Perhaps it was just as well. Rick had made a friend – the first one in a long time, and although it wasn’t an association Chris would have encouraged, it worked. For both boys. Adding Victoria into the equation could upset the balance.
She’d messed with his equilibrium.
He peeled his hand off the door frame, and made his way to the kitchen. With Tommy on walkabout, cooking duties were down to him. They could order out, but they’d done that a lot over the last couple of weeks, and anyway, Chris wanted to do something for his son. A thank you for making progress.
Lacey used to say preparing meals for family and friends was a privilege, never a chore. She often asked Chris to help, but when he wasn’t filming, he was planning and perfecting his next stunt. He could count on one hand the number of times he was her commis chef, but he was surprised by how intimate the experience was – the two of them, working together, achieving the same end. Providing for their boys.
Tommy was always keen to assist, and he’d picked up Lacey’s culinary skills. He was a natural. How intimate had he found the experience?
‘Don’t think about it.’ Chris sifted through the shelves that lined the pantry, pulled out a can of beans, a tin of tomatoes, and a box of eggs. It wasn’t haute cuisine, but with a few rashers of crispy bacon to go on top, and a slice of crusty bread, it covered the major food groups, something Lacey and Tommy were keen to enforce.
‘Lacey and Tommy?’ Chris would have known if they’d had an affair, wouldn’t he? Lacey had a high sex drive, but Chris matched her, and he loved her with such an intensity she had no need to turn to another man. And she loved him. She told him so every day.
He bashed two pans onto the hob, shoved the can of beans under the electric opener, and watched it rotate. The rhythmical whir of its motor settled him, and his mind eased.
Tommy was messing with his head. That was all. Revenge for being kept in the dark about Lacey’s condition. It was pathetic. Childish. Seth behaved better.
The lid popped on the first can, and Chris poured the contents into a saucepan.
It was hard to imagine Seth losing his temper and attacking Victoria. He was such a little thing, scrawny, and defenceless against someone as ferocious as her. But that’s what she claimed. He kicks and spits at me, she’d said. Well, if she dealt with Seth the way she’d handled Chris, it wasn’t any wonder the boy didn’t like her. Chris didn’t much like that side of her himself. She wasn’t the girl he left behind.
He slapped six slices of streaky bacon into the frying pan and pushed them around with a fish slice. Then he sloshed the tomatoes in with the beans, giving the pan a shake to mix the contents together.
His mind was as active as his hands.
The girl he’d left behind. You damaged me. The girl he’d made love to, and then left behind. You battered my emotions, and screwed them into the ground … An unpleasant sensation gathered at the back of Chris’s throat. Whatever he felt about their night on the beach, it was dawning on him that Victoria believed she was a one-night-stand.
And that was the reason she’d wanted nothing more to do with him.
He had to set her straight. Explain what happened and why it happened. He needed her to know what she’d meant to him. Not for his sake. For hers. And Seth’s.
However he chose to do it, Chris had to prove he was not an ogre.
‘All right?’ Rick, closing the front door, strolled into the kitchen, bringing the outside freshness with him. ‘Seth’s home.’ He waved at the variety of pans on the cooker. ‘Smells great. You’re getting good at this.’
Chris delivered the plates to the table, leaned on the back of his chair, and looked at Rick. ‘Listen. I’ve something to ask you.’
Chapter Fifteen
‘I love the smell of your shop.’ Victoria inhaled. She was relaxed, with Seth sitting quietly in the back room engrossed in creating a masterpiece ‘like Livia’. ‘Fresh sharpenings and strawberry erasers. Takes me back to my schooldays. My pencil case smelled exactly the same,’ Victoria said.
‘Saturday’s the day I make a point of my blunt pencils.’ Olivia laughed at the pun and nodded to the waste-paper basket. ‘I spent an hour on them this morning.’
‘Really?’ Victoria hovered over the bin, the bottom of which was covered in pinked wooden shavings. ‘How very different our lives are. I spent an hour at the harbour hooking bait onto a crab line. Fish and raw bacon.’ She waggled her fingers under her nose. ‘And like your shavings, the scent’s lasted well.’
Olivia laughed. ‘Your dad said you were taking Seth crabbing. What a lovely idea.’
‘Hmm. Lovely idea, not such a lovely activity.’
‘It didn’t go well?’
‘My fault. I set my expectations too high. I spent half the time hauling Seth back from the edge of the wall, and the other half telling him we couldn’t bring the crabs home. At one point, I had to ask him to stop naming them.’
‘Sounds like a highly successful morning to me.’ Olivia was clearly appreciating the humour of the situation. Her eyes were giving her away. ‘Did Seth enjoy it?’
‘Hard to tell. He wasn’t happy when I told him we had to put the crabs back. Nor when I stopped him putting the raw meat in his mouth.’ Victoria rubbed her hands together hoping to eliminate the smell. ‘As bonding experiences go, it was testing. I don’t remember it being stressful when Dad took Juliette and me.’
Olivia dug around at the back of her counter and pulled out a packet of antiseptic wipes. She took one and passed the rest to Victoria. ‘Well, fair play to you. I’m proud of you for trying. You’ll look back on this day as a good one.’ Olivia cleaned around the till.
Victoria helped herself to a cloth, put the pack on the counter and gave her fingers a vigorous clean. ‘I hate to think how Seth will remember it.’
Olivia stopped what she was doing, put both hands on top of the till and looked at Victoria. ‘He will remember he went crabbing with his mum.’
Olivia’s words slowly percolated, and Victoria nodded. Together, she and Seth had created a memory. With a bit more practise, they might even manage some good ones. ‘He named the biggest crab Stuart.’
‘I used to date a Stuart. Took him ages to come out of his shell. Wish he hadn’t bothered. He was ever so snippy.’
Victoria raised her brow and gave Olivia a reproachful look. ‘I think it’s time I sidestepped this conversation, before your jokes make me crabby.’ She smiled and used the natural break to move on. ‘What are these?’ She pointed to the round web-like items hanging from the ceiling.
‘Dreamcatchers.’
‘They look a little like spiders’ webs.’
‘That’s what they represent. The Sioux say they catch the bad dreams the way a spider’s web catches and holds whatever touches it. You hang it over the bed, and then the good dreams slide down the feathers to the sleeping person.’
Victoria gave the brown feathers a gentle ruffle. ‘So, they filter out nightmares?’
‘Yes, but I don’t expect you to believe that.’ Olivia ventured out from behind her desk, stood on tiptoe, and unhooked the lowest dreamcatcher. She blew the dust off, and passed the item to Victoria. ‘Do you have nightmares?’
‘Not nightmares, but I’ve had some very strange dreams.’ The confession slipped out before Victoria had time to think.
‘Oh?’ Olivia pulled out a long-handled, rainbow-dyed duster from behind her desk. ‘You can tickle this over the other dreamcatchers while you fill me in.’
Victoria laughed and swapped her Sioux gift for the colourful cleaning tool. ‘I can’t tell you. You’re my father’s partner.’
‘And that proves how open-minded I am.’ Olivia directed Victoria to dust. ‘I take it that actor’s been on your mind?’
On her mind. On her bed. On her kitchen floor … H
e’d been everywhere in her dreams. She waited for the embarrassment to warm her cheeks. There it was. ‘No, really. I can’t tell you. I hadn’t meant to say anything.’ She returned the duster and smiled. ‘You have to stop spiking my coffee with truth serum.’
‘Spoilsport.’ Olivia placed a cool hand on Victoria’s face, and it instantly removed the heat. ‘Do you ever dream of your mother?’
The question was asked at such a tender moment, it pained Victoria. She wanted to say yes, she’d often dreamed of her providing a consoling touch, as Olivia had, but she hadn’t. ‘No dreams. No nightmares,’ she said, taking Olivia’s fingers in hers. ‘Does that disappoint you?’ She didn’t want it to.
‘Nothing you do disappoints me, Victoria. And I believe your mother felt that way, too.’
The ladies dropped hands, and Victoria wandered across to the stool. ‘If that’s true, then she only ever shared her thoughts with God. He never disappointed her. It was a lot to live up to.’
Olivia hummed as if agreeing. ‘Frank said she was a committed Christian. I didn’t have her down as a zealot, though.’
‘That’s exactly what she was.’ Victoria slipped onto the stool. ‘But it wasn’t just with her beliefs. She was uncompromising with everything. I must have been twelve, thirteen when I realised I was going through the motions just to keep the peace. I didn’t believe in God. I mean I really didn’t believe. If I challenged Mum for proof, she’d point to the Bible.’
‘To be fair, it’s quite well documented in there.’ Olivia picked up a pencil from the floor and delivered it to its rightful container. ‘But I understand what you’re saying. You’re a woman of logic. Someone who likes concrete evidence.’
Victoria nodded. ‘And I never found it in The Bible. All I saw were stories. I understood the messages behind them, and I appreciated the comfort Mum gained from them, but that was all. I was sick of being preached to and I hated pretending to be someone I wasn’t. I’d had enough.’
‘You fought back?’
‘In a way. I took charge of my emotions and didn’t allow Mum to stomp all over them. She fervently insisted I believed, I explained coolly why I didn’t.’ She stopped, halted by the mental image of Seth in his skewed pyjamas, insisting dragons were real. He’d fought to make her listen, and he’d refused to let her trash his feelings. It was Victoria and her mother all over again. That was bad enough, but worse was the realisation Victoria was more like Iris than she knew. That thought scared her. Thank God she was already trying to change. ‘Passion versus reason,’ she said, continuing her thread. ‘I loved Mum, but we had some almighty fall outs.’
‘Almighty? What an interesting choice of word.’ Olivia busied herself reorganising a row of shell sculptures.
In the short time she’d known her, Victoria had learned this was Olivia’s way of giving her the stage without the glare of the spotlight. ‘It’s ingrained,’ Victoria replied. ‘Anyway, my head became proficient at ruling my heart, and it worked. Life was less painful. Until I fell in love.’
‘Ah. That old chestnut. I’d like to tell you it gets easier as you get older, but it doesn’t. Glucosamine helps, though. And HRT.’
‘Olivia!’ A laugh exploded from Victoria, and she rocked backwards on the stool. On the verge of tipping over, she threw her weight forward and clung to the desk. With her heart in her mouth, she waited for the stool to regain its stability. She whistled with relief as it clunked into position. ‘Glucosamine aside,’ she said, ‘I was talking about love, not sex.’
‘How did that go down with your mother?’
‘Oh, we didn’t talk about love. Not real love. And sex was avoided like the plague.’
Olivia stopped tidying the shelves and looked sternly at Victoria. ‘God’s love was real to your mum. And perhaps she wasn’t comfortable discussing sex with her daughters.’
‘She wasn’t comfortable discussing anything. That was the problem. Unlike you.’ If only Iris had been more like Olivia. ‘I’m not much of a talker and I put it down to nurture rather than nature, having never been encouraged to express myself, but I’ve told you more in the last few weeks than I care to recall. How do you do it?’
Olivia winked and tapped the side of her nose. ‘I think you know the answer to that.’
‘Truth serum?’
‘It works every time. Coffee?’
While Olivia sorted the drinks, Victoria looked in on Seth. ‘How’s your picture coming along?’ She crouched next to him, resting her arm along the back of his chair. The small camping table Olivia had set up was struggling to contain the paper, pencils and pastels she’d supplied. Victoria gathered a few rogue chalks together and pushed them into the middle.
‘I’m drawing the castle,’ Seth said, lifting his head from his work. He twirled his paper round for Victoria to see. ‘This is Rick, and this big one is Chris, and that’s me.’ He pointed to the smallest figure. ‘I’m doing a five with Chris.’
The three stick figures, surrounded by trees, donned large smiles and huge mitten-shaped hands. Seth’s was in the air.
‘It’s fantastic,’ Victoria said. ‘I love the trees, and that looks just like you.’ The crayon scribbles on top of his head was the giveaway. ‘What’s a five?’
Seth gave an impatient sigh, grabbed Victoria’s arm and spread her fingers out. He patted it with his hand. ‘See. A five. Rick showed me.’
And now, Seth was showing Victoria. She glanced at his hair, searching for fairy dust, a preposterous idea, but the only one she could entertain. Magic had been cast. ‘That was the best high five ever,’ she said, staring at her child in wonder. ‘The best.’
Retrieving his picture, Seth chose his next colour and with slow, deliberate strokes, started to create a beautiful summer’s day sky. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
The spell was broken by the call of, ‘Coffee!’ but Victoria didn’t care. The sense that something amazing had happened between her and Seth survived.
‘So, lunch with your actor chappie,’ Olivia said as Victoria entered the front of the shop. ‘I didn’t push you on it the other day, as you were clearly in no mood to talk, but was it that bad?’
‘Lunch was great. It was the walk afterwards when it went to pot.’ Victoria collected her mug from Olivia and nodded her thanks. ‘The man drives me mad.’
‘In my experience, when a man has driven me mad it has meant one thing,’ Olivia said, sitting Victoria on the stool.
‘He’s arrogant?’ Acerbity was worth a shot. With Seth merely yards away in the stock room, Victoria wasn’t convinced this was the time or the place to be discussing affairs of the heart. Not hers, anyway. She tried another diversionary tactic. ‘Does Dad drive you mad?’
A wide grin took possession of Olivia’s mouth. ‘Do you want me to tell you?’
Without hesitating, Victoria raised a hand. ‘No. Never.’ She smiled. ‘I was trying to take the heat off me.’
‘You don’t have to tell me anything.’ Olivia stepped across to the stock room, said something to Seth, and then pulled the door to. She returned to the counter. ‘But if you did, I would never repeat it.’
Victoria didn’t doubt it for one second. There was something about Olivia that oozed trust. And so far, she’d provided nothing but good advice and positive guidance. Victoria set aside her mug, lifted her feet on to the foot bar, and rested her hands in her lap. ‘Chris and I go back a long way. He was my first … ’ She paused, embarrassed by the advancing confession.
‘Lover?’ Olivia tendered, as she hitched herself onto the sales desk.
‘Not the word I’d use now, but at the time, yes.’ Victoria pushed the sleeves of her jumper to above her elbow. Uncomfortable conversations made her hot. And itchy. She scratched her neck. ‘He was the first and Ben was the last. With no one in between. A fact I put down to Chris’s treatment of me when I was e
ighteen.’
With no interruption from Olivia, she kept going. ‘I was so in love with him. Whenever I saw him, even from a distance, my stomach looped-the-loop. He was confident, funny, and gentle. I was studious, quiet. Got these wretched things.’ She scrunched her hair. ‘He’s so good-looking.’
Victoria’s eyes flicked to Olivia’s, as she realised her last statement was spoken in the present. As usual, Olivia was straight-faced. Victoria continued. ‘I couldn’t believe a man like that would want to be with me. Turned out I was right. He got what he wanted and then took off to LA without a second thought.’
It was a moment she’d relived a thousand times, if not more. She resented him for it, but couldn’t shake the feeling they had unfinished business.
‘So what went wrong yesterday?’
‘According to Chris, I’m convinced he’s come back for me.’ Victoria jumped off the stool and offered it to Olivia. ‘Talk about self-centred.’
Olivia stayed put. ‘What’s given him that impression?’
‘I put my arm around him when he was upset. It was a gut reaction.’ Victoria threw her hands in the air. ‘I’m trying so hard to go with the flow, act first, think later, but it’s bloody hard work. I thought he and I could at least be friends. I’d like that. And his son is lovely. He’s a little lost, but he and Seth get along so well. They’re a real tonic for one another. It could have been easy.’
‘With you still hanging on to the past?’ Olivia gave a look of disapproval.
‘But I wasn’t! I’d let it go. I saw his pain, and I understood his sense of uselessness. For a split second, he and I were the same. Then I comforted him, and it all kicked off. I told him he’d ruined my life.’
‘And?’
‘And what?’
‘Had he? Or was he being a bloke?’ Olivia swung her legs back and forth, her heels clonking against the counter.
Victoria gaped at her. Leg swinging was Seth’s tell when he was boiling up a head of steam. ‘Why would you say that? He built me up just so I’d feel good enough about myself to sleep with him. Then he smashed every tiny trace of self-confidence I had.’
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