In The Bleak Midwinter | T Shelby

NINE - PEARLS

It had officially been two months since Kaia had started her new job. Enough time had passed to allow her to judge each and every person she worked with, identifying who she liked and who she would desperately try to avoid every day, which turned out to be most people.

Despite two months passing, Tommy's instructions to Kaia about letting him know if Lizzie ever said anything confrontational to her had yet to be used. Lizzie had been civil with Kaia, but no more or less friendly towards her than she was to anybody else.

To Kaia, it seemed like Lizzie was a miserable woman who'd never known true happiness. From what other people had said, it wouldn't have surprised Kaia if it was true that Tommy had broken Lizzie's heart, because the way she acted and the fact her face looked like thunder every day certainly gave the theory some credibility.

In the first couple of weeks, Kaia noticed how Lizzie would disappear for handfuls of time throughout the day, half an hour here and half an hour there. She never told anybody where she was going, but Kaia's guess was that she was sneaking off to see Tommy.

As more days passed, Lizzie began leaving the office less and less. In fact, three whole weeks had passed without her leaving unannounced at all. As nosey as she was, Kaia had to settle for the fact that she would probably never know what happened between Lizzie and Tommy, no matter how much she thrived off office gossip.

Bonnie and his girlfriend had been round at the house more often than not, and Aberama had been at home increasingly less ever since. Kaia didn't blame him, though, she didn't want to be sat trying to read her book hearing the floorboards and bed frame creak upstairs either, but she didn't really have anywhere else to be when she wasn't at work.

It was a Saturday evening and the sun had just set. Kaia had, for the first time ever, been invited to go for a drink with the two girls she'd made friends with at work. She'd been waiting around all day to start getting ready, having little else to do apart from take a walk around the fields behind her house or read her book.

Once she was ready, opting for a black satin mini dress with a white Pearl necklace and matching earrings that belonged to her mother, Kaia left in the direction of The Garrison.

It was a cold evening and the thin shawl she'd thrown over her shoulders was doing her no favours to keep her warm, the frost biting at her skin as she kept her head down and hugged her arms across her body as she walked.

She eventually arrived, spotting Bethany and Eliza through the window and quickly headed inside, taking a seat beside both of them.

"Champagne?" Bethany held up the bottle in one hand and an empty champagne flute in the other.

"Yes, thank you." Kaia smiled and rubbed her hands together to warm them up, the heat from the fireplace beside them slowly bringing colour back into her face.

The girls sat and spoke for a while, mostly continuing the gossip about other women in the office, which was pretty much all they ever spoke about at work.

Kaia was glad she'd found other girls on the same wavelength as herself. A lot of the women in the office were the type to be married with children, slaving away after their husband and crying baby whenever they weren't at work, they'd definitely look down on the type of woman Kaia was. Bethany and Eliza were different, though. They were both similar to Kaia in the sense that they had absolutely no intention of settling down with a man anytime soon, and they had far more fun not knowing who's bed they'd end up in whenever they left the house.

Kaia wondered if that would happen on that particular night.

"So what do you think to him? We've not actually asked you yet I don't think."