Saman Williams

Lavender girl

Novel extract

Chapter One

September 1^st, Summer went by so quickly. It’s like it didn’t even begin. I feel as if my days have all blurred into one and I’m going through the motions. I can’t keep up. 

It has been two months since Jay broke up with me, two months since I’ve been living at my mum’s house, and a month and a half since I’ve been looking for a new job. This year has been strange in general because a lot of my friends aren’t around, either working or travelling. I did an internship in June for a few weeks and then that finished and so did my relationship. I didn’t travel because I couldn’t afford it, and anyway, what kind of holiday would that have been fresh off a breakup? Not a very good one. 

 I wake up, I make myself a coffee, I come back to my room. I sketch, I hate what I sketch, I do yoga. I started a couple of weeks ago because I wanted to get fit again. I shower, I change, I look for jobs online. I have lunch, I paint, I sunbathe in the garden. Sometimes, it rains and I’ll watch reruns on tv. I think about Jay and what he’s up to. He’s spending a year volunteering abroad in South America. I think about who he’s with, if he’s met someone since we broke up, or if he’s staying single instead and enjoying himself. We were together for two years and I thought we were happy, the long distance would be insignificant in a year’s time, we’d be together and going strong. But Jay didn’t think he could do it. I said okay and told him to take care. I didn’t let myself feel the hurt it had caused me, I’d pushed it down. I put on a brave face and I dealt with it. We hugged in the middle of his kitchen and I took my bag full of my things and left. I took the bus home and sat at the window seat, trying my hardest not to let the tears out in public. I went home and I grieved. 

We text from time to time but it’s nothing deep or meaningful, pictures of sunsets and cute animals. I don’t always reply to his messages. I used to miss him before but now I’m mostly relieved. It’s a strange thing. The relationship made me feel like I was losing myself. I kept trying to be what he wanted, I kept trying to be what he liked. I was doing everything to make it work but I didn’t see that it was already at the end. I think about Jay and I’m ashamed of who I was with him. Perspective does that to a person, I suppose. 

My days are all the same. Around six thirty in the evening my mum will come home from work, pour herself a large glass of red wine, and we’ll talk about our day. My mum will say something passive aggressive about how I look, which I will ignore and she’ll say it is a joke while she pours herself another glass of wine. Then Anders, her Swedish boyfriend, will join us shortly after. He owns a gym in the city. I’ve heard from a couple of my friends that it’s a good gym. He’s thirty-three and ten years younger than my mum. They met on a dating app, dated for about five months, and then he moved in around a year ago. He cooks dinner for us most nights, recipes he learns in one of the cookbooks or that he finds online, he likes making the dishes look fancy. 

I’m not sure what his intentions are with my mum, but he seems alright for the most part, and he’s a good cook. He doesn’t overstep my boundaries, which I like. God knows that wasn’t the case with some of her exes. I remember how her ex-boyfriend Connor used to be; he didn’t like me, I didn’t like him either. We fought a lot about my mum and our relationship as mother and daughter, which has never been very good. We clash often, it’s the same old story a lot of mothers and daughters can relate to. My dad always had issues with mental health, I learnt early on that he could be two different people at any time. My mum took their separation the hardest, even though it was partially her fault, but then again, I was too young to really understand or remember the details of it. I remember my grandma had to move in for a while because my mum needed help taking care of me, she worked full time and couldn’t do it all on her own. 

Connor made our relationship worse. He started arguments, he put ideas in her head, and called me spoiled. I celebrated when my mum announced their breakup, it was during my first week of university and I was walking back from my first lecture when she called me. I remember the overwhelming relief I felt as she told me. 

Anders, whose favourite band is ABBA, is not as harmless as he might seem, but I feel like I can deal with him better than I did with Connor. He’s been vocal when it comes to me moving out, he’s in his thirties and he doesn’t like having me around the house, he thinks I’m too old to live at home. I think having me around makes things awkward for him with my mum. Even though he’s not that much older than I am and lives off my mum. She doesn’t see the problem with that, she likes having him around, she’s enjoying herself, which is all she cares about. 

I can’t wait to find my own place and move out before classes start, I feel like it would help create some boundaries and improve things between me and her. I realised last year that we get on better when we’re apart. 

This morning, I wake up to the sound of rain hitting my roof. I lie in my bed and listen for a while. The chandelier is dusty. My room hasn’t changed, it’s the same as it was when I was fifteen, with black and white posters of Marilyn Monroe and my favourite bands. It’s like a time capsule of my life back then, and it makes me feel a little queasy because it reminds me of the bad times in this house. There were plenty of them. My parents fighting, my mum cheating, my dad finding out, then packing up his things and leaving. Being thirteen and alone as my mum worked two jobs and was barely home. My grandma moved in and shared my room with me. I remember wishing someone would get me out of here, wishing I could run away somewhere. I tried running away when I was fourteen but I didn’t have enough money to get me to my dad’s. When I was fifteen, I was mostly indifferent. The black and white poster of Marilyn Monroe still hangs above my bed today. 

 My alarm goes off around seven thirty and I hit snooze. I want five more minutes of peace and quiet. I turn over and face the window, light peeking through the gap in the lavender curtains.  

My bedroom door creaks open. 

“Hallie, you can’t lie in bed all day,” my mum says. 

“I wasn’t going to.” 

She steps inside and walks over to the window. “May I open these curtains?”

“I’d rather you—” I cut myself off as she opens them anyway. “Didn’t.” 

“That’s better,” she says. “I’m going to my meeting now. There’s the electrician arriving in an hour, will you be around?” 

“Yes, I will.”  

“Good.” She looks around my room and shakes her head. She starts tidying up and I try not to let it get to me. She picks up my jeans from the floor and shakes them out, folds them. She grabs the packet of cigarettes and shows them to me. “I thought you quit.” 

“I’m trying.” 

She hesitates before placing the cigarettes on my desk. “If you say so.”  

“Okay,” I say, sitting up in my bed. “What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing is wrong,” she says. “I don’t like you smoking.” 

“Well, sorry.” 

She nods, eyebrows raised in that way of hers that shows she doesn’t believe me. She makes her way to the door but then stops. “Anders and I are out for dinner tonight, so you’ll be on your own.” 

I nod and she goes. It will be nice to have the house to myself for a couple of hours. I can make dinner and eat in front of the tv for a change, without it feeling like a crime. 

I reach over and grab my phone off the bedside table. I switch it on and scroll through my messages. Valentina is back from Greece; she wants to see me before classes start. She has my present, she doesn’t want to tell me what it is, because it’s a surprise. She has loads to tell me about the trip, which she went with her sister and had a blast. I smile down at my phone. Valentina goes to art school with me. She’s a better artist than me, I always say, because she isn’t afraid to experiment. We’ve been best friends since year 7, when I broke her nose in volleyball. I took her to the school nurse and stayed with her while she got her nose fixed. We were inseparable after that. I know all of her secrets, she knows all of mine, and that’s reassuring in a way. To have someone grow up with you and know you so well. 

I text her back, telling her to come over whenever she wants because I don’t have much going on at the moment, and then go to get ready before the electrician arrives. I wait for him in the kitchen. He’s coming to fix a faulty light in the living room that flickers sometimes. I make coffee while I wait and play a game of solitaire. I learnt to play when I was younger, to pass the time because I was alone a lot growing up. It helps occupy my mind and ease some of my anxiety. I’m anxious every day trying to find a job and a place to live. It’s impossible. I was hoping to find something by now, part time, but there’s nothing much out there. And what is out there is not what I am looking for. It’s getting harder to stay positive. I have a sip of my coffee and scroll through my emails. I’m waiting for a response from the owner of an art shop. I applied for a job there last week and I’m still waiting for him to get back to me. Maybe he never will, I don’t know. They were hiring, though, so that seems unlikely. But I don’t want to get my hopes high either way because it could end up being another rejection.