David had, I had to admit, been very good about listening to my varied instructions before gently taking my shoulders and turning me around in the nursery car park. ‘It will be fine, Libby,’ he’d said. ‘I’ve got to learn sometime and if that’s by living through a monumental tantrum, then so be it.’ He’d grinned and I’d remembered why I’d fallen for him originally. ‘I’m sure, in the event of anything going wrong, I will be surrounded by sympathetic women desperate to help out the poor man.’
I’d given him a sharp look. ‘You had better not be using our daughter to try to pick up women.’
Another grin. ‘Nope. I’m off the pick-up market for the foreseeable. I want to concentrate on my daughter for now. I’m not saying “never”, but…’ He’d flashed me his best ‘audition’ grin. ‘Not for a bit. I’ve got a lot of adjusting to do. Now, go.’
So I’d gone. I kept my phone on in my pocket and my fingers never far from it, just in case it vibrated a panicked message about a lack of toilet facilities or Tilly having a seizure or choking or…
‘Hi. Sorry, I had to do something noteworthy for the cameras.’ Ross arrived beside me, panting slightly. ‘We’ve pretended to find something wrong with the foundations just to give them something to film, so they’ve had to stop so we can pretend to put it right.’ His mouth twisted but he didn’t go so far as to chew his lip, he just pulled a rueful face instead. ‘I never knew that filming a TV programme could be so utterlyslow. I could have had the new house up by now if they didn’t keep interfering. How are Tilly and David getting on?’
‘We both dropped her off and she seems happy about him picking her up on his own.’ I found I was having to beat off the urge to chew my own fingernails. ‘It feels odd.’
‘Of course it does. It’s been you on your own for everything for so long, delegation isn’t going to come easily.’
‘Mum flew back this morning,’ I said, trying not to sound as though this made me as sad as it did. ‘They want to move home, but it’s going to take time.’
‘There’s video calls though. Once you sort out the time difference you can chat to her whenever you want.’
‘Yes.’ A cold wind scuttled through the bare trees and sticky wet leaves made an attempt to rustle. ‘I took the crow diamonds in for valuing today.’
Ross gave me a shrewd look. ‘I assume from your lack of skipping about and general joyous carefree behaviour that the news wasn’t good.’
I tried not to look down the barrel of an unspooling future. ‘It’s all relative, isn’t it? Apparently black diamonds aren’t worth a huge amount right now, but the assessor said that prices go up and down a lot. There’s about forty thousand pounds worth in the bag, and I know that’s not to be sniffed at. Iknowit.’ I sniffed. ‘And I’m keeping half for Tilly. She likes playing with them, and it’s something to be able to give her to help her pay for university or a car or something, when she’s old enough.’
‘Well.’ Ross tried to sound upbeat. ‘Twenty thousand pounds is an improvement on what you’ve got now, isn’t it? Would David…?’
‘I amnotasking David for money.’
‘No. No, I see that wouldn’t be good. Sorry.’
‘I feel guilty enough already,’ I said quietly. ‘If it hadn’t been for me, he’d have had two years to get to know his daughter.’ I shoved both my hands into my pockets and pushed down to distract me from those feelings and try to stop them rising and overwhelming me again.
‘Look.’ Ross stepped over to close the gap between us. He smelled of engine oil for some reason. ‘You were ill and nobody told you.’
‘I know.’ I let him put his arms around me. ‘It’s just… so much stuff.’
There was a brief quiet, interrupted only by the sound of demolition and some robust swearing from the house site. ‘I have the feeling,’ Ross said into my hair, ‘that this relationship is going to be a bit on the not-straightforward side.’
I struggled back so I could see his face. ‘It doesn’t have to be a relationship,’ I said, keeping the disappointment out of my voice with some effort. ‘I’m not holding you to anything.’
‘You are holding me toyou,’ he almost whispered. ‘My other relationships have gone the other way, you know. I’ve tried to save people and then they’ve dusted themselves down and headed off into their new futures. I haven’t needed to save you and yet, here you are.’ Now he looked away from the horizon and into my eyes. ‘All that therapy, and what I really needed was this life lesson. And you were there at the beginning, trying to help me.’
‘But I come with baggage. Well, Tilly, who absolutely isn’t baggage but she’s mine.’
‘You also come with an ex-partner and a bag of black diamonds. That’s not baggage, that’s a thriller plot.’
Now I laughed. ‘True. We can at least try, can’t we?’
‘Why not?’
We stood together and watched Elm Cottage come down. I tried not to think about how hard it was going to be to get a job to work around Tilly’s nursery and then school hours; where we were going to find somewhere affordable to live; how I was going to integrate David’s desire to help raise his daughter and the general overwhelming confusion of having not been able to trust my brain and whether I would ever learn not to doubt what I felt in future. The gang of men in big work boots and gauntlets stomping all over the wreckage of what had been Isobel’s home began to feel like an allegory.
Then I left Ross and the big sweary men to it and headed back to the hostel. Which also managed to make me feel guilty just by existing. I shouldn’t be here. I hadn’t run from a stalking control freak, I’d run because I was ill, from a perfectly decent man, and thus didn’t deserve this little room.
I sat on the bed in the relative quiet. Tia and her family were a few wall-thumps and the Ukrainian girls were at college. Downstairs, even Slipknot had been struck dumb, so I jumped when there was a tap on the door.
‘Can I borrow some teabags?’ It was Tia’s eldest daughter. ‘Mum’s completely out and her money doesn’t come in until tomorrow.’
‘’Course you can. Hang on.’ I didn’t have any teabags either when I checked the cupboard. This sent more guilt flooding through me; a few teabags was the least I could do for Tia when she’d been such a good friend and support, and I felt a fraud all over again.
