Veto

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

"So here it is." The realtor gestures for me to walk before them. "I'll let you have a look around yourself before I get into things." She smiles politely and stays by the door as Charlotte and I walk into the dinky wee flat I had spied online a few nights ago.

Just as I had assumed from the photographs, the flat is tiny. A small kitchenette with just the one stove top. A joint living room and bedroom space, not enough room for a dining table, bed and couch all together. One obsolete window with a grand view of the red bricks from the building next door. And the smell... Stale air and damp wood, a blissfully melancholy aroma.

"Is this the storage closet?" Charlotte asks and opens the one door in the place apart from the front entrance door. We both pop our head into the tiny bathroom she's discovered. I can smell the mould before my eyes spot the black patches on the ceiling. The tiny shower is rimmed with brown at its base and I don't bother to look in the toilet to know the state it's in. Charlotte looks at me silently and I glance to her before looking at the space again.

"Fuck sakes." I whisper under my breath so the realtor can't hear me, though I'm sure she's well aware how dilapidated the place is. Charlotte moves to the small kitchenette, opening one of the tiny cutlery cupboards.

"Oh!" She exclaims and I blink from the peeling wallpaper to look at her. She turns back to me, opening the door a little wider for me to see as she points into it.

"Free pet." She jokes dryly, pointing to a dead mouse in a trap. The corner of my lip tugs up and I point to the wall I was just looking at.

"Free artwork." I gesture to the tag a previous tenant had etched into the wall. Charlotte and I both stifle our chuckles before we walk back out to the realtor.

"Any questions on the place?" She asks optimistically.

"Don't think it's quite what I'm looking for." I give her a polite smile and she nods before closing up the place.

"Bloody hell, Lot. What the hell am I going to do?" I groan as she drives me back to my half packed flat.

"Move in with me?" She suggests yet again.

"I can't. I can't do that to you guys. Plus it's too long of a commute to work."

"You can't stay in one zone forever just because of your job, Roe." Charlotte lightly scolds.

"I can try."

"I don't know why you haven't quit that place yet. They treat you like crap." She adds.

"Yeah well, I can't really start looking at a new job right now. I need to find somewhere to live first."

"You spoken to your mum yet about any of this?" Charlotte asks pulling up beside my old Vauxhall astra.

"Not yet." I admit, grabbing my handbag from my feet and swinging it over my shoulder. "I just know she'll ask me to move back home but I just can't be there."

"No, that's fair enough." Charlotte nods and I cringe at the sympathetic glint behind her blue eyes. I thank her for coming to check out the flat listing with me and for driving me home before I head in.

I reheat some soup for dinner. Not wanting to use too many dishes while I try pack them up. My flat is covered in boxes. Some packaged and stacked up in the corners of the room. I consider my options of leaving some of the larger furniture in the flat when I leave. But it depends on wherever I end up moving to if I'll leave them or not. After dinner and during my second Merlot I decide I'm now brave enough to call my mother.

"Roe." She answers almost immediately.

"Hey mum." I greet her, my spoon circles the half eaten bowl of soup as I speak.

"You okay sweetheart?" My mother has always had a knack with her intuition. She always knew how I was feeling, even when we were apart and even when I sometimes didn't know what I was feeling myself. She was so in tune with the people around her that way. Apart from dad though. I guess she never picked up on that or maybe he was too good at camouflaging himself from her.

"I'm okay. Just in a bit of a pickle." I sigh, my spoon collecting the small rings of fats and oils that have separated and floated to the surface of the soup.

"Oh?" She prompts.

"They're demolishing my flat so I have to move out end of the week. Only I haven't found anywhere suitable yet. Went to look at a place with Charlotte today and it was awful. Bit stressed about it." I admit.

"Oh Rhona. Don't fret sweetheart. You can always move back here-" She begins but I let my soft sigh interrupt her.

"I don't want to move back home, mum." I knew she would offer.

"Why not?" She asks. She must know why. She has to know why.

"Because." I drop the spoon into the bowl with a clink. "Because it just seems so regressive to move back in with your family at my age." I say instead of mentioning dad.

"Oh Rhona, don't be silly." I can picture her scrunched nose as she speaks. "Well what about Aunt Liza's place?" She suggests. Aunt Liza, was not my real aunty. She was my mothers best friend, and because both my parents had not had any siblings my few aunts and uncles had been close friends of both my mother and father. Though Aunt Liza was the closest one I had. A divorcée at a young age who spent half the year at her timeshare in Benidorm and the rest gossiping with my mother.

"What about Aunt Liza's place?" I ask, taking my soup bowl to the sink and tipping the last of it down the drain.

"She's got that flat under her place. She usually rents it out to uni students but stopped when that last one she had kept throwing huge parties while she was in Spain and half wrecked the place. It's all fixed up now but she's been a little nervous of renting the space out again. But I'm sure she'd love for you to be in there. Looking after the house while she's in Costa Blanca too." My mother explains. I did vaguely remember the partying student debacle. I hadn't even thought about Aunt Liza's downstairs flat. I had only seen photos of it as usually there was someone living in it if we ever visited. But I remembered it was nice. And spacious, and surprisingly sunny for a downstairs dwelling.

"Mmm." I nodded, slightly unsure. There was one downfall to Aunt Liza's place. It was nowhere near close to my work and not within a zone I would prefer to stay living in.

"Aunt Liza's is a little out the way for me though, mum. I'd have an hour and a half commute to work. Maybe even two if it was super busy." I point out, taking a generous swig of my Merlot.

"Oh Roe, you need to leave that bastard place. You hate it there. And they've hardly raised your pay since you were an intern for them." It seems everyone likes to remind me of this lately.

"I think the move to your Aunt Liza's would do you the world of good. It'd motivate you more to find another job too. They have some great opportunities in her area." My mother continues when I don't speak.

"That's because Liza's place is near corporate central." Her neighbourhood alone was full with the wealthy business moguls. Her house sat just on the cusp of it all. A perk from having married and divorced from a wealthy family. I'm sure her ex husband had even brought the house for her, and maybe even her timeshare. Rich people were weird in that way; not wanting the shame or embarrassment of an ex wife looking necessitous and tarnishing the family name and image.

"I thought you wanted to work on the more corporate side of things. Not as someone's book keeper." I brush off my mother's small jab at my current accounting job. I do a little more then book keeping, but she's right. I had wanted to be a financial examiner or analyst for some big successful company when I graduated university. I wanted to be in the big risks and big rewards end of things. Being proud to say where I worked and what I did. Being a junior accountant for small start up businesses was not what I had in mind for myself. It had been a fine job while I was a student and the year after my graduation. But now it was becoming impediment to the life I had pictured for myself.

"I'll pop round Aunt Liza's tomorrow afternoon." I said plainly, imagining the winning smile my mother was most likely sending down the phone.

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