Page 30 of Save Us
“Really?”
He nods. “Yeah, she did the Paris and Milan fashion weeks. But that was over twenty years ago now.”
“Wow. That must have been amazing,” I say, impressed.
“I don’t know,” Wren says with a shrug. “She doesn’t really talk about it.”
“Why not?” I ask.
Wren applies one last piece of masking tape, then stands up and walks over to the desk. “I think she misses her old life sometimes. Either way, she always changes the subject quickly if anyone mentions it.”
“Oh.” I stand beside him and start to pull the rest of the stuff out of my bag and arrange it on the desk. “My dad’s like that too.He never talks about before the accident, almost like that time never really happened.”
Wren sets one of the paint tubs down on the sheet. Then he slowly peels up the lid. Without really looking at me, he says, “Mum’s acting weird at the moment.”
“In what way?”
He takes the roller I’m holding out to him and twists it around in his hands. “She makes out that this is all totally fine, but…” He hesitates a moment. “Yesterday I heard her crying in the bathroom. The walls here are pretty thin.”
I bite the inside of my lip. “I don’t think this kind of move is easy for anyone,” I say quietly. “It’ll probably just take a bit of getting used to.”
For a moment, Wren says nothing. Then he exhales suddenly. “I hate it when Mum’s upset.”
He looks so down and so hopeless that I long to give him a hug. But I don’t move. “Crying is actually a good thing. It stops your sadness eating into you.”
Wren nods, although he doesn’t look convinced.
“Maybe your mum should go up on the rooftop and cry her eyes out, to get rid of everything that’s getting her down.”
Now his lips twitch again. “That really would scare the neighbors.”
“Good point. In that case, she’ll have to save it up until you’re all such good friends that she could never scare anyone off.”
I arrange the different-size brushes on the desk and pick them up one by one, choosing which one to start with.
After a while, I realize that Wren is shaking his head at me. His smile broadens.
“What?” I ask.
His eyes run over my face, and he opens his mouth slightly. But then he shuts it again and presses his lips together.
“Nothing,” he says in the end, nodding toward the paint can. “Shall we start?”
“That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?” I say, grabbing a brush and dipping it in.
The whole time we’re painting the walls in Wren’s new bedroom, I’m secretly wondering what he chickened out of saying just now.
Ruby
My bullet journal now looks totally different from how it did a week ago.
I’ve always structured my days around my timetable, the events committee, and my studying, but now I have no reason to get up at any particular time, or any deadlines for handing in my homework. For the first couple of days, that threw me off completely, but then I decided not to wallow in a swamp of misery, and I came up with a new routine for myself.
I spend the mornings in the little village library here in Gormsey, where I start looking at some of the reading lists for Oxford and keep on working on my A-level revision. After school, either James or Lin comes to my house to drop off the notes from the day’s lessons, and I spend my evenings trying my best to work through it, and to get my head around it all.
It’s weird not going to school anymore. With every passing day, it gets harder to shake off the horrible fear that’s crept into my bones since Monday—I feel like it’s choking me. It tormentsme on every walk to the library, and the fifteen minutes back home again. It’s there when I sit down with my family, and it plagues my nights, even though James stays on the phone, talking all kinds of nonsense to soothe me.
But I’m not going to admit defeat. And I refuse to accept this situation. James gave Cyril an ultimatum, and until that runs out, I’m clinging to the hope that Lexington will learn the truth and let me back into Maxton Hall. Right now, I can’t even think about what will happen if he doesn’t, or I’ll see my entire future bursting before my eyes like a soap bubble. And I can’t bear that.
