“This.” I gestured to her house. “This isn’t your fault. Riz screwed you over. If you need anything. Anything for the children – don’t be proud, I can help.” I pulled out the receipt for my iced coffee from my pocket. “Have you got a pen?”
She looked surprised but went inside and came back a moment later with one. I scribbled my number on the receipt.
I left her and walked back to the car. Simon was glaring at me. “What were you saying?” he asked.
Inside the car, it was hotter than the fucking sun. “I was offering a hand if she needed help with the kids, if she was hard up.”
“It’s not your problem what mess she’s got herself into,” he said, starting the engine. All of a sudden, the idea of him driving my car annoyed me.
It was okay for Simon, who’d probably never had to worry about money in his life, to say it wasn’t my problem to look out for anyone else’s kids. But I’d been those kids, with parents too stupid and feckless to figure out how to put a roof over our heads and food on the table. Whatever the sins of the parents, those kids didn’t deserve to suffer for it.
Apparently, I was glaring at Simon pretty hard because he gave me a sheepish smile. “Okay, I didn’t mean to sound quite so heartless. It’s a nice thing to do.”
He shook his head. “This village gives me the creeps.”
I said nothing. I didn’t feel quite the same way. Forstenmitre felt welcoming to me. Like I could almost hear it laughing, like it wanted me to stay and play.
Simon began to drive in the direction of home. After a couple of minutes, he tried again with conversation. “I didn’t know you were so good with kids,” he said and gave me a cheery look. “They loved you.”
I shrugged. “Little kids always like me; I don’t know why. Babies as well. I pull a silly face, and they stop crying.” My mother used to say it was because my dark hair and big brown eyes were easy for the baby to focus on, and they got distracted. Whatever it was, she used me as a baby pacifier whenever a noisy one came into thepub. “She teething, is she? Let me get my son from the back. Arek, come pull face for baby!”
“When you come up to Aberdeen, you should meet my sister’s boy. He isn’t very impressed with me, but apparently, he’d think you’re the bee’s knees.”
Oh, now I’m all but coming to live in Scotland, am I?I didn’t know how to feel about that. I changed tack.
“What’s your sister’s name?”
“Mhairi,” he said. “She got the traditional name. She’s a teacher like Mum was. Her little boy is four now, and she and her husband, Duncan, have a place north of town.”
“What’s your nephew called?”
He grinned. “You promise not to laugh?”
I frowned. “I changed my name to Arden. Do you honestly think I mock other people’s names?”
He shrugged. “Good point. I forget it isn’t your real name. It’s so … you.”
“It is myrealname. I changed it legally.”
He looked at me for a second. “That’s brave,” he said. “You know, you can choose to go by a different name under UK law. There was nothing stopping you from being Arden, without having to sign a single form.”
I didn’t like this conversation. That was what I had done for several years, but eventually I decided I was Arden Forrest. Arkadiusz Puszcza had been dead for several years at that point, and he wasn’t coming back. Goodbye, Arek, hello Arden.
My silence must’ve been telling because Simon switched topics. “His name is Mungo, by the way. After the patron saint of Glasgow. It’s where they met, at uni, and she had to drag Duncan kicking and screaming to the North East.”
“Mungo Anson?”
“Er, no, Mungo Campbell.”
I rolled my eyes. “Are you the most Scottish people to ever exist?”
He shrugged. We crested a small hill as we headed home and were blinded by the sun on a corner. Simon pulled the shade down. “This car is a heap of junk. No offence.”
“This car saved my life!”
“Then reward it by putting it out of its misery.”
What is it with men and taking against my trusty Green Mobile? It came back from the dead after I had to slam it into a wall to get away from Tarquin. It deserved respect.
