The Timeline

2.

January 31st, 2013:

It was the last day of the first month of the year of 2013, when Claire's phone vibrated with a notification that - although Claire didn't know, and wouldn't have known for some time - would've put in motion a series of events that would've changed and shaped the rest of her life forever.

She wouldn't have found out about the notification for some time, however, because on the 31st of January, as they had spent two months planning, Claire and the boys from her Core Four were busy sightseeing in London and looking around at whatever was on sale, because the moment to choose university and an apartment was getting closer and closer. They could've ignored it on Fabian's 18th birthday party, because they were far too taken with the celebrations, but now reality was slowly coming back down on them.

So, walking around London with a disposable camera, arms linked with her boys, stopping wherever one of those panels with homes for sale or rent came up, Claire didn't check her phone, because she knew that all the buzzing she heard were not important (she had specific sounds for the notifications that really mattered).

Well, that, and the fact that her phone had died in the middle of the day, because if there was one thing Claire always forgot to do was to charge her phone when her phone needed to be charged.

And once they had gotten back to Fabian's aunt's house in Clapham Park, Claire had ran upstairs, plugged the phone to her charger and waited for the screen to light up with the battery icon. She would've stayed even longer than that, would've turned the phone on, because there were texts she clearly needed to answer - and it would've been better if she did it while her friends were not watching, so they couldn't take the piss over the fact she was all smitten about the girl she fancied (with whom she had began a chain of texts that did not stop) - but she was called down to dinner from Fabian. It was late in the evening, after all, and her friends were not used to eating dinner as late as she usually did. The freaks usually ate their dinners before 6pm, and it was now nearing 8pm.

Normally, they would've bought something to pick at while walking around, but they had all ran out of money and did not want to ask around, so they had decided to wait to get home to eat. After all, Fabian's aunt had cooked for them the previous days, so she would've cooked for them that night as well.

So Claire let her phone fall on top of her sleeping bag and went downstairs to eat the dinner with her Core Four, Fabian's uncles and his cousins. The table was crowded, but the inconveniences would've ended the following day, because their train back was at 10 in the morning. They could only miss school for so much, before their parents started being annoying about it.

Claire nibbled and picked at her food as she listened to everyone talk around her, talk about their day, talk about their plans for the following days and weeks and months, talk about the future, talk about university, talk about future jobs, talk about houses and rents and owning properties and then talk about gossip and what was the Royal Family up to those days, and what was the weather and had they enjoyed their short stay in London (which yes they had) and were they excited to move there in the coming autumn (which, again, yes they were, they couldn't wait!) and how much Fabian's aunt still remembered when she had moved to London (insert fond laugh).

Dinner felt endless, and then it had ended and Claire had dissociated from the entire conversation - it was a talent she had mastered over the years, really, that to blend in the background of a large group of people standing around a table and talking, over dinner or lunch or whatever (cue, her big family). Normally, people (not her family) tried to make her a part of the conversation, but to avoid that type of problem when her mind was somewhere else, Claire had mastered the art of what she liked to call "The Human Pretense".