Page 91 of The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

‘Not here,’ I say, unsure if we’re even talking about the weather. ‘Any plans to come home?’

He shakes his head. ‘I’m here for a little while yet. My sabbatical ends at Christmas, so by then, I guess.’

I swallow hard, and I don’t tell him how much I wish he’d come back sooner. ‘Okay.’

‘If Phil gives you the boot, come out here and stay with me for a bit,’ he smiles, messing around. I don’t tell him how appealing it sounds.

‘Yeah, because that’d help smooth things out with my mum,’ I say.

‘Maybe not then,’ he laughs. ‘Anyway, Phil’s not going to give you the boot. He’s practically family.’

I raise a smile. ‘Yeah, it’ll be all right.’

His eyes flicker to the top of his screen. ‘I better go,’ he says. ‘Stuff to get done.’

‘Windsurfing? Movie premiere?’

‘Both,’ he says. ‘Then lunch with Kate Winslet.’

‘Nice,’ I say.

‘You know it,’ he says. ‘Catch you later, stargazer.’

He clicks to end the call and his image is frozen on the screen, hand raised in farewell. Stargazer. I’d sometimes show him the late-night Croatian skies from my balcony, but the nickname doesn’t really apply any more. I can’t imagine he’d want to see our grey hometown skies and street lights.

I run my hand over my new hair, still getting used to it. It’s almost boy short, a feathered cap.

‘I don’t think you’d like it, Freddie,’ I say. ‘In fact, I know you’d bloody hate it.’

I don’t hate it though. It’s going to take some getting used to, but I think, in time, I’m going to love it.

Monday 30 September

‘Oh my fucking God!’

Ryan’s desk is closest to me when I walk into the office, and he jumps to his feet, startled. ‘You’re back and you look amazing!’

He skirts around the edge of his desk and runs his hands over my cropped hair, staring at me. ‘What did you do? I mean, I totally love it, but it’s a bit radical for you, you know?’

By now everyone else has drifted towards me too, all of them looking at me as if I’ve had a limb chopped off rather than my hair.

‘It’s gamine,’ Julia offers.

‘Shows off your eyes,’ Dawn says. ‘God, look at the colour of you.’ She puts her pale forearm next to mine.

My eyes drop to her rounded belly and she laughs. ‘Yeah. Not just cake.’

‘I’m really glad,’ I say, pleased for her.

Phil appears at my side and squeezes my shoulder. ‘Good to see you, Lydia,’ he says. ‘Grab a cuppa, then a word in my office?’

Everyone looks slightly uncomfortable as they scatter back to work, and it’s only then I notice the new girl at my desk. I know about her, of course, but still the sight of Louise, as I believe her name is, makes me sickly nervous. She looks efficient, her fingers flying over the keys as she glances up at me and smiles. I’m sure she’s perfectly nice and she can obviously type fast enough to make her fingers bleed, but I’d still really like it if she vanished in a puff of smoke about now. I watch her for a second in case she does, but she remains stubbornly present, so I take Phil’s suggestion and head for the kitchen.

So, the good news is I still have a job. The not so good news is that it isn’t the one I left. Phil tried to frame it as kindly as possible and clearly didn’t enjoy being the bearer of bad news, but Super-Lou (he didn’t call her that) is here to stay and by all accounts doing a stonkingly good job. His hand was forced when Dawn’s morning sickness kicked in, he said. Of course, I’ve got no grounds to be angry because it’s my own fault for staying away so long. I’ve been ever so nicely shunted downstairs to the library. Delia has finally decided it’s time to hang up her inkpad and stamp and someone needs to step into the breach.

He sold it to me as a challenge, a chance to get my teeth into overhauling the place, a project. And I’m grateful, I really am. I’ll still be at the town hall and able to see everyone upstairs, though just in passing, rather than working together every day. I won’t lie, I feel like the black sheep of the family being banished downstairs for my misdemeanours, but I know the reality is that I’m lucky to still have a job at all.

And, actually, when I think about it, taking on the library revamp might be good for me. There’s a couple of part-time staff to manage and the system needs digitalizing. I could start some reading events. Meetings, author visits. A book club, even. Phil really wants me to see it as something I can take charge of and make my own. He even gave me twenty quid out of petty cash and told me to go and buy myself a planner and pens from the fancy stationery shop in town. I appreciate the gesture. I’ll try to do as he suggests: make some plans for the future.

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