by Lottie Lucas
“Life’s not fair, Clara. You’re a gullible idiot if you believe that it is.”
Suddenly, I’m not feeling tearful any more. An icy fury is building within me.
“I can’t believe that I ever thought we could be something!” I fling back. I’m aware I sound childish, maybe even petulant, but right now I don’t care. I’m half-tempted to stamp my foot, even. “I could never be with someone like you! You’re cold and cynical, and … and …”
I falter. He waits patiently.
“Yes?” he prompts at last. His eyes rake intently over my face. “And what, Clara? Just say what you really mean.”
“… And Casper hates you!” I blurt out.
Casper whips his head around and stares at me in surprise. I put him down and he hops up onto the wall, eyeing Adam malevolently. There’s a long, tense silence.
“The cat … hates me?” Adam manages disbelievingly. “That’s your argument?”
“Why not?” I arch a brow. “He’s an excellent judge of character. If he hates you, it’s not without reason.”
Adam glances at Casper, who stares him down.
“All right.” Adam folds his arms and fixes me with a challenging look. “I’ll play. Tell me one thing he hates about me.”
“One thing?” I laugh disparagingly. “I could give you ten.” I begin to tick them off on my fingers. “You’re rude …”
“He’s rude!” Adam interrupts indignantly, pointing at a smug-looking Casper. “He dropped a plant pot on my foot, if you recall.”
I ignore him. I’m on a roll now. The words tumble from my mouth in a torrent, as though they’ve been waiting for this moment.
“… you’re sarcastic, you’re self-important, you’re stubborn, you’re argumentative …”
“These all sound more like things you hate about me, Clara,” Adam observes quietly. Suddenly, it seems as though all of the fight has gone out of him. His eyes are cast down at the pavement.
“I don’t hate you,” I whisper. “Not at all.”
Quite the opposite.
He doesn’t even appear to be listening, or maybe my words were too quiet for him to hear. He’s pulling his bike away from where he’s propped it against the picket fence.
“You were right; this was a mistake,” he says stiffly. “I should never have said anything.” Then he looks at me, and his face is like granite. I can’t see any hint of the man I’ve come to feel so much for. “Don’t worry; I won’t embarrass us both by mentioning it again. You’ve made it quite clear where things stand.”
He casts a final glance at Casper, who’s crouching on the wall. “Bye, Casper,” he says simply. “Look after her, won’t you?”
And I can only watch as he cycles away into the fading light.
Chapter 32
“I’ve brought you some tea.”
I look up to find that Freddie has materialised in front of me, clutching a chipped mug.
“Why?” I ask suspiciously. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch. I just thought you might be cold.” He sits on the stone bench next to me with a shiver. “It’s November. What are you doing out here?”
He says it with such incredulity that it almost makes me smile.
“People can go outside in winter, Freddie. We won’t disintegrate.”
“Yes, but … why would you want to?” He hands me the mug, wrapping his arms around himself to ward off the cold. “Is it me and Jess? Is it driving you crazy, having us here?”
“Not at all,” I say, aghast. “I love having you. Really.”
All right, so that’s a bit of a white lie. They are driving me a little crazy. But that’s not why I’m out here. Not entirely, anyway.
I haven’t used this bench at the top of the garden for ages. It’s half overgrown with ivy, half obscured by bushes. It’s a little pocket of privacy in the goldfish bowl of suburbia. Up here, I can breathe. I can think.
I’ve had a lot of thinking to do lately.
“Well, I’ve got news for you on that front,” Freddie says, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “We’ve put an offer in on a house.”
“Oh,” I stammer. All of a sudden, my pulse is thudding in my veins.
If he says they’re going back to Manchester, it’s going to take everything I have to pretend to be overjoyed for them. The truth is, I just don’t know if I can face losing someone else at the moment.
But it’s not about me, is it? I’ve even been practising my response. Big smile. No bursting into tears. That wouldn’t do. Bursting into tears can happen later, in private.
“It’s on Millington Street,” Freddie says. “It’s small, and it needs some work, but I don’t mind giving it a go. And Jess thinks the garden …”
I’m so busy bracing myself that the meaning of his words almost passes me by altogether.
“Wait … Millington Street?” I stare at him, dumbfounded. “But that’s around the corner from here.”
“You’re quick.” Freddie grins. “No flies on you, are there?”
“Shut up.” I give him a half-hearted wallop in the arm, for old times’ sake. “Are you being serious?” My voice wavers a little on the last word.
“Of course.” The grin fades from his face. “Why wouldn’t I be? You’re family, Clara. We want our baby to grow up near its aunt.”
“But what about your friends?”
“They’re all still living in a student mentality. They won’t get any of this.” He sighs. “It’s time to accept that our lives have moved on. We’re not kids any more. And maybe it’s more of an abrupt transition than we were hoping for, but there you go. I can’t say I regret it. I just hope I’ll do a decent job of the whole being a father thing.”
“You’ll be great.” Now my eyes are filling up with tears. I’m so emotional at the moment; anything seems to set me off. On impulse I put my tea down and fling my arms around him, squeezing him tightly. “I’m so proud of you.”
He squirms, trying to disengage himself. “Stop it! We’re British, remember? Get a hold of yourself.”
I just squeeze him more tightly. “And Mum and Dad would be proud of you too.”
He stops struggling. “Do you really think so?”
“Of course I do.”
“You don’t think …?” He clears his throat awkwardly. “We’re not doing so badly, are we? I mean, they wouldn’t be too appalled, I hope. If they’re looking down on us, that is.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see movement at the window. Jess is standing at the sink, watching us through the glass.
“I hope not.” I sigh, releasing him. “I worry about that sometimes. I think it’s almost harder this way; at least if they were here we’d know how they felt, instead of always having to wonder. But I’ve come to the conclusion that we just have to do our best with the lives we’ve got. I’d like to think that’s all they’d really want from us.”
Casper slinks through the long grass, dropping a headless squirrel at my feet. He hops up onto the bench beside us, purring.
“See, Casper agrees. He’s very wise.”
“He’s also a murderous sociopath.” Freddie moves his feet away from the decapitated rodent. “Does he have to take the heads off every single one?”
“He likes to crunch the skulls,” I say cheerfully.
Freddie frowns down at me. “You’ve been spending too much time alone with him. It’s a good thing we’re going to be nearby. We wouldn’t want you growing strange in your old age.”
“Never mind me,” I shoot back, laughing. “I’m more worried about the prospect of you doing DIY. You’re not the most practical of men. Do you remember when you were a teenager, and you put that bottle-opener up on the wall at home?”
Freddie groans. “I’ll never forget. It fell down after an hour, taking half of the wall plaster with it. Mum wasn’t very impressed, was she?”
“No, she wasn’t. Not that Dad was much better. He couldn’t even hang a picture straight.”
The mention of Jess makes my eyes automatically travel towards the window again.
She’s still there. I feel the first trickle of misgiving. It wouldn’t take her that long to wash up, surely?
“Hang on, why is she motioning to you?” I leap up, dislodging Casper from my lap. Unperturbed, he simply picks up his squirrel and trots off with it. “This isn’t just a cup of tea; it’s a trap! She sent you out here, didn’t she?”
“We’re concerned, that’s all.” Freddie has the look of a cornered rabbit. To be fair, I have to concede that it probably wasn’t his idea. This has feminine interference written all over it. “We just wanted to check … you know, that you’re coping.”
He turns to the window and mouths, “She knows,” at Jess.
“Of course I’m coping.” I give a brittle laugh. Then, suddenly, an awful thought strikes me. “Wait … you’re not staying in Cambridge for me, are you?”
That would be humiliation beyond words. As if I haven’t had enough of that already.
“What? Of course not,” Freddie says dismissively. “I told you; it’s the best thing for the baby.”
Thank God for that.
“Good.” Warily, I perch back on the edge of the bench. “Because I’m fine. I’m quite capable of looking after myself.”
“I’m sure you are. But you have to admit it; you’ve been moping around ever since you broke up with that vet of yours.”
“He is not my vet,” I retort primly. “And this is nothing to do with him.”
At least that much is true.
“Wait, then …” Freddie looks nonplussed. “Who? The professor?”
I just glare at him.
“It is the professor!” He turns to the window.
“It’s the professor!” he mouths exaggeratedly at Jess. She smacks a hand to her forehead.
“Of course!” she mouths back.
“Will you two stop that?” I say furiously. “It doesn’t matter anyway, because nothing’s going to happen now. I’ve seen to that.”
Even as I say it, my chest feels tight.
I never knew I’d miss Adam so much. It’s like an ache which won’t go away. I even miss arguing with him, would you believe it?
I’d give anything to be arguing with him right now. I’d even let him win.
Probably.
Maybe. So long as he didn’t say anything too incendiary.
“What did you do?” Freddie’s eyes are wide.
“I … I told him that Casper hates him,” I choke out, half laughing, half crying. Suddenly, it seems almost funny, in a tragic sort of way.
“Why would you do that?”
“Because he does hate him.”
“Casper hates all sorts of people,” Freddie points out reasonably. “It doesn’t mean anything. And he takes to the most unlikely of people too. I’m not sure his judgement counts for a lot.”
Actually, I have to concede that there is some truth in that. I mean, he likes Dominic, for some unknown reason. I’ve never been able to understand it.
He likes Jeremy too. Once I had to drop into the museum on the way back from the vet’s. Casper escaped from his basket; eventually, I found him curled up at Jeremy’s feet under the desk.
Hmm. I’d forgotten about that incident.
So much for my claim that Casper has excellent judgement. Perhaps I ought to review that.
“It’s not just that, though,” I gulp. “It’s … well, I might have let him think that I’m still with Josh.”
Freddie looks blank. “Who?”
“The vet,” I grind out. Does he not pay attention to anything?
“Oh.” Freddie sits back. “Yeah. Him. I never bothered to learn his name; I knew he wouldn’t be around for long.”
Sometimes Freddie comes out with the most unexpected things. I just blink at him.
“Really? But he was so …”
“He was a flash in the pan,” Freddie says flatly. I smile inwardly; he can sound just like an old woman sometimes. “I knew you’d grow bored of him eventually. Now, Adam, on the other hand …”
I start, almost upsetting my half-empty cup of tea. I fling the rest out into the flower border, hoping I don’t hit Casper with it. I have a feeling he’s in there somewhere.
“You know his name?” I’m amazed. Freddie’s never used it before.
“Always have. I just like calling him the professor, that’s all. Sounds very Bond villainish.” He stands, dusting off his jeans. “Look, sis, I wouldn’t presume to tell you what to do with your life. But let’s face it; you’re pretty miserable without him. And if all that’s keeping you two apart is a cat and a fictitious relationship, then I don’t see why you can’t work it out. If you want to, that is.”
“You make it sound so easy,” I say sadly. “But I can’t … It’s complicated.”
Somehow, I can’t bring myself to tell Freddie about the whole thing with my job. It’s still too raw and, honestly, too shaming. When it comes down to it, I’d rather they all thought I was just being capriciously stubborn than reveal the truth.
Because, ultimately, whatever I might have said, the rest of it doesn’t matter. Well, it sort of does, but it’s not fatal. I’m sure we could get past it. But how can I be with somebody who was willing to manipulate and deceive me?
I can try all I like to tell myself that he thought it wouldn’t matter to me how it came about. That so long as I got what I wanted, the end justified the means. But I know that can’t be true; I saw the look on his face after he said it. He hadn’t wanted me to find out, because he did know it mattered. He knew that I needed it to be on my own merit. He knew I would never countenance anything less than that.
Yet he did it anyway. I think that’s what really gets me.
And then he tried to hide it. Presumably, he planned to do so indefinitely, if we’d got together. The thought that we might have spent the rest of our lives with that secret between us is too much for me to stomach.
“Can’t possibly be as complicated as what we’ve had to deal with recently.” Freddie motions towards the window, where Jess is still standing, looking on anxiously. “Look, I know you, sis. Once you’ve got your mind set on something, nothing anyone can say will change it. But if there’s anything I’ve had to learn lately, it’s that love isn’t about getting everything right. It’s more about the effort you make to fix it when it goes wrong. Think about that, won’t you?”
He saunters off back towards the house and I’m left wondering when my absent-minded, careless little brother turned into such an enlightened young man. But, before I can come up with an answer, there’s a rustle in the undergrowth and Casper rejoins me on the bench. Blessedly, there’s no sign of the squirrel, or any body parts which might once have conceivably belonged to it.
“Did you really hate him that much?” I sigh, stroking his head.
He just purrs noncommittally.
“Because the thing is—” my voice trembles “—I just … even after everything … I so wished you could have been wrong. A part of me still does.”
That gets his attention. His eyes snap open in affront.
“What? You’re not always right, you know!” I retort. “You thought Josh was wonderful. And look how that turned out.”
He turns his head away and sticks his nose in the air. I know that look; it means, ‘I have no idea what you mean. You must have imagined it.’
“All right, deny it all you like. I know the truth.”
He turns his back on me with a dismissive swish of his tail.
“You’re impossible,” I huff, crossing one leg over the other. “There’s just no talking to you. You’re as bad as Adam!” Just saying his name makes my heartstrings twang. How pathetic is that? “Actually, you two have quite a lot in common, come to think of it. Maybe that was always the main issue between you; you’r
e far too alike.”
He bristles indignantly at the suggestion.
Why do I invite these impossible males into my life? I bury my face in my hands.
“Why can’t I seem to stop missing him, Casper?”
The next thing I know, hot tears are squeezing out of the gaps between my fingers and dripping into my lap.
I feel the pressure of paws pressing on my leg and then Casper’s reaching up, nudging my hands away. I look into his bright green gaze and I feel like he’s trying to tell me something.
If only I spoke cat.
“Your fur’s getting damp,” I sniff, but he just snuggles closer. His whiskers tickle my chin, making me laugh despite myself.
“At least I’ll always have you,” I murmur, resting my cheek against the top of his head.
But, for once, that doesn’t seem quite enough.
Chapter 33
I do the only thing I can in the situation: I get on with life.
I do my regular walkabouts with Jeremy. I help to hang pictures, and I direct people to the Holman Hunt, which now hangs in pride of place in the main hall. I try not to look too hard at the empty window seat where Adam used to sit. Whenever I have to walk through the Roman gallery, I do so quickly, not looking from side to side, trying to ignore the ever-present ache. It’s smaller, but it’s still there. I’m almost used to it by now.
December looms on the horizon and Christmas decorations start to appear. Pumpkin spice lattes turn into gingerbread lattes. Freddie and Jess have their offer accepted on the house, and official-looking paperwork starts stacking up on the kitchen table. They don’t ask me any more about Adam, but I see them sharing worried looks when they think I won’t notice. I console myself with the thought that I won’t be the centre of attention for long; soon, they’ll have someone else to expend their energies on.
I do take Casper back to the vet’s, as threatened. I’d expected that it would be strange seeing Josh again, but it isn’t. We seem to have made a tacit agreement to go back to where we began, as convivial strangers, and somehow it works. Besides, I don’t think he’ll be with the practice for very much longer anyway. He’s far too restless for a place like Cambridge.