Page 45 of Kiln Me Softly

By the Thursday of that week, Juniper missed Cerberus terrible amounts. She was thankful she no longer had much time to mope around her tiny dorm room between classes and work, but the empty place on her desk still made her feel lonelier than ever. And not just because the hamster was gone.

All she saw of Aiden these days was his back in workshop classes, hunched with more tension than his toned shoulders usually carried.

She spent every lesson with a lump in her throat, trying not to cry at the sight of him, and it made her feel ridiculous.

He was just a boy she’d slept with. A boy she’d never even liked.

A boy who had no understanding of what she was going through and tried to heal wounds with bank notes instead of stitches.

So why was it all so heavy? Why did she feel like her life in London had suddenly gotten a lot greyer and a lot smaller?

It was that question that had led her to Cartwright Gardens, though she’d been lingering around the greenery on the other side of the road for well over fifteen minutes now.

She just wanted to see Cerberus before she headed to work.

Make sure he was clean and fed, because that was her responsibility.

But she’d have to talk to him, and she didn’t think she’d be able to.

Not without giving her misery away – and her guilt.

Despite her anger at him, she’d hurt him, too, and she didn’t want that.

Get it together, Juni, she told herself, and finally crossed the road.

She took a deep breath before unlocking the gate, but as soon as she stepped into the narrow front garden, she was hit by a complete lack of air, as though she’d stepped into a vacuum.

She couldn’t do this. Couldn’t see him. It was too messy, and not the sort of messy she was used to. If he tried to talk to her, tried to—

‘Bugger!’

The door rattled, handle twisting, and her first instinct was to run.

Of course, her legs had already turned to jelly, so the best she could do was fall into a tangled deep green shrub of red berries, muddying her black work clothes in the process.

The thin branches scraped her skin, and she let out an ‘Ow!’

Aiden stepped out just in time to see the whole thing. His hair was a ruffled mess like he’d just rolled out of bed, olive skin a tad paler than before, but frown as disarmingly fond as always. ‘Juniper… What on earth are you doing in my bush?’

She huffed and yanked herself up, ignoring his hand when he reached out to help.

‘I’m here to see Cerberus. And to tell you that I’ll take him home at the end of February for half-term, so he won’t be your problem for much longer.

’ She’d wanted to sound detached, but the roiling emotions inside her made it impossible.

Perhaps it was time to accept that she could be a lot of things for Aiden – angry, sad, humoured, elated, infatuated – but indifferent wasn’t one of them. Never had been.

He scratched his unkempt stubble with his thumb slowly. ‘Right. And how did you plan to get in if you’re hiding from me?’

‘I’m not hiding from you. I fell. Your flagstones are uneven.’ A lie. His flagstones were perfect, just like all the others on this street. Just like him, with his silly face and voice and—

God, even his eyebrows. Thick dark, shapely. Simply not fair.

‘Right.’ Aiden twirled his keys around his finger. ‘Well, I was just heading to the shops, but come on in.’

She was hoping he might just let her in then leave her to it, but he held the door open for her and followed her back into the hall.

She gulped at the sight of his living room, the place she’d found comfort on her shittiest day, and beelined straight to Cerberus’s cage so she wouldn’t be tempted to see what paintings he’d been working on.

It turned out there was nothing for her to do. The hamster was clean, fed, watered. He didn’t look like he’d missed her at all.

‘I changed his bedding this morning,’ Aiden said quietly. ‘He’s all taken care of, if that’s what you’re worried about. I wouldn’t…’

‘I know.’ The thought had crossed her mind just once, that maybe Aiden wouldn’t want to take care of him anymore, but she couldn’t imagine a world where he was cruel.

He’d never been cruel. Not like her. ‘You don’t have to do that.

I can come and clean him. I should have been around earlier, I just… ’

‘I know,’ he whispered, voice soft and inviting and all the things it had always been for her.

She clamped her lips together and unlocked the cage, glad when Cerberus dashed straight into her palm. Her smile was shaky as she placed a gentle kiss on his tiny, warm head, smoothing his tawny fur with a light finger. ‘I missed you, little guy.’

Aiden shuffled behind her, and then said: ‘Juni. Can’t we talk about this?’

‘I can’t. I really, really can’t right now.’

‘I miss you,’ he said. ‘All the time. Not seeing you—’

‘I can’t.’ Her voice wavered this time as she turned to face him, keeping Cerberus steady in her hand. ‘I need to stay focused on the contest. The deadline is two weeks away. And I have work in twenty minutes. We will talk about it, just not yet. I can’t afford to be a mess now, okay?’

His downturned mouth made her want to change her mind, apologise, say all the things she’d been thinking over the last few days.

Tell him she missed him, too. But this thing with Aiden had always been an explosion waiting to happen, just like her teapot in the pit fire, and she didn’t have the strength to wade through the debris just yet.

To try to piece together something that would help them move on once and for all.

He nodded, fingers flexing at his sides. ‘Well, you know where I am if you change your mind. And if I can help at all with this contest thing, I’m here.’

So you can have your dad bribe the judges? she thought, but knew it wasn’t fair.

Her eyes welled with tears. She admired Cerberus a final time and then placed him back in his cage. ‘Thanks for letting me in.’

‘Of course. Anytime.’

She grabbed her bag from the floor and walked straight past, unable to look at him. She still saw the devastation from the corner of her eye, though. Still saw the way he bowed his head when she turned to say goodbye.

All of this self-preservation wasn’t preserving her much at all, because her insides felt as raw as ever as she walked out of his door.

Her porcelain had cracked in the kiln. Hours and hours of work into her traditional china tea set, lost. It was only a few of the more delicate sugar bowls and milk jugs that had fared the worst, but when Annie pulled the set from the kiln late on Friday evening, Juniper still felt a hole open up inside her chest.

‘Pesky porcelain.’ Annie tutted, patting Juniper on the shoulder. ‘At least your teapot survived this time. Gorgeous pattern, too, by the way. Very Nordic.’

It was a gorgeous pattern, and it hadn’t been easy painting it with a steady hand, which made the crack all the more devastating. She would either have to douse the cups in superglue or start again.

God, she was tired of starting again.

Juniper took a deep breath, placing the fired ceramics into a crate so that she could take them upstairs, where she had Chris waiting to offer input with bated breath. ‘I don’t know what I did wrong,’ she admitted.

‘Oh, I’m sure it wasn’t anything you did.’ Annie smiled sympathetically, her blue eyes softening. ‘I always say clay is like an ex. Sometimes, it’s just impossible to please. Nothing you do can change it.’

‘Then what’s the point?’ Juniper’s face heated when she saw how the question took Annie aback. Still, she couldn’t stop wondering it. ‘If you might fail every time you put something in the kiln, what’s the point of any of it? How do you know how to get it right if the rules change every time?’

‘Isn’t it part of the fun, never knowing how it’ll turn out?’ Annie shrugged. ‘It might end up in pieces, but it might just be the most beautiful thing you’ve ever created. To me, it looks like you’ve managed both. Don’t be so hard on yourself for the broken bits, yeah?’

Her words might have been inspiring on another day, but Juniper’s exhaustion had tugged her to a precipice, and she was one or two terrible experiences away from being thrown over the edge.

She couldn’t remember a time when she’d ever been this burnt out.

Not at school, not in full-time work, not even last semester.

There was always something to do, something to fix, something to make, and not enough time in the day to do it all.

All of her earnings were being poured into her tuition fee savings, and she was barely able to afford lunch most days.

And on top of that, she was hamsterless.

And Aidenless. And it was her fault, partly.

She trudged back up to the workshop with heavy feet, setting her crate down in front of Chris on his desk. ‘We have some casualties.’

‘How unfortunate.’ He plucked out a saucer that had made it out alive, and then her pride and joy, the three-tiered cake stand for afternoon tea, a typical British enjoyment she’d never been able to afford but liked the sound of.

She had to admit, it had turned out well, with polished white broken up by her blue Nordic-inspired patterns.

She’d tried to emulate the same elegance as what she’d seen in Middleport, hoping that if she wowed the judges with technical skills similar to those of professionals, she might have a chance at winning.

‘This is certainly an improvement from your first piece here.’ He hesitated, and her heart leapt into her throat. He didn’t like it.

‘What? What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing’s wrong…’

She pointed an accusatory finger at him.

‘Your face says otherwise.’ Even now they were on a friendlier basis, it was easy to spot when Chris wasn’t keen on someone’s work.

He fidgeted with his glasses, features pinching like he’d just bitten into a lemon.

About as subtle as Juniper was, which was probably why they’d started out so rocky.

‘This is just my face,’ Chris tried to defend, but Juniper put her hands on her hips. He lifted his hand in surrender. ‘All right. I know you’ve worked very hard on these, Juniper, but…’

‘But?’

He winced as he examined one of the teacups that was still intact. ‘But they’re awfully boring. I never would have guessed they were yours. They show none of your usual creativity. Nothing to distinguish you from other potters.’

Juniper took a wounded step away from the table, pretending to be interested in her boots. ‘So, I have no chance of winning the contest with this.’ It wasn’t a question.

Chris shook his head. ‘No, I dare say you don’t.’

She blinked the tears from her eyes. ‘I thought that’s what they would want. After seeing all the pottery in Middleport and some of the past winners…’

‘Maybe, if the pieces felt sincere. Something the artist excelled in, knew inside out. But these look like copies. They’re not telling me anything about you. Just what you’re trying to emulate – a plain old afternoon tea set. Do you even like afternoon tea?’

‘I didn’t realise I had to like something to make it,’ Juniper couldn’t help but snap. ‘Do you just make these rules as you go along?’

Chris set down her work and stood, draping his tartan scarf around his neck with an indecipherable expression.

He looked at Juniper just once more to say: ‘If you don’t know by now that you’re supposed to find enjoyment in your own work, I’ve severely failed you, and I’m sorry for that.

’ He checked his watch. ‘It’s late. How about you take the weekend to consider the next steps, and we can discuss this some more on Monday? ’

Juniper nodded, afraid any answer she said aloud would be broken by a sob. She was glad when Chris left and she could let the tears flow freely.

How was it that even when she tried to do better, she still failed? It was the only thing she was good at: messing things up, doing the wrong thing, following the wrong path.

The cracked edges of her cups taunted her, and she had no idea what she was doing until she picked up the cake stand and threw it onto the floor with a venomous grunt.

The teapot came next, producing an ear-splitting shatter, and then the cups and saucers.

The sugar bowl, the milk jug. All of it ended up in fragments of painted blue and white on the floor, where it belonged.

What was the point? She wasn’t going to get anywhere in the contest with them.

She wasn’t going to become a potter at all.

At this point, she was just tipping her money, her energy, her everything down a depressing, hair-clogged drain, watching it swirl and swirl and swirl before the current sucked it all up.

Maybe she should have let Aiden take care of her, even if the thought of buying her place here by sleeping with someone wealthy felt oily and disgusting.

Or maybe she should never have come here at all, just like her mum had said.

With a final sob, Juniper tossed the crate of broken pottery away, and then kicked it for good measure. Whatever love she’d felt for her craft was gone, and all she could do was lower to the ground and wonder why she would never be enough.