✅ The Last New Start [NaNoWriMo2021]

15. Tess at Work

It was all she could think of through that afternoon; she even spaced out through her music lesson, barely paying attention to her practice. Somehow her plans had moved forward without her saying anything. She didn't know if it would be better to yell at her friends for the embarrassment, or to thank them for pushing her past her nerves. But she was sure that whatever happened now, she would have to get Spike a very special gift to show how much she appreciated his presence.

When she got home, Tess was surprised to find that Gabby wasn't there to hold the door open. In fact there was no sign of activity at all. She fumbled for her keys and opened the door, then looked around the silent kitchen. Silence.

First she went up to her room. She wanted to get her homework done before worrying about anything else, so there wouldn't be any distractions on Saturday. But it seemed strange for the house to be so quiet. It was strange; a couple of months ago she would have been used to coming home to an empty house. Her parents had never been particularly regular in their schedules, and they had realised before the last move that Tess didn't really need to know whether they would be there or not on any given day. But here, she didn't think she'd spent a single moment in this house without Gabby fussing around checking on her, or doing something useful in another room. The house felt very different without her.

After thinking about how much time Gabby spent on chores around the house, Tess finally remembered that she hadn't done her own. There was still a load of laundry in the machine from this morning, and she didn't know what she should do with it. Last time, she'd come home to find that her sheets had been dried, folded, and put away somewhere, and the clothes she'd been wearing appeared neatly folded on a shelf just outside the door of her room. This time, with Gabby absent, she was determined to do it herself.

Everything was mostly dry. The machine finished with a spin cycle, and she realised as she opened the cupboard that it had been giving a brief spin periodically through the day. She guessed that was some high-tech feature to stop a bundle of damp clothes sitting still too long, or something. She unloaded everything, and decided that some of her clothes would be fine to hang up as they were, maybe slightly moist but so little that the air would dry them well enough. Others, she hung over the heaters in her room and in the lounge. It had been cold enough lately that she could feel the warmth rising, and she thought that an hour would be more than enough time to leave all her laundry dry enough to put away.

Once everything was hanging, including her duvet cover draped over the boiler where she could feel a strong, dry heat rising, she turned her attention to the kitchen. She had noticed earlier in the week that Gabby was checking a list on a notice board before preparing dinner, and it didn't take too long to find it. There was a list of what she was planning to cook each day, along with what looked to be an estimate of how long it would take. Tess studied it, and then realised that the description 'miso cod bake' probably referred to a piece cut out from a magazine, hanging from a magnet on the same whiteboard. She carefully freed it and propped it up against the front of the microwave.

She considered trying to have food ready by the time Gabby came home, but some of the instructions would require a deeper understanding of cooking. The recipe was clear with what it needed, but Tess wasn't sure she knew how to deglaze, fillet, or parboil anything. Still, she could try to help. She opened almost every cupboard in the kitchen, searching for the ingredients and utensils on the list. She checked the 'use by' dates stamped on everything she saw, as well. If there was food that needed using, she thought that Gabby might want to change her plans. But it seemed she had already thought about, and the ingredients for this meal were mostly the things with the closest dates on them. Tess lifted everything out, and started to arrange them on the counter in the order they would be needed.

By the time she had everything ready, she realised that might not have been such a good idea. She didn't want the refrigerated ingredients to get warm while she waited for Gabby to get back, so she put them all onto a tray and returned it to the bottom fridge shelf. She hoped that had been the right approach, but it was certainly the best she could think of. Now, when Gabby came home, she would be able to start cooking as soon as she was ready. Then Tess decided it was time to check on the laundry again. Most of it was dry, so she went around collecting her clothes, folding things or putting them onto wire hangers.

Her room still wasn't tidy. She had been living out of suitcases, and throwing her clothes in the corner as soon as they were dirty. Now she had something clean that needed putting away, she realised that it was time to decide where things would go. There was a wardrobe in the corner, as pink as anything else, and a couple of doors on the far side of the room that seemed to lead to a large closet. She looked at the space available, and quickly divided her clean clothes between them. She didn't need to sort out everything else; she could move her clothes over as she wore them, so that a big job was broken down into smaller parts. But by the time everything was tidy, she checked again and found more clothes that had been dried off sufficiently by the warmth of the heaters. Then she checked on her bedclothes, and found that the sheets and duvet cover were both ready to be put away.

She carefully folded all of the sheets, and carefully returned them to the pile on the shelf over the boiler. But after a moment's thought, she realised that the rest of the stack had been ironed. Should she find an ironing board, and see if she was any more skilled with one than the last time she had tried? She hesitated for a moment, but realised that she didn't need to. She lifted the things out of the cupboard again and hurried back to her bedroom. The duvet was bundled up with no cover, and the only sheet on the bed was a plastic mattress protector. She could put the same sheets back on, and if she hadn't noticed already perhaps Gabby might not be sure if she'd really wet the bed yesterday. If she did her laundry in the morning next Friday, then it would be easy to claim that she was just trying to get into a routine.

Wrangling a duvet into its covers was a farcical ballet of tangled arms and not being able to reach the far corner, but eventually Tess knew it was as good as it was going to get. She spread the covers on her bed, and then glanced out of her window and saw Gabby's boring car pulling up. She rushed downstairs, opened the fridge, and lifted out the last of the ingredients. Then she opened a bag of beans, and asked her phone how to go about shelling them. It seemed easy enough, but after reading the instructions she had barely started when Gabby came through the door.