Chapter 1 - Moving to England

Abbey POV

“MUM, MUUUUUUUM” I scream from the top of my lungs, and I can hear her running up the stairs with dad following her.

“What happened? Are you hurt?” she says almost breathless as she opens my bedroom door. Dad stops right behind her with his hand on his chest, trying to catch his breath.

“You’re getting old, dad”, I say jokingly, and he gives me a stern look that breaks as soon as I offer him one of my biggest smiles.

“What happened?” Dad asks, “Why were you screaming the house down?” he keeps asks as they both take a couple of steps into my room.

“I got into Oxford University”, I say, and mum starts to cry immediately as dad walks to me with open arms, and I hug him tightly.

“Oh baby, I am so proud of you”, dad says, kissing the top of my head. He is a lot taller than me. I am just a little bit taller than mum, a couple of inches, but that still makes dad tower over me.

“Mum?” I let out, and she hugs us both.

“My baby is going to university”, she says, and I laugh as he plants about six or seven kisses all over my face.

“Okay, mum, that needs to stop. I am not a child anymore”, I say, and she giggles.

“You will always be my baby”, she tells me, and I smile.

I have the best parents in the world. Alice and Devin Hardy, I’ve never seen a couple so attached to each other as my parents are. We live in Italy since before I was born. I am bilingual, and I have been studying my ass off to get into Oxford University, and this was my time. Last year I wasn’t accepted but this year it happened, I have just turned eighteen, and I am going to England for the first time. For some odd reason, mum and dad never took me to London, we have been all over the world, I have even travelled to Spain, Portugal and even south America with my friends but I have never been to England, now all of that is about to change. I am going to Oxford University, and my parents are moving back to our cottage house in England. I will be living by myself for the first time ever, and I honestly can’t wait.

Dad is retiring next year, he says he has everything under control, and he has someone he trusts running his small empire. I am not following his footsteps or mums. I am going to study Psychology. It’s always been a passion of mine, and hell, they support my decisions.

Tomorrow is the day I am finally moving to the small flat that I will be sharing with two other girls I met online through the university website. I saw that a double room was for renting in their house, and after dad asked his friends to get a background check on them and their family, they allowed me to move in. They wanted to buy me my own flat, but I asked them not to.

I don’t want to be known as the rich girl, I’ve always been the rich girl in school, and everyone knew who I was. It will be nice to just be another new girl in the university without calling attention to myself.

Mum is getting stressed with me moving out, and dad is trying to make sure that mum is okay with men leaving, but I know he is struggling as much as she is. You see I am a daddy’s girl, and I am not ashamed to admit it. My mum says she’s never seen anyone like us, it is like we think the same way and we behave the same way. She says that luckily I look like her otherwise, I would be dad’s younger self.

The move to England is hard on mum, I still don’t know what happened that made mum never want to come back here, but I know that dad is quite happy to be back, he says he’s tired of speaking Italian, he misses his pints and going to the pub. Could you get any more British than that? We have been organising everything to the move for weeks now, and tomorrow we are flying to London and then we will be going straight to Oxford where mum and dad will be staying in a hotel while I get myself settled.

I know I am a grown woman, but I like having them around, and I know I am going to miss them desperately. We have plans to go to London to see my grandparents after we arrive, after all, it is only Wednesday today, and school only starts on Tuesday.

The flight to England is quiet and feels really nice to actually just chill. These last few days have been stressful getting everything ready and saying goodbye to my friends, I obviously promised I would go visit, but they think I will forget about them as soon as I land myself a prince Harry. Idiots. I roll my eyes at the thought of having a boyfriend, I had a serious boyfriend for three years, and once he found out I was coming to Oxford, he cheated on me and decided he couldn’t do long distances. Well, he can fuck off then if he thinks I am going to cry around for him.

I take a photo of the view of London before we land, and I post on my social media straight away, and I receive around twenty comments from my friends wishing me good luck. I smile at the comments, and I get my things ready to get into the SUV waiting for us outside the private jet.

The drive to Oxford takes a few hours, especially because mum made us stop in the shop on the way there so she could get me some essentials like milk, tea, coffee, biscuits. What can I say? The woman knows me well.

As I open the door to my flat, I see two girls sitting on the settee, and they both look back at the door, one of them has really long back hair, and she has round brown eyes. She is the first to stand up and walk to me, giving me a big hug. “Hi, you must be Abbey, I’m Roxy”, she says, and I smile.

“Hey”, I say, and the other girl walks to us. She has short blonde hair and piercing green eyes, “Hey, I’m Penelope”, she says, offering me a hug. They both pull me into the flat, and mum and dad walk behind me, pulling some of the luggage in.

“Hello”, mum says, and the girls look at her, and Roxie covers her mouth with her hand silencing a gasp. Her eyes go wide opened, and she looks between me and mum like a lunatic.

“God, you two look so much alike”, she says, and I smile. Dad hugs mum from her waist, pulling her close to him, “Good, at least she’s got the good looks:”, dad says, and mum laughs, slapping his arm.

“You guys are embarrassing”, I say, and the girls laugh, introducing themselves to my parents that are now making themselves way too comfortable in a house that is not theirs. Mum walks to the kitchen, placing all the shopping she’s made in the cupboards while I apologise to my new flatmates. Dad walks around the house inspecting everything and deciding it needs some refurbishing.

I try and remind him he doesn’t own the house, but he shakes me off straight away. The girls were quite excited about everything that dad wants to do to the flat, and I just roll my eyes. He has a way with all my friends that I will never understand. Once mum and dad leave me alone to unpack because they want to buy some furniture essentials for the house, the girls pull me to the settee, and I sit in the middle of them.

“Your dad is a fox”, Roxie says, and I gag. They both start laughing, and I warn her that mum gets pretty territorial when it comes to my dad. I even tell her the story of one of my history teachers that thought that dad was a single dad and kept trying to catch his attention, and mum got her fired. They both laugh and help me take my things to my small double bedroom. I look around, and there’s not a lot there, so I do understand mum’s need to get furniture, I bet she is buying me a better bed and some rubs, some curtains, well she is going to bio crazy and redecorate the entire place.

I put my clothes in the small wardrobe in my bedroom and I grab my book. I walk to the kitchen to make a cup of tea but the girls have some people over. I am already in leggings and an oversize t-shirt with my hair up in a bun.

“Hey, Abbey, these are our friends, Curtis and Ken”, Roxie says.

“Hi, pleasure”, I let out and Ken walks to me with a smile plastered on his face, "we are playing monopoly, wanna join?”, he asks and I nod my head. He takes my hand and pulls me to the dining room table where we all sit around and start playing.

Not long after the doorbell rings and Roxie stands up.

“Pizza is here”, she shouts from the door and Curtis stands up to help her bring the pizzas to the table and when they come back there’s more pizzas than we will be able to eat. Or so I thought.