Down London Road

looks he’d given me, the affection, the tenderness, it couldn’t be fake. I knew it couldn’t be fake.
    Maybe taking a day away from each other to calm down was best. We could talk it out tomorrow.
    Chest aching, I nodded to myself. That sounded like a plan.
    I got up out of bed to see Cole off to school. He took one look at me and he knew. ‘You and Cam have a fight?’
    ‘Bloody clairvoyant,’ I muttered irritably under my breath as I passed him to make some tea.
    ‘I’ll take that as an aye.’
    I grunted.
    ‘Is it bad?’ He suddenly sounded worried and very much like a little boy.
    I looked at him over my shoulder. Cole was trying to act cool, like a fight between Cam and me was no big deal,but I knew he would be anxious about what it meant for his friendship with Cam. I shook my head at him. ‘We’ll be fine. It’s nothing that can’t be fixed.’
    Relief glinted in his eyes as he gave me a sympathetic smile.
Sympathy from Cole. I must really look like crap.
    I closed my eyes. God, I hoped Cam and I could fix this.
    I loved him.
    Heaving a heartfelt sigh, I opened my eyes and squealed.
    Spider.
    On my mug.
    ‘Cole!’ I yelled, frozen on the spot.
    ‘Spider?’ he asked casually, his footsteps coming closer.
    He knew my squeal so well.
    ‘Mug.’
    I never moved a muscle as Cole calmly tilted the mug out of our kitchen window, depositing the spider on the sill, much as Cam had done with the humungous spider that had been in his kitchen. I felt a wave of longing at the memory of that day and tried to squash it just as quickly as it had risen.
    Cole gestured the mug at me and I made a face. ‘Bin it.’
    He rolled his eyes. ‘Just wash it in hot water.’
    ‘If you think I can put that mug to my mouth without forever remembering that those spindly, hairy – eeeeeh’ – I shuddered – ‘legs were on it, you’re mental.’
    With another eye roll, he threw the mug in the bin and I slumped with relief.
    Damn all the spiders of the world. They were putting a serious dent in my road to independence. When Cole came over and kissed my hair before going to school, Iknew I had progressed from looking like crap to just looking pathetic. Still, his affection gave me the warm fuzzies and for a moment I forgot my worries about Cam.
    I hurried in the shower and got dressed in something comfortable for flat hunting with Uncle Mick. As I was passing Mum’s bedroom, I sighed in exasperation. Mum hadn’t popped her head out of her bedroom for days, and the only reason I knew she was alive was because I heard her snoring. It occurred to me as I stood in our quiet flat that I hadn’t said a word to her in a week. Not one word.
Maybe that’s a good thing
, I thought with a surprising amount of sadness. Maybe I would never learn to think more of myself if I continued to let Mum get close enough to poison my attempts. And maybe if I thought more of myself, I wouldn’t feel so irrational over Cam’s friendship with Blair.
    Then again, maybe that was just wishful thinking.
    Uncle Mick and I were lying on the hardwood floor of the two-bedroom flat on Heriot Row. A street that was mere minutes away from Dublin Street, it skirted the north side of Queen Street Gardens. More importantly, it was just around the corner from Jamaica Lane, where Olivia had just signed a lease on a one-bedroom flat above a coffee shop. It was all coming together for her. Proving it’s
who
you know once again, Clark managed to get Olivia an interview at the university library. They’d been impressed with her postgraduate degree in library science from the States as well as her six years of work experience. They had taken her on, on a temporary contract to be reviewed for permanency in six months’ time.
    She seemed happy. Nervous but happy.
    Mick was worried.
    Since Olivia had started her new job today, I’d offered to accompany Mick to see the unfurnished flat that was so close to his daughter’s new home. Unfurnished wasn’t ideal, but the location was. The rental was under the Carmichael banner, so Ryan was the one viewing the flat with us. When we suddenly lay down on the floor, our eyes studying the level of craftsmanship in the decor, Ryan had stared at us wide-eyed and then said, ‘Uh, I’ll wait outside.’
    Uncle Mick and I used to lie like this when he took me on jobs with him. During our lunch break we’d lie down on the dust sheets and talk nonsense to one another. Today, I wasn’t in the mood for nonsense. I was