Tamsin Read online

  “That’s the dream. I’ve applied for a job at the fabric shop in town. Not exactly what I want to be doing, but imagine the discount I’d get on materials.” He lay there, rolling a blade a grass between his fingertips.

  “So why not a fashion job now instead of the fabric shop? If it’s your dream?”

  “Most fashion jobs are in London, or abroad if I hit it big time. I’m not ready to leave everyone behind. Couldn’t imagine seeing Jade less than I already do. Also, do you really think I could go more than a day without seeing you?”

  I laughed and a small sigh escaped my mouth. I couldn’t imagine it either.

  “Maybe I’ll start my own business one day. My bespoke designs could be on catwalks all over the world.” He sniggered. He didn’t believe in himself even though I knew he had the potential. I never understood his fashion until he sat me down to watch clips of the London Fashion Show. Fashion would strut down the clean white runway, all held up by size zero models. Truthfully, Liam’s work should have been up there. He would reel off which designers’ work he was inspired by. Most of the time it went straight over my head, but I was starting to appreciate his work for what it was. It was a type of art.

  “One day you will have your own label, and it will be worth the hard work. I believe in you.” I emptied the last drop of prosecco into my mouth.

  * * *

  “Ugh. Why do I have so much crap?” I groaned while pulling a deflated sheep from my canvas wardrobe.

  “Suzie!” Liam shouted, snatching the inflatable toy we’d acquired on a night out from my hands. “Remember the guy who gave us this? He was hot. His mouth would have been on this,” he stated, then started to blow seductively on the nozzle, pumping Suzie the sheep back up to her former self.

  “Liam Wright, will you please help me?” I begged. “The moving van is going to be here tomorrow and my bedroom is a tip.”

  “I’m well aware the van is coming tomorrow. Half of the van is mine. It’s not my fault you are so disorganised,” He quipped, laughing at my misfortune and only wanting to play with Suzie. I had asked him to come up and help, but he was more of a distraction. I didn’t want to say goodbye to my loft room. The wall above the chimneybreast was covered in six-by-four prints of nights out, patterned in a brick-like formation. I pulled an old box out from the bottom of the wardrobe, while Liam threw the sheep in the air.

  “You’re not helping,” I huffed at him, lifting the lid off the box, which released a cloud of dust into the air. My face puffed and both my hands automatically started to rub my eyes to calm the sneeze about to erupt from my nose.

  “What the hell are you doing?” He cried with laughter and started to mimic me.

  “It’s my dust allergy. I’m trying to stop myself from sneezing.” I said bluntly, still trying to tame the inevitable sneezing fit that I was about to have.

  “Brilliant. Dust allergy. How did I not know this?”

  “Honestly… You keep the house freakishly clean, but you don’t clean my bedroom, so I tend to just sneeze a lot up here.”

  “Should clean more often then, shouldn’t you?” he said sharply. He’d always had a remark for any comment I’d made. We kept each other on our toes.

  “I always thought you had hay fever when we were younger. Anyway, I’ll sort that box, and you start packing up those books, okay?”

  “Thank you.” I sniffled, my nose streaming. Packing was the worst but I carried on. I had to if I ever wanted to be at home with Mum again. I didn’t want to pay for another term of rent either. I pulled the books one by one off the shelf that was secured onto the chimneybreast. I scanned the pictures in front of me, my mind wandering through the different memories they each held. One picture had been taken three years earlier during freshers’ week. Both Liam and I were stood soaking wet in the middle of a nightclub during a foam party. Liam was stick thin, enough to make the average person look huge. I cringed at the matted mess of my brown wavy hair and the clothes I had, for some reason, thought would look hot. I was wearing a sky blue shirt and white denim shorts, and was covered in neon necklaces. It was all good fun, but how wrong was I? Looking back, it came as no surprise that I hadn’t taken a guy home that night.

  I was pulled back to reality as my phone vibrated in my pocket.

  “Hello?” I answered. I didn’t recognise the number.

  “Hello, is this Tamsin?” a female asked.

  “Yes, it is. Who’s this please?” People always told me I had a phone voice. I could talk for Britain, but I hated introductions.

  “Hi, this is Roberta from Farden Hotel. We received your application for the position of Customer Relationship Manager, and we have put you on the shortlist. I know this may be short notice, but would you be free to come for an interview next Friday?”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. A small part of me had been losing faith in all of the applications I’d sent. I thought there had been something wrong with them. Something wrong with me.

  “Oh wow, of course I can. That would be great. What time?” I asked eagerly, unable to contain my excitement.

  “Is ten-thirty okay? You’ll just need to sign in with security and then I’ll collect you.” she asked politely.

  “Perfect. I’ll see you then. Thank you!”

  Adrenaline rushed through me from head to toe. This was the beginning of something big for me; I could feel it. I had to get my arse into gear and pack like I’d never packed before. My future depended on it.

  * * *

  Dawn Street was laced with terraced housing and pathetically sized gardens, but it was home. I’d lived on this street all my life. I remembered playing tag with Liam on the roads around ours; we would weave our way through the parked cars, often setting off the alarms. We didn’t care, though. Our parents had given us only three rules to follow or we would be grounded:

  1. Once you are out, no traipsing in and out of the house, unless it’s for food or the toilet.

  2. In for the night when the street lights came on.

  3. Stay within the boundaries our parents had set.

  We weren’t allowed to play past the last streetlight on one side of Dawn Street, and the post office on Liam’s street, which was just around the corner. As I pulled up alongside my house in the moving van, the street looked deserted, as did the wooden play area. Children would have flocked to it all those years back, but instead the park sat rotting, only occupied by gangs of teenagers smoking and God knew what else. Times had changed, and how I knew it. Life had been so much simpler back then. I didn’t have to worry about mum; she worried about me.

  “Thank you so much for helping.” The driver placed my last box just outside the house. My things filled our small paved garden.

  “You’re very welcome. Are you sure you don’t want help taking them inside?” he asked. I hadn’t been home for a few weeks, and although my mum was quite capable of making her meals and taking her medication, I knew that she’d had chemotherapy a few days before and that made her struggle. I didn’t want her to feel like she had to make an effort. She needed to rest and not worry about a stranger coming into her home.

  “I’m fine, thank you. My friend should be back soon to help,” I lied. There was no way I would drag Liam back here after seeing Jade’s little face light up when she saw him. His sister adored him. Who didn’t?

  I stepped through the doorway and kicked off my shoes, flinging them across the hall amongst the boxes I had placed there. My body slumped down next to Mum on the couch. I held her hand and slowly grazed her skin with my fingers.

  “I’ve missed you so much. So happy to be back for good with you,” I said as she smiled weakly. Her skin looked dry and her eyes duller than they had ever been. Cancer was draining the life out of her, and the chemo even more so. But it was helping. The tumour in her oesophagus was shrinking. It was still terminal; the cancer had spread too much by the time they caught it.

  “I’ve missed you, too,” she croaked, like she hadn’t sa
id a word in weeks. Her sparkle and humour were fading, I just wished I could grab on to them to stop them from disappearing altogether.

  This is just temporary.

  I shook it off. I did miss her humour, though. Mum said the reason she’d got Cancer was because she would never stop talking. She joked it was someone trying to shut her up. Laughter was the best medicine and we’d always laughed pain away before, but this time was different. I was the clone of her. We laughed the same, loved all the same things, even shared makeup. By share, I mean I took hers and didn’t buy my own. Because we were so similar I always knew when she wasn’t herself, but it also meant she could read me like a book. I missed the old her, and all her crazy stories, like when she and her old best friend had flashed the postman because he always stared at their chests. If only I had the confidence they had to pull that off, or their cup size. Mine were barely a handful.

  “Mum, I got an interview at the hotel I told you about,” I said in an attempt to cheer her up.

  “You did? I knew you could do it, Tams.” Her voice was hoarse, but her smile grew wider than the last one she’d tried. I couldn’t wing the interview like I had my Wednesday lecture assignments. I had to prepare, but I had time. I just had to organise myself and take a leaf out of the very organised pages of Liam’s book. I would allocate a couple of hours over the next week, in between becoming Mum’s full-time carer, and the very few shifts I had at The Tap.

  “You’ll be wanting my makeup then, won’t you?”

  “Absolutely! And I will be wearing this.” I pulled out a knee length black dress with a white collar to show her. I had packed it separate from my clothes once I got the phone call from Roberta because I knew I’d be too lazy to unpack straight away. I had to look the part, first impressions were everything, so I had every intention of using her makeup.

  “You will look beautiful. Go and grab my makeup box,” she said with the very little energy she had. I passed it to her and she began to root through it, looking for something in particular. She pulled out a red lipstick–the red lipstick–the one I was never allowed to use because it cost her a fortune, and looking at it, she hadn’t dared to use it either.

  “Take this, and when you go to the interview, make sure you knock them dead.”

  For her, anything.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The white painted room surrounded us, yet despite the crisp clean walls it still looked gloomy. The infamous hospital smell was almost as recognisable as Mum's Sunday lunch. Nurses passed the room now and again, occasionally looking in. Mum’s breaths went from deep inhales to shallow gasps for air as I sat next to her, clutching her hand tightly. The beeping of the heart monitor was slowly driving me crazy. What felt like days had only been hours, but each one that passed made it more apparent that this was the end of her journey.

  Mum had always said if she were to go into the hospital, she would never leave. She was right. Annoyingly, she was always right, but I had hoped and prayed that this one time she would be wrong. She had to be wrong.

  I started to count the seconds in between her breaths, which wasn’t the cleverest of ideas. I would panic after every few seconds, waiting for the next crackle of her breathing. Her chest rose ever so slightly with each inhale, moving the tubes attached to her pale skin.

  “I love you so much. Like Jelly Tots,” I said, barely able to get out the words as I tried to hold back my tears. The doctors had told me she would still be able to hear me. I wanted to believe them. My only wish was to hear her say 'I love you lots and lots, like Jelly Tots' one last time. The heart monitor emitted a drawn-out high-pitched noise. My body froze. For a minute, I stopped breathing, too. As much as I’d known this day was on the horizon, nothing could have prepared me for it.

  “No… No, this can't be happening,” I stuttered as the doctors came in and covered her with a white cloth so I couldn’t see her.

  “Why are you doing that?” I screamed as my whole body shook.

  “Take that off her!”

  Everything was blurred.

  I panted as sweat dripped from my body onto the sofa. My phone sounded, accompanied by a repetitive buzz that woke me at seven am. Half of the duvet was draped on the floor like I had wrestled with it all night. Mum was lying next to me, sleeping soundly, inhaling slow breaths and making little snores. It was a dream. A nightmare.

  A nightmare that will be reality one day.

  I had no idea what I was going to do, and the more I thought about losing Mum, the more I felt like I was losing my mind. It was a bright morning. I could feel the warmth already as the sun shone through the gaps in the blinds, creating a dust-like mist around us. I grabbed onto the arm of the sofa, and slowly pushed myself off as my body ached with exhaustion. It wasn’t easy looking after Mum, I had no idea how she’d coped all the time I’d been in Chester.

  “Coffee,” I said to myself as I stumbled towards the pink retro kettle in the kitchen and flicked it on. I couldn’t function without a strong coffee in the morning; that and tea were staples of my diet. I put a heaped teaspoon of granules into a mug that read ‘Don’t be a shoe. Be a hat or a purse’. We’d always watched Friends together, so it was a very fitting gift. Liam bought it me after I finished my exams in the first year. Surprisingly, it was still in one piece as I was notoriously clumsy. I put an extra teaspoon of coffee and a sweetener in the mug for good luck. I daydreamed about having a fancy coffee machine with pods, or better yet an assistant to run along and get me an Americano from Starbucks at the click of my fingers like in the movies. But that’s all it was–a dream. I didn’t need them. They were a luxury I could live without. Besides, I needed my own house, there was no way I could have fit one in Mum’s kitchen amongst all the clutter.

  Mum was still sleeping peacefully once I had finished tiptoeing around the kitchen, so I crept upstairs to my room to start getting ready for my interview. My bedroom was finally looking like it used to after I had spent the past few days unpacking. I plugged my phone into the Hi-Fi system I’d received for Christmas years before and started to play the 'Getting Ready' playlist I had saved, turning the volume down low to make sure it didn’t startle me. I applied a minimal amount of makeup on top of the layer I should have removed the night before, trying to make myself look more human and less Casper the Friendly Ghost. I was surprised I hadn’t broken out in spots with the amount of nights I had slept in makeup recently. I was exhausted, but I couldn’t let it stop me. I curled my brown hair loosely to create a wavy effect and then slipped into my black dress. Something was missing.

  Red lipstick.

  I could see the exhaustion in my face as I looked in the mirror. The cheap makeup had barely provided any cover for my growing panda eyes. The early morning didn’t help but it was necessary to tame my usually untidy hair. No matter how much effort I made, I couldn’t seem to shake a feeling of envy. My confidence plummeted every time I looked at myself. It was the media’s fault. Women were air brushed to perfection or plastered in makeup with teams of stylists to make them look television ready. It did nothing for my self-confidence. Confidence had always been an issue for me, likely another reason why I was still single. As I walked down the stairs, they creaked beneath me.

  Mum was stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at me in awe.

  “You look so beautiful,” she said, seeming to have more energy than a few days earlier.

  “Thanks, Mum. I honestly don't know what I would do without you.” My hell-ish dream flashed to the forefront of my mind. I nearly teared up at the thought of living a day without her.

  Could it be days, weeks or months?

  I didn't know. No one knew. I knew I had to cherish the rest of our days together, to limit the hurt I knew was coming.

  “I’m so proud of you. I love you lots and lots like Jelly Tots.” The words I longed to hear in my dream came from her mouth. Tears rolled down my cheeks, thankfully not smudging my make up too much. Overwhelmed, I kissed her goodbye and stepped out through
the front door onto the cracked slabs in our tiny front garden. Our next-door neighbour, an elderly lady, was in her garden. She was moving her black bin after the collection that morning. We exchanged a smile and nothing more then I carried myself to the train station.

  I quickly arrived at Crewe Train Station. The automatic doors were jammed open with the masses of people who poured in and out. The loud engines roared over the hustle and bustle of the commuters; I could barely hear myself think. Platform five was just as busy, all of us waiting for the next train to Birmingham New Street. I could barely balance in the heels I’d worn in an attempt to appear taller, and not one guy offered me their seat. Chivalry was dead. I stood with one of my hips dropped, trying to balance as best I could in my heels. My eyes scanned the platform and everyone on it. I found myself locked onto a suited man. His lips were small, and his tanned skin was clear of imperfections. One manly hand was wrapped around the phone he was staring at, and the other tapped at his hip in some sort of rhythm. At first, I couldn’t tear myself away from his beauty, until his deep blue eyes met mine. He was stunning.

  “Hot,” I muttered, elongating the word as my gaze shyly dropped from his face, down his blue suit to the floor. That was about as close as I was getting to flirting, if that’s even what you could call it. He was meters away, but that didn’t stop my imagination bringing him closer. Confidence poured from his posture, as he stood with a worn satchel bag that hung off his shoulder. I looked up again, hoping my eyes would meet his once more, but I had no such luck. Commuters rushed past me to board the train that had pulled in beside me, blocking a view I wished I had taken a mental picture of. Once my line of sight had cleared, he had disappeared. I wanted him. I wanted to bite his bottom lip, feel his manly hands all over me and quiver against his touch. I stood day-dreaming for a while, longing to see him again, and then with disappointment I shuffled my way through the crowd and managed to sit on a seat next to a window. The seat faced backwards, which made me dizzy. I suffered from travel sickness, especially when I travelled by coach, but my mum would always give me ginger biscuits to eat before and on the journey. I missed those school trip days. Everyone would fight for the back seat, and I would be at the front of the bus smugly eating my biscuits.