The Sight of You
Page 18
All the blinds are down at the café. But light is flickering inside, inviting as a woodland cottage.
She laughs when she opens the door. “I can’t see your face.”
“Yeah. Just so you know, I fully realize flowers this ridiculous should be a deal-breaker.”
She peers around the bouquet. “That depends on who’s carrying them.”
“A disorganized idiot. Sorry. I left it too late. Sling them in the bin if you want. It’s quite an experience, walking down the street with them on Valentine’s. There was heckling.”
“You might be the only person I’ve ever known who’d apologize for bringing me flowers.”
“Hey, they warrant it.”
“No, I love them.”
“Well, there are enough here to start your own botanic garden, I suppose.” I set the bouquet on the counter. “You look beautiful, by the way.”
Her hair is a dark twist on top of her head. She’s shimmering in a sleeveless metallic top, the fabric fluid as smelted gold.
“Thanks. I had my themed outfit all ready for Esther’s party. So I thought, why not?” She makes a ta-da with her arms.
Gold top, gold earrings shaped like flamingos. A dusting of gold on her eyelids. It takes me a moment. “Heavy metal through the ages . . . you’re gold.”
“I decided to subvert the theme.”
“Glad to hear it.” I glance down at my own outfit. Plain blue shirt and black jeans. Safe as you like. “But I feel a bit underdressed now. You should have told me.”
“Why—what would you have come as?”
I crouch down to say a quick hello to Murphy. “Well, I do have a gold lamé jumpsuit. But I keep that for special occasions.”
“More special than this?”
“All I can say is, Let’s Boogie Night at the Archway does take some beating.”
“Now, that I would pay to see.”
“This feels like stepping back in time.” I straighten up, take off my coat. “Turning up at the café, looking forward to seeing you.”
The shyest of smiles. “I always looked forward to seeing you too.”
On my table by the window, where I sit whenever I’m here, Callie’s arranged candles, cutlery, glasses. There’s an ice bucket chilling a bottle of wine, and Ella Fitzgerald in the air.
“I asked Ben if we could come here for the evening. I thought it might be nice, since it’s where we met. Sorry if it’s cheesy.”
I kiss her. “Not a bit. It’s lovely.”
“You think? I promise I won’t serve you espressos and eggs on toast.”
“You cooked?”
“Well, no—not with a panini press and a microwave. I talked nicely to the bistro down the road.”
* * *
• • •
We dig into goat’s cheese tarts, fat and brown from the bistro’s oven. Our glasses are full, the candles glowing romantically between us.
“You know,” I tell Callie, “at Christmas, when I was poking around in my dad’s loft, I found a receipt from my mum and dad’s honeymoon, thirty-four years ago.”
Her face gives way briefly, as if by receipt I mean abandoned puppy. “What was it for?”
Through the café’s speakers, Ella defers gracefully to Etta James.
“A posh meal out in Christchurch. Guess what the total came to? Three courses, and drinks.”
A smile. “Twenty quid?”
“Eight pounds thirty-nine.”
“That’s amazing. Like . . . holding someone’s history in your hand.”
“Mum was sentimental. She kept stuff like that. She showed us the bus ticket once that Dad bought her at the end of their first date.”
“She was an old romantic.”
“She tried, I guess. Dad was much less soppy than she was.” I smile, shake my head. “You know, Valentine’s was always a bit of a nightmare for us at the surgery.”
“No, really? How come?”
My mind becomes a memory. “Dogs breaking into chocolates, cats chewing flowers. Wrapping paper and sticky tape in stomachs. Candles knocked over. The list was endless.”
Callie sips her wine, lowers the glass. I could look into her eyes all day and not once want to blink. “Ouch. That’s enough to make anyone a Valentine’s cynic.”
“Almost,” I say, “but not quite.”
* * *
• • •
After dessert, I take her hand. “This was an amazing night.”
“It was.”
“It scares me, how great this feels.”
Our fingers become a knot. Tight, inextricable. “Why?”
“Because I never . . .” She knows some of what I feel about love. But not my decision to avoid it, the romantic kind, forever. And the timing’s hardly right to fill her in on all that tonight.
“I love being with you, Joel,” she whispers.
“I love . . . being with you too.”
“Actually,” she says, more boldly, “I love you. I’m not afraid to say it. I love you, Joel.”
Maybe reflexively, I look down at the table. She’s sketched a heart into the chocolate sauce on the dessert plate we shared, bookended it with our initials.
The C goes first.
“I love you,” she whispers again, like she needs to make sure I know it absolutely.
* * *
• • •
“You’re scared to say it, aren’t you?”
I thought Callie was asleep. I’m trying to stay awake, half listening to a TED Talk while the other half of me looks at the book I discovered at Dad’s. I’ve been wondering what to do with it for weeks. Should I act on what I found, or leave the past where it lies?
I could track down the address for the landline, find out who lives there. But then what? Now that I’ve got the chance to take things further, I feel suddenly afraid. Because of what I may find out. Because of what it may mean.
At first I don’t catch what she says. I slide my headphones down around my neck.
“You’re scared to say I love you.”
She’s wearing my ancient Nike T-shirt, hair bunched up around her face. She looks so sweetly vulnerable that, for a moment, I wonder if she’s talking in her sleep.
“I’m not scared to be with you.” Not strictly true. But I am at least curious about the future now. I’m beyond complete paralysis.
Still, love . . . love is the thing I don’t yet dare succumb to.
“You’re afraid to love me. You think it’ll be bad luck if you say it.”
“You know how I feel about you.” But even as the words leave my mouth, I’m cringing inside. Contender for the lamest half sentiment in the English language?
I know Callie wants me to explore this. She’s asked me once or twice about following up on that appointment with Diana. About booking my place at the retreat she gave me for Christmas (futile though I’m sure it would be). And of course I don’t blame her.
Maybe I shouldn’t even be sleeping with her, if I can’t so much as tell her I love her.
I reach for her hand beneath the covers. The room is cold this Valentine’s night, but her skin feels duvet-warm.
“I know you love me.” Her voice winds down to a murmur. “You don’t have to be scared.”
I’m not scared, I think. I’m terrified.
47.
Callie
With the sliding of the weeks, spring is trickling in, and the world is getting brighter, lighter. After so long spent flattened by winter, the earth seems to be developing dimensions. Its lungs are slowly filling with the fledgling dawn chorus, and foliage is fattening its limbs. Butterflies become stray sparks among explosions of ocher daffodils, and at Waterfen, the breeding season is blooming. I love hearing the chiffchaffs whistle me in to work, as redshanks reel and lapwings hassle harriers in an
ever-expanding sky above my head.
Though there’s lots that I love about winter, after weeks spent clearing dikes and waddling about in waders, it’s a relief to feel the earth hardening beneath my feet as the light lengthens and the sun slowly warms, like an egg about to hatch. The air has shrugged off the scent of soil and stagnant water, swapping it for the sweetness of April blossom and nectar. And as nature repairs itself, so do we—we set down the chainsaws and brush cutters and begin mending fences and servicing machinery, enjoying the gentler jobs of tugging thistles from the ground, mowing meadows. I become consumed by breeding-bird surveys and spend hours inclining my eyes to the sky, or tuning my ears toward elongated undergrowth as I wait to catch a flash of flight, the telltale turn of a feather, a mellow segment of song.
In our nest box on the garden shed, a pair of robins has set up home. Joel and I see the female occasionally, a delicious dart of orange, her beak to capacity with dead leaves and moss, bedding for her eggs. It’s a privilege to watch her, like she’s trusting our company and the little wooden home Joel chose. I hope we can catch the chicks fledging in a few weeks, clumsy bundles of brown wobbling their way into the world.
And down by the river, the willow tree is growing full and fleshy with greenery. I climb it sometimes after work, just for five minutes, to feel the warmth of its bark and its comforting bulk, to be close to Grace again, examine how our initials have weathered yet another winter. With every changing season, I worry she’s going to fade away, like an autumn leaf absorbed by the earth, patterns tarnished and colors dulled, until its character and complexity are simply dust in the dirt.
I always tell her I love her, up there in that tree. It feels a bit like saying it to Joel, in that I’m waiting for a reply that will probably never come.
* * *
• • •
We’re off to a book launch, a friend of Zoë’s, when I decide to broach the subject. I’ve been thinking about it for a while—since Christmas, really—and although it’s a risk and I know it could backfire, I’m going to do it.
I’d been planning to ask him tomorrow at breakfast, a long, lazy window over coffee for him to consider the question, no pressure. But as I’m curling my hair cross-legged in front of Joel’s bedroom mirror, and he’s standing behind me buttoning his shirt, it seems so opportune. Because here is a snapshot, right now, of how we could be—at home and comfortable, together.
“Don’t freak out” is how I begin.
Oh, good one, Callie.
In the mirror, Joel smiles. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“I’ve been thinking . . .”
He nods, like, Keep going.
“ . . . about whether or not . . . I mean, would it make sense . . . ?” And then I clam up completely. I can’t find the words, now that his reflection is looking at mine, those carbon-dark eyes pulling my gaze to his.
He waits. “Still not freaking out . . .”
I take a breath and jump. “I was thinking perhaps we should move in together.”
In the mirror, he stays still. The seconds stretch. “Is that . . . what you want?”
I catch his eye. Oh, you’re freaking out now. But I decide to be brave anyway, give him the nod that I feel in my heart. “Yes. You?”
“I hadn’t really . . .”
“It’s too soon,” I surmise.
“No, not like that—”
“Don’t worry,” I say gently. “You don’t have to say anything just now.”
The tiniest part of me is hoping he’ll protest and offer me a yes or a no, but he doesn’t. He simply says, “All right. Thanks.”
* * *
• • •
We’re crammed into the underventilated bookshop where the launch is, so when Joel takes my hand as the speeches are coming to a close, whispering that he needs a breather, I’m secretly relieved.
“Do we have to buy a copy?” he says, once we’re out on the pavement, both pleased to be in the open air. It’s been warm today, and the early-evening breeze across our faces is still streaked with sunshine.
Softly, I shove his arm. “Yes! It’s a book launch. Why else are we here?”
“I just don’t quite get it. Is it sci-fi or erotica?”
I smile. “Just think of it as erotic sci-fi.”
He laughs. “Aha. Knew there was a catchy term for it.”
“Well, of course. Robots need love too.”
Postwork shoppers move past us on the street. There’s a couple eating ice creams, a guy sauntering along in a T-shirt and Ray-Bans. The sight of them feels headily optimistic in a way that seems unique to spring, like birds building nests or buds becoming blossom.
“I’m sorry, Cal,” Joel says suddenly. “About earlier. I honestly . . . God. I handled that really badly.”
Oh, the moving-in. It was a mistake, I see that now. “No, I sprang it on you. Don’t—”
“I’ve been thinking. About what you said.” He clears his throat. “How would you feel about . . . moving into mine?”
My heart sprouts wings. “Into yours?”
“Yeah. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love your flat, but would mine make more sense, with the garden and Murph, and . . . ?”
I can’t hold back my grin. “Are you sure? You don’t have to—”
“I know. But this feels right.”
“It does.”
“As long as you’re cool with . . . you know. Everything.”
“I wouldn’t have asked you, otherwise.” Yes, I lose him first thing in the morning occasionally, to fairly intense note-taking and sequences of monosyllables. If we spend the night together, we rarely fall asleep in tandem—often he’s out with Murphy, long after I’ve gone to bed, or he simply stays up to avoid sleep. And sometimes our rest is disturbed, if a dream wakes him. But so what? No imperfection can touch how much I love him.
He dips his head now, sets his mouth close to mine. “This is all assuming you don’t secretly hate my flat, of course.”
“I secretly love it more than mine.”
“So we’re doing this?”
“We’re doing this.”
For a split second before Joel kisses me, it seems as if he wants to say something else. But as I hold my breath to hear it, his mouth meets mine and the moment moves on.
48.
Joel
Callie’s face is flecked with dirt, sprigs of hair poking free from her ponytail. She’s leaning against me on the sofa, warmly content at the end of a sun-filled day at Waterfen. I’m happy for her, after so many weeks spent weighed down by winter. Fingers frozen, clothes clotted with mud. Not that she ever complained.
Beyond the window, the Friday night light is vacating the sky.
Murphy has rested his chin on my sister’s knee, trained his eyes patiently on her face. Like he knows exactly what she’s here to say.
“I’m pregnant.”
I’m on my feet straightaway, wrapping Tamsin in my arms. I hope she can’t tell that, though my joy is real, my surprise is manufactured. Because I’ve already met Harry in my dreams. Kissed his flawless forehead, wondered at his pinky newness. Felt steam-rollered by love.
“You’re the best mum I know,” I murmur into her hair. “Congratulations.”
I open an arm for Callie to join the hug. The three of us stand knitted together, laughing and wiping away tears.
While Callie’s getting more drinks, I ask Tamsin how far along she is. (I already know she’s around eight weeks, of course. It never stops feeling awkward—being intimate with someone else’s private information before they are.)
I smile as she confirms it. “Neil must be chuffed.”
“Oh, you know Neil. If we won the lottery he’d just say, Cool.” She carries on stroking Murphy. “But, yes. I think this is one of the only times I’ve ever seen a tear come to his eye.”
Tamsin hoots. “Remind me of that on their birthday next year, and all the years after that. Shocking planning.”
“Will you find out what you’re having?”
“No. Want it to be a surprise.”
I shoot Callie a smile, look quickly away. It seems all wrong that we know the best part (You’re having a boy, and you’re going to call him Harry) seven whole months before Tamsin will. Though already I can feel a familiar undertow of fear: I only ever want to dream good things about him.
Tamsin sips her tea. She’s wearing a cream-and-navy-checked cotton dress, a pair of those sandals with woven soles. The sunglasses on top of her head hold back her copper waterfall of hair. “Mum was about eight weeks with Doug, I think, when she married Dad.”
There’s a slightly awkward picture of it somewhere. Me, not yet two, sandwiched between my parents standing stiffly on the register-office steps.
In my mind, the awkwardness mutates. Did they look uncomfortable because the child on Mum’s hip was another man’s? Did Dad know anything for sure? Or did he sense it subconsciously?
What happened, Mum? Why did we never talk about it?
“This one was conceived out of wedlock,” Tamsin says to Callie. She winks at me. “We think that’s why he’s a bit . . . you know. Errant.”
My blood ripples. Conceived out of wedlock—or someone else’s son?
Resting a hand against her still-flat stomach, Tamsin looks at Callie. “I can hardly believe it, you know. Neil and I have been trying on and off since Amber was a year old. I honestly didn’t think this would happen for us again.”
“We’re so happy for you,” Callie says.