I stared at him. ‘Don’t you have a home? A family? Something else to do other than wander around these woods like a weird vagrant?’
He sat down again. I sighed. ‘I’m hanging my entire future on winningThe Great British Build,’ he said. ‘This is important to me. So the second Isobel is out of Elm Cottage I need to be ready to move. OfcourseI’m wandering round! And, yes, I have a home, although no family, thanks for pointing that out.’
When he stood up for the second time I whipped around and got into my car and started the engine. I didn’t want to give him a chance to settle back in my passenger seat again. ‘Goodbye,’ I called out of the window as I drove away. I didn’t want to acknowledge the chance of seeing him again. I didn’t even want tothinkabout that hot little burst of pleasure that had gone off in my chest when he’d mentioned it.
I didnotwant to fancy Ross Ventriss. I was too old for all that stupid crush-on-a-boy rubbish, and I’d been taken in by lust and soft words one too many times already. I had Tilly to consider, and the whole getting us secure and settled and a proper job to think about, I did not have the time or brain space to start liking another man.
Ross wasn’t for me, anyway. He was a bloodyarchitect. He had a vocation and, despite his chewed nails and terrible haircut, he was clearly good enough for a TV programme to want to film him carrying it out.
All these thoughts were sensible and carried me back along the road, back through the village where an absence of people continued, and out towards home. But they didn’t stop me smiling as I drove.
11
‘We can go and see Isobel tomorrow,’ I said conversationally to Tilly as I bathed her before bed. ‘In the woods.’
‘Bird lady,’ Tilly said dreamily. ‘And man.’
‘He might be there too,’ I admitted grudgingly. ‘It’s his house really.’
I sometimes used Tilly as a sounding board, explaining things to her to get them straight in my own head, as she was too little to really have much input into conversations about such things as relocating a hundred miles north, or the complexities of the internal combustion engine.
‘He’s nice really,’ I went on, while Tilly sucked the sponge. ‘He’s wound up a bit tightly though. And I wonder what all that stuff about therapy was about? He seemed to think it had something to do with me, in some obscure way, which is just daft because we’ve only just met.’
‘’Scure,’ Tilly murmured, squeezing water onto the floor over the edge of the shower cubicle she was sitting in. ‘DoGruffalo, Mummy.’
‘You’re no help, do you know that?’ I lifted her out onto my lap and began patting her dry, feeling the delicacy of her skin, so tender that I almost wanted to bite at it, the chubby roundness of her arms and legs and the soft curl of her hair. ‘He’s cute.’
‘I’scute.’
‘Well, yes, you are. He’s cute in a different way. In fact, I’m not even sure which way that is – there’s just something about him. Probably because he’s rather sweet.’He’s self-effacing and funny, like the boys I used to know before your father came along. He reminds me of the person I used to be.I couldn’t say any of that. Not even to a two-year-old who would forget it all before I’d even started on Gruffalo voices.The men I used to date growing up in Greenwich; those sweet vet students that used to come on work experience to your grandad’s practice, all shyness and milkshakes. Those days when your granny and I would laugh in the kitchen about the earnest bouquets they would bring me, and she’d make them cakes to take home…I swallowed hard. Those days, now so distant that I sometimes felt I measured my age in centuries.
Tilly, clean and fed, snuggled into bed while I read to her. She’d had a frantic morning with Kiara, according to Tia. They’d chased each other around the playground like a couple of loose puppies and then played some complicated game on the slide, which involved Kiara telling Tilly she was a shark, and much shrieking. It had all served to tire Tilly sufficiently that she was ready for an early bed, which would give me a few hours browsing the internet while she slept.
‘Night, Tils.’ I kissed her head and tucked her in.
‘Night, Mummy.’ Tilly settled down. ‘No shouting.’
‘Shouting?’ I felt that settling of cold between my shoulder blades. She’d been a baby, she didn’t remember the shouting, surely? And if she did, whatelsedid she remember?
‘Tia said “no shouting”.’ Her thumb was in her mouth now and her eyelids closing, pale and traced with blue veins, almost transparent. ‘No shouting, Mummy.’
‘No,’ I agreed. ‘No shouting.’
Didshe remember? I barely remembered myself, those long, confused nights with a small child, when David would come home from wherever he’d been to give me the third degree about what I’d got up to that day. The endless,endlessquestions – where had I been, how long had I been out for, where was I going tomorrow – trying to make me trip up and admit to something I hadn’t done. What the hell did hethinkI was going to do, with a small baby in her sling or buggy in front of me all the time? Just getting to the library and back was a voyage that even Ranulph Fiennes would struggle to undertake, what with having to take a changing bag, clean clothes, Brass the dragon, muslins, buggy and everything else required by a small child. Crossing Antarctica on foot would be a breeze by comparison. I hadn’t even had any huskies to help me.
I eased my shoulders down from where the merest thought of David had made them spring up around my ears with the tension. My hands had automatically clenched too this time, I noted with a sort of detached interest. Maybe this was good. Maybe this meant I was preparing to fight back rather than roll over and apologise or run away. I looked down at my hands, curled around the cover ofThe Gruffalomaking it bend and warp until the trees behind the Gruffalo’s head curved inwards. Dark woods. I half-laughed to myself. Dark woods, with birds – what the hell was I doing?
Then I looked at my now-sleeping daughter, thumb still in place between lips slackened by dreams, and I knew. I was making a life. Keeping Tilly safe. I was giving her a life where she could feel free, a life where she could be herself and not have to worry about being tracked or followed,controlled. She could be clever, she could fail to achieve anything at all, as long as she was happy. And that was all that I wanted. Tilly to grow up happy, secure and herself. And I wanted to be alive long enough to see that happen.
It had all been in doubt while I’d been with David.
She was curled in the bed that this room was only just big enough for, her lips making sucking motions as she slept, her hair baby-soft after its washing, and I felt again that overwhelming force of protection that had got me this far. She was safe. I was safe, now. It might not be much of a life, but with Ross’s five thousand pounds we could do so much. I tried to ignore the tiny nibbles of guilt which eased their way into my soul, like mice into a biscuit tin. Guilt that I’d taken Tilly away from her father, guilt that he couldn’t see her… She had been safe with him, David had doted on her, even though he had struggled a little to interact with her. It had beenmehe’d had the problem with. Me who’d been afraid. Wasstillafraid.
Images of enormous black birds made my neck prickle, but I gritted my teeth. Yes, it was a phobia, and one I’d had since childhood. But people beat phobias. Phobias were irrational, I reminded myself, I had no more to fear from birds than I did from… from… a pencil, I thought, seizing on the only image to hand, one of Tilly’s crayons poking out from under the bed frame. We needed that money. So I needed to get Isobel to move out.
I squared my shoulders again. Yes. Of course I could do it. We’d go back to Elm Cottage tomorrow and I would refuse to let myself be chased away, however unintentional the chasing might be. I’d confront Isobel and tell her the facts – shehadto leave. For me, for Tilly. I’d shut down the stupid softness that I felt when Ross was kind to me, because I knew it for what it was – the same kind of feeling that a patient can get for a therapist or a doctor who helps them. Transference, wasn’t it called? Ross was the first man I’d met since David. He was kind, after all, he’d bought us coffee and a muffin. That was it. I’d got all this emotion swirling around that I couldn’t express, love and fear and hate and dread and a weakness I didn’t dare show in front of my daughter, and I was dumping it all onto the figure of Ross Ventriss. I was giving him attributes he didn’t have and, to be fair to him, unlike David, he didn’t evenpretendto have.
It was all my problem. I sighed and decided to watch some TV on my laptop to distract myself. A couple of episodes ofDetectoristsand I’d be right as rain again.
