Page 40 of Sad Girl Hours

Chapter Forty

Saffron

Life in the Holloways’ home is even better than I imagined. Each morning, I wake up on an air bed on Nell’s floor (no way was I letting her give up her bed for me), staring up at fake, slightly green stars, and usually with a very large cat giving me pins and needles in one or both of my feet.

Then we go downstairs for breakfast where the twins offer us various juices that Nell always pours down the drain outside, and today, Xander offers me potato pancakes with tofu scramble and avocado.

“I hope you didn’t go to the trouble of making that just for me. I know it’s a pain me being veggie, but—”

“Not at all,” he says, cutting me off. “Any excuse to try a new recipe, honestly. And, besides, veggie’s easy enough. Gluten free, we’d have had issues with.”

“We are a family of bread lovers,” Nell notes, looking very sleepy and cute in her flannel pyjamas, her dark hair mussed up at the back from her pillow.

The tofu scramble was a little watery, I must confess (although obviously I say it’s the best I’ve ever had to a bashful but beaming Xander).

I also don’t sleep particularly well on the mattress as it deflates slowly throughout the night – and also because of my brain that unfortunately continues to have depression attached to it – but at least when I do wake up from my fractured sleep I wake up here , with Nell.

I messaged my parents to tell them I wasn’t coming home.

I did it at 7 a.m. a few days before we came here and then turned my phone off for the day, not wanting to see whatever their reply was.

I suspected it would either be flippant and unfeeling, much in the spirit of Cool.

Now we can save the petrol money. Or its intention would be for me to feel an exponential amount of guilt, something like Christmas is a time for family, Saffron (I know it is, that’s why I came here).

If we expected any better, then we’d be disappointed that you’ve apparently forgotten this.

I braced myself for both variations when I turned my phone back on.

There was no response. Not an unfeeling one, no guilt trip, just … nothing. And somehow that made me feel even worse.

If I was being generous, I would say that they felt hurt and weren’t able to reply to my message because they were too upset.

But I know better than that. They read the message; they just didn’t think it warranted a reply. Or they were too busy being relieved to have time to send anything back.

“You OK?”

Nell’s voice brings me out of my head as we’re getting dressed several hours after breakfast (my mum would have made pointed comments about laziness if I’d done that at home), having got roped into an intense game of ‘made-up-word Scrabble’ (you can play anything: you just have to pronounce it and tell the group what it means) with the twins.

“Yes,” I say. “I’m good.”

Nell pulls that face that I love and hate in equal measure, the one that says bullshit in every crinkle and frown line.

“I’m just … thinking about my parents.”

I’m trying, I really am, to be open with her. No more secrets. Or , I add to myself, trying not to stare at the softness of her body as she pulls on a shirt, sweater vest and tartan skirt, just a couple of them.

“Ah. Were they upset when you said you weren’t going home?”

“Not exactly,” I say, pulling out my phone and showing her the absence of a response and the two white ticks as a read receipt.

Something akin to fury flickers across Nell’s face, before settling in the hardness of her jaw. She takes a few seconds to compose herself before fixing me with a stare that feels like heat from a well-stoked fire. “They don’t deserve you.”

There’s a pause while I try to decide, again, whether to cry, smile or kiss her, but then she continues. “Come on,” she says. “I thought we’d go for a walk this afternoon. Thoughts?”

“Positive,” I say (they usually aren’t but in this particular instance it’s accurate). “It sounds lovely.”

I do feel a little guilty about still hiding some things from Nell, but they’re all things I want to hide from myself too. It’s not personal. It’s just if I’m going to survive the next few weeks, I need to not think about them.

I didn’t go to that meeting with my tutor.

The one about my attendance. Ironically.

I got up ready to, but then, when I reached the front door, I couldn’t quite manage to open it.

I was worried if I went that he’d tell me I was being kicked out.

And if I didn’t go then he couldn’t tell me that. A foolproof plan.

Apart from the fact that when I remember this, at unbidden intervals, I feel even more anxious.

If there was any chance I wasn’t going to be reprimanded for my attendance, that went out of the window with me not attending the meeting.

So, my time with Nell here now feels a little like I’m on death row and have been offered one last incredible meal.

I do intend to enjoy it, to make the most of our days together, but in a way, if going back in January is the end of my time in Lancaster …

it’s going to make it even harder to say goodbye.

And the worst thing is— No, not the worst. One of the frustrating things is, I passed the exam last term. Barely, but I did. And I know if I could just have made it to spring, I could pass properly, study properly. But I doubt that I’ll have the option now.

James sent me a follow-up email, rearranging our meeting for the first day back in January. The ninth. Vivvie has her fashion show in the evening the day before, so at least I can go to that and cheer her on before I’m sent packing. Literally.

But anyway, I’m not thinking about that. Not yet, not until I have to.

Right now, I want to think about lacing up my boots next to Nell, about putting on the thick coat that I’ve borrowed from her, and heading out together to explore the place she grew up.

“That –” Nell points – “is the kerb where I fell off my tricycle as a kid and got this scar here.” She lifts up her chin so I can see the faint line underneath.

“Poor baby Nell.”

“That was my primary school,” she says, gesturing towards a charmingly small building with gables painted green.

“Many lunchtimes hiding in the cloakrooms were spent there. And then, when they clocked on and forced me out to the playground, I instead snuck seeds in and started planting herbs in any spare patches of ground I could find.”

“You really started your ‘convince the neighbourhood children you’re a witch’ mission early, didn’t you?” I say, my heart growing a couple of sizes as I imagine a tiny Nell poking seeds into the earth and tending to them carefully during her breaktimes.

“You remembered!” she says, midway over a wooden stile.

“Of course I did. I’m very invested in the concept. I’m going to be a frequent visitor to your cottage.”

“You’d better be,” Nell says.

We head away from the village, up a steadily sloping hill. The buildings grow smaller behind us, and the light has the kind of hazy property that signals dusk is looming.

Nell plods on next to me, stopping at intervals to point things out like the field she normally walks through to befriend the new batch of cows that arrive in March.

“And that— Oh .” She draws her hand back, puts it on her chest and closes her eyes. “Oof.”

“Are you OK?” I’m by her side instantly, hand on her arm. “Is it your heart?”

“The PoTS do be PoTting, yes,” she says, scrunching her eyes shut even more and swaying slightly.

“Come on, sit down,” I say, helping guide her slowly to the ground.

“Thanks.” After a moment or so, she reopens her eyes. “Sorry, I think it’s the exercise and the cold. I’m not so good with changes in temperature.”

“You don’t have to apologise,” I say. “How are you doing now?”

“My heart’s still going. I might need a minute or two.”

“OK.” I shrug my bag off my shoulder and reach in. “Would these help?” I hold out a mini bag of salted pretzels.

She stares at them in my hand for three blinks and then looks up at me for another three. “You brought pretzels.”

“Yes.”

“You often get snacky on a walk?”

“No. Well, sometimes. But no, I’ve made sure to have some in my bag any time I go out with you ever since the day in the maze when you asked me for a giant pretzel. Giant pretzels tend to go mouldy with prolonged tote-bag exposure, but these are fine.”

The blinking’s back. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Um. No?”

“That’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever done. You know that, right?”

A smile tugs up my face. “You arranged a full bucket list of activities to try to make me love autumn and winter because you knew they made me sad. I think that beats a bag of pretzels.”

“Technically, I didn’t know that you had seasonal affective disorder at the time. I just thought you didn’t particularly enjoy those seasons. I wasn’t knowingly trying to make you romanticise your way out of a legit mental illness with hot chocolate and scavenger hunts.”

I let out a laugh. “Yeah, when you put it like that. See, I knew it wasn’t going to work and, like, cure me , or whatever. But I still wanted to do it because I wanted you to have an excuse to do the things you like.”

“You’re so annoying. You agreed to let me help you –” she puts the words in quotation marks – “only as a way to help me. Have you ever done anything for yourself, like, ever?”

I stop and think about it. “I came home with you?”

Nell grins. “True. And definitely a good start. But I think you should keep doing it. At least one thing a day that you do just for yourself.”

“Another scheme, Nell. Really?” I joke, and am rewarded with her laugh. “But maybe that’s not a bad plan. If I agree, will you shut up and eat some pretzels?” I add, noticing her closing her eyes, swaying forward like she’s still dizzy.

“I will eat some pretzels because the salt will make me feel less dizzy. But you should agree because it’s something good to try for you , not because it will get me to eat them.”

Ah. “I’m not very good at this, am I?” I concede.

“No. You’re not.”