South London Forever // George Karim

-ida and the attic-

Freddie nervously tapped her fingers on her knee as the tea cooled. It had been the smallest of small talk as she tinkered around the kitchen carefully and shut Chai out the garden to stop him barking and gnashing his teeth at Edith endlessly.

"You must be..."

"Freddie, my names Freddie." She said, picking up her teacup and taking a sip. "The others are out, but they should be back in a few minutes."

"Oh." Edith's voice had an odd hilt to it that Freddie was used to hearing when people of the... older generations found out she had a 'boy's name'. At least she was polite, thought her words were still stiff. "That's a lovely name."

"Thanks." Freddie motioned to the kitchen behind her, grasping for things to say before the woman sitting on the couch opposite came out with it and said why she was here. "You must be tired after driving; George said your house was on the other side of London. Would you like something to eat?"

"No thank you dear, you make a nice tea though, is this camomile?"

It wasn't camomile, it was green tea. They were very different, actually. Freddie nodded with a smile. "Yep."

"So, how did you two meet?" Edith asked, slurping on the green tea and speaking in that fake casual voice that Freddie knew meant she would be being judged by her answer.

"Well, uhm. I was looking for a job at Fittes, when George was there too, and..." She wasn't sure how to word the story, she certainly wasn't going to tell Georges mother that they had yelled at Penelope Fittes, stolen a dog, at least half of the canteen, a type three, and then pulled the ghost alarm. "He gave me a tour and I told him about Lockwood and co, the agency me and Lockwood, Anthony Lockwood, are trying to get started. I didn't get the job, and George knew that if he came to work with us instead, we'd have enough agents to get qualify, officially, of course."

She didn't say anything in return, so Freddie bounced her knee a few times and wished that Earnie would drive a bit faster and get her friends back before they ran out of bland conversation.

Freddie continued, "I think Lockwood and co suits us better anyway, Fittes can be a bit... you know, big and fancy. We get to help out locals and the people we know here as well. It's nice, less controlling people the better, I suppose."

"You don't have a supervisor? Where are your parents?" Edith asked, horrified, and Freddie knew that she was glancing around the living room and up the stairs as if two normal looking adults might come down and answer Edith's un asked questions.

"Right, uhm." Freddie held her breathe. "Yeah, no supervisor. We do well enough though, for ourselves."

"Ah yes, what a pity that the youth have to fight these ghosts for us all, you don't deserve to be doing this. You should be going to school, kissing boys, doing normal teenage things. I really am sorry for you all, dear." Edith said, in that patronizing adult voice like Freddie was a little girl with a toy sword pushed out into the war against ghosts, and not a perfectly capable sixteen-year-old who'd been training for seven years and did everything other agents did without sight.

"It's all we know, so... I'm pretty used to it." Freddie smiled again, feeling her cheeks hurt a bit with the fakeness of it. She cocked her head, "I hope there wasn't a family emergency, you're just visiting George, right? I wouldn't want anything to be wrong."

Edith didn't speak for a moment, and then sounded surprised, "Oh! George, yes, I've come to ask about future plans, you know, boring parent talk and all that, I won't bother you with it all, dear."