by Fiona Gibson
‘So, d’you remember how he used to like watching each wave dissolve a bit more of the castle, until finally, a last one would crash over it, and the whole thing would be gone?’
I nod, utterly lost now. ‘What does that have to do with us now?’
‘Well, it wasn’t one thing that made me anxious and depressed and have to see the doctor and then get therapy. It was wave after wave, year upon year, dissolving me bit by bit until, well—’ Sinead breaks off, her voice cracking. Now, it’s as if the entire restaurant, and all the people in it, have faded to nothing. ‘Don’t you see, Nate? It was as if I’d been washed away, dissolved onto the beach. There’s was literally nothing left of me.’
For a moment, I can’t think of a single thing to say. I want to tell her I’m sorry, that I wish I’d known and done more, wish she’d tried to tell me all of this before it was too late – then my attention is caught by a man who’s appeared, briefly, at the circular window in the door that leads to the kitchen. Pale face. Short red hair, messily gelled.
You’d better watch out when you’re eating out locally, that’s all I can say.
When I glance over again, he’s still there at the window: Angus Pew, my deranged candidate. I look down at my tart, wondering if it’s been contaminated – but never mind that, my wife has just eaten a wild salmon steak, with braised greens, and said she felt queasy earlier, plus a spoonful of sorbet.
She stops and gives me a curious look. ‘Are you okay, Nate?’
‘Er, yeah.’ I glance back at the door to the kitchen. Another flash of red hair, and a glimpse of a pasty arm. I’d imagined him working in a more downmarket place, not somewhere like this. But then, chefs can probably turn their hand to anything, from flipping burgers at Bill’s to— There he is again! A rumbly laugh emits from the kitchen as Sinead lifts another spoonful of sorbet towards her mouth. ‘Don’t eat that!’ I bark at her.
She flinches and drops the spoon. ‘What?’
‘Don’t eat any more of it, okay?’
‘What’s wrong—’ Our waitress, who was swanning past, turns to us in alarm.
‘D’you feel all right?’ I exclaim. ‘You said you felt a bit sick earlier …’
‘Not sick exactly,’ Sinead says, still looking bewildered. ‘Just kind of nauseous. I’ve had it quite a lot lately. You see, I wanted to tell—’
‘It’s bloody him!’ I exclaim, catching yet another glimpse of his round, smug face as I leap up and shove back my chair.
‘Nate, what the hell?’ Sinead is staring up at me, aghast, but I’m no longer registering my wife as I storm towards the kitchen, shove open the swing door and march in.
The kitchen is all silvery units and things steaming and hissing on a gigantic hob.
‘Hey, mate!’ An older man whirls around from tending an enormous pot.
‘Is Angus Pew here?’ I shout.
A younger chef, his collarbones jutting above a baggy T-shirt, strides towards me. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I’m looking for someone,’ I bellow, glancing wildly around. ‘A ginger-haired guy. Angus Pew, sat his driving test, threatened to do something to my food if he saw me in his—’
‘Jesus Christ,’ the older man says, wiping his hands on a cloth. ‘What are you accusing us of here?’
‘I don’t know. Spitting on my wife’s wild salmon? I have no idea—’
‘Fuck’s sake!’ the younger one exclaims.
‘Get out of here,’ thunders the older man. ‘Just get the hell out or I’m calling the police …’
I step back. ‘Where is he? I need the names of everyone who’s working here!’
‘Nate, what the hell are you doing?’ Sinead is standing behind me now, grabbing at my arm, pulling at the shirt I chose so carefully and ironed to perfection. ‘What’s got into you?’ she cries. ‘Have you gone completely mad?’
‘It’s not me who’s mad,’ I snap. ‘It’s him, wherever he is. It’s – it’s assault, that’s what it is. Poisoning someone …’
‘Who’s poisoned?’ Sinead gasps, and at that moment a back door opens, and in steps the ginger-haired man who, I can see now, isn’t Angus Pew after all. He is pale-skinned and red-haired, just like my candidate – but a good few inches taller. I have never seen this young man before in my life.
I stare at him, aware of the three chefs’ eyes upon me. The older man is tapping out something on his mobile. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I mutter, stepping back towards the door now. ‘I thought he was somebody else …’
‘Get this nutter out of here,’ the younger man snaps.
‘It’s fine, it was a mistake. I’m going now …’ I turn and hurry out of the kitchen, aware of everyone in the restaurant staring at me. The lady in the red dress is gawping with her fork halfway to her mouth.
Sinead follows me, then barges past, storming towards our table – the one we were so lucky to get tonight. She grabs her bag from beside her chair and swings round to where our waitress is hovering, looking distinctly alarmed. ‘Could I have my jacket, please?’ Sinead asks her.
‘Yes, of course.’ The waitress scurries away.
Sinead turns back to me. ‘Have you lost your mind, Nate?’
‘No! I just thought …’
‘What an end to our evening,’ she exclaims, eyes brimming with tears now. ‘I thought it might be possible for us to have a nice time. I thought, maybe, when I told you …’ I watch as a tear slides down her face. She wipes at her cheek as the waitress approaches with her jacket.
‘Please, darling,’ I start, trying to reach for her hand, ‘I’m sorry. You see, there was this guy, this candidate, and when he failed his test he threatened …’ I stop. There’s no point. Sinead has already turned, gripping her jacket in one hand, and is marching briskly towards the exit. As I stand there, helpless, it strikes me that she’s leaving again, and here I am just watching her go. And as she disappears, I sit back down, looking first at Sinead’s barely-touched dessert, then around for the waitress so I can ask for the bill.
A couple of other diners catch my eye, and I realise the place has fallen oddly quiet. It takes a few minutes for conversations to resume. I sit there and wait, trying to act like I’m fine. But all I can think is, it’s a cold, wet night out there, and Sinead hasn’t put on her jacket.
Chapter Thirty
Tanzie
I’m sorry, but when Nate tells me about the Angus-Pew-mistaken-identity thing I can’t stop laughing. I know it’s terrible, and that he’d piled all his hopes on that posh dinner at Elliot’s – but storming into the kitchen just because he saw a flash of red hair? ‘Oh, God, Nate,’ I say, dabbing at my eyes with a Burger Bill’s paper napkin. ‘I’d never had you down as having a violent temper.’
‘I wasn’t being violent,’ he insists. ‘I was just, you know, concerned …’
I perch on the chair beside him and realise some of my mascara has transferred onto the napkin. Nate brought Flynn into the diner today after school – a drizzly, grey-skied Thursday – and what a handsome boy he is. You can tell he has something by the way he moves and holds himself, but he was sweet and cheerful (I mean, why wouldn’t he be? All I knew before I met him was from what Kayla had said; that you’d ‘hardly know really’, and that he’s an ‘amazing guitarist’).
In fact, he reminded me of my eldest, Robbie, when he was that age. Such a nice boy, everyone said. I know that sounds bland, but he really was. We had a couple of difficult years when his dad had left, and Robbie was staying out all night, dabbling with pills and God knows what. Most people think, ‘How quaint!’ when they come to Hesslevale. They see the renovated mills, the pretty river and canal with all the houseboats, and have no idea there’s a drug thing going on here. But of course there is. It goes on everywhere. Maybe it’s because I’m a small woman and not a big, strong man like his father – but I couldn’t control Robbie at all. If I asked what he’d taken he’d just laugh in my face. But then, by the time he was nineteen he’d got into college, and becam
e obsessed with diving, getting all the qualifications – and now he’s offshore, earning a fortune.
So Flynn reminded me a little of Robbie, when he was a slightly awkward sixteen-year-old too.
Nate introduced us: ‘This is Tanzie. I did her driving test.’ (Test-singular.)
‘Hiya,’ Flynn said, and that was that. Of course, Nate wasn’t about to add, ‘And since then, she’s seen me mashed out of my brains staggering out of a Wendy house and been advising me on how to win back your mother. In fact, we are friends now, according to the guidelines set out by the Driving Standards Agency,’ or whatever they’re called. Anyway, there was barely time to say much more, as Flynn scoffed his burger like a half-starved thing – ‘That was great!’ he enthused as I took his plate away – and then he was off, bolting out the door to meet friends and, naturally, leaving his dad to pay the bill.
Nate is looking at me now, as he stirs his coffee. ‘You think I’m crazy, don’t you, wrecking the evening like that?’
‘Well, you obviously have some anger lurking in you somewhere,’ I remark.
He smirks. ‘I did throw an oven glove once.’
‘Whoah. Steady on,’ I say, chuckling, then quickly scan the restaurant to check that no one needs attending to. The place has quietened down now. We have the after-school flurry (most of them just want chips), but we’ll be busy again in an hour or so. ‘So, how’s Flynn doing?’ I ask. ‘I mean, how’s he handling living with his crazed, oven-glove-throwing dad?’
‘We seem to be managing okay,’ Nate replies, then adds, ‘I mean, I’m tolerated. That’s why I brought him here – just to try to have some proper time with him.’ He smiles. ‘And he sat down for, what, about fifteen minutes …’ He breaks off. ‘Is your daughter like that?’
‘Kayla?’
‘Yes, Kayla,’ he says quickly, as if trying to show that he remembered her name, although I wouldn’t have expected him to.
‘Oh, yeah,’ I say. ‘I told you about her fascination with her best friend Paige’s place …’
‘With the fancy all-angles shower?’
So he was listening after all. ‘That’s the one. Yeah, I’d just love her to be at home more, you know? Did your parents ever say to you, “You treat this place like a hotel?”’
‘Not really,’ he says, looking a bit bashful. ‘I wasn’t one of those teenagers who was out all the time. I mean, I had friends of course, but I was also with Dad a lot, making things, building stuff …’
‘What kind of stuff?’
‘Oh, anything really. Dad was into making model steam engines, proper miniature machines with pistons and valves and – oh, God, that sounds so geeky …’
‘It doesn’t,’ I say. In fact it does a little, but I always liked a man who had the patience to make things from scratch. Gary managed to persuade me he was like that; funny how a man can go from building you a double bed, and I don’t mean flat-pack – he literally impressed the pants off me – to refusing to fix some fallen-down bookshelves.
‘We spent hours together,’ Nate adds. ‘We were kind of inseparable.’
I nod, touched that he’s telling me this. He doesn’t strike me as a man who shares any personal information easily. ‘I don’t suppose Liv ever found his watch?’
‘Nope.’ He shakes his head. ‘She said she’s looked everywhere, but no luck.’
‘Aw, that’s a real shame.’
We fall into silence for a moment. If Stef was in, I wouldn’t be sitting here with Nate – but he’s not, so I am.
‘Flynn’s a lovely boy,’ I add, in the hope of lifting his mood. ‘You must be very proud of him.’
‘Oh, I am of course. But, you know – he’s just like any other teenager in many ways.’
I smile. ‘Yeah, it’s not an easy phase, is it? I wish Kayla would treat our place like a hotel. You know, use the facilities, throw a few towels about, lie around in a fluffy dressing gown—’
‘… Raid the minibar,’ he chips in.
‘Exactly. Maybe I should have one installed in her bedroom. At least that way, I’d see her occasionally.’
Nate smiles kindly. He has a lovely smile; wide and open, unguarded. You don’t notice that when he’s sitting there in the car with his examiner’s face on: calm, professional, emotionless.
‘Don’t you wish there was an instruction book to tell you how to be a parent to teenagers?’ I ask.
‘God, yes,’ he says eagerly. ‘I’d certainly buy it.’
‘’Cause sometimes,’ I add, ‘I really think I’m losing it, Nate. Seriously. It’s like I’m not her mum anymore. Like she’s disowned me. Can I tell you something that’ll probably sound mad?’
He frowns and takes off his specs. I haven’t seen him without them before. His eyes are chocolaty brown, with crows’ lines and slight shadows beneath – tired dad eyes – and radiate kindness. ‘If you like,’ he says hesitantly.
I laugh dryly. ‘I feel like I can talk to you, you know? Isn’t that weird? I mean, I hardly know you really.’
‘Well,’ he says with a smile, ‘maybe you’ve just figured out, who on earth is he going to tell?’ He twists his fingers together. He’s still wearing his wedding ring, of course. It’s a medium-width plain gold band – the kind you’d expect.
I twiddle with the vinegar bottle on the table. ‘I’m only with Gary because of Kayla.’
‘Really?’ His eyes widen.
‘Yeah.’ I nod. ‘You see, when me and Neil split up, even though it wasn’t all my fault – it wasn’t anyone’s fault really – I felt like a big failure. I saw my own mum sticking with Dad until he had to move to a care home – even though he’d been a shit to her really. Drinking, squandering their money, getting off with other women, that kind of stuff. Mum was tough, though. I think she thought it was kind of heroic to put up with all of that.’
Nate is looking at me, really listening, I can tell. Sometimes it feels as if no one really does. ‘And when me and Neil broke up,’ I continue, ‘she thought I’d given up too easily. I mean, compared to Dad, Neil was a saint! He never hurt me or cheated on me, which made him perfect in her eyes. And then I met Gary, and even when things started to go wrong, I wanted to show Kayla that I could make a relationship work, that her hopeless mother wasn’t going to be a failure all over again.’
I pause for breath. Nate looks at me, as if a little stunned by my outpouring. ‘You’re not a failure,’ he says carefully. ‘Far from it, from what I can tell.’
‘Huh.’ I shrug. ‘That’s very sweet of you.’
He frowns. ‘But is that the right thing to do, d’you think? Sticking with him, I mean?’
‘Stand by your man and all that?’ I snort. ‘I really don’t know anymore.’ I scan the room and realise I really shouldn’t just be sitting here, even though there are only two other customers, drinking coffee, and they haven’t asked for their bill yet. ‘Thanks for letting me babble on,’ I add.
‘Oh, you’re welcome. And you haven’t been babbling at all. This has been really nice.’
I smile and get up from the chair. ‘Want me to slip you a knickerbocker glory?’ I wink theatrically and drop my voice to a whisper. ‘On the house?’
‘Tempting, but I’m all done, thank you.’
‘Not even a banana split with squirty cream?’
‘Some other time, maybe.’ He gives me a bemused look. ‘But, um, just before you go … can I ask you something?’
‘We don’t give out our secret hot sauce recipe, Nate.’
He chuckles awkwardly. Now it’s him who’s twisting the vinegar bottle round and round.
‘Actually,’ I add, ‘it comes out of a three-litre plastic carton, like engine oil.’
We look at each other, and he smirks. ‘Erm, it’s not that,’ he murmurs. ‘You might think it’s out of order, actually …’
‘No, I won’t,’ I say, sensing myself reddening now, ‘unless you’re about to say something really pervy, and I really don’t think you’re the type �
�’ Oh God, what made me say that? Of course he’s not. He’s an upstanding man – a guardian of the highways, or however driving examiners see themselves. Even so, there was a flicker of something then, and with a jolt, the possibility occurs to me … Does Nate want to ask me out? Maybe I shouldn’t have told him all that stuff about Gary. I know Nate’s single now – sort of – but I’m definitely not, and even if Gary’s shagging half of Yorkshire I’d never go with anyone behind his back. But still, the thought of … well, someone like Nate, liking me …
I look down at him. ‘C’mon, Nate. Just spit it out. What d’you want to ask me?’
He chuckles, and now he’s blushing too. He puts his glasses back on and rakes back his light brown hair. ‘Okay – please do say if this is something you’d rather not do …’
‘Of course I will …’
‘Well, um, I was wondering, if you had the time and wouldn’t find it a completely awful experience …’ He beams hopefully.
I realise I am holding my breath.
‘… It’s Sinead’s birthday a week on Saturday,’ he adds. ‘I don’t suppose you’d help me to choose a present for her?’
Chapter Thirty-One
Sinead
It’s Abby who suggested I did another test. Abby who went through round after round of IVF, with all the hope and crashing disappointment, and would have given anything to be a mum.
‘And that was positive too?’ Rachel asks now.
‘Yes.’
‘How do you feel about this pregnancy?’
‘Pretty awful,’ I admit.
‘And why is that, Sinead?’ As usual, her expression remains entirely passive. Sometimes I wonder if she is a robot, plugged into the wall. In fact, even though I decided to restart my weekly sessions, I’m starting to wonder if she is the right person for me. Hesslevale is awash with therapists of every description – you could have someone interpret the veins on your eyeballs whilst wafting smouldering rosemary in your face if that’s what you wanted. It seems crazy now that I chose her because of her kind answerphone voice.