table, receipts and lip balms and pages from notebooks and random flyers I’d accepted out of politeness. Lucy projected nothing but serenity whereas I took my own personal brand of chaos with me everywhere I went.
What would mine and Patrick’s home look like? His flat was so him, his personality indelibly stamped on every surface. I hadn’t decorated my flat in DC, never quite sure how long I was staying, and the main style reference for my room in our shared house before that was ‘I bought it at Ikea like everyone else’. Maybe we wouldn’t stay in London. Maybe we’d travel before we settled down. Either way, I was happy for him to take the lead on the decorating. Or maybe I could ask John who had designed that upstairs room in the bar. As much as I hated the pretentious steampunk, Insta-friendly downstairs, upstairs was beautiful, a perfect balance of classic and contemporary, masculine and feminine. I wondered if his wife had done the decorating or if they’d used a professional. Or maybe he’d done it himself. I really had no way of knowing.
Running the teapot under the tap, I thought back to our conversation last night. A crossword puzzle with the wrong clues. What was that supposed to mean?
‘Not that it matters,’ I said out loud over the singing teapot.
‘What did you say?’ Lucy called back, twisting as far as she could in her seat. ‘I zoned out for a minute. Baby brain.’
‘It’s nothing,’ I replied, smiling back at her and wiping the thought of John from my mind. ‘Absolutely nothing at all.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
Having spent what felt like hundreds of hours watching his livestreams and his YouTube videos, I had gleaned a few facts about my new co-worker before I set out in Mum’s Mini Cooper on Monday morning for a meeting at Chateau Snazzlechuff. I knew he was fourteen, I knew he had more money than I would ever have in my entire life and I knew his followers worshipped the ground he mostly seemed to sit on. Every time I checked, he was online, playing some game live for all his followers to watch. They didn’t even play along, they just watched him. It was bizarre. Mostly, I was amazed his legs hadn’t wasted away altogether so his body could send more precious resources to his thumbs.
After what felt like an age of tootling along the motorway, Google Maps led me out of six lanes of traffic and into a small village. I kept watch, looking for the mega mansions that usually went with the kind of money Snazz was bringing in, but there was nothing. Just semi-detached new builds and a surprisingly large number of supermarkets. Just when I seemed to be running out of village, the map took me into a perfectly normal-looking cul-de-sac. At least, it looked perfectly normal until I pulled up to park in front of number 18. A sea of teenagers were milling around a tall metal gate, none of them actually talking to each other, all of them staring at their phones.
‘At least I know I’m in the right place,’ I muttered, climbing out of Mum’s car and beeping the alarm.
‘They won’t let you in,’ one boy said as I pressed the buzzer on the gate. He wiped his nose along the sleeve of his white training jacket, a knock-off version of the one Snazz had worn the first time I met him. ‘They don’t let no one in.’
‘What are you all doing here?’ I asked, ignoring the tallest of the group who was either winking at me or needed to see an optometrist. I very much hoped it was the latter. ‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’
They all began to snort and laugh, kicking stones with their very white trainers. No wonder Jo had started going out with girls.
‘OK, OK, get out the way,’ I told them, ignoring the muttered assessments of my tits, and pressing the buzzer again. A clicking noise, a sigh and then, very suddenly, the gate opened just a crack. I breathed in, squeezing myself through to a chorus of ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ as each of the teens began snapping my picture.
‘Get your arse inside,’ Veronica barked from the front door, cigarette hanging out of her brightly lipsticked mouth as I bolted up the path. She stubbed it out on the side of the house and called out to the assembled teenagers at the gate. ‘We’ve got a limited edition drop going live on