She leaned over and the taps squeaked as she turned them off. Whizzy padded into the bathroom to keep her company.
‘I’ll let you go,’ he said when she didn’t engage in more conversation.
‘Yep, don’t want the water to get cold.’
She must have been tetchier than she realised because his amused tone altered. ‘No need to snap.’
‘It’s been a long day.’ She didn’t point out that as well as work, she had the emotional turmoil of Isaac and Conrad churning over in her head constantly, not to mention being a meals-on-wheels service for a lying ex-husband. ‘I want to climb into a warm bath and then go to bed.’
‘There was a time when you did that here.’
‘Conrad, we are divorced. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’ She calmed herself by fussing over Whizzy.
‘Marriage did.’
‘I have to go.’
‘Have you thought any more about Ireland?’
‘Seriously, you want to talk about this now? No, I haven’t thought about it.’
She couldn’t see it but no doubt there’d be an amused sneer on his face right now as he said, ‘Maya, don’t push it, babe.’
‘Please don’t call me babe.’ She hadn’t liked it when they were married and she sure as hell didn’t like it now. ‘I’m going now, Conrad.’
‘Suit yourself.’ And so that he had an upper hand of sorts, it was him who put the phone down on her.
Maya sank into the tub, Whizzy leapt up on the small faded-blue cabinet with drawers beneath that she’d painted and put at one end and curled up into a ball, happy to be near her for the company.
Maya didn’t have the long bath she’d wanted, not that Conrad bothered her again. But after ten minutes, she couldn’t relax and so she climbed out, dried off, pulled on her jeans again and hoped that Noah’s offer of a beer was an open invitation for tonight too.
24
Noah had had an impromptu visit from Paul again this morning but when he saw the car pull up, he’d purposely run with Eva to the back of the house and closed the kitchen door, where he’d stayed until the knocking ceased and he was sure Paul had gone. He knew he’d have to face the guy sooner or later but he was still fuming at his audacity, asking for money, proving that he had zero interest in Eva. What sort of man could do that? He had no idea but he did know if Paul was to come here before he’d had a chance to calm down some more, Noah might well kill him with his bare hands.
It was the height of summer, which meant the days went on forever, sunlight lasted and lasted, but still Noah had the curtains in the house closed at the front. Nobody could get around the back, not without scaling fences and bushes, so at least that was something. Eva had refused to go down for her nap today and so every time she picked up one of her toys, he cringed at its volume in case Paul came to the door and he would know they were inside.
Before he became Eva’s guardian, Noah would have assumed that babies who skipped a daytime sleep would sleep for muchlonger at night. But it didn’t work that way. She was grouchy and his attempt to put her down early had met with screams and the kind of sobbing you couldn’t ignore unless you were prepared to have your heart totally broken.
He was pacing in the lounge, shushing Eva, the little girl in his arms with barely open eyes by now. She was fighting the sleep, or she was so overtired her body wouldn’t let her settle. And whatever he tried didn’t work. He attempted to sing a lullaby – that went about as well as if he’d blasted out Metallica on the stereo. He tried to give her a teething ring – she slung that across the room with a deft flick of her wrist and it crashed into a glass he’d left on the mantelpiece, sending it toppling to the floor with an almighty smash. It was as if the universe knew this was a trying time for Noah, more so than usual, and it wanted to make him doubly pay for even wishing this guy Paul into their lives.
Noah had to leave Eva to scream in her cot while he cleaned up the glass and made sure every last speck of it was gone from the rug and it had been torture listening to her cry for him, but he had no choice.
Her tear-stained face when he finally went to get her rested against his cheek but she began to settle in his arms as he paced in the lounge, jostling her up and down a little by bending his knees as he walked.
A knock at the door sent him hot-footing it out to the kitchen at the back.
‘Shit.’ He’d have thought he’d hear the roar of that obnoxious engine on Paul’s car which had one of those annoying exhausts boy racers thought were a status symbol, the sort of exhaust that pissed off everyone within a mile’s radius apart from the car’s occupant, who was convinced it gave him bigger balls than anything else.
The knocks kept coming. Did this guy ever give up? He’d said he’d be in touch, but Noah hadn’t expected him to be this persistent, showing up twice in one day.
With Eva quiet apart from the odd whimper, he tiptoed out of the kitchen and hovered at the door to the lounge, which he’d left open this time. And then he heard a voice coming through the letterbox. And it wasn’t Paul’s.
He went into the hallway and opened up the door. ‘Maya.’
Her face registered his exhaustion.
‘Oh, God, I shouldn’t have come. You’ve got your hands full?—’
