Page 3 of You, As You Are

Maisie intended to delay this conversation for as long as possible, since the reason her grandma had been told regarding why she’d moved to Wales wasn’t exactly the whole truth.

“I just wanted a change of scenery.” The lie came so easily. “And I’ve been working from home for a while. Being here isn’t a problem unless a client wants to meet face to face, then I might have to take a trip back to London.”

The truth was that the entire Moss family were concerned for their matriarch. Vera was getting on in her advanced years, and an accident that hadbrokenher wrist was completely out of character. As was her strange behaviour over the phone for thelast couple of months, as though she had an itch she couldn’t scratch, or a secret she couldn’t tell.

Between worrying for Vera’s physical healthandher mind, the whole family garnered a plan to keep her well, the first bullet point being thatsomeonehad to move closer to her.

Well, Maisie was as close now as close could be.

Living in her grandma’s house.

Sleeping right above her bedroom.

* Grandad’s

* Cuddle

CHAPTER TWO

MAISIE

At the exactmoment when the corner clock of her desktop screen flipped to16:00,Maisie signed out of the online portal tracking her working hours and stretched her arms out wide. The knot between her shoulder blades loosened up nicely as she said, “Let the weekend begin.”

Technically, being remote, she was able to log in and out whenever she liked, but since her only commute was from her bed to the living room, Maisie preferred to begin at eight o’clock and give herself an extra hour in the evening for working on her own business.

She flicked on the kettle in the kitchen and came back to the table she’d commandeered in the back corner of the living room, making a neat pile of her notebooks for her day job before sliding them into a box that she nudged beneath the table. Out of sight, out of mind.

Today had been an easy one. Her boss had given her a new brief for a vet clinic’s website which needed a complete overhaul of its outdated design. So after a long video call to iron out some details, she’d spent the afternoon formatting a couple of layouts and options for site maps to give back to the client. Creating apitch for an update to the colour scheme had been the last task of the day, which Maisie sent to her boss at15:59on the dot.

With her profile status set to ‘Out of Office’ – aka,leave me alone –Maisie was free, finally, to enjoy the rest of her Friday night.

She could hear Vera milling about in her bedroom above, humming a tune Maisie didn’t know to the music playing on her beloved radio while she got dressed up for the evening. The fact that she’d broken her wrist in three places only a few weeks ago hadn’t slowed her down. Given Vera’s age, her doctor wanted the bright-purple cast to stay for another five weeks, but Vera’s tenacity had categorically told himfour.

As it turned out, her grandma had a more active social life than Maisie had known of, which meant she was – given her uprooted circumstance –jealous.It was Friday night, and she had nowhere to go. No one to see.

What a life.

Cup of steaming tea prepared, she set it on the table and opened her spreadsheet that kept track of the stock for her online shop, including an ever-changing list of which jewellery items she needed to make more of. The extra income had been a lifeline back in London, though not substantial enough for Maisie to quit her actual job. Last November had been such a success in her pre-Christmas launch that the profits had paid for every present she’d bought and a good chunk of December’s rent, too.

Her spring collection was set to launch in March, and she needed to get ahead of making batches of earrings ready to go. The move from London to Wales disturbed her equilibrium, and her crafting had come to a bit of a sudden halt, but Maisie was ready to get back to business.

She recalibrated her mind to the fact that Vera’s lighting wasn’t the same hue as hers had been, that this table andchair weren’t the same height as hers used to be. She couldn’t reach out beside her anymore and automatically pull whatever she needed from the drawers that’d been arranged perfectly in her London flat for years. A couple of those thin, plastic sets of drawers had made their way to Wales and were squished up against the wall between a sideboard and a standing lamp. Realistically, Maisie couldn’t keep herself and her supplies organised without them.

She scrolled through her spreadsheet and decided that some daisy-shaped earrings would be straightforward enough to get a batch or two done tonight. She took out a few packets of yellow and white polymer from her colour-arranged drawer of clays and started to soften them up the best way that she knew how. “This is the only way that you are useful to me, ladies.” Dropping down the front of her polka-dot overalls, Maisie lifted her t-shirt and stuck the four packets of clay underneath her boobs.

Her bra had come off as soon as her video call meeting was over, and if the back-aching size of her breasts that her mother had gifted her with (begrudgingly) were useful for anything at all, it was their warmth. A hands-free method to soften up the clay whilst she grabbed her glass-cutting board and gathered various tools. She’d once forgotten about a packet under there and only realised when she’d woken up in the morning and panicked, thinking that she’d had some sort of gooey, green accident in the night.

After ten wasted minutes of deliberation deciding what film to watch in the background, the room fell silent. Then the familiar sound of hernain’sfootsteps came down the stairs.

Maisie’s eyes landed on the swipe of rosy pink on Vera’s lips first. That pink lipstick was one of the most vivid memories of her childhood; she didn’t think that she’d ever seen the natural colour of hernain’slips in all her life.

“What do you think of my frock?” Vera swished her hips so the frilly, knee-length hem of her navy dress, patterned with a print of gold filigree, bounced.

She looked beautiful, like always. The woman had been an avid runner for all her life and a member of a local hiking group now in her later years, which explained why her figure had always stayed willowy. If Maisie were more inclined to dislike her own body, she’d be envious of those slender legs.

“I love it,” she answered. “Where are you going tonight?”

Headlights of a car slowed outside of the bay window.

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