Free The Sensual Revolution by Kayler Holmes

walked away. I still kept in touch with my friends Kellie and Marie but being from different towns I didn’t see them so much.
    It was weird being back home during term time while Jamie was at University. I still spent a lot of time with his Mum and sister but when he did come back home he was changed somehow. No don’t get me wrong he was still my best friend but he was full of everything he was experiencing, of his plans for the future and of this girl or that girl. I swallowed my jealousy and pretended an interest in everything he wanted to talk about. I had long since realised that Jamie only saw me as a friend, his best friend maybe but definitely not a girlfriend.
     
    At home life was more or less unchanging for a couple of years. I got a job in the book shop and so had money to buy food and stuff. Perhaps that was not such a good thing though; my Dad knew he didn’t have to worry about finding money for food or bills so he started drinking even more. Not long after my 18th birthday he started turning yellow and lost so much weight that he was like a skeleton surrounded by bags and flaps of skin. Horrible dark blotches started appearing on his skin and he seemed to have trouble breathing at times. He complained of chest pains regularly and I was convinced he was heading for a heart attack. It was liver and kidney failure that killed him though when I was about eighteen and a half. Suddenly I was an orphan and although I hadn’t had a brilliant relationship with my Dad, I still missed him terribly. I started to feel adrift with no idea of what I wanted out of life.
    Of course Jamie took compassionate leave and came home and he and Jenny helped arrange the funeral and everything. It was a simple affair, cheap because I didn’t have much money and next to no one turned up to mourn. The few people that were there came to support me rather than to see my Dad off.
    I did have a couple of very big surprises once I was able to start sorting out the house and all the paperwork. It turned out that the house belonged to my Dad completely, there was no mortgage, it had all been paid off when my mum was alive. They had also both made a will naming me the sole beneficiary of their “estate” such as it was. What it turned out to consist of at this stage was the rundown house, a small car that needed repair and...ten thousand pounds in a bank account I knew nothing about! I also discovered that although my Dad had seemed completely out of it, there were no bills to pay, everything was mine, fair and square and I had a home and the opportunity to carve out a new life on my own.
    The first thing I did was have the car taken to a garage to see if it still worked and if not how much it would cost to have it repaired. Again to my surprise it was in really good condition just needing a service and some new tyres. I didn’t know how to drive back then, I rode everywhere on my bike, which served to get me around and helped me keep my weight slightly under control. I got another two thousand pounds from the sale of the car, apparently it was very old an d worth something to collectors. I’m sorry I really am a bit lost when it comes to cars even though I have been driving one for the last five years! It was a red one and looked really nice, that was about all I knew about it. I probably would have been completely stitched up with it if Jamie had not been at the sales meeting. Still another two grand to add to my nest egg would not go amiss!
    Having my own home and money in the bank meant that I could take some time off, sort out the house and decide what I wanted to do with my life, so I handed in my notice at the little bookstore and began looking at college courses and potential careers. I quite liked the idea of hospitality or catering and our local university had lots of courses along those lines. While I was pondering all of this I set about sorting the house out so that my home would be nice no matter what I decided.
     
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