december, age 6
A couple of weeks away from the start of the Christmas holidays, Lucas still wasn’t sure how he felt about Year Two. He had grown used to having Cora as his teacher the year before last and last year she had always been next door but now he didn’t even get to see her around school: three months into her year off, she was at home with Lucas’s baby sister and he wished he was too. His new teacher was nice enough but she didn’t understand him the way Cora did: when he didn’t want to get messy with the paint, she told him he could just wash his hands afterwards. It felt like a downgrade to him, only made better by the fact that now he had a sister.
When Friday came to the end, November pulling to a close, Lucas sat with Asher once they were the only two children left in the classroom once more. Everyone else had gone home and the teacher seemed to want to leave too, held back by their presence.
“Is your mummy coming?” Lucas whispered, trying not to get on the bad side of his teacher. He got the feeling she didn’t like him and he didn’t want to make that worse.
“She should be,” Asher said, looking up at the clock. Though Lucas still struggled, he had learnt to tell the time by now. “It’s ten minutes after four.”
Lucas sat on his hands and swung his feet, partly excited and partly nervous for the upcoming weekend. When his parents had dropped him off at school at quarter to nine that morning, it had been with a kiss and a hug from both his mother and his stepfather before they headed off for the continuation of their honeymoon. Rather than taking a week or two immediately after their wedding three months ago, they had instead decided to spread out the joy with a serious of weekend breaks. This was their fourth: they had flown down to Jersey after leaving the children at school.
“She’s late,” he said. Asher slumped in his seat.
“She’s always late.”
“Maybe she forgot.”
“She can’t forget!” he cried out. “She’ll be here soon. Miss? Is my mummy still coming?”
“I hope so,” said his teacher, who scrolled through her computer.
A moment later the door swung open and the boys looked up in hope but rather than Ishaana, it was his sister, Audrie. She was followed into the classroom by her teacher, Lucas’s grandmother Maddie, and she sat down next to the boys.
“No Mum yet?” Maddie asked. Tom held her hand, gripping onto his mother as though she was a raft in the ocean.
“She’s on holiday,” Lucas said. His grandmother chuckled.
“I know, baby. I meant Asher’s mum. Isn’t she taking you and Audrie for the weekend?”
Lucas nodded. “She’s late,” he said.
“I’m sure she’ll be here soon,” she said. She checked her watch and pursed her lips, taking her phone out of her bag. “I’ll give her a ring.” She held the phone to her ear for a moment before she said, “Hi, Ishaana, it’s Mrs Langley. I’m just here with Audrie and the boys and I wanted to make sure everything’s ok – I can drop them off at yours if you need.” She waited for a moment, snorting a laugh at Ishaana’s flurry of expletives before she ended the call.
“Where’s Mummy?” Asher asked.
“She’s on her way,” Maddie said. “She’ll be here in five minutes.” She held up her hand and smiled. “Tom and I are going to head off now – have a fab weekend, guys.” She hugged Audrie, kissing her granddaughter’s cheek, and bent over to wrap one arm around Lucas. He hugged her tight: she always gave the best hugs and he liked her perfume.
“Bye, hammy,” he said. As a child, he had often tripped over trying to call his Korean grandmother halmeoni and the word had been shortened before long. “Love you.”
“Love you too. I’ll see you on Monday.” She left with a smile and a wave and Tom.
Five minutes passed. Then six. By the time Lucas had watched the minute had go all the way around the clock seven times, his frown deepened until a flustered Ishaana burst through the the door with an apology for the teacher.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she said, one for each child that she was late to collect. “Bloody traffic. We need to get a wiggle on – we still need to go and get Aaron and Dylan.” She herded the children out of the classroom, hurrying them to the car as she swore under her breath, hauling bags and coats into the boot. The older two had both started high school now, the same high school Audrie would end up at in less than a year, and she was secretly hoping she would get her Auntie Martha or Uncle Jesse as her form tutor after they had both transferred to the school in September.
When they got to St Matthew’s High School twenty-five minutes late, Aaron hopped into the front seat with a grumble and Dylan sat next to Audrie in the middle row while Lucas and Asher sat in the back seat: Lucas liked the back the best, so far removed from the driver that it felt like they had their own secret space.
“You’re so late,” Aaron muttered. “We’ve been waiting for hours!”
“Sorry, wigs,” she said, craning her neck to look behind her as she reversed out of a slightly illegal spot. “Just think, you can learn to drive in five years. Then you can drive yourself to school.”
He muttered away in the corner, running a hand through his shaggy hair and sulking.
Lucas poked Asher to get his attention. “Asher,” he whispered, casting his eyes around the car to check that no-one else was listening to them. It would have been difficult when one of Aaron’s songs was blaring through the bluetooth connection and Audrie was locked in conversation with Dylan.
“What?” Asher leant close to Lucas, his eyes wide. He stared at his own reflection in Lucas’s lenses.
“Does Dylan like Audrie?”
Asher nodded. “They’re friends.”
“Is he her boyfriend?”
Asher laughed and clapped his hand over his mouth, looking over at his older brother. “I don’t know!” he said, trailing off when he realised he was talking a little loudly. Lucas slumped back in his seat and he hoped that the answer to his question was yes: he wanted his sister to have as close a friend as Asher was to him.
*
“So,” Bishop said as he served Lucas a steaming plate of tuna pasta bake, “how’s your baby sister doing?”
“She’s awesome,” Lucas said with a grin. He tried to see Isabella as much as possible: he ordinarily spent every other weekend with his father but since the baby’s birth, he had tried to spend even more time there. “She’s so little.” He held his hands an inch apart, right in front of his face. “She’s like a dolly. And she never cries when I hold her.”
“That’s pretty great! You like being a big brother?”
He nodded fiercely, taking a seat next to Asher. Ordinarily the two of them couldn’t wait past five thirty to eat but they’d had to hold on until an hour later than that when supper took a little longer than Ishaana had expected. His tummy rumbled, gurgling at the scent of the food. “I wish she lived with me,” he said, tucking in when Ishaana nodded her head at him. “I want my mummy to have a baby too.”
“I want a sister,” Asher said, pouting at his parents. “Can I have a baby sister?”
Ishaana laughed and sat down opposite the two of them with a glass of wine in one hand and a plate in the other; Bishop curled his hand around the stem of a glass of red. “Sorry, Ash. I think I used my last good egg on you.”
“And Isla!” he cried out. Ishaana’s face dipped almost imperceptibly before she gave him a smile and a nod.
“And Isla,” she said. Asher’s twin had died in the womb, something she had never planned to tell him until he had developed an obsession with the mirror. As a baby he had been fascinated by his own reflection and as soon as he could talk, he had insisted that he had a twin trapped on the other side. Eventually, his parents told him about the twin he had lost and he had seemed comforted rather than traumatised: he was right. He had a twin on the other side.
“Ugh, no, please don’t have another baby,” Aaron said, wrinkling his nose. “That’s just gross.”
“It’s not gross,” Bishop said, “but it’s not happening.”
“But I want to be a big brother,” Asher said, his eyebrows pulling together. “Can’t you just have one more baby?”
Ishaana laughed and shook her head. If she’d had her own way, or if life hadn’t dealt her such a difficult hand, she would have had more children. She should have, but a series of miscarriages had preceded Asher’s unexpected birth and now, less than a month until her forty-seventh birthday and Asher’s seventh, the choice had been taken from her hands. “Sorry, Ash.”
“You can borrow Isabella sometimes,” Lucas said. “She’s your sister too!”
“She is?” Asher frowned at his plate. “Why?”
“Because we’re married,” he said, recalling the wedding they’d had at the end of their Reception year. It was more than a year ago but he had never forgotten those promises: he had written them down the following weekend with Cora’s help, saving the memory of his marriage to Asher. “Mummy married Truman and he calls my aunties his sisters now. So Issy’s your sister too.”
“And me,” Audrie said, poking her chest. Though she and Lucas shared no DNA, they shared a mother as far as the law was concerned: one of Sarah’s first priorities after her wedding had been to adopt her stepdaughter as her own, a swift process when there was no-one to object and plenty of people willing to attest to her competence as a mother.
Asher frowned, trying to work it out in his head. He fell quiet and in that time, he seemed to give up on trying to understand: he didn’t have the best concentration, his mind often getting so clustered with information that he had to hit reset. Coupled with his dyslexia, school wasn’t the easiest for him but he had been lucky. Born ten weeks early, his parents had been told to expect the worst but their fears had never been realised. His asthma made it difficult for him to play football with his brothers – not that he wanted to anyway – and learning was a struggle, and his hearing wasn’t the best, but it was a small price to pay for his life.
*
Asher’s house was huge. Even to an adult it felt like a sprawling mansion, that feeling multiplied for the two boys. An old house, there were hidden nooks and crannies all over that made it a prime spot for hide and seek, though that game was on a temporary ban ever since a lengthy search for Asher had ended with Ishaana finding him in the clutches of an asthma attack in a dark, dusty closet.
Now, the boys preferred to just head to the room they had taken over as their playroom, a small room at the top of the turret. It sat at the top of two flights of narrow spiral stairs so they were rarely bothered when it was such an effort to reach and Lucas liked that he could find a bit of peace and quiet even in such a busy house as Asher’s. They both lay on their stomachs on a fluffy carpet, lost in separate colouring books.
Asher wasn’t as neat as Lucas, not so bothered about the artistic side of the activity. Colouring was just easier than reading or doing puzzles: there were no words to jump around on the page, no jigsaw pieces to get in a muddle. There was no right or wrong way to fill in the pages of the patterned book his father had bought him: with no definite picture to fill, no colours dictated by the reality of the black and white lines, he could make up his own rules. Lucas strictly coloured according to truth: the tiger on his page had been meticulously shaded in orange and black, the grass a few shades of green.
“Can I have your purple?” Asher asked. Lucas looked up, his eyes grazing over the page of tessellation that his best friend was scribbling on. There was no rhyme or reason to the pattern, a page filled with interlocking shapes of all sizes, and the lack of any order stressed him out. He passed across his purple pencil crayon without question and laid out his five different shades of blue in order from darkest to lightest. Taking the navy blue in his left hand, his tongue sticking out between his teeth, he began to shade in the sky above the jungle scene.
They both looked up as though they had heard a gunshot when the staircase creaked and the old door eased open. The boys froze, staring in silence until Audrie slipped into the room.
“Hey,” she said, a magazine in her hand with the pages closed around her thumb. “Can I stay?”
Lucas nodded. “But you have to be quiet.” He held a finger to his lips. “This is the quiet room.”
Audrie smiled. She could get on board with that: she wasn’t shy by a long stretch, but she was perfectly happy in her own company. She and her father had been alone for the first nine years of her life so aside from school and the occasional playdate, she was quite used to being by herself. Although she loved to be surrounded by people, she had taught herself how to recharge by being alone. A perfect balance of introversion and extroversion, she had hacked her own life to get the most out of it.
Without a word, she lay down next to Asher, giving Lucas the space he needed and appreciated. She spread out her nature magazine on the floor and the room fell quiet once more. The only sound was the scratch of pencils on paper and the swish of turning pages, the noises of productivity. When Audrie came across a colouring page in her magazine, she took great care to tear it out without shredding the image and she passed it to Lucas. She always donated the pictures to him: at home, he had a tray full of the pulled-out pages and each time he completed one, it was stuck up on Audrie’s wall.
“Knock knock,” came Ishaana’s voice, accompanied by a couple of actual knocks on the door. “Can I come in?”
“Yeah,” Asher said. Ishaana stepped in and chuckled to see the three of them lying in line along the carpet, surrounded by the debris of their hobbies. Asher was surrounded by a scattering of his own felt tips and crayons; Lucas’s were lined up in their tin in the order they had come in. He had memorised the order so that even if the tin spilled, which had happened a couple of times before, he could put them back the way they should be.
“Look at you all,” Ishaana said with a chuckle. “Are you guys having fun up here?”
The three nodded and Lucas turned back a page, showing her the proud peacock he had decorated.
“I finished the peacock,” he said, letting go of the book when Ishaana took it to inspect.
“Wow, that’s fantastic, Lucas!” she said with a warm grin. “I love all these colours: it looks just like a real peacock.”
Lucas beamed. That was the biggest compliment to bestow upon him: an assurance of reality.
“Is it bedtime?” Asher asked with a sad face, hoping it wasn’t when he was so content to lie with his best friend doing hardly anything at all.
“Not yet, hun,” Ishaana said. “I just thought I’d come up and show Lucas and Audrie a picture their mum sent.”
Audrie’s ears perked up and she sat up, her eyes on Ishaana. “Mum sent you a picture?”
“Mmhmm, she wanted me to show you,” she said, holding out her phone. The photo was a selfie of Sarah and Truman beaming. His arm was around her shoulders, the phone held as far away as possible thanks to their height difference, and they looked insanely happy in the little French house they had booked for a long weekend.
“I like that picture,” Audrie said, showing Lucas. He held the phone in both hands. “I wish we could go too, though. I really want to go to France!”
“I’m sure you’ll get there someday, honey,” Ishaana said with a smile, hunched over on a small chair with her elbows on her knees. “Anyway, I’ll leave you guys alone now. I just wanted to show you the photo so you know they got there safely. Your mum and dad send you their love.”
“Tell them we send ours back, please!” Audrie said, hugging her knees to her chest before she lay down again to start a rainforest-themed wordsearch. Ishaana grinned and stood, moving back a little to snap a photo of the three of them engrossed in their various activities.
“I will do, hun. Ash and Lucas, bedtime in about half an hour, ok?”
They nodded and she gave them a thumbs up before she left, pulling the door almost shut behind her and stepping down the creaking stairs. Sending off the picture to Sarah, she made her way down another flight of stairs to return to Bishop in the kitchen. He topped up his glass of wine and filled one for her.
“Everyone alright?” he asked.
“Absolutely fine. Those three are so quiet, it’s almost weird,” she said, shaking her head. She sipped her wine and leant back against the counter. “The boys are colouring and Audrie was reading her magazine. Very … women’s institute up there.”
Bishop laughed and tutted her. “And all’s good with Sarah and Truman?”
“Oh, yeah. Sarah sent me a pic.” She unlocked her phone again and scrolled to the photo to show her husband. He smiled at the picture.
“They look so happy,” he said. “They’re quite an attractive couple, aren’t they? I wonder what their kids would look like.”
Ishaana raised her eyebrows. “Well, we’ve got two of them held hostage upstairs if you want to go and have a look.”
Bishop rolled his eyes. “No, I mean their kids together. As a couple, you silly mare.”
“Oh.” She snorted a laugh. “Well, I don’t think we’ll have to wait long to find out.” She circled Sarah’s face with her finger, pinching the screen to zoom in. “Look at that.”
“Huh?” He looked from the photo to her and back again. “That’s … Sarah’s face?”
“No, no, look,” Ishaana said. “She’s glowing. I bet she’s already knocked up.”
He laughed. “You’re terrible, Ish. They’re just on their honeymoon – she’s probably just happy! They look really happy.”
Ishaana studied the photo and shook her head to herself. “No, she’s pregnant. I know that glow. It’s usually followed by a baby.”
“Maybe she’s just sweaty,” he said. “Maybe it’s her make-up.”
“No, trust me, Bish. They’ve been married for three months and she’s been so fucking broody all year. I bet you fifty quid she’s up the duff.”
“How do I know you don’t already know that?” He raised an eyebrow at her, slowly sipping his wine.
“Because we’ve been together for twenty-six years and you can read me like a book,” she said, tucking her phone back into her pocket. “This is just intuition, ok?” She held out her right hand to him and grinned when he shook it. “Say goodbye to your money, Mr Knight.”
He kissed her and grinned against her lips. “Easiest money I ever made, Mrs Jain.”
*
When it reached eight o’clock, Bishop headed up to the top of the turret to collect the boys for bedtime. They were both tired by that point: Lucas tended to head to bed early at home, rarely awake past seven thirty except on very rare special occasions, and he didn’t bother to stifle a yawn as he followed Asher and his father downstairs. Holding his book and his pencil tin to his chest, he gripped the banister all the way down.
“Time to get into your PJs,” Bishop said. He unzipped small suitcase that Sarah had packed for Lucas, containing everything he would need for a weekend away from home. She had even added a list of instructions as though he was a piece of IKEA furniture rather than a boy with a voice. That made Bishop chuckle and he folded the sheet into his pocket, taking out a pair of pyjamas that he passed to Lucas.
“Thank you,” he said, his fingers fumbling with the buttons of the school shirt he was still wearing. When he reached the tricky top one, the material too stiff, Bishop gave him a hand getting out of his shirt and he put both sets of uniform in a bag to be washed.
“Do you want me to put the airbed up?” he asked once both boys were changed and had fresh teeth. Asher shook his head and stood by the bed. “Into bed, Ash,” Bishop said. Asher shook his head.
“Lucas goes in first,” he said, standing by the corner. “He likes to be by the wall.”
Lucas did exactly that, climbing across Asher’s side of the double bed to lie down by the wall. He passed his glasses over to Asher, who folded them on the bedside table, and Bishop suppressed a chuckle. His son wasn’t yet seven – and Lucas had only recently turned six – yet he already seemed so middle-aged.
“Am I reading you two a story?” he asked, his hand resting on the stack of books by his son’s bed. Asher nodded but before he could request a story, his father spoke. “Actually, I have one in mind. Hold on a moment.”
He disappeared for two minutes before he came back with a thick hardback in his hands.
Asher frowned. “What’s that?”
“It’s your next favourite book,” Bishop said. “I used to read this to you when you were a baby and my sister read it to me when I was your age.” He showed the cover to his son, who squinted to stop the words from dancing, but that didn’t make it any easier to read when he didn’t recognise the word on the cover.
“What’s it called?”
“Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.”
*
After a gentle weekend that belonged to the children, Sunday evening seemed to jump out of nowhere. All of a sudden, it was the night before another week of school, and Sarah and Truman had returned from France. Lucas and Audrie were all packed up, their things waiting by the door ever since Sarah had texted to say that she was over, and Ishaana couldn’t wait for her to arrive: she was determined to make a little money off her husband’s bet.
She arrived at ten past seven with a tired grin on her lips, the heat of a thick coat turning her cheeks red. Ishaana welcomed her into the house with a hug, pulling her into the kitchen.
“How was France?” she asked.
“Amazing,” Sarah said with a sigh. “Absolutely incredible. I want to go back already!”
“I bet you’ve just been eating cheese and drinking wine all weekend, haven’t you?” Ishaana wore a teasing glint in her eye, her questions pawing Sarah for answers. Bishop shook his head at her, despairing of his wife’s shamelessness.
“Oh my goodness, so much cheese,” Sarah said with a laugh. “I must’ve eaten half my weight in bread and brie, and half my suitcase is wheels of cheese. I’ve got a serious craving for cheese and crackers right now and I think I’ll be living off it for the next couple of weeks, the amount of Camembert I’ve brought back.”
“I could get into that life,” Ishaana said. “Do you fancy a drink? I just opened a bottle of white.”
Sarah wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “No, thanks. I should probably be getting back, really. Thanks so much for having the kids by the way. I owe you one, Ishy. Both of you.” She looked past Ishaana’s shoulder to smile at Bishop, who lifted his hand and beamed back at her.
“They’ve been a dream,” he said.
“I’m so glad,” she said, hugging herself. “Where are they?”
“Just finishing up with a film,” Ishaana said, nodding her head in the general direction of the playroom where all five children had somehow managed to agree on a film. It was one Audrie had chosen, which meant she automatically had Dylan’s and Lucas’s approval, and Asher’s by proxy. With four against one, Aaron had given up any protestations he might have had.
“Perfect. Thanks,” Sarah said. Ishaana eyed her, trying to decipher whether or not she had got it wrong. She didn’t care about the money side of the bet but she hated losing for the principle of it, struggling to admit when she was wrong.
“You know what, Sar,” she said, persisting in her quest for a definitive answer without having to wait another few months, “there’s a new cocktail bar in town and I was thinking we should head there someday, have a girls’ night out.”
Bishop quietly tutted at her, partly amused by her determination.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Sarah said. “I’m not much of a cocktail person.”
“They do all sorts – wines, gins, ciders.”
Sarah pursed her lips and shook her head. “That’s not really my thing,” she said, though she had rediscovered her love of a glass of wine or a good gin. “Thanks, though.”
“Maybe some other time,” Ishaana said, struggling to keep from winking or asking outright. “Next year, maybe.”
Sarah looked to the side, her eyebrows pulling together above her glasses. Utter confusion seemed to lace her features for a moment and she looked back at Ishaana, but she didn’t say anything.
“Oh!” Ishaana said suddenly, a new idea springing to her her head. “While I’ve got you here, are you around this summer?”
“Yes … why?”
“I’ve just been thinking about holidays,” she shamelessly lied, “and I was thinking maybe you and I could go away somewhere, or our families could get together.”
Sarah dug her hands into her pockets. “I…” She trailed off, meeting Ishaana’s gaze, and she gasped when she caught the glimmer in her eye. “Oh my goodness, you’re just messing with me, aren’t you?”
“What? Why?” Ishaana played innocent though she was let down by Bishop’s expression of disbelief behind her. Sarah clamped her hand over her mouth, her eyes going wide.
“You know, don’t you? How on earth do you know?”
“Know what?”
Sarah’s hand moved to her stomach, an instant giveaway, and Ishaana clapped her hands in utter glee.
“Oh my God, you’re pregnant, aren’t you? You really are?”
Sarah was completely stunned, lost for words. “I don’t understand how you know,” she said. “I only found out two weeks ago. How do you know?”
Ishaana grinned and tapped her forehead. “I studied politics, Sar. I’m trained to see what’s not being said. As if you’re actually fucking pregnant!”
“Shush!” Sarah cried out, her finger to her lips. “I’m only eight weeks. I don’t want the kids to know yet. Not until I know everything’s ok.”
Ishaana zipped her mouth. “I won’t say a word. But congratulations, Sar. That’s wonderful news.”
Sarah allowed herself to smile, dropping her shoulders. “Thanks. I can’t believe you knew. How did you know?”
“Your picture,” Ishaana said. Bishop stepped over to her and took his wallet out of his pocket. “You had the rosy glow of someone very happy to be in the first trimester. Though I suppose it could be the rosy glow of the pregnancy sweats and the effort of throwing up every ten minutes.”
Sarah laughed and shook her head. “The first one, thankfully.” She crossed her fingers and pressed her lips together. Her eyes fell on Bishop, watching as he wordlessly took two twenties and a ten from his wallet, passing them to Ishaana. She grinned and folded the notes in half, tucking them into her bra.
Sarah sighed: she was well used to Ishaana and her husband’s antics after knowing them for almost two years. “I love when you make money off my life,” she said drily, giving Ishaana a look.
“Oh, shush,” Ishaana said, flapping her hand. “I make money off everybody’s lives.”
“Well, now I just feel used,” Sarah said. “Now we’re going to put this topic to bed because I need to find my current children and take them to bed.”
Ishaana laughed and pulled Sarah into a tight hug. “I’m really happy for you, Sar. And I swear I won’t say another word on the topic until you announce it, and you’re now free to retrieve your kids.” She led Sarah down to the playroom where the film was just coming to an end. Asher and Lucas had dropped off together, a tangle of sleepy limbs and Aaron was playing games on his phone while Audrie and Dylan chatted.
“Hey, sweetie,” Sarah said, almost knocked off her feet when Audrie dropped her conversation to hug her mother.
“You’re back! How was France? Was it awesome? Can we go one day?”
“It was wonderful, honey. Maybe we’ll go as a family one day,” she said. “I’ve brought back plenty of cheese for us to enjoy before then.”
Audrie had stars in her eyes, salivating at the thought of proper French cheese. “Is it organic?”
Sarah nodded. “Only the best, don’t you worry.” Her eyes fell on Lucas, wondering how to go about waking him when he looked so comfortable and he was a grumpy sloth when he was disturbed. She touched his shoulder. “Lucas, baby, it’s time to go home.”
He didn’t respond, his mouth open as he snoozed with his cheek squashed against Asher’s chest.
“He’s such a dead weight,” Sarah murmured when she tried to pick him up. Bishop rushed in when he saw her.
“Don’t you dare, Sarah,” he said. “Here, let me.” He stepped into Sarah’s place and gently eased Lucas away from Asher, picking him up as though he weighed nothing. For a tightly toned man like him, Lucas’s forty-two pounds wasn’t much at all. Lucas didn’t stir: he was mentally drained after an entire weekend with his best friend, the exertion of his brain manifesting itself in his physical exhaustion.
“Thank you,” she said with a sigh. She took Audrie’s hand and squeezed it, smiling down at her. “Ready to go home, baby?”
Audrie nodded, only letting go for a moment to say goodbye to Dylan with a hug while Aaron got a wave.
“Have you and Lucas had a good weekend?”
She nodded and smiled, looping her arm with her mother’s. “It’s been awesome.”
+ – + – +
I hope you like this chapter and that you like the new cover! i wanted something a bit cuter and happier and all i needed to do was change up the colours and add a few plants. i’ve written these first two chapters in a major sleep haze (i even fell asleep midsentence while writing chapter 1 and powered on through) so i hope they’re ok but i’m probably a poor judge of that!
how’re you liking the characters so far? if you’ve come from the night train then you probably know lucas quite well already but i’m really enjoying getting to know asher a bit better, especially in this chapter.Â
enjoy!
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