“It’s Tuesday.”
“I know it’s Tuesday. I’ve got a stocktake in the glasshouse…Oh, it’s Tuesday.” He peers at the kettle. “You’re going off to Fallowmill with your guest, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” I ignore the weight behind the question.
“And you’re sure about this, are you?”
“You’re being a dad again.”
“I’m not being a dad.” He holds the kettle under the tap, although most of the water seems to be going down the side of it rather than into it. “I’m being a responsible adult. You should give it a try sometime.”
“I am being responsible. I’m fine.”
“Mmm.”
I try again. “Remember how Sanjay said I should do jigsaw puzzles?”
“I’m still finding some of the pieces down the back of the sofa.”
“Well, this is a big jigsaw puzzle.”
“And Fallowmill?” Charlie pours water onto a teabag.
“You’re being difficult about this on purpose, aren’t you?” I drop my bowl and spoon into the sink with a clatter. “You know that, right?”
Still holding the kettle, Charlie hesitates. “I’m not. I’m trying—”
“Yeah, you are,” I mutter.
His deep sigh is a pretty good clue that he heard me. “I’m trying to make sure you’re thinking clearly. You were upset for days after you missed the party at Fallowmill. It set you back – you know that, and I…”
“You don’t want me to get sick again. I know. But I feel like I need to do this – I need to go there and…exorcize it. Or something.” It made sense in my head at 4 a.m.
“Exorcize it?” He finishes making his tea, pausing just to make sure his incredulity has time to sink in.
“I just really need to do this. I’ll be okay – I promise.”
At last he nods, and I watch him take a sip of his drink.
I wait.
I wait longer than seems entirely reasonable…and then it happens. Charlie frowns, looks at his mug, looks at the kettle…and sighs.
“You could have told me I didn’t actually boil it, you know.”
“What would be the fun in that?”
Still grumbling – about me, about the kettle, about the glasshouses, about everything – he empties the mug into the sink and stomps back off upstairs, leaving me alone in the kitchen.
I look at the clock.
6.15 a.m.
Great.
Only three and three-quarter more hours to kill.
I give up trying to pass the time at home and head in to Hopwood, making myself a cup of tea in the still-deserted staff break room. But because it’s not even 7 o’clock, nobody’s been in here yet and no one’s brought the milk in from the main kitchen delivery. I stick my head out into the corridor. Nothing. The only sound from the kitchen is a rhythmic thump-slap-thump-slap of dough being kneaded. That means Philippe’s in there, but the main breakfast shift – the chefs who start at four or five in the morning – must be getting some fresh air before the rush starts and the kitchen heats up.
I slip across the corridor and in through the kitchen’s steel swing doors. As they swoosh shut behind me, Philippe looks up from the metal counter where he’s working a small mountain range of dough. Flour is dusted up his arms, the white standing out starkly against his skin.
“You’re in early,” he says with a smile. “Still working on all that stuff in the library?”
“Something like that.” I point at the nearest of the fridges. “Can I get the milk?”
“Sure – help yourself!” He glances round, then back to me, turning the dough over in his hands. “What’s with the apron?”
“The apron?” I stop halfway to the fridge. “What apron?”
He waves a floury hand at me. “That apron.”
Then I realize. He means my dress.
He’s making fun of you. You look stupid. You are stupid.
Stop. No. Think. Is this the right reaction?
Does my mood match the moment?
I check Philippe’s face. He’s smiling warmly. His eyes actually twinkle.
He’s not making fun of you. He’s teasing you. He’s just being friendly. If it was Mira, you’d know she was kidding. He’s kidding.
“It’s a pinafore dress, not an apron.” I pull out the big plastic jug of milk for the staff room and close the giant fridge door.
It happens to be a new pinafore dress, too. Well. Newish. I just haven’t had a chance to wear it until now.
But I’m definitely not wearing it because of Hal.
Definitely not.
Philippe grins even more widely. “It looks like an apron to me. Good for cleaning.”
“It’s a nice dress!” Did that sound defensive? I don’t think it did…“Anyway, nobody could do a full room changeover in this – the straps would catch on everything.”
He laughs, rubbing his nose and leaving a stripe of flour across it. “I will never understand fashion. Or women.” He shakes his head.
If it was a test, I think I passed. My heart swells with relief, pride, triumph…Do people feel like this all the time? I flourish my milk jug at him in farewell as I turn away…
“Flora!”
“Yes?”
“You’re about to walk into the door.”
I swerve around the edge of the open door and into the corridor. “Thank you!” I call back, but the only answer I get is the thump-slap-thump-slap of him going back to his work.
By the time I get back to my tea, it’s overbrewed and bitter. But when I replay the conversation with Philippe in my head – the way I always do with every conversation, however exhausting and miserable that might be – it doesn’t seem to matter.
I make another cup of tea and pull out my phone, settling down in a corner to look through other people’s year-old photos. Call it preparation, call it masochism…but just like going today, it feels like something I have to do. Something I have to face.
“You’re still here,” says a familiar voice – Mira, crashing into the break room with her bag in her hand. “Aren’t you going to—”
“Fallowmill. Yes. In a bit.” I cut her off before she asks why I’m here so early.
Why are you here so early?
Because I couldn’t sleep?
And why was that?
Because I’m excited?
Nope.
Because I’m nervous?
Try again. And this time, be honest.
Because I’m scared.
Bingo.
Except, when I look at the clock, it’s not early any more. It’s nine o’clock, and somehow I’ve lost all that time willing myself into photos I can never be part of. I didn’t even notice the morning rota briefing, even though it must have happened right next to me.
I lock my phone and drop it into my pocket. “What have you got in your bag?” Mira’s usually neat bag is straining all along the zip, the seams visibly close to bursting.
“Ah. Coursework.” She sets her bag down carefully, as though it’s explosive. “For my application. I’m on the lobby and corridor shift today so I brought it to finish before I start.”
“Oh. Right. You have to study.” Of course. I keep forgetting.
“Are you okay?” She must have seen a change in my face, or maybe my voice is different, because she’s looking into my eyes and trying to read them. “You know he’s already waiting outside, no?” She winks at me. “Maybe he couldn’t wait until ten either.”
“He is?”
My stomach flips.
Never mind scared, I think I’m actually terrified. And it’s not just the thought of going to Fallowmill that’s causing it.
“So? You should go.”
“I should. Should I? Or should I, you know, wait? It’s not even quarter to! He’ll think I’m weird or too keen or something. Won’t he?”
Mira gives me a withering look. She puts her hands on my shoulders and pushes me towards the door (not exactly gently, eit
her). “Go. Do the thing. Exercise your ghosts, or whatever you call it.”
“Exorcize, Mee. Exorcize.”
With all the running around my head they get to do, I think my ghosts are exercised enough.
There’s a finger smudge on the glass front door to the driveway, and as I step out from the lobby, I wonder, did Hal make that? Like a hair left on a pillow, a twist in the pile of a rug, a fingerprint on a door, we mark our way through the world in the traces we leave behind. Small and insignificant, maybe…
At least to anyone who doesn’t know any different.
He’s leaning against the side of his car waiting for me, face tilted up towards the sun and legs stretched out. He looks so confident, so sure of himself, and my breath catches in my throat. How can he be so together? Is this how life’s supposed to be; how I’m supposed to be?
Yeah, right.
Maybe that’s just the way things are in his world.
What would that world be like?
Is it the same world where I’m in the group photos at the Fallowmill party? In that world, if I was here and he was waiting for me, would I walk confidently out of the porch and across the drive? And when he heard my feet on the gravel maybe he’d look over at me and smile and take his sunglasses off, and then I’d go to him and I’d be looking into his eyes and he’d be looking back at me and slide his hand around my waist – fingers strong and warm against the small of my back – and he’d pull me close to him and…
Where did that come from?
Hal tilts his face down, cocks his head to one side – and looks straight over at the porch. At me.
Can he see me from there?
Maybe.
Can he see everything that just went through my head?
He can’t. That’s not possible.
Nobody can see into someone else’s head. There is no actual way to project thoughts. No one can tell.
Can they?
No, Flora. They can’t. He can’t. Now pull yourself together and stop standing here like a loser.
I try to think about something, anything, other than the way he looked just then, in reality and in my daydream.
Think about the flowers at the edge of the drive. The gravel.
Flights of ideas. That’s what Sanjay called them. That’s all this is – a flight of ideas. My brain skipping along so fast it actually lifts off.
Definitely not thinking about Hal, definitely not his hair and his eyes and the way he’s got his arms folded across his chest and…nope.
“Hey,” he says – and he pushes himself away from the car, standing upright as I leave the safety of the porch and cross the drive to him.
“Hey!” I say back. And that’s it. Just “hey”, and then standing there.
This is going well.
“You’re early.” He turns his car key around in his hand, twirling it and catching it in his palm over and over again, like he needs to do something with his fingers.
“I guess so. I didn’t want you to have to wait, but here you are.”
“Oh. Yeah, I was early too. I was…I didn’t…” He stops, bites his lip. “Shall we go?”
I can feel my heartbeat inside my head. Is that good?
In addition to racing thoughts, some patients display symptoms such as euphoric happiness and a sense of well-being.
I don’t think this counts as well-being. Does it?
I shift my weight from one foot to the other and back again.
And back again.
And again. And again.
However, those experiencing hypomania may also find it hard to stay still – moving around unnecessarily and fidgeting uncontrollably.
I stop hopping around.
I don’t think he’s noticed; he’s opening the car door. “I’m ready if you are.”
Why isn’t he getting in the car?
He’s opened the door. What’s he waiting for?
Has he changed his mind?
Did I do something wrong?
What did I do?
My mind races through the last thing I said, the last thing I thought, checking…double-checking…triple-checking…
It’s the passenger door.
He’s opened the passenger door.
For me.
Oh.
“Sorry. Yes. Sorry.” I shuffle up to the car, drop into the seat, and he closes the door gently after me.
Nobody’s ever opened a door for me before.
I mean, sure, they’ve opened a door when I’ve had my hands full of cleaning equipment or my arms full of towels – but that’s just what you do, right? This is different – more like how nobody’s ever pulled a chair back for me to sit on. Not before him.
Something under the car creaks alarmingly as he slides into the driver’s seat and slams his door. I raise my eyebrows pointedly at him and he waves a hand at the windscreen. “It’s fine, don’t worry. Just the…umm…Yeah. It’s fine. Let’s go then.”
The gravel crunches under the tyres, and as he turns the car around, I spot Philippe standing at the staff entrance, waving at me as we pass.
I smile back through the window at him and reach for my seat belt.
The engine of the squashed-frog car is noisier than I expected. Somehow I thought Hal’s car would be quiet and smooth inside, like his voice, like his clothes. There’s no radio or dock, so the only sound – apart from the growl and rattle of the engine – is the world whipping past the open window. The trees lining the drive down to the gate give way to the hedges, to the stone houses of the village…and then to the fields.
“The curator said she’d look through the archives and see if she could find anything that connected to Hopwood. She sounded pretty excited, right up till I told her it wasn’t for a TV show.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“What are you apologizing for? It’s not like it’s your fault, is it?”
“No. It’s just…well, that must kind of suck.”
“It does. But I’ve got used to it. They normally at least wait to actually see me to be disappointed, though.” He slides his sunglasses down his nose and puts on a pinched-sounding voice. “‘Oh. Mr Waverley. You’re…younger than I expected.’” Hal snorts.
“Sorry.”
“Seriously, stop apologizing for them.”
“Sor—” I snap my mouth shut so quickly that my teeth click together.
“Now you’re getting it,” he laughs.
Up ahead a sign points to a turning between enormous stone gateposts with an open wrought-iron gate.
“That’s it – Fallowmill House.” Hal flicks the indicator on and pushes his sunglasses further up the bridge of his nose, hunching over the steering wheel. A screen of trees separates the road from the house ahead as we follow the curve of the drive. “I guess we’ll just have to play it by ear…woah.”
The drive has swept around a patch of woodland, carrying us with it…and suddenly opened up onto a view of the house. “Woah” just about sums it up.
Unlike Hopwood, which is perched on top of a hill that makes it look small at first, Fallowmill wants to impress. It sits squarely at the end of its long, wide drive, an enormous fountain right in front of it, and stares right back at us with rows of glittering windows. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot the lake through the trees.
“Imagine living somewhere like that,” Hal mutters, staring at it as it looms towards us.
I peer over my sunglasses at it. It peers back.
When the car creeps to a halt, Hal switches off the ignition…but then he doesn’t move.
“Are you okay?”
“Hmm?” For a second, he looks confused to see me there, as though it’s hard to pull himself back from wherever he went – but then his eyes clear and he shakes whatever thoughts he was having away. “Yep. Yep, I’m good. I was just…thinking.”
“About your grandfather?”
“About lots of things. Maybe I should try not thinking for a bit. Everybody tells me I overthink everything anyway.�
�� He drums his thumbs on the edge of the steering wheel as though he’s afraid of what I’ll say.
“Me too! Overthink things, I mean. People tell me I do that.” I stop. It feels like the best idea.
Sterling work there, Flora.
But if I’ve bothered him, he doesn’t show it. Instead he’s climbing out of the car, reaching back to grab his bag stuffed with notebooks and whatever else he carries around with him on this quest of his.
Clambering out of the car, I try to straighten my pinafore, which has somehow managed to twist itself around my lower body. Stupid dress.
The house really feels enormous up close. Most places like this are just glorified big houses, but Fallowmill? Fallowmill is a proper stately home. Between the thundering fountain, with its spray drifting across the gravel, and the tall windows along the front, it’s built to make anyone standing out here feel small, dwarfed by everything up to the row of carved angels and lions peering down from the roof.
Hal strides across the drive as though he owns the place, bounding up the steps. He stops at the top, turns and looks back towards me, pulling off his sunglasses to see me better. “Are you coming?”
The way he moves his hand, the way his hair falls over his face as his sunglasses come away from his eyes, the way he stands…maybe these could fill in the space where my Fallowmill memories should be. I could take all of this, now, and drop it into the gaps in the middle of my puzzle and pretend this was the picture that had been there all along. Maybe it would even work – for a while, anyway.
A woman – older, serious-looking, probably the curator Hal spoke to on the phone – appears in the open front doorway. Hal – still turned towards me – doesn’t see the expression on her face, wiped away the instant he turns to face her and replaced by something carefully blank…But I do. It’s the look of someone who thinks you can’t possibly matter, that you’re too unimportant to count. They don’t usually bother trying to disguise it for me.
Her face expectant now, she offers her hand to Hal and he takes it, shakes it.
“Mr Waverley.”
“Hello.” Hal beams at her, but judging by her scowl she’s immune to his charm. Maybe she’s immune to everyone who arrives without a camera crew.
“If you’d like to follow me?” It’s less a question than a command.
The Pieces of Ourselves Page 9