Page 1 of You, As You Are

CHAPTER ONE

MAISIE

Of all thesights to see, Mister Roberts trying to shag a miniature potted tree leftover from Christmas on her grandma’sdoorstep was a new one. Luckily, Maisie didn’t need to get too close to the rampant festivities to knock on the door. A blur of a figure moved behind the glass, and the red wood was slung wide before the iron gate she grasped could completely creak open.

“Is that my Moo Moo?” Arms wide and beaming a toothy smile, her grandma – affectionately known in Welsh asnain –swiftly covered the four steps across her modest, walled-off garden. Maisie was too slow to tell her to be careful of her broken wrist.

“Hello, Granny.” Warmth filled her so completely as they hugged, hernain’sarms squeezing around her body just like they had always done.

The whiff of white lily permeating from Vera’s clothes softened the smell of rain on the road behind them, where a pair of heavily-set removal men stomped about inside of the van that Maisie was more than pleased to have gotten out of.

It’d been a long drive – far longer than she remembered it feeling – from London to the Ceredigion coast, stuck in a loaded van going fifty on the motorway with two men she’d only metthat morning. She’d felt excessively conscious at first, given that the transit van had only been a three-seater and both brothers had the burly build one might expect of removal men. They hadn’t left much room for Maisie to squeeze in the third seat, but at least they’d been chatty Kathys and eased her discomfort enough for the ride.

Vera pulled away first and cupped Maisie’s cheek with her good hand. Her freshly styled, white hair held more sass in its choppy layers and curls than Maisie had in her entire existence. “I’m so glad that you’ve come, Moo Moo,” she said in her bright, thick, mid-Wales accent, putting a smile on Maisie’s lips.

“Me too.” Her generically English voice sounded bland in return. “Your cat might need a trip to the vet with how hard he was going at that tree.” She watched Mister Roberts go, tail high and proud, as he walked off inside Vera’s three-story terrace like a runway model.

“Miss Moss?” The blonder and older of the two forty-something-year-old brothers, the one who’d driven the entire contents of her flat all the way here, shifted in his heavy coat and steel-capped boots in the gateway. They’d insisted on calling herMiss Mossfor the six hours they’d been bundled into that van together, each of them sweltering in the musty output of the heating vents.

Maisie Moss, because her parents thought they were hilarious. Her brothers Miles, Morgan, and Maksen – the latter kindly named after their grandfather – had all suffered the same fate.

“We’re ready to unload if you are?”

“Yes!” hernainanswered for her. “Please, do come in. Don’t worry about your shoes.”

Vera blustered back into her house, issuing orders kindly for where to begin unloading every possession Maisie owned into the living room.

This wasn’t how she thought she’d be starting the new year, moving in with her grandmother over two hundred miles from London and the rest of their family where Maisie had lived, studied, and worked for all her life thus far. But no matter how much Vera tried to defy it, her age was taking a toll. The bright purple cast on her wrist highlighted that point wordlessly.

So Maisie had sold most of her furniture and donated practically everything from her kitchen to the local charity shops – except for her favourite mugs and a very expensive casserole dish that’d been a gift. Vera’s spare bed was the same size as hers in London, but the mattress was ancient, almost the same twenty-nine years in age as she was, so wrapping her own mattress in rolls of cellophane and bringing it too had been a necessity.

Her friend, Bash, had offered to drive her with all the belongings thatmight’vesqueezed into his car at a push, but with Faye – their shared best friend of ten years and as of Christmas a week ago, his girlfriend – preparing her own move to Manchester, Bash’s full days with her were limited, and Maisie didn’t want to take a single one away from them.

Watching her entire life be carted around in boxes for the second time today was strange. Mister Roberts perched on the upright end of the staircase banister, looking down on the mere mortal peasants as they lugged about boxes before the grey clouds looming outside decided to open up.

It was the second of January, and the weather in Aberystwyth was as grey and gloomy outside of Vera’s windows as it was over the ocean a mile down the road. If Maisie listened hard enough over the removal men’s heaves and grunts, she could hear the crash of waves breaking on the rocks in Cardigan Bay, tasting the salt in the air, too.

Making easy conversation about how Vera’s New Year’s Eve party with her hiking friends had gone (heavily-poured gin andtonics,TescoFinestparty foods, and a rather explicit game of charades), Maisie tried to make herself useful and tied back her thick mass of tight red curls, ensuring that the fastenings on her floral overalls were secure in case bending over caused any chest spillage – god knows there was enough to spill – before pushing labelled boxes towards their corresponding boxes.

The brothers lugged her cling-film-wrapped mattress up the narrow staircase, their boots leaving a faint trail behind them that made Maisie wince. Reluctantly, she pulled her gaze away and looked over at Vera sitting on her plush floral sofa from the last millennium, digging a knife with her non-casted hand through tape that sealed a moving box.

“Where’s Ronnie?” she asked. Her grandma’s boyfriend wasn’t ever far away from wherever Vera was.

“He’s at his bungalow. He said he wanted to give us some time alone together before he came over to see you.”

Ronnie and Vera – their relationship was adorable. They’d been together for ten years but decided not to live together, both firm believers in ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’. Especially as one of them was an incessant snorer and the other required trips to the loo three times a night.

Maisie had hoped that at this point, the next time she shifted boxes of her stuff would be when moving in with the love of her life, with her friends around her cheering her on. She was almost thirty, wasn’t she supposed to have found him by now?

“How are your brothers?” Vera asked, tossing the knife aside.

Maisie craned her neck to try and see which box hernainhad ripped into exactly. “They’re doing okay,” she said distractedly. “They say hello.”

“They could have come and saidhellothemselves.”

“Nain,” she chided.

Vera pulled out two books from the box as if the covers with half-naked men on them were nothing she hadn’t seen before. “I’m just saying that I would like to see my grandchildren.”

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