An Ordinary Girl

by Barabara Elsborg

  “I’m not going to pay you to babysit forever.”

  “This isn’t about money. It’s about what’s best for Noah.” Dalton kept telling himself that, as if repeating it could make it so.

  “Talking of the little pain, what’s he been up to today? Has he fucked that waitress?”

  “They met at the club and left together. This morning he told me he’d brought her back to the flat last night and fucked things up. She left, but he’s still interested. I made a plan to get them together again, but just before I got here, I had a call from Kay, the girl Ash lives with, to say Noah and Ash had been at the house but Noah stormed out and almost knocked Kay down in his haste to leave.”

  Ilya laughed. “Has he forgotten how to behave with women?”

  Dalton thought back to the way Noah and Ash had danced at the club. “I think he really likes her but he’s still battling his demons.”

  “He can use her for exorcism. But I don’t want him to get suspicious. No woman would put up with this sort of behavior for long. If he guesses we’ve paid her to tolerate it, he’ll be furious.”

  “Actually, I—”

  “This was a good idea, Dalton. His interest in Ash won’t last, which suits me fine. He’ll have dumped her before he suspects anything. If he’s fool enough to be taken in, we’ll pay her to dump him.”

  “But—”

  Ilya grunted. “Father’s party is the following Saturday. I want him there even if you have to drag him. And I want him behaving himself.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Ash had barely set foot in the house before Mike burst into the hall with a broad smile on his face. “Drink. Kitchen. Now.”

  “Bed. Tired. Now.” Ash’s heart leapt at the look of delight on Mike’s face.

  Kay appeared at Mike’s side and tucked her arm through his. “He’s been to the off-license and bought champagne. Proper bubbles, not the cheap stuff.”

  Mike slung his arm over Ash’s shoulder. “Hey, where’s my happy-faced housemate?”

  “She got dumped,” Kay said.

  Thanks, Kay.

  “Noah? God, that didn’t last long,” Mike said. “It wasn’t my fault was it, over that guy?”

  “No, he—”

  “Noah rushed out of here so fast.” Kay spoke over her. “He knocked me over on the stairs.”

  Well, that said it all, Ash thought.

  “Is that where you’ve been, Ash?” Mike asked. “You went after him? What happened?”

  “Nothing happened.” Not a bad thing for them to think she’d followed Noah.

  Ash ducked out from under Mike’s arm and went ahead into the kitchen. Ronan sat at the table, eating beans on toast and drinking champagne.

  She mustered a smile. “Gourmet dinner again?”

  “I’ve run out of caviar. Did I hear Noah’s name mentioned?” Ronan asked.

  Mike handed Ash a glass of champagne.

  “He’s dumped her,” Kay said.

  Oh Christ. Kay was pleased. Ash could hear it in her voice. It hurt to hear her say it, but it was the truth.

  “He walked out on you?” Ronan narrowed his eyes.

  “No, he raced out of here and Ash went after him, but looks like it’s still off,” said Kay.

  “You don’t need to sound so gleeful,” Mike said. “Are you okay, Ash?”

  “Fine. What are we celebrating?” she asked, desperate to deflect the attention from her and Noah before she burst into tears.

  “Freedom and happiness,” Mike said. “Here’s to fucking miracles.” He tapped his glass against each of theirs. “To Santa, the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny and the innate goodness of man.”

  Mike grabbed Kay and danced her around the kitchen. Ash smiled and sipped the champagne.

  “What’s up with him?” she asked Ronan.

  “Apart from the fact that he’s already drunk most of that?” Ronan nodded toward the empty bottle on the counter.

  “My brother’s having a baby,” Mike blurted.

  “That is a fucking miracle.” Kay laughed. “You could sell his story for a fortune.”

  “Way to go, Uncle Mike.” Ash raised her glass to him.

  “He and Sadie have been trying for years. They had IVF treatment. Cost them a fortune, but the last time it worked. She’s three-months pregnant.”

  Another piece slipped into the jigsaw and Ash was more sure than ever she’d done the right thing. Mike wouldn’t find out, no one would as long as Logan kept quiet. But the price she’d paid had been high. Not the money. She didn’t care about that. She did care what Noah thought of her.

  Her mobile vibrated in her pocket, and when she saw who was calling, her pulse jumped.

  “Hi.” Ash moved toward the door with the mobile pressed to her ear.

  “You at home?” Noah asked.

  Oh God, he wants to come back. “Yes.” She ran upstairs. “Where—”

  “Just wanted to be sure you hadn’t done anything stupid, like gone to see that loan shark.”

  Anger swamped her disappointment, and Ash slumped on her bed. “It has nothing to do with you, does it? You made it quite clear what you thought about interfering in other people’s affairs. You were the one who stormed out of here in a strop. Why should you care if that’s what I chose to do? You can’t have it both ways.”

  She switched off the phone and threw it on the floor.

  She’d done the right thing, hadn’t she? No way would Mike have taken the money from her, even as a loan. Except Ash couldn’t silence the niggling voice in her head reminding her she didn’t want anyone to know about her money and that was the reason she’d done it secretly.

  Thank God she hadn’t completed the rest of her question to Noah—Where are you and how soon can you be here?

  Forget him.

  Forget him.

  Forget him.

  * * * * *

  She lay in bed, reading, not taking in a word, when someone knocked. Please don’t be Kay. “Come in.”

  Ronan popped his head around the door. “Can I have a word?”

  Ash put her book aside, sat up and hugged her knees.

  Ronan closed the door and perched at the bottom of the bed. “What happened with Noah?”

  Shit. “I guess…we weren’t compatible. Different views on what’s right and wrong.”

  “You okay?”

  Ash smiled. “Yep. I’ll just have to keep kissing those frogs.” God, don’t let me cry. Alarmed how close she felt to breaking down, Ash chewed the inside of her cheeks.

  Ronan shuffled closer, took her hand and fixed her with his dark gaze. “You almost make me wish I was…different.”

  Her throat began to close and her eyes prickled. Ash forced a smile to her face.

  “You deserve to be happy, Ash.”

  “I am happy.” She smiled even more broadly. Shit, not too much or I’ll look like the Cheshire Cat.

  “You think you can fool me? You’re always smiling, but half the time, it doesn’t reach your eyes. I’m an expert on reading people and I know you’re not happy.”

  Ash opened her mouth and then closed it without saying anything.

  “You spend your life doing things for others. The Citizens Advice Bureau, the garden work, looking after us in this house. You pick up our crap, organize us and do more than your share of everything.”

  She shook her head.

  “We know nothing about you,” Ronan whispered. “You never mention your past, which makes me think something bad happened, but you don’t want us to pity you. Nor do you want to feel like a victim, so you cheerfully carry on making the best of your life or at least pretending to. You’re all service to others but you’re not thinking of making your own life better.”

  “I like to help people,” she muttered, floundering under his words.

  “Because that makes you feel better. But you’re hiding behind your smile. Taking care of others is your way to avoid brooding on your own life.”

  Was she so transparent?
Ash struggled to steady her breathing. Had all this been for nothing? All the barriers she’d erected, fantasies she’d created—everything useless?

  “I’m not asking you to tell me what happened to make you like this, but don’t let it blight the life you have. You deserve to be loved, Ash.”

  The pain in her heart radiated all over her chest and spread through her body.

  Ronan stroked her cheek. “I want you to have someone special.”

  “Mike doesn’t have anyone. Neither does Kay,” she blurted.

  “I’m talking about you.”

  Ash gulped.

  “Mike changed tonight. It was as if a weight had lifted from his shoulders. I suspect that had nothing to do with his brother’s baby. Maybe you know more?” He raised his eyebrows.

  Oh God.

  “As for Kay,” Ronan scowled, “she doesn’t yet deserve someone special because she’s not learned how to be special to someone.”

  “You don’t have anyone,” she said.

  “No, no, no.” He shook his head. “We’re not talking about me. So, Noah’s not the one?”

  She tried to say “no” but the word log-jammed in her throat, restrained by her heart.

  “You went after him?” Ronan asked.

  Ash squirmed. Shedidn’t like lying to Ronan. She had the distinct impression he’d know.

  “So you do feel something for him.”

  “He’s mixed up,” Ash said. “It’s too tempting to help him, to try to sort him out, but he doesn’t want that.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure. Sometimes people don’t know what they want. The Metro said he was a hero and saved a soldier’s life.”

  “I don’t think it was straightforward,” Ash muttered.

  “When is anything straightforward? Excuse the cliché, but maybe he needs to come to terms with what happened out there before he can move on with his life here.”

  “I don’t think he’d talk to me about Afghanistan.”

  “Have you asked him what happened? Pressed him?”

  “He told me some of it, but I didn’t press him, no.” How could she when she dreaded someone doing the same to her? Ash looked straight at Ronan. “Maybe he never will come to terms with it. Maybe it was so bad he can never face it. But that doesn’t mean he can’t live a normal life, does it? He has to put it behind him. Terrible things happen in the world and life goes on, the world keeps turning. I— He can be happy.” Shit, shit. Ash hoped Ronan hadn’t noticed that slip.

  She saw his lip twitch. Oh damn.

  “Want to give him another chance?” he asked.

  “It’s me he doesn’t want. Not the other way round.”

  * * * * *

  Kay didn’t dare to linger. She didn’t want Ronan to open the door and find her listening. She slipped back into her room and flopped on her bed, her fists clenched in anger. So she didn’t yet deserve someone special because she hadn’t learned how to be special to someone. Fucking bastard. She screwed up the duvet in her fists, twisting the material. Kay did deserve someone special. She was as nice a person as Ash.

  Nicer.

  She cooked for everyone sometimes. She gave Ash fashion advice. She always paid her way in the pub. Just because Kay didn’t devote her life to being a do-gooder, didn’t mean she was selfish. Though Kay had changed her mind about Noah. Ash was right about him. He was fucked up. Kay needed someone to take care of her, not the other way round. But Ash didn’t deserve someone as good-looking as him. They looked cool together and that annoyed Kay. She was the model. She was the one everyone was supposed to want.

  Ash aggravated Kay more and more.

  “Do you mind if I take your washing out of the machine?”

  “Is it okay if I cook first tonight?”

  “I saw the shampoo you use on sale so I bought you some.”

  She was too bloody…good. Except Kay hadn’t missed that slip Ash had made. Something bad had happened to her. Like Ronan, Kay had noticed that Ash never talked about her parents or her past. She’d told them she’d been in care, but that was all. Maybe she was abused or something. Kay shuddered. Weirdo. She tried to muster sympathy and came up with nothing.

  * * * * *

  When the horn tooted outside at ten the next morning, Ash grabbed her work jacket, flicked on the burglar alarm and locked the front door. A white van idled outside, Green Piece written on the side in flowery, emerald lettering. Ash pulled on her jacket as she hurried down the path. Martin waved from the driver’s seat.

  Ash climbed in and put on her safety belt. “’Morning.”

  “’Morning, Ash.”

  “How’s Cindy?”

  Martin’s wife had multiple sclerosis but was currently in remission.

  “Pretty good. She might come and see how we’re getting on later.”

  “Great.”

  Martin turned the van onto the main road and almost instantly became snarled in traffic. “I swear it gets worse every day.”

  Which was why Ash didn’t bother buying a car, but the van was needed to take all the gardening equipment to and from the site currently under conversion. Nothing could be left there overnight, not unless it was chained to an object the size of the Titanic. So far, the completed gardens had not been subject to theft or vandalism. It gave Ash hope.

  “Pete, Jan and Valerie are already there,” Martin said. “Stuart’s on the way. Jack and Bob sent their apologies but they’ve been offered paid work this week. I told Pete to carry on clearing the area adjoining the school. Another skip’s due this morning. Any news from our mysterious employer about the next project? If he can’t find one, I could look again. He went with Leopold Road after I suggested it. I’m sure I could locate another where a crime’s—”

  “Trevor’s looking at one in Hither Green,” Ash said. “He told me we’d definitely have work for another twelve months.”

  Martin sighed in relief. Ash knew he worried about working for a company that dished money out, but never took money back into the coffers. Martin was the only paid employee of Green Piece. Everyone else was a volunteer, though they did receive travel expenses.

  “Thought any more about the Chelsea Flower Show?” Martin asked.

  God no. “I don’t—”

  “I think we stand a really good chance of being accepted in the small garden category. What we’re doing is great for the environment and for local people. We use volunteers and must tick loads of boxes for eligibility. I’m still a member of the Royal Horticultural Society. I think it’s worth a shot.”

  “Trevor doesn’t want that sort of publicity.”

  “Why the hell not? We might get more funds, someone else to sponsor us so we could take on more employees, more projects.”

  Oh Christ. “He likes to do things quietly.”

  Martin sighed. “We can keep his name out of it. Chelsea would be such a coup. It’s something I’ve always dreamed about, but as an individual, I’d never get the chance to enter. We could do this as a team. Everyone would love it.”

  Pile on the pressure, why don’t you? “Well, how about you do a written proposal and I’ll show it to him.”

  “I’ve already done a plan. Could we both go and see him? See if I can persuade him?”

  No. “I’ll ask. You know how weird he is about meeting people.”

  “I’ve been thinking…”

  She wished he wouldn’t.

  “About Leopold Road,” Martin said.

  Ash particularly wished he wouldn’t think about that.

  “We need to find someone to do an article about it. It’s a local interest story, bad place turned good. I even wondered if we could get a TV company interested.”

  Oh fuck. Ash could feel time running out on the fantasy she’d created. She didn’t think of it as lying, though she supposed it was. Trying not to shoot yet another idea down in flames, Ash perched on a metaphorical fence and skillfully changed the subject onto the day’s work. Once Martin ran with that, she breathed a silent sigh of r
elief.

  It had all seemed so simple when she’d set this up. Easier to invent a boss no one saw than explain how she could afford to fund the whole shebang. In retrospect, employing someone as creative and talented as Martin had been a mistake, but once she’d read his resume, heard his wife had MS and that he needed a job where he could dash home when needed, Ash had no choice.

  Martin was the design expert and a large percent of the brawn of Green Piece. Without him and his boundless enthusiasm, Ash couldn’t have made it work. He’d accepted the story of Trevor, her philanthropic uncle, who pretty soon was going to go on an extended trip around the world. Or maybe Ash could kill him off, only she doubted that would solve much.

  Once they arrived at the site, Ash stopped worrying. There was too much to do to spend time fretting about stuff that hadn’t happened yet. She greeted all the volunteers, sorted out a few minor issues and made a list of what she needed to do that day.

  The neglected patch of ground next to the primary school had already been transformed merely by clearing away the rubbish that had been thrown there. It was a sad truth that one discarded item acted like a magnet for all the crap in the neighborhood. Washing machines had given birth to fridges and broken bikes. The council had provided free skips for the rubbish, offered plants from their parks and gardens department and Ash had persuaded three local building supply merchants to donate gravel for the pathways. It wasn’t that she couldn’t afford to buy the stuff, but she wanted people to have an investment in the transformations.

  Ash had a meeting later that morning with the local community leaders who had their own ideas about what they wanted to see on the small plot of land. Whatever they came up with, it had to be low-maintenance and safe. Once the work was finished, the upkeep was the responsibility of the neighborhood.

  She picked up a spade and started digging.

  * * * * *

  Ronan was ticked off. He had two canvases in his studio he needed to finish for a commission and instead he was back at Noah’s flat. No point waiting until Friday to see the idiot, Ronan doubted he’d turn up for their session. Pity. Noah needed to be taught a lesson. Ronan pressed his finger on the buzzer and kept it there.