Free Another Love by Amanda Prowse Page A

her for a very long time, but now I suppose I feel sorry for her. I’m pretty indifferent. I can see that she was an enabler. She encouraged my mum to drink, so they could both have a good time. But Mum wasn’t forced; she was a consenting grown-up who wanted to go along for the ride. In fact, I see Sara a bit like an instructor, a boozing tutor, picking my mum up, taking her out and helping her to get better and better at drinking. They relied on each other. So I don’t blame her, not any more. If it hadn’t been her, there would have been another Sara. Mum would have found someone else to show her the ropes, help her become an expert at her chosen sport. Of that I’m absolutely certain.

Five
    ‘Can you see the difference?’ Romilly held the two fragile glass slides up towards the light and stared at them, holding them slightly to the right so that Warwick the intern could see them too.
    ‘Not really.’ He swallowed, looking nervous.
    ‘That’s okay.’ Romilly smiled, polite and patient, trying to put the young graduate at ease. ‘Let me show you in a different way.’
    Warwick followed her to the end of the lab bench, where the microscope was set up.
    She pushed her specs up onto her nose and squinted over the lens, silently twisting and adjusting the settings until she was happy. ‘Right, take a look now.’ She moved to the side and nodded for him to take over.
    The young man sighed and placed his eye close to the eyepiece. ‘Oh!’ he exclaimed.
    ‘Go on,’ she coaxed.
    ‘Erm… I think the seed on the left has tiny new radicles on the base and the one on the right doesn’t.’ He lifted his head and stared at his mentor.
    ‘Exactly! Well done, you!’ She beamed. ‘And that means, Warwick, that there is something about the seed on the left that the grey field slug didn’t like! This is marvellous. Really marvellous.’ She clapped.
    ‘It’s exciting, isn’t it?’ he said, flushing.
    ‘It really is.’
    Romilly logged the data and tidied her workspace, as was her habit. She knew her colleagues laughed at her OCD-like meticulousness, but it was a trait she couldn’t alter. It was just one of her quirks that they affectionately ribbed her about, another being her need to work alone. ‘There’s no “I” in team!’ her colleague Tim regularly shouted at her from the other side of the lab. To which she always replied, ‘And there’s no “Do I look like I give a shit?” there either!’
    ‘You’re a lone wolf, Rom!’ Tim yelled at her now, impressed by her latest finding.
    She gave a high-pitched howl in response, as she always did when he said that.
    Romilly eventually hung up her lab coat an hour after her official workday should have ended. ‘Bye all, see you tomorrow! Good job today, Warwick.’ She noted the lad’s beam of pride as she waved to her colleagues, then began fishing one-handedly in her bag for her keys as she made her way to the car park.
    *
    ‘Rom!’
    She turned to see who had called her. ‘Sara?’ She was surprised to see her neighbour waving from a car window by the gate. ‘What are you doing here?’ Romilly was taken aback, wondering if all was okay with the house. Questions and scenarios flashed through her head. Burglary? Fire? Where is Celeste?
    ‘Yeah, I’m good. How are you?’
    ‘Fine.’ She felt a little confused by the exchange, as though it was normal for her friend of six months to turn up at her place of work and hang out in the car park.
    ‘Hope you don’t mind me pitching up, but there’s a new cocktail menu being launched tonight in town and I have a VIP invite that’s a plus one. So, as I don’t have any other friends, I thought you might like to jog along with me. Please don’t make me go on my own!’ she begged, hands pressed together as if in prayer.
    ‘I can’t just go out, Sara! I have to go home.’ She looked at her watch. It was about now that the afterschool sitter would be packing up to leave, and David would be heading