This gift of tea, biscuits, and towels big enough to dry more than my goolies encourages me tell him even more truths. “I’m not a fan of early starts. You’ve made tomorrow’s easier for me. Aloteasier. Thanks, Dair.”
He doesn’t unfurl then. He melts again like he did for me in the bathroom. It’s that plain and simple: Dair smiles so hard he shows me a dimple of his own, and that’s almost as good as what Flynn’s call interrupted us doing. In fact, in one way, it’s even better than me getting to come as hard as Dair did, because nothing makes this smile quit. Not even me grumbling. “I really can look after myself. I do have plenty of stuff of my own.”
“In your brother’s spare room?”
“My cousin’s. But yeah, some of it is there. The rest is in a storage unit. I would have dug it out already, but?—”
“You’ve been busy.”
He’s been honest with me. Been bare. I take another turn at doing the same.
“I’ve been putting it off. Anything else seemed like?—”
“Giving up.” His gaze lands on the bathroom door he closed between us to let me take a call in private. “You didn’t want to give up on your… on your Flynn coming back to make everything right?”
“He isn’t mine. He never was. And I never wanted him to be. As for him making it right…” I struggle to verbalise what I hadn’t wanted to believe until an empty space meant I had to. The wail of a passing siren helps me explain. “When I was a nipper, ice cream vans used to do the rounds of our housing estate every summer afternoon and evening. Still do. My aunt must have got sick of me asking for a second Mr. Whippy. She used to tell me those vans only played a tune in the evenings if they were empty.”
That surprises Dair into laughing. This place is too full of clutter for it to echo, which is a shame. I could stand to listen to it for longer. And to his Highland-heather murmur. “Canny woman.”
“She was.”
“Must have had some Scottish blood in her veins.”
“Nah. She was a born-and-bred mudlark like me.” His slight frown means I translate. “Someone who makes their living by picking through whatever gets washed up. She was a real grafter.” My voice roughens out of nowhere. “A real grafter who always told me the same thing.”
He almost whispers, “Which was?”
“That if I wanted another ice cream, I had to put in the work to earn it. Then she’d give me ways to do that.”
“Like?”
“Like cleaning up her mudlarking finds. The stuff she found on the shores of the river, like clay pipes and old blue glass chemist bottles. Her favourite finds were china.”
“You mean she did it for real?” His gaze skitters sideways in the right direction for the Thames. “Right here?”
“No. Not here. On the Isle of Dogs, where I’m from. The rough side, not the posh side where Canary Wharf is. She’d fill a bucket with soapy water and tell me to get scrubbing.”
“Tough lady.”
I nod. Then I shake my head. “She was the best. And she wasn’t wrong. Work did make that second ice cream taste good. But what I’m trying to say is that Flynn might as well have played the same tune as those ice cream vans the whole time I knew him. He was empty.” I instantly doubt my word choice and try harder to explain my meaning. “He didn’t have nothing for me.” I picture the goals Flynn had listed and checked off. “I mean, he had long-term plans all mapped out, plain as day. The final one didn’t include me.”
“Did he…” Dair wets his lips and straightens up like this is important to him. “Is that why he called? To tell you he’d made a mistake about that and he’s coming back for you?”
“No idea.” I won’t risk getting sucked back in by someone who fooled me once already. “I didn’t pick up.”
“Oh. I thought I heard you talking.”
“That was me leaving him a voice note. Told him that if he’s got something to say to me, he can do it in the group chat where every Ex can see it. Then I blocked him. I ain’t got no more time for him. Which is good.”
Dair breathes, “It is?”
“Yeah.”
I meet worried eyes.
“Because it means I got more time for you.”
I didn’t intend to walk away carrying more than I arrived with, but that’s what I do, and I’m not talking about towels or teacups.
