A Part of Me

by Anouska Knight

  ‘Just remember, Amy, you may have been off enjoying city living these last few years, but Earleswicke is still your community. There’ll be nothing for anyone here to do if they take the community centre. Well, they can go whistle. They’re not having it.’ I felt my eyes widen before falling back to the screen and that name again. The WI was supposed to keep Mum out of trouble. Give her some blue face paint and a kilt and she was about ripe to give Mel Gibson a run for his money.

  ‘If it’s not viable, Mum, it’s not viable. Buildings cost money to run,’ I said, reviewing the figures for Bywater’s building on screen. The numbers did look a little offensive, but that was the point. There was no way he was going to ask me to work on the mill, not at these fees. Good. It wasn’t like I didn’t have enough on my plate at work.

  Mum huffed wearily. ‘The council absolutely has the money to run the community centre, Amy.’

  ‘So? What’s their issue, then?’ I asked, copying Bywater’s email address from the papers on the table next to me.

  ‘What do you think? What is always the issue, the stingy swines?’ Vivian asked.

  I gave up concentrating on my task until Braveheart got through with her rabble-rousing. ‘They can get more money for it if they just get rid?’

  ‘Bingo. They’ll flatten it, and build a car park, or a ruddy pole-dancing club.’

  ‘Probably,’ I agreed absently ‘Although on the bright side, it’d give you somewhere more lively to hold your WI meetings.’

  ‘You could at least pretend to be interested, Amy. It would be different if it were your gym that was about to close down. You practically live at the place, you’d have something to say then.’

  ‘Not any more,’ I reminded myself. James had killed that one for me. I sucked in a deep breath and sank back against the hard dining chair. ‘I’ve got to get through these emails, Mum,’ I said, nodding at the screen between us.

  She took the hint. ‘Right then, I’ll leave you to it. Would you like a nice slice of this key lime pie Sue’s sent back for you?’

  I rubbed a new tension from the side of my head. Did everyone know about my failed personal life? ‘Not until I’m back at the gym.’

  A run-down of all the meals Mum had watched me eat since I’d been staying here flashed through my mind like some sick calorific version of The Generation Game. No gym meant I was going to have to start jogging. I hated jogging. Mum lingered in the doorway. ‘You know, you don’t need to be so controlled all of the time, sweetheart. It’s okay to loosen the reins from time to time.’ I smiled to pacify her. It was quicker than going into the finer details of my fitness regime and the reasons for it. Mum had gained a little after her menopause, but she’d taken it all in her stride. What my mother constantly seemed to forget though, was that I wasn’t in my fifties yet. It probably wasn’t the best idea I’d had at the time, but I’d immersed myself in the horror stories, endless forum threads, post after post about the average weight gain in that first year after surgery. Twenty to thirty pounds, I’d read. Twenty to thirty pounds.

  ‘Have you thought any more about how long you’re planning on staying, Amy?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘You know you’re welcome to stay as long as you wish, darling, and I’ll support you in whatever you choose. But it would be good to know what your plans are.’

  ‘My plans aren’t really working out at the minute. But I’ll let you know if any light bulbs appear over my head.’

  ‘I know, sweetheart. I’m just worried about you. I’ve been quite excited about having a new grandchild, too, you know. If that’s not going to happen, I’d like to know, Amy.’

  I was suddenly tempted to go and comfort myself with a huge wedge of Sue Shackleton’s key lime pie. Mum had only been home two minutes and I was already in need of a sugar rush. I began pretending to tap out the email to accompany Bywater’s fee proposal, in hopes my bad influence would finally take her cue and bugger off.

  Dear Mr Bywater,

  Please find attached quote. Hopefully, by the time you receive this email, you’ll have done yourself a real injury, and will no longer be in need of our assistance.

  I ran back through the text. I wish. I sunk my finger into the delete key and watched the words disappear again. Mum hadn’t moved. I tapped away.

  Dear Mr Bywater,

  Work for you? I’d rather pull my own eyelids off.

  I deleted it again and sneaked a glance at Mum. She was thinking about leaving me to it, I could tell. Third time lucky.

  Bywater,

  I’d love to see someone kick your arse with your own peg leg.

  I bit at the smile forming on my bottom lip and squinted at his name again.

  Mum had just skulked off into the hallway when the doorbell suddenly echoed to life. She always locked the door after nine, Guy was probably trying to get in after driving a sleepless Harry around. I listened for the sound of their voices. Then I heard him, asking like some vampire to be invited in.

  Mum began dithering in the hallway over her choices. I held my finger on the delete button and cleared my throat. ‘It’s okay, Mum. He can come in,’ I said, apprehensively rising to my feet. James was still in his suit when he appeared in the dining-room doorway, one hand in his pocket, the other fidgeting around his keys. I watched him pull that vulnerable dip of his head, glancing up with uncertain cherubic blue eyes. It didn’t have the same effect it used to.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  I took a few steps backwards and leant against the radiator on the wall there. James took it as invitation.

  ‘Can we talk?’ he said softly. ‘Please? Somewhere … private?’

  I slid my hands into the back pockets of my jeans. ‘Where would you suggest, James? You know all the best spots for privacy. We could go to the gym, or the boardroom, if you like?’ I couldn’t help myself. This was the stuff we didn’t have time to hack our way through on our fast-track to relationship recovery, but I just couldn’t help it.

  James looked up at the ceiling and sighed. ‘Please, Ame. Let’s not do this again. I want to make it right. I love you. You know I do.’

  ‘And have you informed Sadie of that too, James? Or are you keeping that option open?’ James closed the dining-room doors behind him.

  ‘Sadie’s nothing, Amy. I told her that night, that you’re the only one. Now you know, she hasn’t got anything over me any more. I haven’t spoken to her since, I swear it. Not even at work.’

  At least that last bit was probably true. Sadie had been off sick most of the week. My stomach tightened thinking about her. James came a little closer. ‘I need to be with you, Amy. I need us to be together again. A family.’

  James knew how to knock all of the air right out from inside me. The radiator was too hot behind me, but I tried to hold on to it anyway. I needed something to take my focus from James’ sugar-coated words. ‘I can’t talk about this now, James. Not here, like this.’

  ‘So come home. Please, Amy. We can work through this, I know we can. We’re a team. We’ve pulled through worse because we stuck together. Come back home with me, Amy, please?’ James leant in and cradled my head in his palm. There were lines to his face that hadn’t been there when we’d met. He was no less handsome for them. I realised that this was everything Mum had ever hoped for. The man who had wronged her pleading for another chance, promising a lifetime all neatly wrapped up in a white picket fence.

  But it felt wrong.

  It was going to be hard fighting our way back to okay, but I realised it was going to be even more difficult pretending we were already there. I gently moved James’s hand. ‘I need some time, James. I need to be sure of what’s happening here. I don’t … trust the choices I might make right now.’ I’d never been like this, unsure as to what move to make, which path to take for the best solution. I didn’t like feeling so out of control, bad things happen when you’re out of control.

  James held his position. ‘That’s fair, Amy. It’s more than fair.
But we don’t have time, do we? Anna could call any time now, we both know that. What do you want us to say to her while you’re thinking on everything?’

  Cool nervousness swept over my neck. James knew he had me in a corner, just as I knew it was the best I could hope for. Bringing our child home was the priority, everything else we could sort through after the adoption was finalised.

  James knew what I would say before I said it. ‘We say nothing, James. She only wants to arrange a meeting to talk through the matching process.’

  ‘And what if we’ve already been matched?’

  ‘Matching can take months, James.’

  ‘And sometimes it doesn’t. You know that, Amy. They could have had a child in mind for us for months, you know it happens. If Anna turns up with a child’s file, are you going to turn around and tell her that you need time?’

  He was right. These were the thoughts that had been banging around my head when I didn’t fill my mind with other things. It had been a month since the panel had approved us, Anna would be in touch any time now. James turned at the movement out in the hallway. We watched my mother’s broken silhouette move past the mottled glass. ‘Let me make you dinner, tomorrow night?’ he said. ‘We can talk properly, without company.’

  This was what I knew had to happen. It had to, or there was no chance of Anna not suspecting something was going on with us. But the offer of dinner nearly had me breaking out in a nervous sweat. My scrawny plan was already falling down. Put a brave face on to the world – yes. Jump back into dinners for two and bed-sharing? I didn’t think I was ready to do that. ‘No dinner, James. No distractions. Just talk.’

  He was watching me, careful blue eyes trained on their target. He seemed more than ready to slide right back into normality. The thought of it made my skin prickle, but that was what we needed, after all. To pretend Sadie had never happened, our family never jeopardised.

  James nodded. It was a small victory for him and we both knew it. I felt as though I’d just been handed my own heart to hold. ‘I have to get back to this fee proposal, James. I’ll come over, but not tomorrow. I’m behind at work, I have contractors waiting on me. After the weekend, things will be quieter.’ James nodded again, resuming a more rigid posture. He glanced at the papers on the dining table.

  ‘The proposal’s not for that tit in the baseball cap, is it? What was his name?’ James began to play with his keys again. He’d achieved his goal.

  ‘Bywater.’

  ‘Bywater? What’s a guy like him doing at Cyan anyway?’

  Outshining James on the big-boy injuries, if I remembered correctly. I moved past him and opened the dining-room doors. James followed me slowly across the hallway. ‘Who wears a baseball cap over the age of fifteen, anyway? Knob.’

  I didn’t give the obvious answer of James’s golfing buddies. Instead, I opened the front door for him and watched him through it.

  James turned on the step, his eyes cautious. He was sizing me up, surveying me like one of his buildings, working out where was safe to tread. ‘Look, I’m mostly on site for the rest of the week so I won’t hassle you, Ame. But we are gonna talk soon, right?’ I was still nodding when he leant in unexpectedly and kissed me chastely on the mouth. I watched, rigid and ineffectual as he turned and walked away. James was efficient in the art of closing deals. For some reason, I remembered the time I’d nearly been had by a smarmy car salesman.

  I closed the door after him.

  ‘Everything all right, sweetheart? I was just coming to put the kettle on.’ Mum was about as subtle as an atom-bomb.

  I nodded and passed her into the dining room. She knew not to ask, leaving me to tidy up my work things in peace. I didn’t spend long at my laptop, I didn’t even sit. James had thrown my head for the rest of the night, so I fired off Bywater’s email and, much to Mum’s dismay, headed upstairs.

  I was hoping sleep would find me more easily tonight, but the hours soon slipped away as I replayed James’s visit through my mind. At least the time issues we were facing with Anna were something we were both aware of. A small voice had been whispering to me that James might take the upheaval of the last couple of weeks as his opportunity to change his mind, to pull out altogether, but he’d sounded genuinely concerned tonight that we be ready for our next meeting with Anna.

  I tried to visualise it all being okay, the two of us and the child we didn’t yet know, living somewhere picturesque and wholesome, like the mill. Fishing on the riverbank, balloon-adorned birthday parties on the lawns, friends and family coming over with their own kids. We didn’t need a super-home. We didn’t need anything but the people in that picture, yet still it felt like an unreachable fantasy. And still sleep evaded me.

  CHAPTER 8

  ‘ER, HOUSTON? WE have a problem.’

  The delicate issue of cohabitation was always going to have to be tackled at some point. This morning, that time had come. With my back to most of the office, I couldn’t see Sadie without swivelling my chair, so for nearly three hours, I hadn’t, locked in position like a stiff neck. Sadie had proven Phil wrong and had made it past the eleven-thirty benchmark, the time by which Phil had bet a fiver that Sadie would’ve cried off sick again.

  Hannah was admiring a crisp five-pound note, Blu-tacked to her monitor. It was a momentous occasion that saw Phil lose a bet. One small step for Hannah, but a giant leap for office junior-kind.

  Phil’s chair squeaked again. Hers hadn’t stopped swivelling all morning. It wasn’t yet noon and so far, her hawkish monitoring of Sadie’s end of the office had produced a near constant commentary of whispers and tuts.

  ‘Ame!’ she muttered for the umpteenth time. I carried on with the lighting plan the contractors were patiently waiting on. I didn’t need to know what Sadie was doing now. ‘It’s work-related, I promise. You really need to deal with this before Adrian does.’

  That wasn’t necessarily good to hear either. ‘Don’t tell me the shop-fitters are working from superseded drawings again?’ Someone was in trouble if they were. I skipped around the workstation to Phil’s desk. Open on the screen was Phil’s cc’d copy of the email I’d sent to Rohan Bywater.

  ‘What about it?’ I asked. Phil gave me a few more seconds to work out what the problem was. ‘I had to give him your details, Phil, because I can’t work with him! The guy’s a big kid. Please be the point of contact on this if he takes us on?’

  Phil pursed her lips as if about to whistle through them. ‘Er, I don’t think he’s going to take us on, Ame.’

  Off the back of Phil’s expression, I tried to remember the figure I’d ended up quoting him. ‘I gave him a second option on the fees.’ I shrugged. It wasn’t like I’d priced him out of using Cyan completely.

  ‘The fees? Amy! I didn’t get as far as the attachments! I’ve just scrolled down the email to get to them and, and …’ Phil actually appeared lost for words. ‘Are you mad?’ She jabbed a pen at her monitor. ‘Read,’ she instructed. I skimmed over the email I’d hastily sent the night before, mumbling through the text.

  Dear Mr Bywater,

  Further to our earlier conversation, please find the attached fee proposal outlining our costs for the interior redesign of Briddleton Mill House, areas as specified on the accompanying plan. We have drafted two fee options for your consideration, as attached.

  If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact my colleague, Philippa Penrose, on the above number.

  Best Regards,

  Amy Alwood

  It was only a little buck-passing. It usually took a lot more to get Phil’s knickers in a twist. ‘I don’t see the problem? It’s polite, professional …’ I joked.

  Phil had that rarest of gifts, the ability to bestow a full-bodied smile that held absolutely no warmth to it. ‘Scroll down the page, Miss Polite Professional,’ she instructed.

  I exhaled and began scrolling through the screen. Beneath my message, a large blank space stretched out several lines further down the screen. I carried
on moving down through the whiteness, until that name appeared again.

  Bywater,

  I’d love to see someone kick your arse with your own peg leg.

  A whoosh of breath rushed into my lungs. It wasn’t unlike a scene from Indiana Jones when someone opens the crypt and the air gets sucked away before all hell breaks loose. ‘Oh shit! Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!’

  Phil sat open-mouthed. ‘You got that right. Why the hell did you write that on the end of a client’s email?’

  I stared panic-stricken at the screen, willing the words in front of me to change. They didn’t. Well, that was that then. I slapped a hand against my stupid forehead. ‘Adrian is going to hit the roof. He’s going to sack me. I’ve just given him the perfect excuse to get rid—’

  ‘Calm down,’ Phil soothed. ‘You didn’t copy Adrian in on it. You’re just gonna have to call this guy up, quick, and, er …’

  ‘And what, Phil? Apologise for insulting him? Or for being so professionally inept that I didn’t check my own email before hitting SEND?’ I slumped into the free chair beside Phil, covering my face with my hands. ‘I must have pressed the return button, instead of delete. I moved the words out of view,’ I said shakily. I began to tap the heels of my hands against my forehead. ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid!’

  *

  My desk phone began ringing out behind us. We all ignored it. All morning I’d wished for something, anything, to take my mind off Sadie sitting a few yards further down the office, flanked by her own team of whispering chair-swivellers. Now I had it. I was going to lose my job. I’d managed to pluck up the guts to come back here, and now I was going to have to explain to Anna anyway that I’d been sacked for abusing a guy with only one leg.

  The ringing at my phone cut out, promptly replaced by a tinnier ringing at Hannah’s desk.

  ‘Hannah speaking?’ Hannah turned in her chair to face me. ‘Yep, she’s just talking to Phil.’ Hannah’s eyes widened. ‘Hang on a sec.’ She covered over the mouthpiece. ‘Ally’s got Mr Bywater on the reception phone. He’s asking to be put through to you.’