LITMIR.BIZ

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father she’d never met. Izzy tried not to think about how long the money her mother had left her would last, but it wouldn’t be for ever. She’d never been one to think about the future. Other people did that. She was more of an in-the-moment kinda gal, but this time there was no getting away from it: she’d have to get a job.

      ‘Some of the kids were saying because we moved from Hawaii to here it must mean that we’re poor.’

      Izzy looked out of the window and laughed. Today was a rare sunny day. Apart from the insanely beautiful May bank holiday with Charlotte and the gang (chocolate cake would never be the same again), they’d pretty much enjoyed grey, drizzly, British seaside weather every day. Not that they were anywhere near the sea. The village itself was perfectly serviceable, but heaven knew why her mother and father had picked it. It was near absolutely nothing. Perhaps that had been the point. On Maui everything felt close. In a good way. The twenty-mile drive to Cardiff – or ten to the sea – seemed crazy long after living on an island you could circumnavigate in under two hours. Or maybe it was the constant fear that her van would break down and they’d be stranded. Friendless. With no one to call. She thought of Freya’s invite to go camping and Emily’s regular check-ins. No one within one hundred miles, anyway.

      Her daughter was still looking at her expectantly.

      ‘I can see where they’re coming from, Booboo. Hawaii was pretty amazing, but they’ve got castles here. And … umm … other things. We’re good. Don’t you worry about that.’

      ‘Then why did we move?’

      It was a good question. And one she really didn’t want to answer.

      ‘To be near friends.’ It wasn’t entirely a lie.

      ‘But … Auntie Emms lives in London and Freya does too and Charlotte’s getting divorced.’

      Izzy squatted down and swept her daughter’s hair away from her eyes. ‘You don’t miss much, do you? Look, just because Charlotte’s getting a divorce doesn’t mean we aren’t going to see her again. In fact we’ll probably see more of her.’

      ‘Good.’ Izzy grinned. ‘Bonzer likes her.’ She scooped up Bonzer with a grunt and patted his huge paw on Izzy’s cheek. ‘Bonzer loves ice cream.’

      ‘Well, isn’t that lucky?’ Izzy pulled them both in for a cuddle. ‘There just happens to be an ice cream shop on the way home from school.’

      ‘Still don’t wanna go.’

      ‘Loons.’ Izzy held up her hand and showed four fingers. ‘School breaks up in this many. If you finish the rest of the week, how about we jump into the van and drive up to meet Freya and Charlotte on their crazy wild camping trip?

      Luna’s blue eyes lit up instantly. ‘Really? Can we bring Bonzer?’

      ‘Of course we can!’ Izzy crossed her fingers behind her back, desperately trying to remember if Freya had said he was welcome. His incarceration at Sittingstone Castle had led to meeting Charlotte’s new mentor, Lady Venetia, but losing Looney for the two hours before the dowager countess had discovered both child and dog asleep in the castle kennels had scared the living daylights out of her. No chance she was going through that again. If the worst came to the worst, she’d stick Bonzer in a pair of cargoes and vest and pretend he was her husband.

      ‘Yay!’ Luna jumped up and down, her long, coiled hair flying around her head like a whirling dervish.

      ‘Right, time to get dressed!’

      As Luna ran upstairs to her room, Izzy spied the letter she’d tucked behind the fruit bowl, away from little girl eyes. Every time she caught a glimpse of it she shrank a little, knowing the longer she ignored it, the worse things might be. Or better. There was always a possibility.

      She looked around her at the cottage, its patches of peeling plaster, its lack of central heating, the damp that seemed to permeate the whole house even though summer had well and truly arrived.

      It hadn’t even occurred to her to sell it as, apart from a small savings account, this was all she had left of her mum (and dad), but how on earth could she have known it was going to be like this?

      She should’ve sold it the second she found out about it and moved to Bristol instead. Tantalizingly close, just across the mouth of the Severn River, and yet, oh so far.

      She’d been so busy the past few months. Packing up what she could afford to bring on the plane. Selling or Craigslisting the rest. Answering the barrage of emails from Emily as best she could. Wishing Nr Cardiff was Nr-er to Bristol, or that Cardiff wasn’t so insanely far away from London. Why couldn’t her parents have had an affair in Brighton? Bloomsbury. Paris, even. They’d both been artistic types. What was the allure of Nr Cardiff?

      The romance of penury? The fact it was so cold that bed was the only place to get cosy? The mould?

      Who knew? Her mother’s tastes had always eluded her, and too late Izzy had realized the millions of questions she should have asked her before she’d died. At least her father had thought of her in his will. She’d done her best to make the flint stone cottage seem the tiniest bit like their simple but perfect beach house they’d left behind in Hawaii, all the while trying to ignore the growing fear that the mould she smelt (and saw) was toxic.

      That. And, of course, The Other Thing. She nudged the letter out from between the bowl and the wall, eyes glued as it fell open, the name of the hospital and the department in bright blue lettering at the top of the page, glowing like a neon sign.

       Oncology Department

      She could hear Emily’s voice in her head, ‘Deal with it. Now!’

      Bonzer batted at her chest. It was like he knew.

      Izzy shoved the letter in the pocket of her cut-off jeans. She’d look at it later.

      ‘Wait. What? Who?’ Emily was properly regretting taking Callum’s call. His love life was definitely not an emergency. The fact he wanted her to move out, however, was.

      ‘A boy-friend.’ Callum said it really slowly, as if she were a thicko. Then, ‘He’s called Ernesto. He’s Spanish.’ Callum made a trill of his tongue wrapped up with a click of the fingers and an Olé!

      ‘Bueno,’ she said flatly, then, ‘I thought you were in Vienna today.’

      ‘Yes indeed. We met at the Regenbogen parade. He’s a musician. That’s why we need your room. So he can set up his studio.’

      Puta madre. Trust Callum to have his ‘some enchanted evening’ with Barcelona’s answer to Moby. If she’d gone on his Euro Pride Tour with him as requested, she’d very likely not be in this mess. On the flipside, if she’d gone she’d no doubt be in some sort of other mess. Her mother had recently friended her on Facebook and Twitter, marking a dramatic curtailment to her already half-assed #lovinglife presence on social media. Which is why she’d stayed home and done double shifts. Yesterday, after her mother ‘waved’, she’d taken an ironic panorama of the dim sum across the street to a sign outside the hospital warning people about viral gastroenteritis. Her mother had rung immediately and told her not to bother, there was a better place down the road with far better dumplings.

      All that genius … wasted.

      ‘You’ll like him,’ Callum gushed. ‘I can’t wait for you two to meet.’

      As he yammered on about the perfect place in Soho to eat because he thought meeting at the flat would be awkward all things considered, she shook the phone, praying something, anything, would magically change the fact that Callum was dumping her by FaceTime. Why couldn’t he have text-dumped her like a normal person? Not that it was really dumping seeing as they were only friends, but … even so …

      Sigh. She should’ve answered more of those WhatsApp things from the girls. Then she’d have gained some ‘bitch about Callum’ credits.

      She

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