Playlist for a Broken Heart (2 page)

I’ve never been totally clear on what Dad actually does, although he’s tried to explain a number of times. Finances. Something to do with shares and investments. He’s always
done well at it, that I do know, because we live in a fabulous detached house with a huge garden by the river in Richmond. Dad drives a Mercedes, Mum a Porsche. I go to one of the best private
schools in the country and we have two five-star holidays a year. Not any more, I was hearing. Dad’s lost everything and had to declare himself bankrupt.

What? That’s not possible
, I thought, then told myself to keep listening. This was important. Some investments went badly wrong, and he’d put the house up as collateral, and
it seems we’ve lost that too and we have to vacate in a month’s time. Nothing is left but a big bad debt.

I felt totally in shock, like someone had just knocked a hole in me.

‘We
can’t
have lost everything,’ I said. ‘It can’t be true.’

‘I’m afraid it is,’ said Dad.

‘But you must have savings?’

‘All gone,’ said Dad.

‘So . . . so what does this mean exactly?’ I asked.

Dad glanced over at Mum. I’d never seen him like this before – uncertain, unshaven and pale. Usually he was Mr Sure of Himself, out the door at six in the morning, dressed in a suit
and tie, dark hair slicked back and shining. He had a glow about him. A glow that said, ‘I am a successful and very wealthy man’. Not today though. Today he looked dejected, broken
even.

‘It means we’re going to be moving,’ Mum said with a false smile, her voice in the higher pitch she always used when she wasn’t happy about something. As I studied her,
she looked her usual immaculate self, her make-up impeccable, her highlighted blonde hair freshly blow-dried as it was always was on a Friday, ready for the weekend. However, I could see shadows
under her eyes like she hadn’t slept properly. ‘We’re going to go to Bath to live with my sister.’

‘Moving? To Bath? Aunt Karen?’

Mum nodded.

‘For how long?’

‘Until . . .’ Mum looked at Dad. ‘Until we can make other arrangements.’

‘But that’s insane,’ I blurted.

‘That it may be, but that’s what’s happening,’ said Dad wearily.

‘Do you mean for a few days or weeks?’ I asked.

‘A permanent move, Paige,’ said Mum. ‘We’re leaving London.’

‘Permanent?
No.
But why? This is our home. When? It doesn’t make sense. This is a wind-up, isn’t it? You’re having me on.’

‘I wish we were,’ said Mum. ‘We’ll be going in a few weeks.’

‘Few weeks?
No
. I can’t leave my school now.’

Mum looked like she was going to cry and I felt as if I might too. ‘It’s the last thing we want to happen, believe me Paige, but luckily we’ve found a school in Bath that has
the same syllabus. It’s called Queensmead. It has a very good reputation.’

I didn’t want to hear about a new school. I didn’t want to hear about moving – especially not today, which had been the best day of my life until I got home.
‘
No
. Dad, you can fix it can’t you?’

‘Not this time, baby girl,’ said Dad sadly. ‘Believe me, I’ve tried, I really have, and I’m afraid we have no choice. We have to go.’

‘Can’t Gran or Grandpa lend you money?’

Dad shook his head. ‘Not the amount we need, and anyway I wouldn’t take their savings, especially not at this time of their lives.’

This could not be happening. Not now. I was going to be Juliet. Alex was going to be Romeo. I liked my school. I liked our life. ‘But why can’t we move in London? Everyone we know is
here. We
have
to stay. What about school?’

‘We can’t afford to stay in London and we can’t afford the school fees any more,’ said Mum in a clipped voice.

‘But you’ve paid until the end of the year, haven’t you? So I have to stay.’

‘Due to the circumstances, the school has been kind enough to reimburse the fees for the last term,’ said Dad.

I felt a wave of anxiety as I pictured the scene – Dad having to go to my headmaster. It must have been excruciating for him.

‘Bath will be great, Paige. You’ll love it. It will be a new start for all of us. A new place, new people to meet, and it will be lovely spending some time with Karen and her family.
It’s been ages since we had some proper time with her. I bet we won’t miss London for a second once we get settled in.’ She couldn’t fool me. She smiled but it didn’t
reach her eyes.

‘Are you saying that we’re . . . we’re poor?’

Mum glanced nervously at Dad. ‘Not poor exactly,’ she said. ‘Just our circumstances have changed and we have to make some cutbacks.’

Moving in with Aunt Karen. Losing our lovely house. That sounds like poor to me
, I thought as I looked at Dad, willing him to take charge, but he was just staring at the floor as though
he wished he could be anywhere else but here with Mum and I having this conversation.

My mind went into a spin as the implications hit me. Moving meant leaving my friends, Allegra, my bedroom with the window that looked out over the river. I’d be leaving my life. And
Alex Taylor
. Alex Taylor, and just after he’d noticed me. It was too cruel. Tragic.

And live with Aunt Karen? There were six of them, eight if you counted the dog and cat. Aunt Karen, Uncle Mike, Tasmin, Jake, Joe and Simon. We hadn’t ever stayed over with them the few
times we’d visited because they didn’t have room, and we hadn’t even been down that way for years, not since I was nine or ten. Not that Mum isn’t close to her sister, she
is – they’re always on the phone to each other – but everyone gets together at Christmas or for birthday celebrations at Gran and Grandpa’s in Surrey. How could we possibly
be going to live with Aunt Karen and Uncle Mike? From what I remembered, they’d moved since we were there and their new house sounded tiny. Terraced. Four bedrooms and one bathroom. We had
four bathrooms, one each for Mum, Dad and I and one for the guest suite.

‘But there’s no room there. There are six of them in that minuscule house,’ I said.

‘It will only be temporary, until your dad and I get jobs and we can find our own place to live,’ said Mum.

‘
You’re
going to work?’ I asked.

Mum has never worked, not in a job. Not that she was idle. She was always doing something – Pilates on a Monday, watercolour painting on Tuesday, cooking class on Wednesday, ladies’
lunch on Thursday followed by a meeting for one of the charities she runs, and Friday shopping, the hairdresser’s and beautician with her friend. She was always busy but she’d never had
a paid job. She hadn’t needed to.

Mum nodded. ‘I’ll find something.’ As she said this, I saw Dad wince.

‘
I’ll
find something,’ he said. ‘I’ll get us out of this mess.’

Mum leant over, took his hand and squeezed it. ‘I know you will, Patrick.’

‘I’m sorry, Paige,’ Dad said to me, then put his head in his hands for a few moments. I wasn’t sure which was more shocking, seeing my father behave like this or the fact
that we’d be leaving London and the house where we’d lived all my life to live in some unfamiliar place in the middle of nowhere. I hadn’t seen much of Bath when we had been
there, only the area where Aunt Karen lived, and it looked really boring. London was the place to be, everyone knew that. London was
my
place to be.

It. Could. Not. Be. Happening.

‘But you
must
have some money somewhere,’ I said.

‘Not any more,’ said Mum.

‘Can’t you borrow some from a bank?’

‘I wish it was that easy,’ said Dad.

Mum took a deep breath and sat up straight. ‘Come on. Let’s remember who we are. We’re the Lord family. We’re survivors. We’ll get through this. Life’s a
rollercoaster, up and down we go. We’re going down for a while but things will turn around and we’ll be going up again before you know it.’

Dad sat up straight too. ‘Course we will,’ he said. ‘Things will turn around but, in the meantime, you’ll have to be a brave girl, Paige. I need you to be strong and not
be too upset about the changes coming. Change is part of life and you have to embrace it and go with it or it will destroy you.’

I got the feeling he was talking to himself as well as me. But it couldn’t really be happening. Something would make things all right. We couldn’t have lost everything. Things like
this didn’t happen to people like us.

Mum stood up. ‘Would you like a hot drink now, Paige?’ she asked.

As if that will make everything all right
, I thought, but I nodded anyway. I felt stunned by their news.

Dad got up and left the room.

As I sat there, trying to take in the enormity of what they had just told me, I felt cold. So, not divorce. No. This was much,
much
worse.

I awoke the next day in my queen-size bed. My room had been decorated last year – a soft lavender colour with mauve velvet curtains and bedspread. My dressing table and
stool were over by the window, a bookshelf packed with my favourite books by my desk on the other side, and opposite my bed was a wall-to-wall wardrobe. It looked fab, everything in its place. The
curtains weren’t fully drawn, the sun was pouring in and, for a moment, everything seemed normal, safe and cosy. A lovely spring Saturday morning and I could have a lie-in. As I snuggled down
under the covers, my mobile beeped that I had a message.

It was from Allegra.
You OK?

The conversation with Mum and Dad yesterday evening came flooding back. For a brief second it had seemed like a bad dream but the reality soon hit me. I’d called Allegra the moment
I’d got upstairs last night and, like me, she couldn’t believe it. I’d also found it hard to admit the whole truth to her. I felt a whole mix of emotions: embarrassed at our
situation, sad, sorry and ashamed. Like Mum had done last night, instead of stating the fact that we are now poor, I found myself using her more diplomatic words – our circumstances have
changed, it’s a temporary measure.

It felt weird. I’d always told Allegra everything and part of me wanted to wail down the phone. This. Can’t. Be. Happening. But another part of me had gone into shock and
couldn’t let any real feeling out until I made more sense of it all in my head. Not that Allegra is snooty about money or anything, or at least I don’t think she is, but then I’d
never been in this situation before. I had a privileged life, as did everyone in my school. I quickly texted her back that I’d speak to her later, then I got up, put on my dressing gown and
headed downstairs.

Mum was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee in the kitchen. She looked up as I walked in.

‘How are you, love?’ she asked, her concern for me showing on her face.

I slumped down opposite. ‘It’s a lot to take in. Being told that my . . . I mean
our
whole world has changed and yet here we are, sun shining into our top-of-the-range
kitchen, us sitting at the table like nothing’s happened. I can’t get my head around it.’

She nodded. ‘I know. It must be hard for you. Your dad and I have lived with it a bit longer and, although that doesn’t make it easier, we’ve had some time to adjust. Both of
us feel really bad about having to take you out of school on top of everything else.’

‘Why do we have to go so soon?’

‘It’s not really soon. Things have been difficult for months but came to a head recently. Your father didn’t want to say anything before, not until he’d explored every
avenue to get us out of this mess, in case some miracle happened, but it didn’t and it seems there is no way out. As you know your dad’s already spoken to your
headmaster—’

‘About the fees?’

‘And you leaving, so you . . . you don’t have to go back at all if you don’t want. You’d have been breaking up next week for the Easter holidays anyway.’

‘Not go back at all? Why not? I’ll want to say goodbye to everyone. Oh . . . but what will I tell them?’ I remembered my conversation with Allegra.

Mum looked at me tenderly. ‘It could be awkward for you,’ she said.

‘But I’ll have to tell Mr Collins that I can’t play Juliet after all. He’ll have to give the part to someone else.’
Mia Jeffrey probably
, I thought and an
image of her with Alex flashed through my mind.
So
not fair.

Mum sighed. ‘Oh Paige, you got the part.’

‘I told you last night.’

‘Did you?’ Mum’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I didn’t take it in. Believe me, both your father and I had been dreading telling you what’s happened. I do feel
we’ve let you down so badly. I can’t tell you how sorry I am, and if there was anything I could have done, you know I would.’ She sniffed back tears, got up to go to the sink and
looked out the window so I wouldn’t see her face.

Seeing Mum upset made me realise that this wasn’t just about me. ‘Maybe we can come back here some time,’ I said. ‘When Dad’s sorted it all out.’

‘Unlikely,’ she said without turning around. ‘But never say never, hey?’

The following weeks were a blur of sorting, packing and trying to accept that we really were moving. Mum told me more about the school I’d be starting at in Bath after
the Easter holidays, though I still didn’t want to hear or believe it. I was amazed that Dad and her had sorted it so quickly but it seemed that, unbeknown to me, so many arrangements had
been going on behind the scenes for a few months.

Allegra was round every day before we left, or I went over to her place. She had soon grasped what was really going on. We talked it over again and again and she was totally cool about the fact
that we didn’t have any money any more. ‘Happens to loads of people,’ she said. ‘I bet your dad will get it together again.’ I wasn’t so sure. He went about the
place like a robot and looked even more in shock than I was. Allegra asked her mum if I could go and live with them but my mum wouldn’t hear of it. She looked so sad when I put the idea to
her that I didn’t pursue it. Allegra and I swore we’d be friends forever though, and would Skype and text daily as we had always done.

I did go into school again but only for a few days to get my things and talk to a few teachers about various projects I hadn’t finished. They were all very kind, which made it worse and
made me want to just leave. I knew I had no option and there didn’t seem to be any point in prolonging the agony, that part of my life was over. Also, I dreaded seeing Alex and knowing what
could have been but now would never be. However, as luck would have it, I bumped into him on my last day when he was coming out of the canteen and Allegra and I were walking along the corridor.