Ross jiggled himself upright against the post. ‘I could…’
I fixed him with a stare that could have burned holes in metal. ‘No. You couldn’t. I am not leaving my daughter with a man I don’t know. To be honest, I wouldn’t leave her with a man Idoknow.’ He’d recoiled with such horror that I softened my voice. ‘Nothing personal, just protective-mother stuff.’ Or, at least, mother who lives in fear of her daughter being taken…
‘I’m sorry. Of course, I didn’t think.’ His lower lip was drawn up between his teeth again. It made him look so agonised that I felt sorry for him.
‘Look. I’ll go and have a quick look around tomorrow, all right? Isobel might have packed up and gone now she knows the place is going to be knocked down. And I have to go and get Tilly’s wellies back. I can’t afford…’ I stopped. My lack of funds was not really Ross’s business. ‘But any hint of birds and I am out of there.’
He slumped again. ‘Thank you, Libby.’
His use of my name made me stop. It made everything feel more personal, as though I’d been pulled into some nefarious plan to make an old woman homeless. ‘Just for a look around, mind you.’
‘Yes, yes, I get that. No bird assaults.’ He stopped. ‘Would your daughter…’
‘Tilly.’
‘Would Tilly like a hot chocolate or something? There’s a little café over there and I feel I owe you.’
You owe me five thousand pounds, mate,I wanted to say but Tilly had heard her name in conjunction with the wordchocolateand was attempting to screw herself out of the swing seat.
‘Chocolate!’
I sighed. ‘You’ve done it now. We’ll be lucky to get out of here without ear-to-ear chocolate application and a helping of cheesy chips. Tilly can be very persistent.’
I lifted her out of the swing and the moment her feet touched the ground she was off, sprinting across the play park in her almost-outgrown shoes. At least she was sprinting away from the pond this time though. Ross and I followed, me shoving the buggy ahead of me with Brass taking the seat.
‘Couldn’t you leave her with her father?’ Ross said conversationally as we walked. ‘I mean, he must have her sometimes, even if you’re not together any more?’
I shook my head. ‘No. He’s not around.’
‘Grandparents?’
It struck me suddenly that anyone looking at us, crossing the muddy grassland of the park behind an overexcited toddler, would think that we were a family. Mum, Dad and daughter, out for a day at the playground, heading to the café for a restorative drink. A harassed mother dragging a buggy with the father stalking alongside, head tilted into the wind, and their child stomping in puddles and screaming with delight as the water splashed to the height of her head. We looked like the family Tilly would never have.
‘No,’ I said, trying to kill the conversation.
‘Come on, she’s not an immaculate conception.’ Ross sounded almost amused. ‘I’m fairly sure the Second Coming won’t wear a glittery top and dungarees with Babar the Elephant sewn on.’
‘It’s her favourite top,’ I said sulkily.
‘I just think that, should the Messiah return to earth, he or she will have a better taste in clothing,’ Ross said, sounding as serious as if he reallyhadconsidered the sartorial choices of Jesus for a reappearance.
‘That’s because you’re weird,’ I said firmly and carried on dragging and shoving the buggy through the mud ruts and bird poo that ornamented what, three months ago, would have been a restful grassy stretch.
Tilly had reached a little clump of trees and was walking around it, patting each trunk. I was glad she’d slowed down because my lack of fitness was showing and I was sweating inside my coat. ‘Chocolate,’ Tilly said firmly, looking Ross squarely in the eye. ‘Now.’
‘Yes, we’re just going to the café, over there.’ I pointed.
‘Hot chocolate all right?’ Ross said, with the enforced jocularity with which most men speak to unfamiliar small children. It wasn’t how David had spoken to her though. I had a sudden red-hot memory. Tilly, just a tiny baby, David reading to her from his copy ofThe Stage, speaking to her not as though she were a child but as though she were an adult who understood the ins and outs of auditioning, because he didn’t know how else to speak to her. I’d snatched her up in my arms, watched her small face crease into a frown and then into tears and had that overwhelming feeling of failure again. She’d been happy listening to audition calls and now she was crying.
I shook my head to clear the memory. It had razor blades around the edges.
‘Are you all right?’ Ross broke my memory by touching me lightly on the shoulder. ‘You went all still.’
Tilly was staring at me too, one hand on the door to the café. ‘Mummy?’ Her voice trembled slightly and I remembered that I had to be the grown-up here.
‘No, it’s fine.’ Pushing away the memory, shoving down the dry crumbling feeling of fear, of incipient danger, I gave an unnaturally bright smile to both of them. ‘Just… thinking.’
Ross held the door for me as I dragged the recalcitrant buggy inside, like trying to get an unwilling horse into a trailer. As I passed him he raised a single eyebrow and it gave his usually careworn face a cynical cast.
