Ruined By My Brother's Best Friend novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Mrs H

At 2 a.m. the Haddow kitchen hears everything, Hollie tells Lev to leave only if he wants to, and in the morning he's on the bakery step as a notice to quit arrives from his father's company.

Nobody threw a punch.

I think everyone in that room was waiting for one.

Freddie just took his tie off his head, folded it, and put it in his pocket.

"Get your shoes, Hollie. We're going home."

"I'm not twelve."

"Get your shoes."

Lev picked up his suitcase.

"I'm coming too," he said.

"Like hell you are."

"I'm not sleeping here." Lev glanced once at the hole in his ceiling. "Not tonight."

The lads with the pint glasses melted away at the lift.

Kirsty got in the cab with us and held my hand the whole way across the river.

At two in the morning the light was on above the bakery.

Mum was standing at the top of the stairs in her pink dressing gown with her reading glasses pushed up into her hair.

"Freddie rang me from the cab," she said. "Kettle's on. Sit."

So we sat.

Me, Kirsty, Freddie and Lev, round the kitchen table where Lev had eaten a hundred and fifty Sunday dinners.

Mum poured five teas without asking who took sugar.

"Right," she said. "Who's starting?"

Freddie started.

"She turned up at his flat at one in the morning in Kirsty's dress. Like some..." He stopped.

"Like some what?" I said.

He looked at me, and his eyes were red.

"Like some desperate little girl throwing herself at a man who's never once looked at her."

Kirsty put her mug down hard.

Mum said, "Frederick."

I didn't need either of them.

"He looked," I said. "You should have seen how hard he looked."

Freddie's face went purple.

"And you're so grown up, are you? Living above your mum's shop. Never been further than Margate."

"I've been up since half three every morning for three years, Freddie. Who do you think paid your rent in second year?"

That landed. I watched it land.

He turned on Lev instead.

"Three Christmases ago. In this kitchen. You remember what I said?"

Lev held his tea in both hands.

"You said, 'Not my sister. Ever.'"

"And what did you say?"

"I said, 'Never.'"

"So what was tonight?"

Lev looked at the table for a long time.

"Tonight I broke my word to you," he said. "I'm sorry for that. I'm not sorry for her."

I stopped breathing.

Kirsty kicked me under the table, very gently.

Freddie stood up so fast his chair fell over.

"Then you can get out."

"Sit down, Freddie," Mum said.

"Mum..."

"Sit. Down."

He sat.

Mum turned to Lev and folded her arms over her dressing gown.

"Why were you going to Moscow, love?"

Lev told her.

Not all of it. Not the camera.

He said his father had wanted him home for a long time. He said his father had found a way to make him.

"With what?" Mum said.

"With her," Lev said, and nodded at me.

Mum was quiet for a moment.

"And she rang Freddie herself," she said. "So now he can't."

"Yes."

Mum looked at me over her glasses.

Then she reached over and squeezed Lev's wrist.

"You've had your dinner at my table for three years," she said. "You've washed up every time without being asked. You came to Dad's grave with us on his anniversary and you didn't have to. I'm not having this boy shouted at in my kitchen like he's a stranger."

Freddie stared at her.

"He's a stranger to me now."

"Well, he's not to me."

Lev's jaw worked. He couldn't look at her.

"Thank you, Mrs H."

The clock on the cooker said 2:47.

Lev stood up and took the handle of his suitcase.

"Flight's at nine ten," he said. "I should find a cab."

The whole table went still.

Freddie looked relieved, then looked away.

I followed Lev down the narrow stairs to the shop.

The ovens were cold. The trays were stacked for the morning.

He stopped by the shop door with his hand on the bolt.

"Hollie."

"Don't," I said. "Don't say something nice and leave."

"What do you want me to say?"

"Nothing. I want you to go only if you want to go. Not because he told you. Not because Freddie's angry. Not for me." I swallowed. "If you want Moscow, go. If you don't, don't."

He looked at me for a long moment in the dark shop.

Then he opened the door and went out into the street with his suitcase.

I didn't watch him walk away.

I went back upstairs, sent Kirsty home in a cab, and lay on my bed in her dress until 3:30.

Then I got up, tied my hair in my scarf, and went down and lit the ovens like any other day.

I made croissants, custard tarts and cardamom buns, and didn't cry into any of them.

At 9:15 I carried the A-board out to the pavement.

Lev was sitting on the bakery step.

His suitcase was beside him. He was still in yesterday's black T-shirt, and he'd clearly been there for hours.

"It's taken off," he said, without turning round. "I watched it on the app."

I put the board down very carefully.

Behind me, I heard Mum on the stairs.

She came through the shop slowly, holding an envelope the postman had brought to the side door.

Her face was grey.

"Hollie," she said. "Read this."

It was a notice to quit.

The lease on Haddow's Bakery would end on the thirtieth of September.

It was signed for the freeholder, Ropery Estates Ltd.

Underneath, in small print, it said: A Sokolov Holdings company.

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