The Near & Far Series

by Serena Clarke

  “I’m not lonely. I have plenty going on.” She ignored Cass’s sceptical expression. “Anyway, I’ve floated along for too long, it’s time to get serious. Thirty is looming.”

  Cass snorted. “No, it’s not. You only just turned twenty-five.”

  “Well, okay. But next I’ll be twenty-six, and then I’m on the downhill slide.”

  “I’ll be twenty-six before you, thanks very much.”

  “Yes, you old tart.” She grinned as Cass poked out her tongue. “Anyway, I’m handing that bag in. And then I’m going to do something with my life.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ve ever really known.” She reached for the sugar bowl and sprinkled a consoling amount over the Weetabix. “But I do know that I spent far too long working for Mum and Dad when I should have been doing something of my own.”

  “There’s no shame in working for the family business.”

  She sighed. “I didn’t even finish my degree though.”

  “Well, there’s no point in having a degree in something you don’t want to do.” She shook her head firmly. “And now you’re doing what you did originally plan—travelling.”

  Livi put down her spoon and smiled at her. “Thank you. You keep me sane.”

  She shrugged, but Livi could see she was touched. “Well, I’m just glad you’re here. Now eat your breakfast before it goes soggy.”

  She obediently took a spoonful. “Speaking of soggy, did you actually meet Mum’s latest new best friend?”

  “Yes! Talk about the summer of love. Shame she’s too late for Glastonbury this year.” They both laughed.

  “Mum adored her. I could practically see her consciousness expanding.”

  “Turn on, tune in, drop out…”

  Livi sighed. “Better than crazy Len, at least. It was quite funny, but it didn’t exactly help. And Mum took it so seriously.”

  “Mind you, at least your mum has some get up and go. Mine refuses to go anywhere other than Benidorm. She gets that from my Nan. She was happy to go abroad, as long as it was to Jersey.”

  “Yes, but I dread to think who she’ll bring home next. I mean, it’s a bit tragic, at her age, latching onto people and their ideas—”

  She stopped. Cass was suddenly looking very uncomfortable. She knew immediately that her mother was standing behind her in the doorway. A sick, guilty feeling hit her in the guts. She didn’t want to turn around.

  Cass got up and left the kitchen, laying a hand on Livi’s shoulder as she went past, then Evelyn was sitting in the chair she left vacant. In a fog of shame, Livi couldn’t bring herself to look up. After a few moments, her mum began to talk.

  “One day, when you were small—maybe about three—you looked at me and said, ‘Mum, you look really old’.” Livi winced, but she went on. “To you, I must have seemed ancient. But you know, I wasn’t much older then than you are now.” She paused. “Being a parent is love like you can’t imagine. But parents get used to their children hurting them in all sorts of ways. Small and big. Sometimes they mean to, sometimes they don’t. I used to think my mother was the most unbearably irritating person in the world. And now I’m almost as old as she was when she died.”

  “Oh, Mum…” Livi looked up at last. At the sight of her mother in the familiar pink dressing gown, a Mother’s Day present picked out with her dad long ago, she began to cry.

  “Journey may be slightly mad, but she was right about one thing. We are all searching for something. Maybe you and I are not as different as you might think.”

  She got up, gathering the dressing gown around her. As she passed, she stopped and kissed the top of Livi’s head, and she felt like that three-year-old all over again.

  “Life is so, so short. I know I’m not doing everything right, and I’m sorry to upset you. But at the end I want to say, Wow, I can’t believe I did that, not Why didn’t I do that? I’m afraid of leaving things undone. We all should be.”

  Then she was gone, leaving Livi sitting at the table with a half-eaten bowl of slushy cereal. She pushed it away. A full helping of remorse and confusion and sadness had taken away her appetite.

  * * *

  To: cam.holden@nzuni.ac.nz

  From: liviaway@gmail.com

  Subject: I am the world’s worst daughter

  * * *

  Really, I am. I was awful. There’s no other way to describe it. And it’s true, what’s been said can’t be unsaid. Is it written anywhere that mothers have to forgive their children for bad behaviour? I hope so.

  You can tell your mum she’s lucky to have you, instead of an ungrateful, thoughtless child like me.

  xxx

  * * *

  To: liviaway@gmail.com

  From: gemgem@outlook.com

  Subject: Home update

  * * *

  Hi Livi,

  * * *

  Bex and I saw Cam at the Frigate on Friday night and he told us about your mum. We can’t believe it! How are you managing? We’re going to FaceTime you when we’re both home, just have to coordinate with Bex and her night shifts.

  Rob turned up out of the blue a few nights ago. He said he wants to talk to you, but we didn’t give him your details. Let us know if you change your mind and decide to talk to him. He says he’s not seeing anyone. Not that we care, of course.

  Talk to you soon.

  Lots of love to you from us two.

  xoxoxoxoxo

  Nineteen

  As she went into the tube station with Cass that morning, Livi realised she’d left the satchel sitting in the passage at home. Distracted and distressed, she’d walked straight past it, down the stairs and out the door. Well, she figured, he’d done without it this long, another day wouldn’t make much difference. It was the least of her worries. She followed Cass through the turnstile.

  By the time they got to work she was feeling worse rather than better, having relived the incident with her mum about a hundred times on the journey in, despite Cass’s best efforts to console her. Nicolette was coming to check on progress with the list, and although she’d got through it, she didn’t feel up to showing the rah-rah enthusiasm Nicolette always wanted to see.

  There were still a few minutes to spare, so she went into the bathroom to gather herself together, blow her nose, and put drops in her eyes. But even with freshly whitened whites, she looked puffy and out of sorts. She shrugged at her reflection. Oh well. Without much hope, she put on some lip gloss and smoothed her hair. As she came out again, there was a general sort of sympathy in her direction, and she knew Cass had been updating the others. In how much detail, she didn’t know or care.

  She checked her email and found a message from Gemma. Well, she wasn’t going to talk to Rob any time soon—or any time ever, come to that. There was no point in it. She sent a message to Cam, knowing as she wrote that it was a bit over-dramatic, but also knowing that he’d understand. She sighed and tucked her phone back in her bag.

  In the staffroom, she made a pot of Nicolette’s favourite coffee, kept in a special tin in the top cupboard, not to be dipped into by anyone else. By the time it was ready, Nicolette had made her grand entrance, sweeping through the door like a queen returning to her realm. After what she judged to be an acceptable amount of effusive welcoming and fussing, they settled themselves at the big lunch table in the staffroom and got down to business.

  Livi pushed the memory of the morning out of her head, and forced herself into professional mode. “Katie and I went through the client database and checked everyone we haven’t seen for six months or more. A lot of details were out of date, so we might check a bit further forward too, maybe four months. We got lots of bookings in the process, which was a bonus.”

  “Very good. What about the bathroom?”

  “There are three contractors coming in to quote on Friday. I’ve noted down a few things you’ll want to decide on before then, like soundproofing the wall, and what kind of extractor fan. If you have time
that day, it would be good to talk to them directly about what you want.”

  “That should be fine. Next?”

  She passed some brochures across and Nicolette took them carefully, slightly hindered by her over-long acrylics. Those wouldn’t last a day in the salon, Livi thought. “These are the latest inventory control systems. They look interesting, although I’m not sure if it’s worth spending the money to upgrade just yet.”

  “Right. I’ll have a look at them.”

  When they’d gone through all the items, Livi refilled Nicolette’s coffee and laid another list on the table. Looking at her own handwriting, so similar to her mother’s, the sick feeling began to creep in again. She cleared her throat, holding herself steady.

  “There are a few other ideas I wanted to give you, too.”

  Nicolette raised her perfectly groomed brows. “Really? You have been busy.”

  “Well, actually, these are things I’ve been thinking about for a while.”

  Having got to grips with the workings of the salon some time ago, and introduced a range of changes—including better use of social media, despite her own purposefully non-existent profile these days—she’d started to see a lot more areas where things could be improved.

  “All right, go ahead.”

  She launched in. “We really got a lot of bookings when we phoned to check the client details. So it might be worth calling people who haven’t been in for a while, instead of just texting. We can keep track using the appointment software we have now. We’ve seen that if you talk in person you’re much more likely to get a definite booking. There are so many places offering special deals now, and our promotions are just as good—we don’t want anyone else stepping in front of us and stealing our clients.”

  Nicolette pursed her lips. “Definitely not.”

  “It would take more time, but it could be worth it to grow the business. That connection with an actual person can really build customer loyalty, especially combined with the online stuff, like the special offers we’ve started in the newsletter and on Facebook.”

  She looked thoughtful. “Yes, interesting. It might be worth a trial. What else?”

  “Well, I think we could look at carrying less stock. I know the reps always push for bigger orders, but there’s a lot of capital tied up in those boxes of product out the back. And if we weren’t using all that area for storage, you could think about converting part of it into a space for beauty therapy. There’s not a lot of room, but it could be enough for manicures and pedicures, maybe threading.”

  “I like that idea.”

  So far, so good. She checked her notes.

  “There’s another thing that might be fun. We could set up a really lush, gorgeous picture frame in the waiting area, for people to take an ‘after’ photo. If they give the okay, we could use it on our Instagram, and repost on Facebook. And maybe Pinterest, if we want to start that too.”

  Nicolette looked at her as though she was an entirely new person. “I’m impressed. You’ve been working hard,” she said. She seemed to be taking real notice of Livi for the first time. “And you look tired. Is everything all right?”

  “Oh, I’m fine. I just had…” Her voice cracked. “I just had a difficult morning.” She worked to stop her face crumpling. “Sorry,” she managed, pressing her fingers against her eyes. “Really, I’m fine.”

  But Nicolette shook her head. “I can see you’re not. Come on, we’re not going anywhere until you tell me what the trouble is.”

  In the end, Livi’s reluctance was no match for Nicolette’s insistence. She found herself telling the whole story of her mother’s adventures, up to the sorry episode that morning, after which she had closed the living room door and not come out.

  “Well, you’re only human,” Nicolette said. “And you’re barely out of your own drama.”

  “How did you know about that?”

  “I’m not here very often, but I do try to keep up with what’s happening. The boys told me about your fiancé and the television programme.”

  “Oh, they didn’t.” She hid her face in her hands. “I just wanted to leave all that behind.”

  “That’s understandable. I think it was horrendous. Although, at the end of the day, you probably had a lucky escape.”

  Livi thought of Rob, unexpectedly knocking on her door though she was far away. Rob of the easy charm, the lazy grin, and the tanned, muscle-carved body. Rob of the long, heated nights, when their outright lust for more, more, more overcame any other thought in her head. Funny how, before the show came along, he’d kept her awake night after night, and yet she’d felt more energised than ever before. Now she slept alone, but felt more tired than she could describe. She felt tears welling, but refused to give in to them.

  “You’re probably right,” she said, pushing her shoulders back, determined to keep her composure. Crying in front of the boss was definitely not the look she was going for. “And we weren’t really suited, anyway.” She tried to concentrate on the paper in front of her. “Now, there are a few more things before you go…”

  Nicolette reached out and took both lists from her. “Leave them with me. I’m sure I’ll like what I see. The boys are always telling me I work you too hard, and now I see they may be right. Why don’t you take some time off and get some rest?”

  “Time off? I don’t know…” Pounds weren’t exactly flying in the door, and London rent didn’t pay itself.

  “Paid time off,” she clarified.

  “Oh!” After all the complaining they’d done about Nicolette, she didn’t see that coming. “Will everyone manage, though?”

  “I’ll be here,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve completely forgotten the basics of running a salon.”

  “No, of course not,” Livi hurried to agree.

  “Take a week. Come back in good form. We have lots to do.” She looked at Livi, still sitting across the table. “Well, go on! Off you go, before I change my mind.”

  They emerged from the staffroom, and Nicolette stood in the centre of the salon and made an announcement. “Livi is having a week off. I will be here to keep things running smoothly.” In response to the surprised faces, she unbuttoned the sleeves of her silk blouse and began to theatrically roll them up, bravely disregarding the danger of creases. “I am the owner, after all.”

  Livi hesitated, but Nicolette was in action mode. She gave a brisk double clap. “Right everyone, back to work! And Livi, go. Go and revive yourself.”

  Before she knew it her jacket was on, her bag was in her hand, and she was out in the mid-morning street. She looked around with a strange out-of-place sensation, as though everyone was going about their business, but she had no business being there. After a moment she breathed out and started in the direction of the Tottenham Court Road tube, feeling like a child skipping school.

  She could have gone anywhere, but she let her automatic pilot take her home. Home, up the stairs into the empty flat, past the damn satchel, into her room and into bed, only stopping to close the blinds and kick off her shoes. She pulled the covers up, and escaped into the blissful respite of sleep.

  Twenty

  There was an atmosphere of awkward politeness over dinner that night. Cass had taken a rare turn in the kitchen and cooked her famous spaghetti, hoping good food would lead to good vibes. Livi apologised for what she’d said, and Evelyn apologised for entangling Livi in her crisis. Despite that diplomacy, they tiptoed around each other in the small, small flat.

  So the next morning, she waited until the flat was empty, then got up all set to hand the problem of the satchel over to London Transport. But when she was ready to go, there was no sign of it. She looked all over the flat—which didn’t take long—before a suspicion began to creep in. She phoned Cass at Peach.

  “Where is it?”

  In the pause that followed, Livi could tell that she was trying to decide whether to deny it. “I can’t tell you.”

  “Cass!”

  “No, you can
have it back to go to Paris for the next clue. You’ve gone this far, I think you should see it through. Especially now you have some time off.”

  Livi could only shake her head with disbelief and frustration. But a part of her wasn’t surprised. Once she got hold of an idea, Cass wouldn’t let it go, especially anything romantic, wild, or unorthodox. “You are the world’s most infuriating flatmate.”

  “I love you too. And you know I’m right.”

  As she hung up, Livi knew she was beaten, for now. But Paris wasn’t on her agenda. She’d just have to wait for Cass’s conscience to kick in.

  So she did as Nicolette had instructed, and rested. It was actually a relief to not answer the phone, be unfailingly polite to clients, keep her makeup perfectly applied, pay too much for sandwiches at lunchtime (though she always intended to be organised and bring lunch from home), or use any form of public transport. Cass held her ground on the secret of the bag, but brought work news home that night. Nicolette had declined to do any shampooing or cleaning, lest she risk the acrylics, but she was there, being more or less helpful.

  Gemma and Bex FaceTimed her, as promised. They had a good long catch-up, but the sound of their accents brought on pangs. Her own was still slipping inexorably away, steadily returning her to her childhood voice. When she first came back, she’d felt like a foreigner in what was, after all, her own country. Now it was becoming home territory again, and Bex and Gem sounded like the foreigners. The tide had turned. It was a strange feeling.

  The following morning, she walked to the local cafe—seeing more of above-ground London at least—and checked her email while she had breakfast. No reply from Cam. That wasn’t like him. She’d stayed off Facebook since she left New Zealand, but now she went to his profile to see if there were any clues. But he hadn’t posted anything since his bike trip—a picture of himself standing on a high, windswept hillside, all faraway eyes and leather jacket and tousled hair. He looked happy. She hesitated over her phone, but finally decided against sending another message. He was probably away again, or busy, and anyway, she didn’t have anything entertaining or cheerful to report.