‘Me,’ said Tilly, over my shoulder and smug.
‘She won’t just sit quietly with crayons, she’s not that kind of child.’
A few more moments of crunching ensued as we crossed the leaf-scattered ground and burst out from the trees onto the sanity of the tarmac. A lone cyclist went by, turning his head to register us for a second but seeming to look right through us. I wondered if we’d become invisible.
‘What about the park? Does she like the park?’
‘Park!’ Tilly chimed in, lifting her head from my shoulder now. ‘Park, Mummy!’
‘Yes,’ I said wearily. ‘She likes the park, as long as there are swings and a slide and not just interesting examples of dahlias and cacti.’ David’s idea of a good day out was wandering through a botanical paradise with his wife and child looking immaculate and said child regarding her daddy with wide adoring eyes. And never needing a nappy change, needing food, randomly screaming… David was not a natural parent, unless the child was an unnatural child. Tilly was, it had turned out, very, very natural.
‘All right. Let’s meet in Rowntree Park tomorrow. At eleven?’ Ross was standing up straighter now, as though he had renewed hope. Isobel had been right, he actually was quite tall when he stood properly. He was dark, too, I noticed as I remembered her description of him: shaggy dark hair threaded with those grey strands which matched an outcropping of dark stubble across his cheeks. I couldn’t comment on her opinion of him as good-looking as I had less desire to admire a man than I had to go back into that avian-haunted house.
‘Yes, all right,’ I said, aware that I didn’t sound very gracious, but I was trying to stumble my way to my car carrying a hefty toddler. The sides of the road were rutted with tyre marks as though construction vehicles had recently passed this way and been forced to pull over to let more conventional traffic get by.
‘Fantastic.’ I looked up in time to see Ross smile. It was a smile that slid him firmly into Isobel’s self-determined ‘good-looking’ category. It relaxed his face and crinkled his eyes, pushed that tautness away until he looked twinkly and happy. ‘That’s great.’
Something lurched inside me and my blood buzzed in my veins for a minute.No. No no no no. I cannot fancy Ross Ventriss. I am a single mother, I have no idea where my next penny is coming from and I have a track record with men that puts me somewhere ahead of Mrs Genghis Khan.Rational thought stamped its foot hard on my feelings.I’m also lonely, he’s the first man, apart from the man at the council, who’s been nice to me and he’s not dreadful looking. It’s just biology, that’s all. Good sense is having a day off.
Fortunately for all concerned, at this point Tilly ended our conversation by being noisily sick on Ross’s shoes.
8
I couldn’t sleep that night. It was cold and the windows rattled. The flat had been converted from a building which had been an old grain warehouse and turned cheaply into apartments that ought to have sold for huge amounts, but a downturn in the market meant anyone who could afford it had gone for the luxury market by the river. The place had been used for student accommodation for a while, and now it was used for us.
The ‘build it cheap, sell it pricey’ approach meant that the flat had thin walls and no double glazing. From outside came the sound of people with disposable income enjoying spending it in the bars and clubs, and from inside came the sound of those with no disposable income enjoying what they had in whatever ways they could. Music made the walls thump, the floors jittered to the sounds of arguments and fights. From next door there was the occasional wail of a waking child and Tia’s voice, reduced to a blurred Cornish accent, comforting them.
I turned my phone over and looked at the screen. No new messages.
We’re safe. We’ve got a roof over our heads. We can afford food.Tilly had managed to keep some toast down before going grumpily to bed and, for lack of anything else to do, I’d got in beside her, where I sat knees up and thinking. I didn’t often compare lives. Not now, not when we were happy. Just, every so often I’d remember the ultra-king-sized bed with linen sheets and those slippery throws that had never stayed on the bed all night but looked good in photo shoots. David, in bed beside me, with me unable to believe my luck. Me, Libby Douthwaite, moderate of looks and attainment, having done nothing more noteworthy with my life than go to work for a company that managed bookings for a London theatre, had bagged myself a rich, successful actor! All right, notthatrich – the money wasn’t his but his father’s, andhehad indulged his son in his desire to be an actor – and notthatsuccessful – he’d been on TV and stage but not played any major parts or had the acclaim he felt he deserved. Even so. I’d had it all. Ha.
Reflexively I checked the phone again. Then, almost as though to torture myself, I opened my old messages.
David
I just want to see my daughter. I want to know that she’s all right.
Then further back.
David
Don’t worry, I’ll find you.
I closed the phone, turned over and adjusted the earplugs that stopped the worst of the background noise. Tilly, sleeping beside me with her mouth open, didn’t ever seem to hear a thing. She could sleep through police raids and arrests, although I didn’t know how; I was awake and alert at the first thump on the front door.Count your blessings, Libby.
I had Tilly, we were safe and there was the prospect of getting out of here, if Ross Ventriss came through with his promise of five thousand pounds. I didn’t dare think about what I was going to have to do to get that money, and the occasional thought that he didn’t even seem tohavethat money fired through my brain, but it was something. Something to hold on to, a prospect of freedom. We’d come so far, Tilly and I, we just had to hold on a little longer – and possibly fight to the death with a room full of birds, eject a woman from a house she didn’t want to leave and extract the money from an impecunious-looking man – and we’d be home and dry.
I fell asleep to the sounds of vigorous drumming from the flat below, and woke to silence and Tilly brushing Brass’s little felt body with my hairbrush. Outside, my limited view told me, it was raining. The sky was a dim grey and water trickled in slimy trails down the window.
‘We’ll have to put our coats on today, Tils,’ I said, looking for clothing that would make me seem businesslike in front of Ross, and yet would still be suitable for a park visit. I’d got some decent jeans, those would do.
‘No boots,’ Tilly said. ‘Boots gone.’
‘Here, you can wear your old shoes,’ I said, trying to trap her into getting dressed. ‘They can get muddy, it won’t matter.’
Tilly was quieter than usual. Whatever bug had made her sick had reduced her energy levels to something a little easier to cope with and given her less inclination to argue about every single decision made for her. She accepted me strapping on her slightly-too-small shoes without complaint, a pair of dungarees which were also getting a little on the small side I noticed, and only really put her foot down about the jumper I wanted her to wear. In the interests of actually getting to the park on time, I gave in on that point, and she wore her sparkly top with the glittery sleeves, and thus looked like a CBeebies presenter on her way to change the oil in her car. The dungarees weren’t a great move, given that she was only recently toilet trained, but they were the most mud-resistant of her clothes. I didn’t fool myself that a visit to the park was going to be a decorous walk and a quick push on the swings; Tilly could get covered in mud sitting on a chair in an empty room.
Five thousand pounds, though. I couldn’t keep my mind from dwelling on the money, as I strapped Tilly – with a good deal of complaining – into her buggy for the walk through the rain to the park. ‘How the mighty are fallen,’ I muttered to myself as I shoved the cheap buggy through the drifts of soggy leaves.
