Page 74 of Take Two

A flicker of pain crossed Callie’s face. ‘Yeah.’

Callie Price had always been bigger than the village. The surprise wasn’t that she was going.

It was that she was saying it now. Here. In this bed, they’d just made new.

‘When?’ Mae forced out.

‘Not yet,’ Callie said. ‘But soon.’

‘So that’s it, then,’ Mae said quietly. ‘We squeeze in what we can before you go, and then…’

Callie flinched. ‘That’s not what I want.’

‘What do you want?’

Callie looked at her properly, as if trying to pin her down.

‘I want you to come with me,’ she said.

‘What?’ Mae said stupidly.

‘I want you to come,’ Callie repeated. ‘We could find a place. We could get jobs. We could do it together. Like everything else.’

Mae’s head filled with images faster than she could process them. A city. Noise. Anonymous crowds.

Waking up next to Callie.

But…

‘My dad,’ she said. ‘The shop.’

‘I know,’ Callie said. ‘But he’d… cope.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘I don’t,’ Callie agreed. ‘But I know he’s a grown man running a business. He’d find a way. And you…’ She reached out,brushing a strand of hair from Mae’s face. ‘You deserve more than the same four streets until you retire.’

‘What if I like my four streets?’ Mae asked.

‘Do you?’

Mae opened her mouth. Closed it again.

She thought of the way her stomach had dipped when her dad talked about giving the bakery to her one day, the way the path had stretched out in front of her like a conveyor belt.

She thought of the ash tree. Of lying in the grass with Callie, listening to her talk about leaving this place forever. But she’d never asked Mae to come before. It had been understood that she couldn’t. They’d both been trapped, but Mae didn’t have a shovel to dig a tunnel out.

‘I can’t imagine not being here.’

Callie didn’t speak.

‘My dad would see it as betrayal.’

‘Parents are very good at making their feelings your problem,’ Callie said bitterly. But her voice changed. ‘But helovesyou. He’d be upset, and then he’d adjust. It’s allowed, you know. Leaving.’

Mae stared at the ceiling, pulse roaring in her ears.

Leaving. What a concept. Her father, the bakery, the village that had wrapped itself round her like the strings of a tight apron. With Callie.