Her Song

22 - Home Sweet Home

**Kim**

Home sweet home. There's no place like home. Take me home, country road...

Yep, I was feeling all the cliché feelings about home. Except I wasn't, not really. Because I didn't actually have a home. I never really had. Oh, don't get me wrong I'd never been homeless. Quite the contrary – my upbringing had been privileged beyond belief. No, at the risk of coming across like a spoilt little princess – no I didn't have an HRH in front of my name but if you were posting me a letter you'd be correct in addressing it to The Hon Kimberley Beaumaris, thank god for email – I'd lived in a lot of luxurious houses, and some not so luxurious, but none of them had been a real home. And my current living arrangements were a bare step up from couch surfing.

It was weird. I'd spent so much time in this flat when Lucy was still living here and I'd felt so comfortable then. Now...not so much. It was hard to explain. Most of the furniture hadn't changed Lucy had only taken her absolutely favourite pieces, like her LC4 chaise, and left the rest in the flat when she and Bas had bought furniture together so the place didn't look much different. The problem was I knew things were different. Van may have only moved in the same day as me but it felt like he had more right to be here than I did. I was just the potentially homeless girl that he'd helped out. Even if I was Lucy's best friend. Being back in Lucy's old flat drove home just how uncertain my future was.

It wasn't just myself that I had to worry about either. Two of my considerations sat, tails twitching, in the spot facing out to the garden that was formerly occupied by Lucy's chaise. On the other side of the glass, his outraged barking barely audible, was an apoplectic Kevin. Clearly Kevin had not grown accustomed to the feline invaders during my absence. Cathy, Troy and Hope's housekeeper, had taken charge of The All Blacks along with Kevin whilst we were all out on tour. It was doubtful that Jonah and Zinzan would forgive me for my defection in the week and a half before I had to leave again. This time for several months. And when I came back from that trip I'd better hope that I'd managed to come up with a solution to not just my own and the cats' living arrangements but also exactly where I was going to keep a baby. I was still thinking of the baby in the abstract, it hadn't quite penetrated that in about seven months time I was going to be responsible for another human.

I'm not panicking.

I'm not panicking.

I was panicking. Of course I was panicking.

It was all very well to be all loved up and sharing a hotel room with Van on the road. What the hell was going to happen when real life burst our little bubble of unreality? I didn't know much about babies but I knew enough to be aware that they're noisy, smelly at times and need a whole lot more care and attention than a pair of black cats who like to taunt small Pomeranians.

I flipped open my laptop and navigated to a rental agency website. The last thing I wanted was for Van to feel trapped in a situation with me that I hadn't thought through. He'd told me he'd be there for me but I wasn't convinced that he'd fully understood what that meant. He might not have been the one to put me up the duff but I had a feeling that he wasn't the kind of guy who'd turn his back on me if I needed him. He was well on his way to being a star with all the attendant fame and fortune. I had no intention of being the millennial version of my mother, flitting from husband to husband in pursuit of superficial love and a lot of money with a modicum of fame and notoriety thrown in for good measure. I needed to make some kind of concerted effort in the small amount of time I had back in London to try and find somewhere to live. Somewhere I could afford. Somewhere I could fit a baby. Somewhere that would allow two cats.

Piece of cake.

Scrolling through the listings I groped for my glasses because surely I was reading the prices wrong but no, even with perfect vision, that was definitely the weekly and not the monthly rent. It's not like I hadn't realised that things were bad out there in rental land but I'd kind of hoped for a miracle. Even if there was some way I'd still be able to keep working with Lucy after I had the baby in some kind of office based capacity I'd need to dip into my trust fund just to be able to afford a pretty basic and slightly grim flat without the assistance of a flatmate.