Fran has a tried-and-tested solution for dealing with her problems: run away.
And despite what the self-help books say, it's worked pretty well up until now. "Now" referring to her hiding in the seaside town of Seacombe until the end of summer, and...
Ουπς! Αυτή η εικόνα δεν ακολουθεί τους κανόνες περιεχομένου. Για να συνεχίσεις με την δημοσίευση, παρακαλώ αφαίρεσε την ή ανέβασε διαφορετική εικόνα.
Eventually, her uncle managed to persuade the woman who ran the Dolphin Hotel down the road to lend a mattress, and, with a lot of effort, transport it back to the store and up onto the balcony, muttering "what kind of a responsible adult would let you do this..." and "when your mother finds out about this I'm in so much trouble..." the whole while.
When Fran made up the bed and moved the pianos out of the way and piled her stuff in neat groups around the mattress, her suitcase open next to the bed, it almost felt homely. That was what she liked about Darren; he didn't much like responsibility, but when it came down to it, he was one of the kindest people Fran knew.
Fran woke up the next morning to the sound of a key turning in the door. Convinced she was back home and being robbed, she stumbled out of bed with a mumbled cry of alarm, wrestling with her duvet for a minute before she remembered where she was. She checked the time on her phone: 8:46. Who was coming in so early?
She'd forgotten about Darius until she crept down the stairs to investigate and nearly bumped into him. He had the hood of his black Twenty One Pilots jumper pulled up over his head, but she could still see the cord of his headphones trailing from his ears down into the pocket of his scuffed jeans.
"Oh, hey," she said. Darius looked at her for a few seconds without saying anything.
"Still here," he said, eventually.
"Well, of course," Fran said, trying to figure out if his tone was matter-of-fact or sarcastic. "I'm Darren's niece."
"Yeah, he said that yesterday."
"So it's only natural I would stay with him."
Darius shrugged.
"What are you listening to?" she said, when the silence had stretched on for too long.
"Iron and Wine. Dearest Forsaken."
Fran pretended to think about it, hopefully giving the illusion she had a vast repertoire of music that she needed to sift through before coming to an answer. "Never heard of it."
Darius nodded absently. He didn't make any effort to continue the conversation, which left Fran to do all the social legwork. She scrabbled around mentally for something else to talk about.
"So, uh...how long have you worked here for?"
"I'm going to make some tea," Darius said.
Darius drank a lot of tea, perhaps more time than he spent working. The shop only got a handful of customers a day, mostly people stopping in for a quick browse, so he had plenty of time to himself. Fran went into the kitchen and found Darren on the table doing some paperwork of some kind. He'd left her an omelette on the countertop, which she took up to the balcony, and spent most of the day there.
She'd liked to have a good snoop round downstairs, check out all the sheet music and instruments and stuff, but the abrupt way Darius had ended their last conversation made her a little nervous about bumping into him downstairs.
