Mum let me go and we both pulled an enormous amount of paper from the dispenser – shaped, rather oddly, like a tree – and wiped our faces.
‘David and Ross will be wondering what we’ve been doing in here,’ Mum said, and now her voice sounded lighter, with the top note of laughter I remembered so well.
‘It’s a toilet, Mum.’ I helped Tilly off and sorted her out. ‘I think they can work it out.’
‘And you’re all right? Really?’ Without thinking Mum helped button Tilly’s trousers. We were face to face with Tilly’s wriggling little body between us and I could see the strain and tears still staining Mum’s face.
I smiled and it felt as though my face had echoed the words of Tilly’s chanted song and let it go. ‘I will be,’ I said. ‘I really will be.’
But after Mum and David had left, Mum to go sightseeing around town and David to… I actually didn’t know what he was up to, and Ross and I were sitting facing one another across a small plastic table while Tilly ate a bowl of ice cream and occasionally shouted ‘Balls!’ at a disconcerting volume, I slumped.
‘It’s going to be all right,’ Ross said cheerily. ‘Tilly gets both parents, I get you – within the acceptable boundaries laid down and not meaning to imply anything by the wordget…’
‘You don’t have to worry, Ross.’ I helped Tilly with her spoon. ‘I know what you mean.’
‘I’m an architect. I tend towards being upfront with full details. Avoid that in my business and you’re likely to find a staircase halfway up the wrong wall and a room with no doors.’
I smiled. ‘You’re an idiot.’
‘Oh, probably. But it does seem that things are falling into place. Incidentally, I need a PA to deal with the business while I’m on this TV gig, are you interested?’
I tried to give him a hard stare but it was difficult because I was also fending off Brass who seemed to want to beat me over the head. ‘No. That would be a recipe for disaster.’
A sigh. ‘You’re probably right. But you’re going to have to find a job, aren’t you? And sell some of the diamonds to get somewhere to live?’
‘I don’t want to sell them all though. Isobel left them for Tilly, so I shouldn’t.’ There was that horrible guilt back again, the guilt that had descended on me as soon as my pregnancy had been confirmed and had lapped up against my shores to a greater or lesser extent ever since. Knowing how I’d behaved after Tilly’s birth was a tsunami of guilt, and not wanting to sell the crow diamonds while knowing that I might have to was eroding an entire coastal district.
‘But Isobel told you to use them so you didn’t have to roll over and take whatever your ex suggests,’ he said, reasonably.
‘But she said they were for meandTilly,’ I pointed out again. ‘I checked the bag, there are twelve black diamonds there. Even if I save six for Tils and sell the other six, that’s going to net me, what, eighteen, twenty grand? A nice little sum, but hardly life changing – it will all go on housing us until I can work full time. And I’ve still got to find a job that fits in with nursery and then school hours. Mum and Dad are thinking of moving back to Britain but they’ll have their own lives and I don’t want to depend on them for childcare.’
‘I’m sure Tilly will understand if you have to sell them all.’ He was so rational that it made my teeth hurt.
‘IthinkIsobel meant her to actually have some of the diamonds, at least. I mean, yes, Icouldsell them all but it’s still not going to realise loads. Maybe forty thousand pounds? Bill-paying money, a new car… and then nothing for Tilly to keep; nothing for her to use forherfuture, and Isobel was all about the future. I’m pretty sure she didn’t intend me to flog the lot and blow the money on boring, everyday stuff.’
‘You could…’ Ross tilted his head, hopefully.
‘No, I couldn’t,’ I said firmly. ‘Working with you and… well, us having whatever we might have, it wouldn’t work. We’d be too much together, and Tilly and David aren’t the only ones who need to take things slowly.’
Now Ross looked back at the tabletop and rubbed at the skin around a nail. He didn’t quite go as far as picking at it, but it looked like a close-run thing. ‘How slowly are you envisaging? Only, I’m thirty-nine and I can feel the world of male pattern baldness and erectile disfunction creeping on apace.’
I let Tilly’s spoon drop and touched his hand. It felt very intimate as a gesture, even given that we were sitting around a primary-coloured table in a room full of screaming toddlers and I was being assaulted by a felt dragon. ‘Ross, I’m never going to risk having another baby,’ I said, trying for softly, but Tilly instantly yelled ‘Baby!’ at such volume that several mothers turned around and gave me ‘good luck with the pregnancy’ smiles. ‘If you want someone to start a family with…’
Ross looked over at Tilly, who was hanging dangerously from her seat. ‘I never had much thought about children,’ he said, also as softly as was concomitant with several small children seemingly being murdered. ‘I think you and Tilly are more than enough.’
Relief waves joined the puddles of guilt. ‘After what happened, I don’t dare,’ I said, apologetically.
‘No, I can see that.’ His hand curved upward to take mine. ‘And I don’t want to risk losing you, not now.’
I held his hand while awkwardly righting Tilly in her seat, fending off Brass and trying to keep my elbows out of the remaining ice cream, and wondered how onearthwe were ever going to get this to work.
26
A few days later I was standing in the wood watching what was left of Elm Cottage being torn down. Lots of men in hard hats and high-viz jackets moved purposefully through the rubble while Ross stood around looking at plans and pointing dramatically. A camera team filmed every move, although I couldn’t quite understand why, as surely demolition was demolition and hardly what every viewer was going to tune in for. But apparently the crew were going to film every stage of the build and somehow it would all be cut and interwoven to make unmissable TV.
I watched a huge truck with a massive grab arm on the front clawing its way into the paper-thin walls and sighed. People watched other people making cakes on TV, didn’t they? They watched people getting married, people going on holiday; they watched police and ambulance forces at work, what was so different about watching an architect and a building team? And at least they got time-lapse; we had to live through every stage of something that took an hour and a half of TV to show. The judging would be done live after the respective houses were finally finished, to a nine-month deadline.
Ross was still pointing, waving part of the team over to raze a small part of standing wall, then bending to pick up a brick and look at it critically. I wandered back to my car. I’d only popped over to see how things were going while Tilly was at nursery and because I was at a bit of a loose end. David was going to pick her up from nursery today and take her to a Children’s Day at the York Archaeological Trust for the afternoon, and I couldn’t settle.
