✓ WORKING FOR THE KNIFE ━ lando norris. ¹

[ 024 ] I Knew It Then

( ACT II. ── Uncertain Waters )
chapter twenty-four / I Knew It Then

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The brick row house in London had never exactly been home, but it was familiar enough that Annika could call it that without much guilt. Besides, it was where her Mama was, and what was a home without that?

"Mein Schatz, mein Schatz." Renate kissed Annika several times on the face before inviting her daughter inside, reserving the garden walkway for a very forceful hug. Annika had been taller than her mother since she was fourteen, but still crouched down for hugs so Renate could kiss her head like she had always done.

"Hi, Mama," Annika said happily.

"Come in, I just made tea. Couldn't find the biscuits you like, so, I think maybe toast. Come in."

The house was smaller than Annika remembered, but then again it had been a while. 90s-styled wallpaper and chipping baseboards, low ceilings and doorways, gaps in the walls where family portraits had been recently removed, colorful furniture, and rugby boots just the right size for a fourteen-year-old's foot scattered in the foyer.

"I told your sister to clean these up," Renate kicked them out of the way as she passed. "But anyway, who am I to tell her what to do?"

Renate was the person she had always been. Stern in the face, commanding in the words, soft in the heart. Annika had inherited her narrow mouth, slender jaw, and rounded nose. Her dark hair had started to go gray.

"Wo ist Greta?" Annika asked as she laid her duffel bag on the couch, scanning the room and peeking eagerly into the hall.

"Oh, Miss Maureen from down the street called before the sun was in the sky this morning," Renate was already in the next room, pouring tea. "Her television stopped working and she was going to miss the weather report, so Greta went out to fix it again ─ you know your sister. I told her to hurry up because you will be home. We love poor Maureen, of course, she's deaf like a wall, but why today of all days did she need help? Now Greta will be side-tracked for ages, you know, stop to gab with everyone and their brother between here and there. God knows where she is at this point. Knowing her, she will be halfway crossed the city by now or up on someone's roof or she could have gotten in a car with the first perfect stranger she met to talk away about anything and everything. I need to get one of those beeper things and stick it on her."

Annika smiled as she sat down across from her mother. Already, she was starting to feel a tension working its way up through her chest. Anxiety, pointing to what was to come.

They had already agreed that she would be taking Greta with her to Silverstone, but that didn't mean it wouldn't be a fight for Annika to get her sister out of Renate's sight. As long as she had been alive, it was a rule ─ we do not speak of racing in this house. It had taken a lot of arm twisting just for Annika to get this far, and she didn't expect this to go down without some kind of fight.