë to start in the worldwide scheme of things than in the great British Isles?

      ‘Europe,’ Jocelyn had once said to Chloë, ‘is enthralling, the United States vast. Africa is captivating, Asia a jewel. Australasia is glorious and fiendishly far away but Britain, Britain is the garden of the world with secrets of joy lurking in every tiny nook.’

      Jocelyn’s bequest was that her god-daughter should discover and share those secrets. Who knows what she might find. And where. How exciting and what an opportunity. Grab it! Go! Have you gone yet?

      Christmas Eve in Islington. Chloë has pinned Jocelyn’s map above her bed and as she gazes at the four countries, she decides that now is the time to greet Wales. With Mr Andrews’s encouragement, she extends a tentative hand out towards the envelope. But she stops midway and wonders if it is all a little too far-fetched. So Jocelyn had deemed Chloë’s job deplorable and had thought Brett loathsome, but was a voyage to the distant corners of the United Kingdom really the answer? Was it a logical solution? Was it necessary?

      Was it even sensible?

      (‘People who are forever sensible are interminably dull, Chloë sweet. As drab as a black brolly in Islington.’)

      Was it a good idea? Realistically?

      ‘I’ve quit job and jilted the boyf – won’t that do?’ Chloë says aloud with just a touch of a whine to her voice. ‘What if I just move away from Islington – say, try Putney? How about I look for a job in a nice private firm – market research or something? Mr Andrews, please advise!’

      Mr Andrews, however, remains silent, his grin stony and fixed. And Chloë suspects that there is little point consulting Mrs Andrews who appears, on Christmas Eve, the sort of lady who would not speak unless spoken to but might, with a giggle and a glance, sing a little ditty if cajoled and flattered.

      Chloë does not want entertaining, she wants someone to tell her what to do. She can no longer reach out to Jocelyn and seek her advice.

      And yet it is Jocelyn’s advice that is in dispute today.

      Wales, still enveloped beyond reach, is yet tantalizingly close.

      ‘I’ll

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