The Ties That Bind by Erin Kelly

map application. Her office looked to be a good half-hour walk away, and his backpack was already growing heavy, but somewhere on the train journey he had already resumed his poverty mindset and he walked past the queue of white and turquoise taxis snaked under the latticework canopy of the station forecourt.
    He followed the map faithfully. The Brighton he knew from pictures was a Regency paradise and while he did pass a couple of creamy terraces, he found that the route he was taking was built up with ugly shopping precincts and tall sixties office blocks. He could not smell or see the sea but he could sense it and, with it, that feeling of possibility that always comes with being near open water. He had heard that the town took its name from the pure quality of the light down there and it was true that things looked clearer, cleaner, than he’d seen in a long time.
    The blue dot on his map had almost caught up with the little red pin that marked his destination. He passed a discount bookshop, a charity shop, a firm of solicitors and, at the corner where narrow streets met in a tangled crossroads, he found what he was looking for.
    The hoarding said Jocelyn Grand Properties in faded gold, with the sub-head Lettings Agency beneath it. This was not like the estate agency near Jem’s, which had fridges full of drinks, TV screens and brightly coloured sofas beckoning you in. Through the plate window he could see half a dozen people sat at desks, making phone calls or counselling young couples. He pressed his nose to the glass and saw Charlene, a telephone cradled between her ear and her shoulder. When he entered, she winked and mimed the quacking of a duck’s beak to show that she was trapped in conversation.
    Luke briefly checked his own phone again. The calls had stopped, for now at least, but the messages were still building up. It was clear that Jem didn’t know that Luke had left Leeds.
     
Please come home. I’ve taken the day off work. I’m waiting in for you.
 
I bet you’ve gone to HIM, haven’t you?
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it about Viggo. I just want you home.
     
    Luke shut it down. Even turned off, he felt the charge of it, heavy with Jem’s hurt and anger and worry in his pocket.
    He looked around. The wall behind Charlene was plastered with local maps blown-up twenty feet wide. They stretched from Lewes in the east to Portslade in the west. A featureless sea skirting along the bottom of the map was relieved only by a couple of jutting piers. These were not ordinary streetmaps but the highly detailed Land Registry kind, with each building separately demarcated. Only the main roads were easy to read: on the side roads, the street names sardined themselves into tiny gaps. Here and there buildings had been coloured in pink highlighter. In some places, out near Whitehawk entire streets were shaded this way. Did this represent all their property? Would one of these pink squares be his new home? Which were the fashionable areas and which were ghettoes? Charlene had said that although it was out of the question that Luke stay with her, she’d sort him out with the best affordable flat she could find. Actually, the word she’d used was ‘garret’, along with the phrase ‘beggars can’t be choosers’.
    Finally she put the phone down, and jumped around the desk to give him a bear-hug. Luke was so shocked to see her in a skirt that it took him a few seconds to reciprocate.
    ‘Hey, you,’ she said. ‘How are you feeling?’
    ‘Oh, you know . . .’ said Luke, suddenly not trusting his voice to hold steady.
    ‘Want a tea, or a coffee?’ He nodded, and she led him to a small kitchen at the back of the office. While the kettle boiled, Charlene looked Luke up and down, taking in his meagre luggage for the first time. ‘Where’s all your stuff?’
    ‘Viggo’s going to send it down when I give him an address.’
    ‘Of course. I’m sorry it went tits-up with Jem.’
    ‘Thanks, Char. Hey, how’s your