‘You know I don’t bother with birthdays. And I don’t want any fuss.’
‘Well, this year you are,’ I say firmly. ‘We’re having a party on Saturday for you—’
‘A party?’ He looks aghast. ‘No way!’
‘Please, Dad. It’s not aparty-party, it’s just a little—’
‘I think I should move back to my own place,’ he retorts.
‘Oh, no. Don’t react like this,’ I start, welling up now. ‘You’re welcome to stay with us, you know that. And Ana will be upset if you’re not here.’
‘Well, I’m sorry about that,’ he says tersely, shaking my hand from his arm and storming off into his room. ‘I’m going to pack up my things. I’ve been under your feet for quite long enough.’
Chapter Thirty-two
Eddie
All’s quiet when Eddie comes home after his shift on Thursday night. He assumes Raj and Calum must be asleep. They’re like that these days, off to bed early like a couple of monks.
Although he doesn’t have his phone he reckons it must be nearly midnight. He is absolutely shattered, not only from his shift, but also from running on adrenalin all day following his thrilling morning with Lyla. Marius commented that he seemed a bit ‘giddy’ today: ‘Great to see you buzzing, Eddie. But can you dial it down a bit tomorrow when Jill Gilbert’s in?’
Eddie laughed it off. But really, it’s a wonder he’s managed to keep his mind on the job at all today. What he’d dearly love to do now is fall into bed. But he can’t do that yet, because tonight he has important stuff to do.
On his way to the bathroom he notices that Raj’s bedroom door is open, and there’s no one there. Calum’sis open too. He wonders where they’ve gone, now they’re such boring old men? Late night bingo, perhaps?
This is great, he decides, heading into the living room where he surveys the usual chaos. Despite being clean-living professionals, Raj and Calum don’t half leave a mess sometimes. Sweaters and T-shirts are flung everywhere, and dirty plates are cluttering the woodworm-ridden old crate they use for a table. It’s no place for a baby, Eddie reflects. But of more immediate concern is that it’s no place for a girl like Lyla. He sets about gathering everything up, and then washes up the pile of dirty mugs and glasses with an enthusiasm he’s never experienced before, when engaged in a domestic task.
Now he notices that the living room rug has acquired a gravelly layer of crumbs. Eddie can imagine that Lyla’s the type to pad around barefoot. He can’t have her resting her dainty little pregnant feet onthatwhen she comes over tomorrow after his shift. So he starts looking for the hoover, hoping now that neither Calum nor Raj are planning to work from home tomorrow, as they do occasionally. With a shudder he remembers Lyla describing Raj as ‘handsome’. Eddie would far prefer to have the place to himself.
Having checked the hall cupboard, and found only a headless shop dummy and a mangled bicycle wheel, he has no idea where the hoover might be. Or if they have one, even (no one’s used it since he’s lived here). Finally he locates a dustpan and brush buried under the sink, and makes do with that. Then he turns his attention to his bedroom and realises, with a jolt of horror, that this will not do at all.
It’s dingy and depressing and, he realises now, a bit smelly. He can’t possibly invite Lyla into his sleeping quarters when they’re in this state. At the bottom of his wardrobe he finds the new bed linen set, still in its clear plastic packaging, that his mum ordered for him. He’d flung it in there without much thought – irritated, actually, at her ‘interference’ – but now he decides that these items are in fact extremely useful. They’re a stripy design, grey and blue; perfectly acceptable for a young man to have. Not that his mum would have picked a SpongeBob set, but still. Eddie is conscious that everything has to be just right for Lyla.
Spirits rising now, he strips off his grubby bedclothes and stuffs them into the wardrobe to be dealt with at a later date. Then he rips the packaging from the new set and pulls it all out.
Eddie frowns. A vital component seems to be missing.
There’s no sheet! Where’s thesheet? He checks the label on the packaging:Pure Cotton Duvet and Pillowcase Set.What’s the use of that? Is he supposed to sleep on a bare mattress, like it’s a crack den? Eddie can’t imagine Lyla would be crazy about that. What can he use instead? A tablecloth? Of course there isn’t a tablecloth here; there isn’t even atable.
There’s the option of putting the same sheet back on. But on further inspection Eddie discovers that it has a huge greyish patch in the middle. And by ‘middle’ it’s more like the whole sheet, apart from the edges, from where he’s been lying on it. So the greyness must be his skin cells that have fallen off in the night. Is this the colour he is now, from these long, hard shifts in the kitchen?
Tentatively, he sniffs the sheet. Ew, no, this definitely can’t go back on the bed. Five months is too long to sleep on the same sheet, he realises now. But Eddie can rectify that. He bundles it up and carries it through to the kitchen, locates some washing powder under the sink and stuffs it into the washing machine on the quickest cycle.
With it churning already he bounds back to his room to tidy and evendust, wincing at the filth that comes off onto the pair of boxers he uses as a duster.
Now for the most challenging task – the one he’s put off until last.
Eddie rotates his clicky shoulders, takes a big suck of water from Raj’s spout bottle and pops a handful of vitamin pills he swiped from the tub in the kitchen. Thus fortified, he eyes the blind, still propped up in the corner in its cardboard tube. He steps closer, squaring up to it as if it might fight him.
Eddie Silva is a hard-working man now and a father-to-be. Surely he can put up a simple window covering?
He knows there’s zero chance of there being any tools in the flat. (Where is Eddie’s dad when he needs him?) But he can improvise, can’t he? He has a good brain, Marius reckons. He’sresourceful.So Eddie tips out the components out of the tube, tossing aside the sheet of instructions as obviously he won’t need those. Now he picks up the little packet of screws and two white plastic thingies. Brackets, he surmises, to hold the thing up. How can he fix them in place without a drill, a screwdriver or a ladder to stand on? Even at six foot tall, Eddie can’t reach the top of the window.
Filled with determination now, he fetches a woodenchair from the living room, plus the only frying pan in the flat. With the washing machine whirring reassuringly, Eddie tries to measure the blind’s width ‘by eye’. Then he climbs onto the chair and, wobbling a little, he places a bracket above the top left corner of the window. He fits a screw through the hole and whacks it hard with the frying pan.
Shards of wood and plaster fly out at him. But amazingly, it stays up!
Somehow Eddie needs to knowexactlywhere to place the second. He clambers off the chair and checks the blind’s width from the instruction sheet he’d tossed aside. Then he stares up at the top of the window, wondering how wide fifty-two centimetres might be.
