Page 71 of Love and Loathing

Roscoe looked up from his screen, blinking. “Um. Hello to you, too.”

It was just past eight AM in the morning. Evie was probably still in his bed warm and soft and sleepy—and incredibly naked, just as she had been all night, sleeping in his arms, head on his chest, while he lay awake and stared into the blurring night shadows and tried to work out if joy was always meant to be this fucking terrifying.

“Bad night?” ventured Roscoe.

“Quite the opposite.”

But that was about all he could safely tell Evie’s brother on the subject, so he went to make coffee and pull himself together.

When he got home in the late afternoon, he was disappointed to find Evie gone. The extent of his disappointment wasworrying and best not thought about. So he wandered into the kitchen, stared blankly into the fridge for a good ten minutes, then came to, shook his head, gave up on the fridge and dragged his hand down his face.

He spotted a note on the counter.

I’ve had the weirdest day. Call me, E x

She’d written her phone number, because they’d still, somehow, never actually exchanged them. He felt a bit better with the note in his hand, and he called her number as he walked to his room, unbuttoning his shirt, phone pressed to his shoulder. He grabbed it properly the moment she answered.

“Hello?”

“Evie. It’s me. I got your note.”

“Oh my God, Aubrey! You wouldn’t believe what—”

He could hardly hear her. She seemed to be outside, a clanging rattling noise in the background and people talking, one of them now interrupting her. He heard her tell them to wait, then she came back on the line.

“The craziest thing happened!”

Aubrey wandered over to his window, leant there smiling faintly, not really seeing any of the passersby as he concentrated on picking out Evie’s voice over the commotion and wind blowing into the phone.

“A solicitor called me this morning, asked me to come to their office. So I went down, no idea what it could be— No, put them over there, we’ll stack them all up for the skip— Sorry, you’re still there?”

“Yes. Go on.”

“So I went down to their office, no idea what it could be, thinking it was probably my dad cutting me out of his will again like he does every few years. Except it wasn’t his usual law firm. I’d never heard of this one at all— What? No, keep those, we could probably use them for something. Sorry, sorry, it’schaos here. So I go into the meeting, and they start explaining to me that someone has nominated me as the sole trustee and guardian of this parcel of land. Aubrey! You’ll never believe it! They’ve given it to me, the whole place, handed me a key! You have to come and see for yourself.”

And she gave him an address that had become very familiar.

Aubrey pulled up outside the vacant lot on Laburnum Grove, N16. The gates that had been padlocked last time were now wide open, and a horde of slightly scruffy looking people were busy pulling down the Bluedeen boards that had screened the wasteland beyond.

He caught sight of Evie hurrying across the space, wellies on, face bright. She almost ran to the car. “Park in here,” she said breathlessly. “No point getting a ticket stopping there.”

She waved everyone out of the way, and he drove his immaculate silver car onto the sticky mud. He got out, shoes stepping onto the same mud, giving it a dubious look before Evie rushed over and clung to his arm.

“Aubrey! I have no idea what’s going on. I think I’m still dreaming.”

He smiled at her excitement. “Tell me what happened.”

“Come, let’s sit down.” She pulled him in the direction of a small portacabin in one corner. “They even left their site office here. It’s the perfect base of operations. I can keep all the stuff we need here—I won’t have to take over someone’s living room!”

“Wonderful,” Aubrey said, stepping into the damp, cold, flimsy-looking structure.

Evie dragged over some plastic office chairs but was too excited to sit, leaning back against the edge of a cheap MDFdesk, some Bluedeen paperwork still scattered over it, drifting to the floor, which was covered in muddy footprints.

“Did they say anything to you?” she asked. “When you were still at BlacktonGold, did Domnall or anyone mention they were selling the site or why?”

“No. I heard nothing of it when I was still working there.”

“I wonder what happened, why they decided to sell?”

---