Worse Than The Rest

Chapter Five

The main problem I faced as a sixteen year old living alone was transport. I had my moped, but it wasn't any good for moving boxes and bags of stuff, which Immy and I had suddenly realised while we were eating breakfast in the living room on Saturday morning. She looked up at me with a puzzled expression, which I mirrored in confusion, before Imogen said,

"You don't have a car," as if it was supposed to clear things up. "I mean, how are we supposed to move all my stuff?" I scoffed at this,

"Good point," I laughed, "Do you have a friend with a car?" Immy shook her head. She only lived two or three miles away, but three miles was too far to carry boxes full of stuff- and we would have had to make more than one journey. I hummed, thinking about another possible solution.

"What about your sister?" I asked. Imogen shook her head again.

"She's in London with her boyfriend." As she was speaking, another idea came to mind.

"Mikey's older brother has a car," I said, "I'll ring some people to see if I can get his number." Immy frowned at me,

"Why not just ask his brother- y'know, the one you're going out with?" I shook my head aggressively after drinking a sip of my lukewarm tea.

"I haven't spoken to him since the car park yesterday; he'll just want to help and that means he'll have to come here and then he'll want to stay for a bit and it'll just escalate to him staying over and that would be bad." Imogen raised her eyebrows but didn't say anything.

It took me about forty minutes before I had Ashley's number, I had to be careful about what I told people when they asked why I hadn't asked Mikey.

Immy and I wanted to get sorted as soon as possible, so I didn't hesitate to text Ashely.

Me: Hey, Ashley. It's Mikey's boyfriend- Oliver. I was just wondering if you could do me a favour. I need to pick up and drop off some boxes but don't have a car. Would you be free today to drive your car for me please? Thanks. -Oli

It was twenty minutes before I got a reply.

Ashley: Hi Oliver. Yeah I'm about today. Any particular time? I'm going out this evening so any time before 6pm is fine.

Me: Is 1pm okay?

Ashley also replied quickly this time.

Ashley: Yep. 1pm is fine, just give me your address. See you later.

Imogen decided to make a list of things that she wanted from her parents' house, while I texted Ashley my address. I still had some decent boxes from when I'd moved in. So immy had boxes to put her stuff in.

By half past twelve, Imogen and I had both showered and were only waiting for Ashley. It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't heard anything from Mikey at all. Imogen seemed to notice my sudden discomfort.

"What's wrong?" She asked; we were sitting on the sofa in the living room.

"Mikey hasn't texted me at all since yesterday." Imogen nodded.

"Did you used to text your boyfriend first after an incident?" She asked me, turning down the volume on the TV and facing me. I nodded.

"Yeah. Unless he'd really upset me. Then I would leave it for them to message me first." Immy stared at me for a few seconds, but I met her with a puzzled expression. She sighed.

"Do you think that's what Mikey's doing?" She said. I thought for a second. I suppose that would make sense. Maybe I had really upset him. That seemed a bit petty.