The Key to Anchor Lake ✓

09 : Blaire

B L A I R E

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As of today, it's been a whole week since I moved in with Elizabeth, and I can probably count all of our conversations on my hands. They're few and far between, and every time I think we're making progress, we take a step back the next time we see each other.

She's virtually blanked me since we had breakfast together two days ago, all of her time spent up in the attic. There haven't been any explicit instructions, but based on her silence about it, and her lack of acknowledgement of the paint she's always covered in, I get the feeling she doesn't want to talk about it and I shouldn't go up there. That's her territory. My bedroom is mine.

The rest is free space, where we tiptoe around each other and try not to step on the cracks.

My bags are finally unpacked. I didn't bring much with me other than Mum, and the contents of my wardrobe. When I checked out Anchor Lake on Maps and saw that it was a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, I figured it might be hard to find anywhere that sells clothes in any size above eighteen, so I made sure to bring everything I care about wearing.

It was a good idea, clearly. The only clothes shop I've seen is a tiny boutique, the kind I could never bear to step in even to buy clothes for Mum, in case the salespeople took one look at me and wondered how crazy I must be to think I'd fit anything they stocked.

Today's the first day I wear something other than a jumper and leggings, instead digging out the only pair of comfortable jeans I've ever found – high waisted and slightly stretchy, with extra thick fabric in the inner thighs – and the softest t-shirt I've ever come across, with an abstract hand-stitched rainbow on the front. It feels good to change it up a bit. I even run a brush through my hair, rather than tying it up into a bun to hide the tangles.

Downstairs, Elizabeth is reading the paper. Not one of the nationals but something small and local, probably fifty percent adverts. She glances up from the pages when I come in, but she says nothing other than a quick good morning before returning her gaze to the news. I make toast and coffee, my go-to each morning, and sit opposite her.

There's frost in the atmosphere today. Not literally – it's been getting a bit warmer since the storm – but I can feel the figurative icicles growing towards me from Elizabeth, and I can't deal with it. She's hot and cold with me, one moment acting interested in my life and the next hardly acknowledging my presence. I don't know where I stand.

"Everything okay?" I ask. It's a stupid question. I know nothing's okay when there's a cavernous hole in my heart and I've been dropped into her life with hardly any warning, and like a river flowing around a stone, she has been forced to accept it.

She nods once. Her lips are a thin line.

I munch my toast, but my appetite is fading fast. She isn't covered in paint today, I notice. She hasn't been up to the attic yet. Her arms are clean, her short nails unblemished. When I drink my coffee, it curdles in my stomach. The tension in the room is palpable even though it's only nine o'clock in the morning and nothing has changed from last night, except a slightly shit night's sleep when I couldn't get comfortable or warm.

I ended up listening to a few more episodes of the podcast, using Sukie and Oli as a lullaby, something to lull me to sleep, and although I remember selecting the sixth episode and then the seventh, maybe even the eighth and ninth, I don't remember much of the content. Just the way they made me feel.

Even when they're talking about stuff that should make me cry, stuff that does make Sukie cry, I don't feel sad, per se. I feel ... included. Like I'm part of their conversation. Like they're talking to me, and I matter. The opposite of how I feel when I'm with Elizabeth, who is silent and severe and makes me feel like I'm nothing more than a piece of furniture she has to move around.