The first snowflakes were hesitant and watery, but soon they were as big and solid as cats’ paws. All night it pattered softly, insistently, on roofs, fences, on the cold ground. The squeaking sigh of snow crunched underfoot as people left the Rose and Crown and made their way, shivering and chuckling, back to their homes. The snow covered the pretty buildings, the un-pitted roads, the well-kept hedgerows, until only a few chimneys peeked from beneath the white. Only a few soft undulations showed where the pavement met the road. By morning, only one hardy dog walker managed to make it out into the stillness.
This woman, older, thin, moved cautiously towards the hills. Her dog, a pot-bellied and aged Jack Russell, sneezed as he sank up to his belly in the drift. The woman picked him up then. The dog quivered in her arms, half with cold, half with excitement, and yapped, once, twice.
‘We’ll be there soon, Huck,’ the woman told him. ‘Just let me go at my own pace. Don’t want to slip. Don’t want to slip, now, do we? Not on the hills.’
The hills – not hills, but slight folds and ripples in the earth, where once there had been a brickworks – lay at the very edge of the village. Only young children and elderly people thought of them as hills.
It was Saturday, 9 a.m. and not a sound. No one was getting into their cars. There were no breakfast radio shows, no sharp, parental annoyance on the school run, no mutinous mutterings from their children. The woman bent slowly, stiffly, placed Huck on the ground and unfastened the lead from his collar.
‘There you go now. Have a run about.’ But the dog seemed dubious, and his breath formed little husky puffs as he sniffed suspiciously at the snow. He looked round at the woman as if this weather was a personal insult she’d visited on him.
‘Dafty! Go on!’ The woman prodded his backside with one wellington boot. The dog sighed, put up one hesitant paw and plunged into the snow.
She smiled, watching his little tail bobbing up and down. Mornings made her happy. The quiet made her happy. She would pay for it later, she knew: the cold wouldn’t do her rheumatism any good, but it was worth it. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply in the frigid air.
Huck barked then. It was his ‘Look at this!’ bark.
His tail stood straight as an exclamation point, and he whimpered and growled at something in the snow. As the woman moved forwards she saw a scrap of red material fluttering near a bone-white foot; the rough slump of a torso. The head, topped with greying brown hair, was twisted and one fixed, open eye, the eyelashes weighed with snow, gazed at the blank sky. As the woman stared at the face of her neighbour, a frightened sob escaped her and, hearing this, Huck whimpered, and gave one panicked bark. The world started again.
‘Huck! Huck, away! Now!’ Together they backed away from the body and moved, as quickly as they could, back to the warm house and the telephone.
On the way, the snow started falling again. By the time the police came, both dead eyes were filled with it.
‘I-I knew it was Sal,’ Mrs Mondesir told the nice police lady, later, wrapped in two cardigans, and sipping sweet tea by her own fire. ‘So did Huck; I could tell. I could tell because he was so upset. He liked her. She’d always have a treat for him, you know. She was good with animals. I-I touched her foot. I’ve never felt anything so cold. I shouldn’t have touched her, should I?’ she whispered to the policewoman. ‘They say on TV, don’t they, you must never touch a body. Crime scene.’
‘Don’t worry,’ the officer said. ‘Can you tell me what happened next?’
‘I just looked at her. Her neck. It was too long – it looked like a Christmas goose, you know? When you used to see them hanging upside down at the butcher’s? Do you remember that? No, probably you don’t. Too young.’
‘Does she have any relatives? Anyone nearby we should contact?’
‘Oh yes. Yes. She lives with her daughter. Jenny. Is she not in the house?’
‘There’s no one in the house that we can see. Do you have a contact phone number for Jenny?’
‘Oh no. No. I don’t,’ Mrs Mondesir replied. ‘That means she doesn’t know! The poor girl doesn’t know what’s happened!’
A mile away, Jenny Holloway stood in her friend’s parents’ kitchen, studying a list pinned to the fridge:
Orchids rem change gravel!
Fan heaters 10-12, 2-4, 6-10.
Check bubble wrap for holes EVERY DAY.
She was keeping an eye on things while Freddie’s parents were on a cruise, and they were very anxious about their greenhouse.
The kitchen – spacious, stylish, clean, was normally her favourite place to be in the house – but all night she’d suffered through various shifting nightmares, had woken late, and was still unsettled. She pulled a painful brush through her tangled curls and smeared on some tinted moisturiser that promised on the tube to make her look Radiant, Rested and Rejuvenated. It didn’t work. A slightly browner face frowned from the mirror, blinked slowly, frowned. She dabbed concealer on the small bruise on her chin.
She put on Freddie’s old parka and a big fur hat with lots of flaps and pockets that Graham – Freddie’s father – had bought on a recent holiday to Crimea. Looking in the mirror again, she almost laughed. She looked like a caricature of a teenage runaway. Freddie despaired of her dress sense at the best of times, referring to it caustically as ‘Asylum Seeker Chic’. She took a photo and sent it to him with the caption: ‘Still got it!’
She took the shortcut through the church graveyard. Snow lay frozen in glittering, crusty crests over the gravestones; she paused to take a photo of a stone angel with an icicle dripping from its nose. She sent it to Freddie. He’d get a kick out of that.
After a while, the big detached houses close to the churchyard gave way to large semis and a neat heath used for cricket matches and picnics in the summer. Once upon a time, the heath had marked the very edge of the village, until the affordable housing section had been built next to it. Years later the houses were still roundly despised by ‘real’ villagers, who would gather in the shop or at parish council meetings to complain. Why did they have to be built here? Why not closer to the city, in one of those other, uglier, villages? They were such horrible little boxes, and the hills they backed onto was a popular spot for dog walkers, ramblers… having houses there ruined the peace, changed the ambience… couldn’t Something Be Done?
Eight years ago, Jenny and Sal had been one of the first families to move into one of those horrible little boxes. On the day they arrived they saw a rabbit, an actual wild rabbit! Sometimes there were foxes – not the mangy, scavenging beasts she’d seen in the city, but fluffy-tailed, plumply alert creatures. Sal said they must have their den in the hills somewhere, and they’d put out scraps for them to eat until Mrs Mondesir told them not to because they might end up going for her Jack Russell.
It had been their New Start, in a New House and a New School and, for a while, it had seemed like it might all work out…
Jenny didn’t see anyone that morning, and the only thing that passed her on the road was a police car.
‘I didn’t think anything of it,’ she told Freddie later.
At her mother’s front door, Jenny saw that the lid had come off the recycling bin. The empty bottles were very visible, only partially covered in snow. She quickly replaced the lid, hesitated, sighed and, riding a sudden wave of adrenaline, opened the door.
‘Mum?’
A freezing breeze caught the door lazily, slamming it almost shut, before catching on the latch. The TV was on in the living room – a tinny Jeremy Kyle berated an alcoholic in front of a baying crowd. She crossed the room quickly, and turned it off.
‘Mum?’ Her voice was louder now. ‘You in bed?’
Two drops of blood, as big as pennies, stained the carpet at the foot of the stairs and, on the bannister, like a sinister skid mark, was a smear of blood. More spots and drips of red on the wall ran vertically down to a broken picture frame resting on the stairs. Glass smashed into a starburst… a child perched on a donkey, huge grin, an ice cream in one chubby fist. Adrenaline hit again but, this time, she froze. Her stomach felt hollow, smoky. ‘Mum?’
And then an unfamiliar voice came from the kitchen. ‘Hello? Who’s there? You’d better come here, whoever you are.’
And Jenny turned slowly, each inch an eternity, eyes wide and heart bump-bump-bumping. The police officer stood next to the kitchen table.
‘I knew then that something very bad had happened,’ she told Freddie later.
They sat at the kitchen table. The policeman eyed the semicircle of dirty glasses and plates at the base of the table and tried to keep his clean uniformed elbows off the tabletop.
‘Your mother has been involved in an incident.’ His voice was soft. ‘Your neighbour next door was out walking her dog—’
‘Is she OK?’ Jenny asked.
He thought she meant Mrs Mondesir. ‘She’s had a shock but she’s being looked after next door. Can I ask—?’
Jenny started to turn. He caught her arm, and she struggled. ‘Let me go and see my mum!’ she shouted.
‘Miss Holloway? I’m going to need you to sit down. Please.’ His kind eyes were tired. His smile was sad. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that your mother has died.’
Jenny stared at him, nearly said something, but then seemed to deflate, empty out. She sat at the table like a puppet with its strings cut: eyes wide, mouth open. She asked: ‘How?’
A few words pierced the fog. ‘… found… field at the back. Must have slipped on the snow…’ Then he nodded at the glasses on the floor. ‘Drinking, was she?’
‘Yes,’ Jenny whispered.
‘Should she have been drinking?’
‘No. Not really.’
‘Can I call anyone for you?’
‘What?’ Her face was wiped clean of expression, kabuki-like. ‘What did you say?’
‘Can I call someone for you? Brother or sister?’
‘I don’t have any.’ Her empty face stared, straight-ahead, at the back door, still open, squeaking. ‘There isn’t anyone.’
‘A friend?’
There was a long pause. Jenny spoke as if the words were being dredged up from the deep. ‘My friend Freddie. You can call him.’ And she gave him the number.
‘Did your mother have a partner? Boyfriend?’
Jenny flinched, then got up, slow as a sleepwalker. ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’
She stumbled up the stairs, past the bloodstains and the glass, to the tiny bathroom and there she crouched by the toilet bowl until there was a knock and an ‘Are you OK in there, Miss Holloway?’
‘I’m—’ She made a gagging sound. ‘No. I’m… I don’t know.’
‘We’ve called your friend. Why not come out now, if you’re feeling better?’ He sounded anxious.
Jenny stood up shakily, crossed to the basin. In the mirror, her fearful face rose like a yellowish moon; she splashed it with water. Your mother is dead, your mother is dead, slipped on the ice, in the cold. Your mother is dead. Dead in the snow like an animal.
‘Miss Holloway? I do need you to open the door now.’ There was an urgency in his voice.
‘Don’t worry. Don’t worry about me,’ she murmured at the mirror.
‘I want you to come out of the bathroom now. Can you do that for me?’
Your mother is dead your mother is dead your mother is dead.
‘Miss Holloway!’
She unlocked the door. Later she realised that he was probably scared she’d hurt herself in there. Taken an overdose, or cut her wrists or something.
As they walked down the stairs together, towards the smashed picture, he asked: ‘ Do you know what had happened here?
‘No.’ Jenny looked at the glass dazedly. ‘No idea.’
When Freddie arrived an hour or so later, the policeman seemed a little relieved to hand her over to someone else. Freddie gently coaxed her out of the chair, out of the house and into his waiting car, where he buckled her in like a child, and, like a child, she gazed at him with sudden piteous fear.
‘My mum died, Fred.’
‘Oh darling!’ He pulled her stiff body towards him in an awkward hug.
‘I don’t know what to do. What should I be doing?’ she whispered into his shoulder.
He didn’t answer. There was no answer. They drove back to his parents’ house, where the remains of Jenny’s breakfast were still on the kitchen table, there was still steam in the shower room, and everything was abnormally normal, strangely sane.
Later, that afternoon, Jenny found herself at the hospital.
The two officers, one old, one young, were quiet, professionally quiet. In the car over they’d been quite chatty; it had been easy to almost forget where they were going. Until she saw the sign.
Mortuary. Level Zero
A small, narrow corridor led to a wide grey door that wheezed on its pneumatic hinges. Inside, the room was partitioned by thick glass, smeared with the sweaty ghosts of many handprints, and through these prints, a body laid on a slab-like gurney.
‘Take your time,’ the older policeman told her.
‘Do I…? Can I get closer?’
‘No,’ he murmured. ‘Health and safety.’
Jenny looked at him, then at the floor, then at her own hands. Anywhere but at the body. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she whispered. ‘I know what you need; I know you want me to identify her. I just… I can’t…’
‘Take your time, Miss Holloway,’ the younger one repeated.
She took some deep breaths, in for five seconds, out for five seconds… Do the visualisation technique Cheryl taught you. Your place of power… your still, cold, blue room, silent and safe. Bars on the window, bars on the door, and no one can get in, no one can harm you… safe for ever without end… Now, open your eyes. Do it now – get it over with… She stood up straight, opened her eyes and approached the glass.
Sal was draped in a purple robe. It looked strangely regal. A bruise bloomed on her cheek, and her neck seemed too long. Too long and twisted. Jenny heard herself say: ‘Why’s her neck like that?’
‘Her neck was broken in the fall,’ the older policeman said impassively.
Her mother’s hair, grey at the roots, and cut short, brutally short, made the neck seem even longer. Jenny pressed her forehead to the glass. Her mouth formed soundless words.
‘What was that, Ms Holloway?’ The elder policeman leaned towards her. ‘Did you say something?’
‘That’s her. That’s my mum.’
‘Would you like to ask us any questions?’
Jen kept her eyes closed. ‘What do I do next? The funeral?’
‘We’ll tell you when the body can be released,’ the elder one told her.
Jenny opened her eyes a little. ‘What? What does that mean?’
‘Well, there’ll be a post-mortem.’
‘Why?’
‘To ascertain the cause of death,’ said the younger officer sadly.
‘But, you said she fell. That’s what happened, right?’ Jenny’s voice rose, and she turned from the glass. ‘It was an accident. The policeman this morning told me so. You said that yourself!’
‘Ms Holloway, any unexplained death has to be investigated.’ The elder one looked at her kindly. ‘It’s routine. Please don’t let it upset you.’
Jenny laughed then, a short, sharp mirthless bark. ‘Oh my god, I couldn’t do your job,’ she muttered. ‘I really couldn’t.’ Then she closed her eyes, leaned against the glass again, and when she opened them, she seemed calmer. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be… horrible or anything; I don’t want to make your day even worse, you know?’
‘Can we give you a lift back home, Miss Holloway?’
‘No.’ She took some deep breaths. ‘No, I have to… what did they say? I have to pick up her personal effects. Her teeth – her bridgework – came out, they told me.’ She stopped suddenly, blinked. ‘Actually, maybe I should go home. Yes. Shouldn’t I?’
The younger officer took her by the elbow; the older one handed her a tissue.
As they walked back to the car park, she noticed that the cafe in the foyer was called The Spice of Life. Under other circumstances this would have made her laugh, but not today.
What does a person think about on the morning their mother dies? What will I remember? Some people get a call from a relative, or the hospital. Some people are there, at the deathbed, to hear, miss, hate or cherish those last moments. I didn’t get any of that.
Death happens, and to some it’s a shock, to others a release, but I haven’t found the word yet. Is there a word for it? Maybe there are a lot of words for it. Maybe I need to use all those words.
Writing helps. My therapist has taught me that. She used the analogy of trepanning. ‘Let the evil spirit out. It will be painful. It will be against your instincts.’ I made some lame joke about her boring holes into my skull, but she didn’t laugh. ‘You’re using humour to deflect attention,’ she said. ‘Release is against your instincts, feeling pain and acknowledging injury – it’s against your instincts. It’s not how you brought yourself up.’ I must have paled, because that line did bore right into me. I did Bring Myself Up. I am self-made. But, sometimes – often – especially now, I feel like a child’s first attempt at pottery – all misshapen and dented. The kind of thing only a mother would be proud of.
Let me tell you about my mum. Let me pull her out of this snarl, and set her upright in front of you. It’s important that she’s rescued from the mess her life became. She wasn’t just a mess. She wasn’t always a mess. She was wonderful. She was tall, like me, and lean. She looked like someone who ran, someone who worked out, even though she didn’t. I’ve inherited that from her. I’m very lucky.
When I was small we would dance together. She had all these old records, singles from the 80s and 90s, 12 inches and albums. She’d put them on her little turntable and we’d dance to them – even the things you couldn’t really dance to, like Nirvana and this other band called Chinaski. She was related to the singer somehow. I forget how. When she danced she’d shake her head and her hair – wavy pre-Raphaelite hair – would show all it’s different russety shades. The light would come in through the kitchen window and shine through her hair like a stained-glass window. I thought she was beautiful. She was beautiful.
She sometimes used to pick me up from primary school and, when she did, she always wore dresses or skirts and blouses, never trousers, and her lean legs were pretty as a fawn’s. Her skin was this beautiful matte golden colour, with little freckles, like a sprinkling of nutmeg, over her nose. I was so proud to be seen with her! Proud and loved and warm. Other kids’ mothers were dumpy, or angry, or just not there, but my mum was so vivid. She was someone you remembered. Just looking at her did you good.
We used to go to Scarborough on holidays with Auntie K and her daughters (my mum’s step-auntie, really, so my great aunt). K’s boyfriend then was a big man called Granville who managed a hotel – The Windsor Castle it was called – and we’d stay for free – all crammed into two adjoining rooms. Mum kept all her 2p’s aside so I could use them in the penny falls at the arcade. At night we’d stay up in the hotel bar, and Granville would make sure we had all the Pepsi we could drink. Mum and Auntie K might have a few drinks and sing. They both had lovely singing voices. The first time I heard Dusty Springfield, I thought, That’s my mum!
It was just me and Mum, and it was perfect that way. We were poor, but so was everyone we knew, and at least my mum had a job – she worked as a receptionist at a dentist’s surgery in town, and sometimes in a pub at night. She was very particular about her appearance – ironed hems, lacquered nails. Hair always washed and shiny. A little slick of lipstick.
Then she fell in love. She fell hard.
Right from the start I didn’t like him. I knew he was a Bad Man. And with him around, things changed. She stopped singing. She started drinking more. One day I came back from school and she’d cut her hair off. I know it sounds silly, but it was as if all her strength was in that hair, and when she had it cut into a nondescript mum-helmet she started fading, fading fast. I date her decline from the haircut. The long, passive slide, hastened by The Bad Man, into what was the rest of her life.
I was thinking about her hair when the policeman was talking to me through the bathroom door, those glossy waves with the little glints of copper and gold. It seemed to hang in front of my eyes, beautifully, impossibly bright, and I wanted to tell him all about her: about her laugh and how she danced, about Scarborough, and how, on the beach, she’d let me bury her in the sand and then lurch out like a monster to play-scare me. She would be younger than I am now. Just a kid herself really, trying her best to raise me right, working hard to make me happy. I wanted them to understand, you know? This was not just a dead woman with a stretched-out broken neck. This was my mum, with her long legs and her wide smile and her ability to raise one eyebrow, and her dirty laugh and her glorious, glorious hair. You can’t explain that to people though, can you? Not to the police anyway.
Someone can just... die. Someone can just cease to exist. Blink and they’re gone. The last time I saw my mum, she’d been firing on all cylinders, spitting gin and slinging barbs, and now what? She went for a walk and died. She was there, and now she’s not. Someone that vivid paled away to nothing? How can something natural feel so insane?
In the mortuary, I was alone with her one last time. But she didn’t look like my mum. I couldn’t even look at her for very long. It wasn’t her. It was a body.
And that’s when I began to cry, and just thought over and over Mum, Mum I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
XOXO Jay.
Jenny read the last line, mouthed the words silently to herself. Then she hit publish.
Freddie knocked on the study door, came in, and sat on the desk.
‘Can you eat?’ he asked.
She shook her head.
‘Blog post?’
She nodded.
‘Is that a good idea though? You don’t have to share everything right away.’
‘Oh, well, you know. It helps me to write,’ she told him.
‘I know. I know it does.’ He squeezed her limp palm briefly. ‘What can I do?’
‘Just carry on being lovely.’ She smiled at him.
‘I just hope you won’t get any crazies,’ he said.
‘Oh, I won’t,’ she told him firmly. ‘They’re good people.’
‘OK, but let me monitor it, OK? Go and have a bath. Relax, try to have a nap? I don’t want anyone to have a go at you.’
The first pings of response sounded within the hour. Regular readers rushing to Jenny’s virtual side. Freddie kept an eye on the messages as he filled the dishwasher, happy to see that people were being nice. Apparently the post had helped Christie from Pontefract cry for the first time since her own mother’s death two years before – ‘RELEASE of tension!’; Liz from Braintree sent LOVE, and Maya Jayasinghe wrote (or cut and pasted) a touching haiku. Lisa Pike-was-Shay sent a link on an article about grief from the Daily Mail; ilovemykids1982 was concerned that Jay was putting too much pressure on herself to keep up the blog: ‘You have enough on your plate with the counselling training, as well as work and the grieving process. TAKE TIME TO HEAL!!’ but Trish Cole from Dover felt that the busier she was, the better, and signed off: ‘From one neurotic to another, I appreciate your courage!’ All the messages were positive. All expressed their absolute belief that Jenny was a Strong, Remarkable Woman who would Get Through This.
But then it all seemed to go wrong.
Theehedgewitch: How did mum fall? Was she drunk? Drugs?
Ilovemykids1982: what? NOYB
Theehedgewitch: just asking unexplained death suicide?
Ilovemykids1982: Oh my god crawl back under your rock!
Theehedgewitch: All I can say is that at the end of the day you have one mother and that’s it, why weren’t she looking after her??? Why was she alone???
EmmajCrawford: awful news but @Theehedgewitch has a point. When my mother was sick I was there for her fair question imho
Theehedgewitch: THanku! Just sayin
Ilovemykids1982: ffs!! If you think she wasn’t! The whole blog is about that! Read dont troll :-(
Lilagracee: A quick archive search would have told you that Jay did everything she could to help her mum, she gave up her job and everything to look after her! Does that sound like someone who doesn’t care @Theehedgewitch??
Ilovemykids1982: Thanks @Lilagracee. For you newbies there Jay has been through a lot and weve all been on the journey with her so walk a mile in her shoes!
Lilagracee: Exactly. For example: I’m experimenting with pureed food. I’m like the mother of the world’s largest baby – even Mum has to laugh! Today it was pumpkin, broccoli and sweetcorn (I know, right? Delicious.) What delicacy can I prepare for tomorrow? Carrots peas and kale? *shudders* In other news I borrowed some power tools and put up the handles she needs beside the bath and at the top of the stairs. I’m becoming quite the renaissance woman! Joking aside, Mum is making improvements day by day. I’m so proud of her! The MRI shows that she has scarring from previous mini strokes, which is why we have to be very careful, but the physio is definitely getting easier for her to manage. I can’t thank you enough for all your messages of support! But, keep them coming! I need you guys!
ilovemykids1982: its just humbling
Theehedgewitch: you call me a troll but i’m entitled to my opinion there is such a thing as online bullying you know
ilovemykids1982: OMFG
Lilagracee: @Theehedgewitch Police always investigate an unexplained death UK law doesn’t mean anything suspicious
Laundryloony2: Disgusting that Jay is being cross examined in this way!
HollybFootitt: She’s just asking a question tho, no reason to jump on her imo
Laundryloony2: Oh really how would you feel if your mother just died and you were asked this???
HollybFootitt: My mother passed when I was a child, actually so don’t talk to me about it
Laundryloony2: Just goes to show!!!!
HollybFootitt: ????
Lilagracee: I really don’t think this is necessary, come on ladies
Ilovemykids1982: Theehedgewitch I hope your mum dies bitch
HollybFootitt: WTF??
A few years earlier, after she dropped out of university, Jenny often visited Freddie in London, where he was sharing a flat with five bisexual anthropology students and a bashful, bemused Greek. She wasn’t doing much at the time, just kicking her heels at Sal’s house and applying for temping jobs, but somewhere along the line she must have mentioned something vague about ‘maybe writing some stories or something’ and that’s where the ‘Jenny is a writer’ idea came from. Every time she visited, without fail (usually at last orders at the student union bar), Freddie would bring out his tub and start thumping; she was talented! Seriously, in school? She was so good. Inventive. Seriously! Tell her, will you? Then they’d have another drink, head to a club and all careers advice was put on hold until the next hungover morning. When he graduated and moved back home – well, not home, but the nearest city, where Jenny was working as a receptionist in a doctors’ surgery, his ambition for her coalesced into a firm objective. It wasn’t right that she was wasting herself on stupid menial jobs. You’re better than that.
‘This whole benign bully thing? You can stop that any time you want you know,’ she told him.
They were moving Freddie into his new flat. Very grown up. But then Freddie had done what you’re supposed to do and had finished university, and his parents, Ruth and Graham, had done what parents are supposed to do and helped him with a deposit to buy a flat.
‘You’ve got to be cruel to be kind.’ Freddie had aped the local accent.
‘You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.’ Jenny’s pale face had shone with sweat as she struggled with a box marked ‘Kitchen shit’.
‘Fortune favours the bold.’ Freddie took the box off her.
‘Good. Better. Best. Bested,’ she replied smugly.
‘Now, you see, I don’t even know what that means,’ Freddie told her. ‘So that proves you’re cleverer than me, and you shouldn’t be on minimum wage. So, in a very real sense, I’m brilliant.’
‘I like it there,’ she lied. ‘The people are nice.’
‘It’s between the magistrates’ court and the dole office. Literally nobody there is nice.’
‘You’re a snob,’ she told him, smiling, and passed him a beer.
‘I’m not though. I’m…’ She watched his expression descend from happy banter to serious pondering, and felt herself tense. ‘It’s not snobbery. It’s worry.’ He swigged his beer and turned to her. ‘Have you thought about talking to someone?’ This was the new tack he’d decided to take with her: her lack of ambition was a psychological issue that could be fixed. ‘Not finishing university. Jen, you broke down for a reason—’
‘I didn’t break down. I quit. That’s all. I couldn’t afford the debt.’ She frowned at a handful of knives. ‘We don’t all have to go to university.’
‘Put that down, will you?’ Freddie took the box from her, put it on the work surface. ‘We’ve never really talked about what happened.’
‘Tha
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