“What?”
“Well, you know I’m all for a schedule, but this sounds exhausting.”
“It’s not exhausting. It’s enriching,” Rebecca said. “And he needs to get ahead if he wants to get into the right pre-prep school.”
“Okay. Well, I’ll do my best with it all.”
“Tom and I don’t get home until six, so you’ll need to cook meals for Hector too. I order everything on Ocado, so all you’ll need to do is follow the meal plan. And remember, he doesn’t have red meat or dairy, and we try to only give him refined sugar at the weekends.”
“Righty-ho.” Libby was feeling sorrier for Hector by the second.
“I know what you’re thinking, Libby, and no sneaking him off to McDonald’s for chicken nuggets and milkshakes. You may not care about your body, but in this household, we treat ours with respect.”
“No Big Macs, I promise.”
Rebecca’s phone buzzed and she picked it up. “Oh, and noscreen time either,” she said as she read the message. “I saw a report recently about the damage it can do to developing brains.”
Libby couldn’t help but roll her eyes at this, and at that exact moment Rebecca glanced up from her phone, catching Libby midroll.
“Is there a problem?”
“No.”
“Because that eye roll suggested you don’t agree with me.”
“It’s not that. But we watched loads of TV as kids, and I’m not sure it did our brains any damage.”
Rebecca was staring at Libby with a look she remembered from her childhood, a withering mixture of boredom and contempt. “Remind me, Libs—how many kids do you have?”
Oh, here we go.
“Exactly,” Rebecca snapped. “If and when you do have children, you’re welcome to let them spend all day staring at screens and eating crap. But while you’re looking aftermyson, I ask that you please respect my parenting rules. Okay?”
Libby started to reply, but Rebecca had already swept out of the kitchen, leaving her staring openmouthed at the civetpoo coffee.
CHAPTER
3
The following week was one of the most exhausting of Libby’s life. Hector woke her at quarter to seven each weekday morning by bursting into her bedroom and jumping on the bed, and from then until the moment he fell asleep, twelve hours later, he kept up an almost constant barrage of questions:What’s the capital of Mongolia? Why do girls have boobies but boys don’t? What’s the opposite of “hamster”?By the time Rebecca and Tom got home from work each evening, Hector was still bouncing off the walls, but Libby was ready to collapse.
The one upside was that Libby’s days were so full, she had no time to think about Simon. It was only when she went to bed, drained and desperate for sleep, that the reality of her situation came crashing back. Two days... Three days... Four days and still no word. Their conversation on Friday night played over and over in Libby’s brain like a bad pop song on loop.I still love you but I feel like we’ve grown apart... We’re more like housemates than lovers... You used to be such fun, but things have grown stale.And every time, Libby felt the same sucker punch of surprise crushing the air out of her lungs. How had she not seen this coming? All this time she’d been so content in their life together, their Friday night takeaway andSunday morning sex, dreaming of the future they’d carefully planned for themselves, completely oblivious to the fact that the man she loved was deeply unhappy.
On Saturday morning, Hector woke his parents up instead of Libby and she slept in past nine. When she sat up, her whole body ached and she had a tight knot in her chest. She reached for her phone and flicked to Instagram. Libby had avoided it for the past week, not wanting to torture herself by looking at Simon’s feed. Now she clicked on his name, holding her breath for what she’d find. Thankfully, Simon had posted only one photo since she’d last checked, a shot on one of his runs. Libby studied the new image carefully. His skin was flushed and his hair disheveled, and he was squinting into the sun as he grinned at the camera. He looked so rugged and handsome it made Libby feel sick. Surely Simon should have been missing her by now, but he looked so alive and carefree in this photo. What if he’d already realized he was happier without her in his life?
Libby jumped out of bed, showered, and dressed, then snuck out of the house before her sister could give her any commands. She had no idea where she was going, only that she couldn’t spend the day moping in bed, staring at Simon’s Instagram and panicking. When she reached the main road, she went into a café and bought herself a cappuccino and a chocolate croissant. As she stepped back outside, she saw a bus pull up at the stop in front of the café and its door swing open. Libby watched for a moment as passengers disgorged onto the pavement. She had no idea what number bus this was or where it was going, and she didn’t have a coat or umbrella with her in case it rained. If she got on this bus, then she could end up anywhere, in one of the many dangerous areas of the city hersister was always telling her about. She was about to turn and walk past when she remembered Simon’s words.Our life has become so organized and predictable.Libby took a deep breath and jumped on board.
She found an empty seat in the back section of the lower deck and sat down. How’sthatfor spontaneous? she thought as she took a satisfied bite of her croissant. Although as she did, she glanced toward the electronic noticeboard to see where the bus was headed.88 to clapham common, it read. Fine, Clapham Common it was, then.
As the bus set off, Libby looked around her at the other passengers. In the row in front were two teenage boys, their heads bent together as they shared a pair of earphones, the tinny beat of their music leaking out. Across the aisle from the teenagers was an older lady with silver hair under one of those clear plastic rain hoods; she was gripping the handle of a wheeled shopper. Sitting behind the pensioner, directly across from Libby, was a young woman with her hair pulled up in a bun, her lips moving as her eyes scanned across the page of a battered copy ofPride and Prejudice. She was completely lost in the story, absentmindedly playing with a button on her cardigan as she read. As Libby watched her, she suddenly remembered Frank, the old man she’d met on the bus last Saturday. What had he said?A bus is the perfect place to practice life drawing because there’s always a choice of interesting models.
“Camden Town Station / Camden Street,” the automated voice announced. The reading woman stood up, not taking her eyes off the page, and made her way toward the exit. Libby watched her step off the bus, impressed to see she didn’t even look up from the book as she started to walk off down thepavement. More passengers were boarding at the front, and Libby glanced toward them and almost did a double take.
A tall, skinny man with a row of spiked black hair down the center of his head had boarded the bus and was making his way along the aisle in long strides. He must have been in his mid-thirties and was dressed in a black leather jacket, tight jeans, and Doc Martens boots, with a chain attached to his belt that jangled as he walked. Was this an actual punk? Libby hadn’t realized that was even a thing anymore. The two teenagers in the row in front were nudging each other and staring at the man, but he seemed oblivious to the stir he was causing. He slumped down in the seat that the bookish woman had vacated, his long legs jutting out into the aisle.
Frank’s words ran through Libby’s mind again. Here was someone who was definitely interesting enough to draw, but could she do it? She’d not drawn anything for years, and besides, she didn’t have a sketchbook with her and...
Spontaneous.