13

The rain poured relentlessly from the heavens, soaking Abi from head to toe, her shirt and trousers plastered to her skin. The excitement and the adventure from earlier in the day had quickly turned to a disappointing mess. She was wet, tired, and annoyed. She was also still clueless as to what Robert was doing, but the more she thought about it, the more she doubted herself and questioned everything she had done and had allowed herself to believe.

Robert could have just been keeping track of his dates. Maybe, she thought, that was his little black book, details of his sexual conquests and failings. She imagined herself opening the file marked “Victims” and seeing a portfolio of extreme rape porn alongside some perverted checklist. Her own file was likely filled with pictures from her dating profile and downloads from her grandmother’s social media account.

It was perverted. Maybe even a little sick and twisted. But it wasn’t illegal. It wasn’t life-threatening, and it didn’t warrant wasting an entire morning pissing about in the pouring rain, dealing with stuck-up teenagers and drinking terrible coffee.

Abi had left the house that morning feeling happy, inspired almost; she had walked into town with an air of confidence. Her day-to-day generally consisted of sitting behind a desk, staring at a migraine-inducing blue screen and sending dozens of emails. She had relished the opportunity to do something different, but it had ended in abject misery.

She gripped the coffee cup tightly in her palm as she remembered the smug expression on the young barista’s face. If she was anything like her gran, and at moments like that she dearly wished she were, she would have slapped the smug grin off her face and delivered soul-crushing rhetoric that would have made her the praise of the town.

If only.

Instead, Abi had been the one humiliated, she had been the one to walk away embarrassed and red-faced. She wasn’t like her gran; she couldn’t bite back, and she definitely couldn’t fight back. A small part of her also knew that if she had been her gran, she wouldn’t have been placed in that position. The young girl wouldn’t have zeroed in on her if she thought there was a chance of her fighting back.

Abi had all but forgotten about Robert when she made it back home, barely offering a glance in the direction of his home. The rain stopped as soon as she approached her house, a crack of sunshine breaking through the concrete clouds and returning some light to the miserable day.

“Typical,” Abi said, feeling the sunshine on her face as she dug around in her pocket for her keys.

“Holy shit, dear,” Martha blurted as Abi walked through the front door and found her grandmother relaxing on the sofa, tablet in hand, the Twitterverse at her mercy. “You look like hell.”

“Thanks.”

Martha knew Abi well enough to sense when something was wrong. The irreverent septuagenarian immediately rose to meet her, leaving her callous quips for another time. Martha removed her granddaughter’s hat, stroked wet strands of hair from her face, and then helped her to the sofa.

“Sit down, love,” she said, taking the time to retrieve her tablet lest her granddaughter spy on her online exploits. “Let me get you a nice cup of coffee. Here, I’ll take this—” She retrieved the coffee cup from Abi’s palm and paused. “It’s full.”

“Like I said, I went to grab a cup of coffee.”

“But it’s black, dear. You hate black coffee. You like white coffee, remember?” she added, as if Abi had gone senile. “Very white. I’ve seen less milk in a cow’s tit.”

“Maybe it’s for you.”

“Maybe?”

“You like black coffee, right?”

“I also like hot coffee, dear.”

Abi shrugged.

Martha regarded her granddaughter’s meek reaction and left the room, taking the cold coffee with her. Moments later, she returned with a blanket, a hairdryer, and a hot cup of coffee loaded with milk and sweetener. “There you go. Get that down you and you’ll warm up in no time.”

“Thanks, Gran.”

“Then maybe you can tell me all about it?”

Abi shrugged, immediately bringing the coffee to her face and relishing in its warmth. “There isn’t much to tell.”

“At the very least you can tell me where my fucking flapjack is.”

Abi laughed, immediately feeling a little better. She watched passively, her mind on other things, as her gran carefully helped her out of her wet clothes, peeling them off like sticky plasters and then quickly drying them with the hairdryer and a towel.

A few minutes later, she was naked but for her underwear and a towel wrapped around her head, her body temperature cooling as quickly as the drink in her hands.

“I should just go to bed,” Abi said, defeated by the day.

“It’s barely midafternoon! Sleep now and you won’t get any sleep tonight.”

“I didn’t get any sleep last night,” Abi reminded her grandmother. “I need to sleep at some point.”

Martha shook her head. “My mother always used to say you should never go to sleep angry, sad, or horny.”

“I’m a thirty-four-year-old woman who lives alone with her grandmother and has no friends. If I lived by that rule, I wouldn’t sleep.”

Martha brightened, her finger thrust in the air, a smile on her face.

Abi sighed. “You’ve either had a eureka moment or you’re about to ask me to pull your finger. If it’s the latter, now’s not the time.”

“Why don’t you run a nice hot bath and use those things that I bought you from that fancy shop in town? You know, the one that smells like a brothel. Bath—bath—bath salts, that’s the one.”

“Bath salts?”

“Yeah, everyone’s going crazy for them apparently. The kids love them.”

Abi suppressed a smile. Her grandmother was more experienced than most women her age when it came to the internet and social media, but she was clueless with everything else. “I think you mean bath bombs.”

“Bath bombs, bath salts—whatever. The point is, they’ll make the bath-water look like a rainbow and your ass crack smell like Christmas. That’ll cheer you up and calm you down and if you’re feeling up to it you can always—”

“—Please don’t say masturbate.”

“That wasn’t the word I was going to use, but okay.”