Page 75 of Take Me Home
‘Rather than someone who can admin the heck out of things, because that’s kind of all I went on about in the application form.’ She pulled a plastic folder out of the rucksack and waved it at me.
‘That’s not going to hurt, either. I’ll let her know you’re here.’
I left Hattie and Deirdre in the dining room with a salmon bake I’d cooked earlier, and ate my own plateful at the kitchen table, trying not to splatter fishy sauce on the book Gideon had lent me about gardening.
While I waited for the clock to tick around to our art session, I did my own tiny bit of solo therapy, flicking open to the chapter on roses, squinting at the pictures of my family’s favourite flowers until my lungs stopped lurching. I quickly turned to the section on tomatoes, the words and images pointlessly bouncing off my glistening eyeballs, then tried again.
By the time Deirdre poked her head around the door and informed me that it was time to head to the studio, her first task as Hattie Hood’s new assistant, I was pressing one finger to a photograph of a pale-pink climbing rose. The world was still turning, and my heart had decided to keep beating after all.
* * *
The Gals stood in the centre of the studio, waiting for Hattie, who’d disappeared into a store cupboard. Kalani was still preening at having made-over Deirdre’s previous makeover, only grumbling slightly when her protégé swapped the suit for leggings and an old T-shirt. Laurie was also smiling. She’d spent the first five minutes listing all the dusting, scrubbing and scouring her new cleaner had done that week, with accompanying before and after photographs, until Kalani had tactfully suggested a change of subject by tipping her head up at the ceiling and screeching that, ‘Any more of those photos and our eyeballs will need this shocking phenomenon you call a cleaner.’
‘She’s just excited,’ Deirdre said. ‘There’s no need to be rude.’
‘And you’re happy to see close-up images of her dirty toilet bowls?’
‘Maybe we could just see the after photos, Laurie?’
Laurie looked baffled. ‘Then how are you going to tell the difference?’
‘We can tell the difference by how bright you look,’ I added, trying to be the diplomat. ‘It’s obvious that the changes you’re making are having a real impact.’
‘Thanks, Soph!’ Laurie looked genuinely touched. ‘How about you? Has our therapy made any difference to you? Only, after you ran away the other night, we weren’t sure…’
I ignored the shame prickling across my skin. These were my friends. Of course they were going to have discussed my hysterical exit from Kalani’s karaoke party. ‘Last Friday was a bit of a setback, but it’s made me even more determined to keep pressing forwards.’
‘Great to hear!’ Hattie said, reversing out of the store cupboard, dragging a giant dresser behind her.
I say dresser; the general shape of the object implied that this was its original intention, but the patchy, lopsided lump of furniture with one door missing, the other hanging off, two wonky shelves and a giant hole in the back could more accurately be described as future firewood.
‘Is that something you made earlier?’ Kalani joked as she helped Hattie position the ex-dresser in the centre of the room.
‘It’s somethingsomebodyonce made,’ Hattie gently chastened. ‘Imagined, designed, lovingly crafted, sanded and stained. I found this dumped at the recycling centre. So worn and broken that someone considered it no longer useful.’
‘Well, look at it. They weren’t wrong,’ Deirdre said.
‘Really?’ Hattie whipped around to aim a piercing gaze at her new assistant. ‘It’s been mistreated, neglected, discarded, so does that make it irredeemable?’
Deirdre shrugged, looking sheepish. ‘I suppose not.’
‘Is this some lesson about how Gavin rejected Deirdre and went with Heidi instead?’ Laurie asked.
‘Um, I’m not falling to bits!’ Deirdre stopped then, frowning. ‘Not on the outside, at least.’
‘All of us have been battered by different things,’ I dared to suggest. ‘We could all be that dresser, if we think about it.’
‘Precisely!’ Hattie pointed a finger at me. ‘So, what are we going to do about it? Hide in some back room somewhere, consign ourselves to the dump or the bonfire?’
‘Well, we clearly aren’t doing that, are we?’ Kalani huffed. ‘I suppose you want us to somehow make-over that hunk of junk like I did Deirdre?’
‘No!’ Hattie shook her head so hard, her glasses slipped off. ‘You chose Deirdre some new clothes and booked her a hair appointment. I want you to make-over this beautiful treasure as if you were throwing it a karaoke party for the first time.’ She turned to me again. ‘As if it is worthy of being loved. Being a precious part of someone’s home, in the heart of their family.’
‘So, if Deirdre has the dresser, what do we get?’ Laurie asked.
‘The dresser does not just represent Deirdre.’ Hattie started handing out aprons. ‘This is a group activity. You’re going to work together on this. Off you go.’
‘Well, that’s not at all going to end in a verbal brawl, then, is it?’ Kalani said.
