A Part of Me

by Anouska Knight

  ‘For two hours?’ Carter asked.

  ‘About two hours.’ I was picking up on a shift in him. ‘Is that a problem?’

  ‘No, course not. Ro doesn’t need a babysitter,’ he guffawed, but there was something insincere about it. ‘I’m just gonna run down there, drag his ass back up here to give me a hand,’ Carter said, setting the tins down at the water’s edge.

  ‘Okay … I’ll, see you later,’ I said, turning for the mill. ‘Tell him the builder’s coming back on Tuesday, he can meet him then.’ If he can be bothered. Carter jogged leisurely over the embankment. He raised a thumb in the air and disappeared over the hill.

  I wasn’t sure why, exactly, but instead of heading back up to the first floor, I hung around downstairs. I scanned the view of the yard outside, the wall of flittering trees beyond the grassy ridge-line, chasing the line of the riverbank I knew lay behind it. I walked back on myself, retracing my steps to the outside doors. I did this twice more, and when Carter appeared on the brow of the hill, a heaviness settled in my stomach.

  I watched him hurrying along the path to the boathouse. He fumbled at the door, disappearing inside. I was walking back out through the double doors into the yard when Carter reappeared on the path holding a set of crutches. He jogged with them in his arms towards me, a new pressure stretching itself out in my chest, inflating like a big black ominous balloon.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ I asked timidly.

  ‘Ro’s bust his ankle.’ Carter grimaced, skipping past me.

  ‘What?’ I yipped, falling in beside him.

  Carter began climbing the hill in front of us. ‘He’ll be cool, he’s just twisted it. He can’t bear his weight on it, though, so he’s been kinda … stuck.’

  ‘But—’ I quickly ran through all the things I’d done in the time since I’d last seen him. Carter had already run ahead by the time I thought to tell him just how long Rohan had been out there, stuck.

  I tried telling myself that I didn’t know, of course, but the guilt was already colonising the pit of my stomach. Against every instinct to disappear into the mill, I forced myself to wait for them. Fifteen minutes later, Carter pushed Rohan’s bike over the bank, a trainer dangling from one handlebar, Rohan’s helmet swaying on the other. Behind Carter, a hobbled Rohan, barefoot and fed-up. It made for uncomfortable viewing, Rohan on crutches carefully negotiating his way down the uneven slope.

  By the time they finally reached me, the urge to say something was too much. I swept away dark tendrils of hair that had come loose around my face and discreetly cleared my throat. ‘Rohan, I … I’m sorry, I didn’t realise—’

  ‘Are you sure five cans are gonna do it, Cart?’ Rohan asked, cutting me off dead.

  Carter looked warily from Rohan to me, then on to the tins of paint on the floor. I turned briefly to look at them too. After that, Carter’s eyes avoided mine as though he were working something out in his head that he didn’t want me to see the answer to. He scratched at his mass of fuzzy hair.

  ‘Er, yeah, my man. I’m hoping to get two coats outta those bad boys.’

  Defiantly I fixed my gaze on Rohan. It wasn’t my fault he’d cried wolf before. If he was trying to make me feel bad for not dashing to his side à la Florence Nightingale, then he wasn’t playing fair. I began shadow-boxing with the idea that he was, in fact, already succeeding in making me feel bad, but when he finally looked at me my resolve completely crumbled. I dug deeper but my inner warrior princess wasn’t that convinced with my argument.

  ‘I’m going to turn in. We’ll start the painting tomorrow, Cart.’

  I was thinking about stating my case when something in his expression changed. Then he looked away – the statuesque lines of his face pointing off towards the boathouse. I hadn’t seen him look that way before. If I didn’t know better, I might have said he was embarrassed.

  CHAPTER 15

  ‘I DON’T UNDERSTAND. What do you mean, the system’s not recognising the postcode? You’ve picked me up from the same address three times this week already?’ I remarked, sitting on the top step of Rohan’s staircase. There was nothing elaborate about all the oak around me, but it was beautiful. Simple, clean, as if I’d been shrunk down and popped inside a handcrafted cuckoo clock. Lovely or not, I was still ready to get out of here, and for today, finally, to be over.

  This afternoon had been a grueller, helped along just marvellously by my monumental faux pas in the face of injury and basic care-giving. I cast my mind back over the array of badges Mum had stitched to the sleeve of my Brownie uniform. I was pretty sure that along with Friend to Animals, I’d bypassed First Aid and ergo First Aid Advanced, too.

  ‘I didn’t pick you up personally, sweetie,’ the girl on the switchboard managed despite a hefty wodge of bubblegum.

  ‘Well, could you maybe find out who did? Ask them to come and pick me up? Please? What about the other guy who answers the phone, he knows Briddleton Mill.’

  ‘Sorry, sweetie, rules are rules. After seven p.m., if the pick-up is unrecognised, we don’t send out. Can you give me another postcode, somewhere nearby that you can walk to?’ I looked out at the fading sun laying its last veil over the landscape. Unless the River Earle had its own postcode I was stuffed. ‘Never mind,’ I said, hanging up the call so I could flick through the rest of my recent calls for Mum’s name.

  From the gloom of downstairs, one of the rear doors began to rattle, whoever was there bustling noisily through them into the mill.

  ‘Hell-ooo? Anybody home?’ echoed a familiar gruff voice. I got to my feet and walked the few stairs down onto the minstrel’s gallery. Carter walked out of the kitchen into the open lounge area below me.

  ‘Hey, Carter. Only me, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You working late tonight? I was just coming to check that you’d locked up.’

  ‘No, I’m done now,’ I replied. ‘I’ll make sure everything’s secure when I go.’

  ‘You want some pizza? I’m just about to go pick up from Earleswicke. They won’t deliver because—’

  ‘Postcode?’

  ‘I know, right?’ he said resentfully. ‘I don’t suppose I could grab a lift with you, could I Carter? It would really help me out.’

  ‘Sure! I’ve been meaning to tap you for Philippa’s likes and dislikes. Come on, you can tell me on the way.’

  We locked up and left the mill through the front entrance straight onto the front yard. Over the pond I could see Rohan in the little window of the boathouse, his hands interlocked behind his head. I’d seen from the balcony that he’d been sat in that chair for most of the afternoon.

  ‘Madam, your carriage awaits …’ Carter gushed, holding open the passenger side door. Carter skipped around and jumped in beside me. ‘How do you like Bertha?’ he asked sincerely.

  ‘Bertha?’

  ‘My splitscreen! I named her Bertha,’ he declared, gesturing at the vehicle interior. Carter’s campervan was pure vintage from its tangerine vinyl seating to the wood-grain Formica cabinetry. It suited him. He looked like he’d driven it into a time portal, some day back in the seventies maybe, and had found himself spat out again here, in the next century. The engine turned out to be vintage too, elongating what was usually a quick journey into twenty-five turbulent minutes, rattling and juddering all the way back to town.

  We’d managed to fill a good ten minutes of conversation time with a game of cat-and-mouse. He’d give me a reason why he could be trusted with Phil’s address and/or number, I’d give him an example of what she’d probably do to me if I obliged. Finally, he gave up, and I was presented with a new problem, how to avoid asking after Rohan. Carter was blissfully unfazed by long silences, but I always felt a need to fill them.

  ‘So you’re into yoga then, Carter? Is it a good workout?’ I asked, the greenery outside steadily becoming more interspersed with the grey of pavements, and side streets of Earleswicke’s outskirts.

  ‘It’s a good workout for mind, body and soul, Amy. That’s why the
women love it.’

  I felt my eyebrows rise. ‘They do?’

  ‘Oh yeah. Women like a man who’s in touch with his—’

  ‘Toes?’ I asked, smiling. Carter waited serenely for me to finish. ‘Sorry, you were saying.’

  ‘Inner calm; spiritual contentment; balance – they’re all good for the soul.’ He let me stew on that a few moments until his voice suddenly climbed to somewhere more upbeat. ‘They like a flexible, toned body too, I guess, but it’s the philosophy they’re drawn to, I think.’

  ‘They are? The philosophy? How do you know?’ I asked, batting away a mental picture of Carter being flexible with a woman, checking the expression beneath his caramel-coloured candy-floss hair to see that he wasn’t having me on. Carter’s face was a picture of seriousness.

  ‘After I’ve made love to a woman, I like to offer a demonstration of some of the principal moves. So far, the offer’s never been turned down. Although one girl did ask me to put my shorts back on first.’

  A bubble of laughter rippled to the surface of my throat. I wasn’t sure seeing a physically fit man contorting himself on the floor wasn’t more about catching a good show than it was yoga philosophy, but I didn’t say so.

  James would never gel with a guy like Carter. I suddenly felt a twinge of sadness about that, as if we should’ve branched out more with our circle of friends. Phil was bonkers, granted, but she was one of very few dazzling stars in our social sky. Carter, I could tell, was a dazzler too.

  ‘I’ve been trying to talk Ro into joining me, but he works out his endorphins with speed, not serenity.’ Mention of Rohan’s name brought about a different twinge.

  Sod. I couldn’t just not ask, it would be churlish. ‘How is he?’ I asked tentatively. ‘Take the next right, then second left onto Stephenson’s Road.’

  ‘Who, Ro? Ah, he’s fine. Don’t worry about him.’

  I didn’t mean to blurt a reply, but I felt caught out. ‘I wasn’t worrying about him.’

  ‘No?’ Carter said, just as quick over his shoulder. ‘You looked pretty wounded earlier when you realised you’d left him in the field. A disabled dude. All alone … injured.’

  The guilt that had been gurgling in my stomach all afternoon lurched inside me. ‘Is that what Rohan said?’ I asked, trying to swallow it away.

  Carter laughed. ‘Nah, of course not. I’m just playing with you.’ He pulled up to a set of lights, the metronomic percussion of the indicator, counting away the seconds.

  ‘So … he’s not annoyed that I didn’t help him?’

  The traffic moved and Carter rolled forward to make the turn. ‘Course not. He knows that’s how it goes sometimes. No big deal.’

  ‘Are you sure? He seemed pretty fed up when you were helping him back.’

  ‘Yeah, he was. But not with you, he’s been kicking stones around since Meg showed up.’

  I knew Biker Chick had rattled his mood. ‘The girl with the motorbike?’ I asked impassively, remembering how Gucci-friendly she was too. ‘I think I disturbed them the other morning, I didn’t realise he had a girlfriend staying over.’

  ‘Girlfriend?’ Carter guffawed. ‘Meg’s not his girlfriend, not any more. There are enough fireworks exploding between that pair without adding romance.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, relaxing my shoulders, remembering Rohan’s state of undress. ‘So I didn’t interrupt them, you-know …?’

  Carter grinned. ‘It’s possible, but I’d be surprised! It did not end well between those two. You probably interrupted them arguing again.’

  ‘So, they broke up fairly recently, then?’ I prodded.

  ‘Hell, no. It’s gotta be nearly four years ago. Just after Ro had his accident.’ I already disliked her a little bit. If I was being honest, her enviable make-up skills probably hadn’t set us off on the best foot. ‘Meg’s okay, but she’s nearly as tough as Ro. They’re butting heads but Rohan won’t back down, she knows that.’

  Asking what they were butting heads over was a question too far. These were the times I wished I had a bit more of Phil about me, and charged ahead regardless of social etiquette. ‘So, he’s not mad that I didn’t help him out today … Well, that’s good,’ I said, reluctantly steering my curiosity elsewhere.

  ‘Defo. He wouldn’t have wanted you to help him anyway. It would’ve made him feel … y’know.’ Carter shrugged.

  ‘Feel what?’

  Carter rubbed the back of his shaggy head and looked at me. He had kind eyes, that warm shade of blue like my brother’s. Carter smiled and looked ahead at the road. ‘As you’re gonna be here a while, you might as well know that Ro … likes his independence. It might sound stupid, but he wouldn’t have appreciated having to get you to help him back to the boathouse earlier. Even if that meant sitting on his ass for a few hours. I keep telling him to hang onto his phone, but Ro knows best …’ He trailed off.

  There was light on the horizon, maybe I hadn’t cocked up as much as I’d thought. ‘So … you’re saying he’s stubborn?’

  ‘Ro, stubborn?’ He laughed breathily. ‘Yeah, that would be one word for him.’

  ‘But not so stubborn that he minds you helping him?’

  ‘Ro works on a scratch-for-scratch basis. He’s got my back covered, and I’ve got his – so we’re straight. It’s always been that way. He wasn’t mad at you today, he was mad at himself. He’s popped that ankle enough times, he knows he’s gotta land steady. He was just frustrated.’ He shrugged. ‘He’s over it now.’

  Well, bully for him, I’d only been beating myself up about it all day. We were only a few miles from home and I spent at least one of them pondering whether I thought of Rohan Bywater as a wounded soldier or a pig-headed heathen. Both, I decided. ‘Follow this road all the way onto Victoria Street, then I’m right down the bottom on the left, number seventy-four, thanks.’ I sighed. ‘So, how long have you two been friends?’ I asked in my best chit-chatty, just-making-conversation voice.

  ‘A long time,’ Carter drawled, stretching the words from his mouth like a piece of chewing gum. ‘Ro’s the closest thing I’ve got to a brother.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ I said earnestly. ‘Did you meet at school?’

  ‘Not exactly. Ro was placed with the foster family I was staying with when we were, I dunno, twelve? Thirteen? We just hit it off, I guess because we were the same age and liked the same stuff.’

  ‘You were in care?’ I asked, my upper body turning itself completely to face him.

  Carter kept looking ahead happily at the road. ‘Sure. We both were. Although I was only in foster care while my grandpa was sick. I got into a bit of trouble, and he was ill at the time. He couldn’t really cope with me at that age so they wanted him to have some respite. And I guess I needed a bit of time out too. I was back living with him within the year, though, when he got better so …’ Carter trailed off as he waited for the traffic at the junction.

  ‘And what about Rohan?’ I asked, swallowing at the new dryness in my throat.

  ‘Ro? He was more what you’d call a long-term placement. His mum left him with social services when he was still in primary school. Not really little – he remembers what she looked like and everything. Just left him one day, and didn’t really sort herself out enough to go get him back.’

  The familiar poplar trees on Victoria Street came into view, and I suddenly felt the urge to deceive Carter and lead him on a few laps of the neighbourhood.

  ‘But you left? The foster home?’

  ‘Uhuh.’

  ‘And Rohan didn’t?’

  ‘Not then. He moved onto another placement after that.’

  ‘And you kept in touch?’ I asked.

  ‘We were lucky,’ he said, glancing at me. ‘Lots of foster kids move around. Once they’re separated, it’s easy to lose touch. And we did for a while, but then by some weird flip of fate, the next foster home Ro went to was Arthur’s.’

  ‘Who’s Arthur?’ I prompted, willing the campervan to slow down.

&nb
sp; Carter was already smiling at the recollection, his pointy moustache curling at the edges. ‘Arthur was a bearded legend. I liked him because he looked a bit like Chuck Norris. He was the odds-and-sods guy the old locals in our village went to. He had a workshop, and this knack for fixing anything that was taken to him to be fixed. My grandpa took me there one day, I don’t know, to knock out a dink in his wheelbarrow or something. He tells me to wait in the car –’ cos he didn’t trust me inside probably – and who comes cruising down the street on the shiniest electric-blue two-wheeler I ever saw? Ro.’ Carter shook his head to himself. ‘He dropped lucky there, to get a long-term placement with an old gent like Arthur, it doesn’t always work out that way. Arthur, what a ledge, God rest his soul.’

  The campervan was decreasing speed. I was utterly hooked on Carter’s story. We’d met some amazing foster carers through our adoption journey, but I knew I couldn’t do that. At first, I’d thought it was because I wouldn’t be able to let them go again, to love a child only to see them off when it was time for them to move on. But I’d also met with foster parents who’d seen the siblings in their care separated from one another. I’d been told of the difficulties in seeing one sibling adopted, while the other was left behind. I knew such decisions were made to give each child the best chance at finding their forever home, but I couldn’t care for two little brothers like Samuel and Harry and then watch as they were parted – I couldn’t bear it.

  ‘You said seventy-four, right?’ Carter asked, pulling onto the kerb besides my mother’s wheelie bin. ‘Nice digs.’ He was looking past the laurel bushes into the driveway. ‘Your car off the road, then?’ he asked, looking at Viv’s Honda.

  ‘Er, no. That’s my mum’s car.’

  ‘Just visiting, is she?’ he asked.

  ‘No, this is her house. I’m just visiting her, actually, while … my place is decorated.’ I mentally kicked myself for lying. Unnecessary lies were the worst offenders. I followed it with a feeble truth. ‘It’s only short-term.’

  I could practically hear the clock counting down to the point where I’d have no decisions left. James wouldn’t wait much longer for me to go home, and in many ways over the years, he’d already shown exceptional patience because I’d needed him to. All the waiting and wanting, the preparations we’d anchored, the hopes we’d buoyed – all on the long road to adoption. Our journey to parenthood had not been an easy one, but I’d always found it less arduous than James, to focus on our final destination and keep it in mind. The pressure of having our lives scrutinised pitched against the wonderful promise of our own family had been like two sides of the same coin. By moving back to Mum’s, I’d tossed it into the air, and James was still waiting to see if I would catch it, as I wanted to, or let it fall through our fingers.