‘Do you think he might be up for joining the WI?’ Viv asked sarcastically. ‘We could do with a yoga expert. I think I’ll suggest that tonight.’
‘Probably,’ I mused. Carter would probably do anything for a stick of liquorice.
With Ofsted threatening an inspection, Mum said a quick goodbye and practically burnt rubber getting back out onto the lane. I walked the long way around the back of the mill, so as not to disturb Carter with the annoyances of noisy kitten heels on the gangway beneath him. He probably wasn’t trying to pull a crane pose out of the bag, but I didn’t want to risk throwing him off just in case.
I’d nearly come right up on the mill’s kitchen doors when I noticed the motorbike in the rear yard.
Rohan wanted a simply designed kitchen, freestanding handcrafted open units that I’d begun planning spatially. I’d already touched base with three local carpenters to produce the framework, oak to match the exposed beams throughout the mill. Each had agreed to come back with quotes within twenty-four hours of me forwarding them the drawings, which I would, by Friday, so long as Rohan agreed the appliances we’d need to fit in there. I opened my satchel taking the drawings and brochures I’d collected from Cyan’s samples library yesterday, and began walking the balding waterside path towards the boathouse.
A bug flittered around my head as I negotiated my way across the grass, heels desperate to sink into the still-soft ground. Today, I realised, felt like the first real nod that summer was finally on its way. It was the first day I hadn’t bothered with a jacket, warm enough in a cotton shirt and charcoal wide-leg trousers. I’d bundled my hair up, pinning loose curls out of the way after spending an irritating amount of time yesterday tucking it all behind my ears.
The door into the boathouse was closed when I reached it. I raised my knuckles to knock, then held off for a second while I considered the time. It occurred to me for a moment that Rohan might still be sleeping. I’d taken it that he worked from home, but he’d already pointed out that he didn’t have a schedule as such to get up for. I was still chewing over that thought when the door swung open. A petite woman with surf-blonde bed-hair stood the other side. I smiled awkwardly, glancing down at the motorcycle helmet in her arms, wondering how it was she could have bed-hair yet perfectly applied eyeliner flicks.
I tried not to look awkward. ‘Sorry, is … Rohan in?’
She was appraising me, too. She stepped forward a little as Rohan, still subdued with sleepiness and the exhaustion of other night-time pursuits, came to stand behind her. He ran one hand up the back of his head, the other clamped firmly around the bed-sheet tucked around his waist. It wasn’t seeing the flat expanse of his broad chest that made my cheeks burn up, or the way his stomach muscles bunched and relaxed like an undulating river current, but the girl, watching me as I tried to avoid looking at it all.
A small, shrewd smile and she looked just as she had in the photos stuck to the wall behind her.
‘Morning,’ she said.
‘Hi.’
She wriggled out through the doorway past me. Neither Rohan nor the girl said a word to each other before she walked back up the path towards her motorbike.
‘Coffee?’ he asked, walking further back into the workshop. His voice was still gritty with inertia and other, more vigorous things probably. I bumbled in after him, the woman’s accusatory smile still clear in my mind like a strobe of light that doesn’t disappear when you close your eyes to it.
As he moved down the boathouse, I caught the whelk of bruising riding bluish purple up over the back of his ribcage. He needed to forget the brace contraption he and Carter were so preoccupied with and start inventing something that would better protect the rest of his body.
‘Um, I just wanted to … run through a few things with you,’ I said, regarding the papers in my arms, all accurate and comprehensive and crisply folded. I was suddenly conscious that the world was divided into two types of women: the sexy motor-girls with wild hair and feline eye flicks, and the starchy cold-callers with their paperwork and Smeg appliance brochures.
My eyes slid over towards the post-apocalyptic sofa bed. Rohan disappeared behind a makeshift hanging rail the other side of the crime scene. ‘Fire away,’ he called, his voice steadily coming back to life as he dressed.
I looked back at the door. ‘You know, we can do this up at the mill, when you’re ready. I’ll go and wait for—’
‘But you’ve just walked down here,’ he countered. ‘Grab a seat, I just need a minute.’ I silently puffed out my cheeks a little and gave a parting glance to the boathouse’s open door. I opened out a brochure and stared hard into it once Rohan emerged from his modesty screen, still shirtless but thankfully donning a pair of long canvas shorts. ‘Let’s have us some coffee; I need a coffee.’ There was a new inflection to his voice, a detachment I hadn’t heard before now.
He moved around the kitchenette while I pretended to study a table of information I already knew by heart. The shorts weren’t safe enough for me to look over there, exposing his prosthetic leg below, and naked torso above. I briefly wondered which of these two poles would ultimately hold more sway with Phil, pulling her to her final verdict on Rohan Bywater’s physical status. Disabled or Abled? With only a pair of canvas shorts between them. From here, Rohan Bywater very definitely looked able-bodied.
‘We need to run through what you’d like in the kitchen, appliances and worktops,’ I said, flicking to a page I’d already dog-eared for him. Rohan pushed his head through a baggy red tee. The colour seemed to darken his skin and lighten the brown of his hair, all at once. ‘I know they’re expensive, but there’s a composite in here that I think will be perfect for you. It’s incredibly hard-wearing, and we can look at the moulded sinks, which will be more hygienic if you boys are going to be rinsing things like injuries off in there.’ Bywater brought two milky drinks over, taking the stool opposite, and began flicking through another of the brochures. ‘There’s more scope for colour, if you wanted to go with something like Corian, or if you want to remain more neutral, a granite would be another option.’ Rohan eyed the notes I’d already made in the margins and gave a long drawn-out whistle.
‘Two to seven hundred pounds per linear metre? What’s it made from, crack cocaine?’ he laughed.
I sat up straighter. Rohan closed the brochure and took a long drink from his mug, pushing the other closer to me. ‘I want the mill to look good, for sure, but other than having the place sale-ready, I’m not that precious about what you do here. I trust your …’ he began to move his hands flamboyantly, ‘vision.’
I tried not to smile at him mocking my industry. ‘Sale-ready? You’ve only just bought it.’
‘I know,’ he said matter-of-factly, ‘but I get itchy feet, I don’t tend to stay in one place for long. In a couple of years, when the time comes, I’m going to want a quick sale.’
Itchy feet? Athlete’s foot wouldn’t drive me from this place. I’d dreamt of raising a gaggle of children in a home like the mill, who hadn’t? Rope swing over the water, family dog frolicking in the river behind … I’d hack off my itching feet with a rusty butter knife before being walked off by them anywhere else.
I picked up my drink. ‘So how far are you trusting my vision, Rohan? This house deserves a certain standard of finish. Buyers will expect it.’
‘Agreed. But I’m not paying crazy money for worktops. You’re right, they look great but if I had money to burn, I’d probably spend it on another set of ramps, or a new truck – not something that will endure rigorous cucumber slicing for the next billennia.’
I hadn’t taken full-fat milk in my drinks for years, but Rohan was awakening my appreciation for frothy coffee. ‘You might have a lot of cucumber slicing to do some day,’ I offered, taking a sip. ‘My mother used to cram the stuff into my school lunchbox, five days a week.’
Rohan smiled. ‘You don’t like cucumber?’
‘Not now,’ I said, enjoying the silky smoothness of creamy coffee.
His smile grew into a grin, the first one this morning. ‘Maybe you should have asked your dad to pack your lunch, might’ve got the odd tomato instead?’
I took another satisfying gulp. ‘His arms weren’t quite long enough to reach all the way back into his murky past to our chopping board, unfortunately.’ I smiled.
Rohan nodded to himself, holding his smile out of courtesy, I suspected.
‘I don’t think I need to worry about school lunches. I’m kind of a one-man band. Carter gets jealous otherwise,’ he joked.
I wondered what Carter thought about the blonde who’d just left, before engrossing myself in the five-burner hobs section.
‘What?’ he said.
‘What?’
‘The cock of the eyebrow.’
A warmth started to spread across my cheeks, damn it, my eyebrows already trying to cock around again.
‘Ah, I get it.’
‘Get what?’ I replied dubiously.
‘The look. I get the look. Megan, who you kinda met just now, she’s an old—’
‘Honestly, it is none of my business.’ I didn’t mean to cut him off.
He nodded to himself while I progressed to the cooker hoods, wishing I’d have just let him finish. ‘So, do you still see your dad?’ he finally asked.
His question caught me off guard. ‘Um, occasionally. When he’s allowed to revisit the inhabitants of his old life.’ I smiled, sounding irrefutably like my mother. I was making excuses for my father’s lack of interest – I don’t think Petra had ever locked him in the wardrobe to stop him coming to see us.
‘Maybe he thinks it’s better for you that he keeps his distance?’ And for the second time, Rohan had thrown me off balance.
‘What kind of sense does that make?’ I asked, taking the bait.
Rohan frowned. ‘I’m just saying, maybe he thinks he’s not a good enough father to impose himself on you too often?’
I wasn’t really sure where we were heading with this, so I decided bowing out was the best option. ‘Maybe,’ I agreed. ‘Parenting is daunting for some, I guess. Complicated.’ But the sentiment flopped out of my mouth like a slice of flaccid cucumber.
‘Pretty un-complicated, if you ask me,’ he said, leaning against the workbench. ‘If you think you’re not going to do a good job of it, why even try when the stakes are so high?’
‘Those are fairly ambiguous parameters you’re talking about there. Define not going to do a good job of it.’
Rohan seemed surprised by me now. ‘People are who they are.’ He shrugged. ‘Some are better at nurturing, some aren’t. Some know their own limits and try to work around that. It’s no good expecting a person to be something they’re not, just because you like the way the idea sounds.’
I wasn’t sure I understood. ‘So, you’re saying it’s okay not to bother, with your own children even, so long as you’re upfront about it?’
‘No, I’m just saying it’s always better to be upfront. You can’t hide from who you are. It’s like, I know I’m never going to get a nine-to-five job selling mobile phones. I’m not going to kill myself working in a job I hate so I can pay for a timeshare in Costa del England, and I’m definitely not going to ever settle down and have a bunch of kids to worry about. None of those things are me. None of those things will ever be me,’ he added, sinking those last few words into his cup.
It was foolish to feel resentful towards his certainty, but I did. How did he know how he would feel in another ten years’ time, when his friends were all enjoying their own families and the right woman came along? I understood the principles of freedom, but to shut any door indefinitely … that I couldn’t understand.
‘You know, you should never say never. Children change people.’
He shook his head. ‘Not all people can be changed, Amy.’
Well, at least he was upfront about it. I decided against adding anything further. Rohan had obviously had enough, too. He gathered up our cups and walked casually away from the workbench. ‘It should be harder for people to have children. No one messes up a kid more than a bad parent.’
CHAPTER 13
JAMES HAD PRETENDED not to be impressed by the mill when he picked me up. I’d expected the surveyor in him to wangle a full tour, but he was aloof when Rohan had come to lock the mill up after me. When Carter had complimented him on his new BMW, James was borderline rude.
He hadn’t warmed up much on our way here, but then I wasn’t exactly chewing his ears off either.
James had accepted the reasons I gave for not wanting to go back to the house with him, I didn’t mention the visual reminders of what was at stake if we couldn’t make this work again. I knew they’d only confuse the situation. A clear head seemed the best I could offer myself, and as James was reluctant to talk at Mum’s, this seemed the obvious choice. Jackson’s Park, the perennial middle ground.
The bollards were still down when we reached the car park. Silently James pulled into one of the bays facing the common and shut off the engine. Hazy late-afternoon sun dappled through the greenery onto the cyclists and dog-walkers, still milling around on the network of pathways cutting their patterns across the parkland. I’d rollerbladed every one of these paths. Cycled them, tried out my new Walkman for the first time on them, flown kites and Frisbees, even the all-singing remote-controlled car that Guy had stubbornly never accepted. And they’d been enough for me, trinkets in place of my father’s time.
Both Mum and Phil had texted me just before James had picked me up this evening. Both messages were short and to the point. Mum’s had read: Good luck, sweetheart. Love Mum xxx. Phil’s was a slightly more sobering: Take no shit, hon. Men lie.
James looked through his window while I watched a grandmother tootling after her charge towards the boat lake and the ducks that had already congregated for them. The grandmother began pointing to the rowing boats so the child could see them all tied together on the waterfront barely moving like a line of obedient seaside donkeys, each with their own colour and number. And then the windscreen began to mist over with too much silent contemplation.
‘Shall we take a walk?’ James asked solemnly.
*
The air outside was a little cooler than it had been this afternoon. James slipped into his jacket and began strolling beside me along the footpath. I’d forgotten how pretty the old Victorian lampposts were along the waterfront, strings of lights perpetually suspended between each post in readiness for the festive months.
‘Amy?’ he said, surveying the land around us. ‘I’m not going to keep on telling you that I’m sorry. And I know that you’ll think I’m selfish for saying it, but the last few weeks haven’t been great for me either.’ James always liked to open proceeding with something we could agree on. ‘And I don’t want to keep bringing it up either, but I promise you, if we can somehow move on from this, if you’ll just give me a second chance, I promise that this will never, ever happen again.’
There. Everything I wanted to hear. Now let’s kiss, make up and head home. I let out a long release of breath and hoped some of the pressure inside me would eek out along with it. I’d never set out to be an engineer of my own life. I was of the serendipitous line of thinking, right up until it bagged me over the head and left me gasping for air on the floor. I didn’t want to be this person, hung up on meticulous planning and perpetual finger-crossing, but there were some things that I simply couldn’t walk into now, just hoping for the best. Going home with James was one of them.
‘Do you love me, James?’ I asked, slowly following the incline of the path up onto the iron bridge. The string of lights broke here, where shorter mounted lamps followed the bridge railings.
‘I love you, Amy. But even love has to stand up to change,’ he said, resting on the railings. ‘I’ve never met another woman like you, I probably never will. I’ve been stupid, Amy. I’m not trying to make excuses for myself, but it’s been a hard slog, what we’ve been doing. I’m weaker than you are … I
wobbled.’ An itinerary of pressures began racking up in my brain. Pressures that I could have better steered us away from, maybe.
‘Do you want to be a family, James?’ It suddenly occurred to me that this was the first time I’d actually asked him outright.
‘I want what you want, Amy. I know we’d be a great family, you’d make us a great family.’
‘That’s not what I asked. Is it what you want, James? Because you can’t wobble again when there’s a child involved. I want to be a mother, a good mother, and part of that is protecting my child. I’m not walking into that situation, dragging a little boy or girl who’s already been through the mill into that situation, to find that a few years down the road, we’re meeting here for a weekend ice cream and a reminder that we’d messed it all up.’ The toddler down by the ducks was shaking the last contents of a spent bread bag, crumbs flying all over her hair as the grandmother chuckled. James was looking at the imposing Victorian townhouses flanking the scenery. Park Lane properties rarely came onto the market, and why would they? With all this on their doorstep? This was where James and I had daydreamed of one day affording. We’d come here one afternoon where, on the advice of his mother, he’d offered me the prospect of a huge engagement ring if I wanted it. I’d said that he could forget the ring, I didn’t need any of that, but I’d settle for one of those beautiful old houses to grow old in together.
‘Is this what you want, James?’ I pressed.
He turned, slipping his fingers through my hair, tucking it away for me. ‘It’s what I want, Amy.’ There was a proviso in his expression. ‘But if we’re doing this, we need to do it now.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Amy, I know how you think. You’re wondering whether or not it’s feasible to delay the adoption, give ourselves time to get over what I’ve done. But I can’t do that. I can’t go through that process again if that’s what you’re expecting us to do. I’m sorry, baby, but I can’t.’
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