It's Not You It's Me. Allison Rushby

and buying myself a tiny cottage in Byron Bay.

      ‘And your mum’s sculpture?’ Jas asks.

      ‘I, um, only kept a few pieces.’ I flinch when I say this, thinking of her work in someone else’s house, but the fact was I’d needed the money to pay for medical treatment. I hadn’t had much choice.

      ‘The table and chairs? You kept them, didn’t you?’ Jas says quickly.

      I shake my head. ‘I sold them. To a gallery.’

      ‘Oh.’ I can see the disappointment lying behind Jas’s eyes. ‘And your own exhibition? How’d that go? Was one of the reasons I called. Wanted to come.’

      I busy myself drinking the last bit of apple juice. ‘That, um, sort of fell through.’

      ‘Fell through?’ Jas frowns. I pretend not to notice.

      ‘It just wasn’t the right time.’

      ‘But you’re working?’

      ‘Working, working? Or sculpting, working?’ What is this, an interrogation?

      ‘Either.’

      ‘I haven’t been able to. Not since after…’ I don’t finish the sentence, not wanting to go there. ‘I’ve been sketching a bit. Now and then.’ More then than now, truth be told.

      ‘Sketching?’ Jas knows this is what I do before I actually start a piece and that I obviously haven’t been sculpting much lately. Which is true. I haven’t.

      ‘At least you’ve got your degree now. That must be a bonus.’

      Silence again.

      Jas looks at me as if I’m joking. ‘You do have your degree now? You must have finally passed that subject. It’s been two years, Charlie.’

      More silence. Telling silence.

      But I have to say something. Explain it somehow. ‘It was just that it was all a bit much…’

      Jas butts in then. ‘Jesus. Sorry. I’m doing it again. Course it was hard after your mum died.’

      And, as this is partly the truth, I leave it at that.

      Chapter Seven

      We talk and talk and talk. Through lunch, through dinner, through supper. The food, of course, is très magnifique—see, I’m even talking like a first classer now! We talk non-stop through the hour wait in Singapore, which we spend at a café. We even talk through ‘lights out’, when we’re back on the plane again. Eventually everyone gets sick of us and Jessica has to give us the official Quieten down, please. Her lipstick, I note, is still in place. Tattooed?

      We talk—well, whisper, all the way to London.

      And by the time we get off the plane and are waiting for our bags at Carousel 9, our voices are starting to go. I can’t help but notice that, even with the luxuries of first class—the little hot towels, the comfy cotton in-flight socks, the slices of lemon in our tea—we still look pretty much like everyone else jostling around for the best place to wait for their bags. Like the living dead. But at least after an icepack or two, fetched grudgingly by Jessica, the lump on my head’s almost gone. That’s something.

      Jas’s luggage comes out quickly, and as he picks it up I see it’s got an orange ‘priority’ tag on it. The beat-up black bag isn’t what I’m expecting him to have.

      ‘No Louis Vuitton travelling case?’ I say as he wheels his bag over. ‘Or is that still coming?’

      He drops it down beside me. ‘You have some very warped ideas of what my life is like.’

      I glance at him, still keeping one eye on the carousel. ‘I’m not the one who gets around in limos wearing six-inch thick make-up and thigh-high leather boots, remember?’

      ‘Make-up? That’s different. Louis Vuitton beauty case should be coming out any minute.’

      ‘Ha-ha.’

      ‘What’s your bag like?’ Jas asks.

      ‘It’s a blue wheelie one. The same as every second person will have because they just bought it on sale at the same place I did.’