Page 3 of Hard Heart

“Uh, probably?”

Dad had sent me an allowance each month while I was studying—I was lucky, I knew that—and I’d managed to save a little of the money. Plus rent would be cheaper there—NYC was more expensive than almost anywhere—and if I was on my own, I wouldn’t be going out for dinner or socialising. No, I’d be studying for yet another exam and most likely crying a bit. I desperately didn’t want to cash the cheque from Lloyd. No, I wanted to shove it up his craven arse.

“Okay, I just googled, and it doesn’t look great for crime. Are you sure you want to go? Rudd is such a dick, and Zara Michaels can’t even sing. She lip-syncs and uses autotune.”

“What, together?”

“No, separately—autotune in the studio, lip-syncing onstage. Get with it.”

“Look, I can name every instrument in an orchestra, but rock music is way outside my area of expertise. Do you think I’m crazy?”

“Hell, yeah. But good crazy. Go stick it to Rudd, show him what he lost. Big Law sucks anyway—I mean, what fun is it to sit around all day, making more money for rich people?”

“You know I still want to go back to Big Law, right?”

“I’m going to start looking at apartments in Richmond. We’ll find you somewhere splendid to live.”

“I’ll barely be earning gas money, and I don’t even have a car.”

Because on the rare occasions I’d needed to drive anywhere, I just used to borrow Rudd’s Mercedes. What was public transport like in Richmond? Public transportation. Americans were so fond of cutting out letters from some words and adding them into other ones. Transportation, burglarized, expiration, coverage, anaesthesiologist… And don’t even get me started on fanny packs.

“Hey, it’ll be an adventure. If you don’t get shot or kidnapped by a street gang, I’ll definitely visit over Christmas.”

“Not helping.”

“Right, sorry. Good luck!”

“Thanks, and happy birthday for tomorrow. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“So I can crawl home at two a.m. dressed as a flamingo and fall asleep in the summerhouse?”

“Absolutely not. I wasn’t dressed as a flamingo.”

The pink dress had been mine, but the origin of the feather boa remained a mystery.

“Whatevs. See you later, alligator.”

“In a while, crocodile.”

I hung up and put my head in my hands. Maybe I was crazy? Maybe going home and getting some boring job in the City would be the smartest idea? Plenty of US firms had London offices, so the fact that I’d spent two years here with Rudd would actually be an advantage.

I propped myself up against the headboard and began researching Richmond, Virginia.

CHAPTER 2

SERAFINA

On Wednesday morning, I cried.

But for the first time in a fortnight, it was in a good way.

My sister had bought me a car. My sweet, rebellious, just-turned-eighteen not-so-little-anymore sister had used her birthday money to buy me a car as an early Christmas present. It was a secondhand Honda Civic with a smorgasbord of dents and sixty thousand miles on the clock, but it meant I didn’t have to take the bus anymore.

In theory, buses were great. Reasonably priced, good for the environment, and you could relax all the way to work. In practice? On two days out of the last three, a creep had sat next to me and tried to make conversation. Couldn’t they see my headphones? Did they not know how to take a hint?

I’d moved into my new apartment last Sunday, two weeks after The Big Breakup and one week after Rudd and Zara Michaels had gone BuzzHub official. Ugh. Flora said if she ever ran into him again, she’d chop his balls off, and I believed her. Some girls collected stickers; others collected frog ornaments. My little sis collected antique bayonets. Grandpa Frederic had gifted her the first for her thirteenth birthday—a family heirloom—and things had spiralled from there. She was also fond of vintage hatpins.

Anyhow, the new apartment cost half as much as the old apartment, and it came with a roommate named Heidi. Although she seemed very nice, we didn’t spend much time together because I worked days at the Justice Project, and she worked nights at Jackson’s, which sounded like a feed store or somewhere you might buy art supplies, but it was, in fact, the local strip joint. Stripping represented a change of career for her—she’d danced in musical theatre until injury sidelined her, and although the ligaments in her ankle had healed, now she was struggling to land another stage role. She still went to dance classes and auditions, she said, but the money from Jackson’s was better than she’d made on Broadway in any case.