“I don’t care if she has to roll a sleeping bag out on the hill, she is not spending another minute in our flat.”
Leonie tucks a loose blonde curl behind her ear. “You can’t throw her out. Not in the middle of the night.”
“I can, and I have. It’s done.”
My eyes, of their own will, skip to the far end and find Nora wiping her tears. Osian says something and she shakes her head and cries harder. Ashe tries to console her, but Nora shakes her head as if the world has ended. As she tries to stand up, she wobbles and Osian instantly gets up to help her.
They leave the table, his arm around her back, her head on his shoulder and both hands clinging to him. As they reach the stairs, Osian looks back towards the table. I quickly look away, pretending I hadn’t been watching.
With my back to the stairs, I can’t see what he’s doing. Ashe looks up at him, her mouth shapes the word ‘what?’, the way we do when we speak to someone too far away to hear. Then she points a finger to herself, again as a question, before leaving the table and going to join him. I turn and see her join Osian and together they walk with Nora up the stairs.
“Clever lad,” Shirley says in a soft voice. “He’s helping but making sure he’s not alone with Nymphet Nora.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call her that,” Haneen says quietly. “People are starting to repeat it.”
My own worries are also about Nora. Now that Raff has kicked her out ‘in the middle of the night’ she has the perfect excuse to need someone else to give her a bed for the night. And Osian can’t resist helping someone in trouble.
She’s single, no longer Llewellyn’s girlfriend, no longer off limits – those thoughts sink in my mind like a fishhook and pull painfully. Another night for me to worry about sounds from next door.
This is far too much like school. Watching him choose someone else instead of me.
I swore never to put myself in this position again.
For the first time, I wonder if Kendric House will ever be a comfortable place to live. Should I leave? Save my heart instead of my pride just this once?
Chapter Thirty-five
The thought of leaving Kendric Park rolls around my head most of the night. Not really as a serious plan, but like that thing when part of your mind keeps offering a solution, but you don’t know if it’s the wise side of your brain talking or just your fear. So I see myself packing and handing over while my financial losses aren’t too severe. I’ve spent most of my savings but I’ll still have a roof over my head in London. And if worst comes to worst, I can always let the flat and move to the country somewhere.
My thoughts are still jumbled in the morning, and I have a vague foreboding as if I’m ignoring a red flag.
Then I walk into a row in Leonie’s café.
Llewellyn is standing near the counter, a mug in his hand with half of the coffee spilt on the floor. “I just want to understand why!”
Raff has a mulish look on his face.
Between them, Ashe is in tears. “What else would you do?”
“Nothing,” Llewellyn says, his voice quietly angry. “What you should do is nothing.”
Leonie, on her side of the counter, tries to intervene. “What he means is that—”
“Don’t, Leonie,” Llewellyn snaps. “I can speak for myself.”
This is so unlike the usually gentle Llewellyn. Leonie gives me a helpless look.
“It would not be an issue,” Ashe says, trying to keep calm. “If she was allowed to accept Gethin’s invitation.”
Raff crosses his arms. “No way. Exploiting a kind old man? Never.”
“I couldn’t stand by and not help.” Ashe’s voice quivers.
I have no idea what this is about, but Ashe works for me and I’m not leaving her between two angry men. “Ashe, darling, do you want to help me with something?” I point to my usual table on the terrace.
She glances at Llewellyn uncertainly, as if hoping for an answer. He’s already turned away, grabbed a wad of tissues and, with jerky impatient movements, starts wiping the spilt coffee on the floor
“Come,” I say as gently as I can, and take Ashe with me.
