All of this happened in the shadow of catching up with Sally. Now that we’d swapped numbers, the text messages came thick and fast. We swapped stories of school and everything after, laughed at shared memories of boys and high school, and my inbox was soon filling up with photos of her happy family. It tickled me to know that she’d found her spot in the world and was thriving with a bustling household.
By four o’clock Friday afternoon, I’d found my groove. From my stool at the returns counter, I could survey my lands – a little like Simba in The Lion King. The courtyard, which earlier had tornadoes of rubbish, was clean. Weeds were gone, pavers swept, and rubbish removed. There were no books wandering about on return trolleys; everything was in its place. I’d discovered my borrowing computer, with the bash of a key and my tongue held right, sent overdue emails to parents. Once upon a time, I’d have been sending letters through the mail, so this was a nice step up in the world. In the corner, my little office was sparkling clean with windows yet to be covered in smeary, snotty fingers.
Everything was coming up Ellie.
Behind me, the library door crept open with a tired yawn.
‘Or, maybe not,’ I grumbled, spinning on my stool and tucking a flyaway lock of dark hair behind my ear. ‘Hello.’
Marcus came close to filling the doorway, at least with his height. He shifted from foot to foot and slid his hands deep into his pockets. ‘Hello.’
‘Hello,’ I echoed. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I hope so.’ Something on my desk caught his attention. ‘I just spoke to Grace over in the Prep unit.’
The paper in front of me had been the victim of an hour’s mindless doodling. It was covered in musical notes, clefs, quavers, book titles, and my own name a hundred different ways. I reached for it quickly, screwed it up and tossed it into the waste paper basket by my feet. My breath caught nervously.
‘Okay.’
‘She said we could swap classes depending on what I could give her in return.’ He grinned.
‘You do realise that this is not life threatening, don’t you?’ I launched myself from the stool and landed with a little thud on the floor. Marcus followed as I rounded the desk and walked back to my office. His stride was slow, purposeful, and a little too sure of himself. ‘Nobody is going to die if you don’t get a precious afternoon session. I don’t understand what this obsession is. Are you just doing it to upset me? To try and assert some, “I’ve been here longer than you” type of authority?’ I waved my hands about. ‘Why can’t you just wait the year out?’
‘So, what you’re saying is that, even though I’ve met your conditions, you’re still not going to help me?’
‘What I’m saying is exactly what I said the other day. I’ve been here barely a week. I would appreciate being allowed to settle in before I go changing things. I’m sure you can last another few weeks on a Friday afternoon.’ I reached for my PC, listening to it burp and whir as it woke up. ‘And what’s so bad about you getting to start your weekend early? I would’ve thought someone like you would love an early start to the weekend.’
‘Right.’ He nodded curtly. ‘Thank you.’
As I watched him leave, my mobile phone began rattling across the benchtop. It stopped, then started again. Without looking, I picked it up and pressed it to my ear.
‘Eleanor speaking.’ I tapped a pile of papers against my desk and slipped them into the in-tray. I could worry about them tomorrow.
‘Eleanor!’ A wine-soaked voice puttered down the line.
My stomach tightened. ‘Mum.’
‘Don’t sound so excited,’ she clipped.
‘No, it’s not that,’ I lied, doing a very quick emotional stocktake and chirping up. ‘I’m just at work, that’s all.’
‘How is that all going?’ she asked. ‘Your father told me you’d started a new job.’
‘He did?’ I asked, surprised. Since when were my parents talking to each other? It was news to me. ‘When did he tell you this? What are you, like, pen pals now? He’s sending you postcards from the edge?’
‘Not quite,’ she said, the smile in her voice evident from the next state. ‘Facebook.’
‘What?’ I blurted.
How did it happen that my parents, who barely spoke to each other throughout my childhood, and who refused to be in the same room together, were now having regular catch-ups online? Had I missed something? If they told me they were planning on having dinner next week, I was going to start developing an oxygen sensitivity.
Also, how come I hadn’t had a friend request?
‘You deleted my request,’ Mum deadpanned, though I was sure I hadn’t voiced that thought aloud.
I scoffed. ‘I did not.’
Then again, maybe I did. Yeah, probably.
Explaining my relationship with my mother makes for prickly skin, especially in a world where we’re taught that Mother Is All because, sometimes, she just isn’t. The knowledge that she’d packed up and left before I was six months old had always sat in the back of my mind as a warning. We weren’t the stuff of Hallmark movies or cheesy greeting cards.
While Dad insisted that I saw her as often as possible when I was younger, which still wasn’t very often, it was still a whole lot of awkward. Visiting her often felt like that scene in Austin Powers where he’d got the jeep stuck in the middle of a three-point turn. That she kept me at arm’s length and shoved me in the corner with a colouring book or novel while fawning over my stepfather just added to the issues.
‘Anyway.’ She interrupted my train of thought. ‘What do you think?’
‘Sorry, about what?’ I stuffed my water bottle into my bag, retied my hair, and pulled my office door shut behind me, all with my phone wedged between shoulder and ear.
‘Spending some time together, silly,’ she laughed, while continuing a conversation with someone named Floss in the background.
‘I mean, I can, but can you give me a few weeks to settle in first?’ I asked. ‘I’ve barely unpacked my belongings.’
‘Okay, do you want to send me details of your flight when you book them?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I laughed. I didn’t mean to, it just kind of burst forth in the same way a broken pipe might split asphalt. One minute, everything is quiet; the next, there’s a raging torrent springing up from the street. ‘I don’t quite have the money for a last-minute flight. I could drive up, but it’s ten hours either way, so I’d be turning up for dinner and leaving early the next morning. It’s doable, but you’d want to be serving me up caviar and Dom Perignon for dinner, followed by five courses with a private chef and a lap dance from Paul Rudd … or Idris Elba. You know, either one I’d be fine with’
‘Who’re they? Do you have their numbers? Why don’t we do that for your birthday?’ she enthused. ‘What a great idea, Ella!’
Me and my big mouth. I pinched the bridge of my nose as she prattled on about hiring a yacht for the day. Twelve months ago, when that kind of lifestyle was the norm for me, I would have frothed with delight at that idea. Even with my mother at the helm, I would have considered it. Now, it just felt all kinds of pretentious, like something worse was hiding just below the surface. I walked into the staffroom and made a beeline for the coffee. Hopefully it would clear out the throbbing that was starting to wrap its way around my head.
From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Jack. He smiled and offered me that little close to the body wave he’d always had. I motioned for the bottle of milk in his hand. Instead of passing it, he