Page 6 of You, As You Are

Fuck.Aberystwyth was only a couple of miles wide. There wasn’t enough distance for her to decline.

“Here, help me with this would you, dear? Lily sent me pictures of the place, but I can’t get them to open.” Vera pulled a phone out of her purse, and Maisie was even more acutely aware of how naked she was. She couldn’t entirely trust that hernainwouldn’t open the camera app to find those photos and accidentally take one ofherin the bath instead.

“Could I look after I am done here?” Maisie swished the water with her toes. “Preferably wearing clothes?”

“Hm? Oh, yes. I’ll go and get out of this lot.Jammiesare so much more comfortable than a thong.”

Fuck it.Maisie slid her hands over her eyes. Tits out. Stomach bared. Not caring if the bubbles stung or the facecloth floated away.Anythingto erase the image of her grandma in a thong.

Alone, she dried herself and put on her own pyjamas, then ran through her long-winded routine of hair masks and oils to keep her red curls defined before tucking them into her silk bonnet.

She found Vera on the living room sofa with a cup of tea and a chat show on the telly. Maisie helped her find the photos that her friend had sent of the available flat and looked over them. It was clean, plain but cute, renovated within the last five or so years by the looks of the kitchen units. The rooms looked a little snug but maybe that was an illusion of the photos? The rent would definitely be cheaper than what Maisie was used to in London so she could afford to replace some of the furnishings.

Googling on her own phone, she found the flat was one of two above a bookshop on one of the main streets through town, barely a five-minute walk from the seafront and maybe a brisk ten to Vera’s.

Her boxes had invaded the house, so Maisie wasn’t surprised that hernainwould want her own space back.

“It looks good,” she said with an attempt to hide her reticence.

“Really?”

“Yes. It’s well kept and clean. I have enough money saved to buy the extra furniture.”

“Oh that’s amazing!” Vera patted her knee. “I’ll call Lily and tell her that you’d like to look at it.”

“Great.” Her smile portrayed more enthusiasm than Maisie felt. Moving out would throw a whole spanner into the works, one she wasn’t prepared for, of finding out what Vera was hiding.

CHAPTER THREE

MAISIE

“Everybody! This is my granddaughter.”

Maisie wanted to crawl back into Vera’s rust bucket of a Vauxhall Corsa, feeling like a lone chip on a seafront bench with a flock of seagulls all flapping their wings to get to her.

She was all up for making friends whilst she was here; she couldn’t exactly let herself turn into a hermit who never left the house; but nowhere –nowhere –in the last twelve hours since she’d been ambushed in the bath had Vera mentioned that the entirety of her hiking group was made up exclusively of over-sixty retirees.

Then again, why should she have expected anything different?

They all looked at her with bright eyes as though on the verge of saying ‘my oh my, how much you’ve grown’, a mix of faces and statures with a common theme of grey hair.

“Hi.” Maisie tried to wave, pulling on a nice smile that Vera would be proud of, but she felt her personality sliding to the ground and back to the car. She’d agreed to this thinking that maybe she’d be going on little jaunts and strolls along the coastline and neighbouring hills, but one look at every rucksack, waterproof layer, and hiking stick, and she knew she was wrong.Suddenly she was way out of her depth before she’d even left Aber’s promenade.

“Maisie wanted to join us all today,” Vera announced.

Maisiedidn’t.

Maisiewanted to go home, put on her comfiest clothes, some music, and get on with making jewellery. She wasn’t built for …this.

Walking in London consisted of dodging litter on the ground and avoiding bumping shoulders with every single person imaginable. She hated trying to get on the tube even at the best of off-peak travel. Those underground stations were stuffy all the time and grew extremely warm when crowded. Nobody liked that. Maisie certainly didn’t. She’d always said that her body ran warm which she didn’t entirely discount was due to her size. She’d learned what fabrics to wear to help her skin breathe and generally to avoid becoming a sardine in the Underground’s can as much as possible, but as soon as her boobs started sweating like an introvert in a nightclub, it was game over.

Now, suddenly, she had eleven brand new faces (plus Ronnie) all coming up to her,huggingher, and telling her names that she was going to have forgotten in five minutes if the freezing wind hurtling off the bay didn’t blow them away first. The sea of thickly Welsh accents which she still wasn’t used to hearing in such concentration hit her with a pang of nostalgia from childhood summers here.

Beside them, brave souls braced the cold to walk along the pebbly beach as the tide drew out to sea.

Why did you say yes, Maise? Why?

With the round of introductions complete, she was ushered down the promenade to where a minibus had parked fifty feet from the pier, the driver sipping from a Thermos and patiently waiting for the group to pile in. She waited at the back of the line, glancing inside to try and figure out what the seating situationwas like whilst she tore into a plastic-wrapped croissant.Bash,her half-French friend, would have a fit if he saw her eating one that was shop-bought from a multipack, but she’d overslept and rushed straight past breakfast to get here for this ungodly hour of eight-thirty on a Saturday morning. It wasn’t exactly polite to eat something so flaky in a vehicle that wasn’t hers, so this was her only chance if she wanted to stop her belly from protesting.

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