Why?
‘Because you need to leave here!’ he burst out. ‘I’ve got to get started in the next week or so. I’m on the shortlist with some very talented people and they’ve all got their building work started. I’m following them all on social media!’
Ah. Social media. Well, that never lies does it?
I had no idea how Isobel managed to get so much nuance into the written word. That sentence was so saturated with sarcasm that I was surprised the ink didn’t bubble.
And it doesn’t really answer my question. Yes yes, my leaving is important for you. But why Libby? Why are you so involved?
‘I… I like her?’
It’s more than that, isn’t it?
My cheeks heated up with the awkwardness of the situation. I wasn’t sure whether I should pretend I couldn’t hear, or read, any of this, or whether to join in. Or whether I should just change the subject completely. It seemed that Isobel might be doing this simply to distract from her situation – after all, what better way to drive us both from the house than to make us embarrassed to the bone?
‘I don’t think…’ I began.
‘Look, all right.’ Ross stood up now. ‘All right, I admit it.’
The frozen cold came over me again, as though snow had fallen only in my personal space.David sent him. He knows David. He’s been watching me.I shook my head. Not possible. I had sought out Ross, offered to work for him, he hadn’t come looking for me.
‘I thought I’d got over this, I’ve had therapy, I know the ins and outs and the whys and everything,’ Ross went on, his hands edging towards his mouth again and his lip twisting as though he wanted to bite it. ‘The therapist thinks it’s something called White Knight Syndrome – I’ve got a desire to try to save people, that I find my self-esteem from having helped others. It’s bloody stupid and I thought I knew myself well enough now not to throw myself into awful situations and yet’ – both hands came up in an expressive shrug – ‘here I am again.’
I couldn’t meet his eye. I didn’t know who I felt worse for – me, for being so obviously a piteous object in need of saving, or Ross for having such fragile self-worth that he felt he needed to help other people just to feed his own image. No wonder he’d offered me all that money just to get Isobel out! I’d thought he was just desperate, but it had clearly been driven by more of a psychological need than a practical one. The well-known feeling of out-of-my-depth stupidity whirled around the inside of my head. I’d been suckered, and my own self-esteem came roaring to the fore.
‘Right then.’ I stood up too now. ‘As we seem to have sorted out Isobel’s new housing situation, I can go. And you canstuffyour five thousand quid, I don’t need anybody’s pity thank you very much.’
I tried to stalk to the door but the furniture contrived to stop me, as I had to weave in and out of an assortment of side tables. It’s hard to stalk with poise and dignity when you have to perform a kind of hula movement around worm-eaten antiques.
Neither Isobel nor Ross moved to prevent my leaving, but once I’d reached the open air Ross came panting after me.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his jacket swinging with urgency. ‘I didn’t mean it to come out like that. It wasn’t pity – the whole saviour complex doesn’t work like that – I reallydoneed Isobel out and I was desperate enough to want to throw money at the problem. I’m just starting to realise that everything is a little bit more complicated than I thought.’
I’d got caught on a bramble and was trying to unweave it delicately from my clothing without causing myself any dreadful injuries, but it suited me to pretend that I had stopped to listen to him. ‘You tried to buy me,’ I said.
‘No.’
‘That’s like… like prostitution.’
‘No, it really isn’t.’ He sounded desperate now. ‘I didn’t know your situation when I offered you the money, and I’ve been trying to talk myself out of wading to the rescue ever since I found out that you’re struggling alone with your daughter. I thought I was doing pretty well, actually.’
I looked at him standing there in his professional outdoors jacket with his hair on end and his fingernails creaking under the strain of being bitten, and I felt a momentary wave of something soft, something like an inner laugh. ‘Oh, Ross,’ I said. ‘You are an idiot.’
‘I know,’ he replied glumly. ‘All that therapy and I’m having to fight not to – well, I don’t quite know what I want to do.’
‘I don’t need saving,’ I said gently, letting the bramble stem twang loose. ‘I know my situation looks dreadful, but it could be a lot worse. I’m happy, Tilly is happy, we’ve got a roof and a bed and food.’
‘I know,’ he said again. ‘But now I know you were escaping from a controlling relationship, and me leaping in to try to control you in a different way won’t have helped.’
I stood, suddenly surprised. ‘I didn’t think of it like that.’
‘Yes, well, you haven’t had the therapy at £150 per hour, have you? I’m several thousand pounds ahead of you on the emotional self-knowledge scale.’
‘Clearly.’ I’d sounded more acerbic than I’d meant to, and jumped in quickly in the hopes that Ross wouldn’t notice. ‘So, has Isobel agreed to go, do you think? Will she move into the little house?’
‘She’s thinking about it.’ He glanced up and met my eye. ‘She can’t have had an easy life either.’
‘Maybe she’s chosen to live the way she does. Some people do, apparently; they decide that houses and a conventional life aren’t for them and they?—’
