Lou stood in the doorway of the canteen and watched Kyle. He was sitting by the window and staring down at his phone. Every now and then he pushed one hand back through his hair. Lou could just about see the tattoo of a crown on his wrist. She’d loved that tattoo when they’d first started seeing each other, she remembered kissing it, in bed at Kyle’s place. Before it all went to shit.
She didn’t bother getting anything to eat – she had a KitKat, a packet of Quavers and a bottle of water in her bag. She crossed the room before she could change her mind, and sat down opposite Kyle.
He looked up and his face split into a smile and … he had a good smile. And a good face. Lou could remember what it was like to like him, to wait for him to look at her and smile at her. She remembered what it was like to want him to want her. But she didn’t want that any more. Not now she knew what a shit he could be.
‘Kyle,’ Lou said. She was gripping the edge of the table with both hands. ‘If you don’t stop … bothering me … if you don’t stop texting me and waiting for me …’ She took a breath. ‘I’ll have to report you.’
She looked up from her hands and into his eyes. He was staring straight back at her, his expression blank.
‘You don’t mean that,’ he said.
‘I do,’ Lou said. ‘I do mean it. Please.’
She pushed her chair back. Stood up. And left.
‘I can’t talk now, Dad, I’m at work,’ Paige said.
She turned her back to the bar and held her phone between her ear and shoulder as she sliced a lemon, dropping the slices into a jar of iced water.
‘I really need to talk to you,’ he said.
Usually, telling him she was at work was enough; he’d say ‘Oh, sorry’ or ‘I’ll call back’ or even just grunt, but then he’d hang up and she could get on with whatever she’d been doing before. But not this time, apparently.
‘What’s up?’ she said now, keeping her voice intentionally casual.
‘I’m going to sell the house,’ he said. He sounded sober. Could he possibly be sober? Maybe he was just less drunk than usual and that sounded sober to her now.
‘I’ve found a little flat,’ he said. ‘You know the new development? Down by the park?’
‘Yeah,’ she said, even though she didn’t.
‘It’s only small, but it’ll do for me. But half the house is yours. And I hope there’ll be some money for you too. So I need you to come and sign some documents. As soon as you can. Maybe at the weekend?’
Paige’s brain had stopped functioning properly at ‘sell the house’. Last time they’d talked about this, her dad had cried and then got so drunk he’d been sick all over himself on the sofa and Paige had left in the middle of the night and slept on a bench in the bus station. He couldn’t really be planning to sell it, could he? Not just planning either, but actually taken concrete action? She wasn’t going to get her hopes up, let herself think that this might actually solve her problems, that her dad would give her some money from the sale, come through for her when he never had before.
‘I’ll have to call you back,’ Paige said. And hung up.
Ella sat at the dining table in the lounge with the flat’s bills spread out in front of her and her bank account open on her laptop. Something wasn’t adding up, and she wasn’t sure what. She grabbed a notebook and pen and listed the outgoings and the incoming monthly payments and then she spotted it: Paige hadn’t paid her portion of the bills.
Her phone buzzed on the table and she grinned as she opened a selfie from Nick. He was at work, pouting, a full trolley of books next to him.
‘Come and help?’ he texted.
‘Can’t,’ she replied. ‘Busy with grown-up household stuff.’
Ella scrolled back through a couple of months’ bank statements, wondering how long this would take and if maybe she could actually chuck it in and go and meet Nick after work, and found Paige hadn’t paid last month either. Annoyance flickered through her. It was bad enough that she had to be responsible for all this shit, without the others fucking up. She took a breath. She was sure Paige hadn’t done it on purpose. Maybe she’d had a problem with her bank. It would have been better if she’d told her, but perhaps she hadn’t noticed either.
Once she’d cross-checked all the other payments and confirmed everything else was sorted, she closed her laptop and texted Nick: ‘What if I came to meet you when you get off?’ She regretted the phrase as soon as she’d sent it, but laughed when Nick replied with a string of aubergine and tongue emojis. She grabbed her coat off the back of her chair. She could talk to Paige tomorrow.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
During her break, sitting in Jonny’s office while Jonny covered the bar, Paige stared at her bank account on her phone. There was a crack running across the middle of the screen, but it couldn’t hide the fact that she not only had no money, but that she hadn’t paid the house bills for the past two months. How could she not have noticed? She’d thought one day that there was a little more in the bank than she’d expected, but she’d done a couple of extra hours at the pub and so she’d just assumed it was that. She should’ve been keeping a closer eye on it, she knew, but it had always been her instinct to stick her head in the sand when things started to go to shit. It was either that or run away.
Maybe she should call her dad back like she’d said she would. Ask him exactly what he was planning to do about the house, and if there really was going to be any money for her. But she wouldn’t be able to trust the answer anyway. No matter what he said, she wouldn’t believe she was getting anything from him until she actually had it in her hand.
What were her other options? Could she run away? Not yet, no – she didn’t have enough cash to get her to Birkenhead, let alone anywhere she might want to go – but when she got paid. Or when her next loan payment came through. She could just pack up and go. Start again, somewhere else. The thought of it made her feel sick. But so did knowing that Ella knew she couldn’t pay her bills.