‘Is there anything on the menu you can actually eat?’ Nigel looked on anxiously as he waited for his wife to order. Both heand Eve had tried to persuade her to celebrate her birthday some other way, but Annie had dug her heels in.
‘I’m going to ask for the soup as a main course. Hot and sour chicken soup sounds delicious.’
‘Better ask for a bib, you’ll probably dribble most of it down your top.’ Max made it sound like a statement of fact rather than a joke, but when Eve caught Nigel’s eye, she couldn’t suppress a smile. They’d both realised they had to lean into this, but Annie was nowhere near ready yet.
‘Max! That’s so rude, you know I can’t eat properly yet and it’s my birthday. You’re supposed to be nice to me.’
‘I wasn’t being rude. I was giving you some useful advice, based on the way you dribbled that milkshake down your top the other day.’
‘What are you going to order, Max?’ Nigel cut across the conversation before Annie could respond again, but she seemed to be radiating tension and Eve just hoped they’d be able to get through the meal without Annie bursting into tears. No one should feel like they want to cry on their birthday.
‘I’m getting the fillet steak and chips, but I’m going to ask for an extra portion of chips too. I’m absolutely starving,’ Max announced and thankfully it proved to be the opener of a conversation about what he’d been up to that day, which provided a distraction from the tension in the air. He’d gone up another couple of levels on the PlayStation game that was his current favourite, and been out for another surfing lesson with Waves 4 Everyone, which he’d decided was the cause of his increased appetite. The tension had lifted slightly and by the time the main course arrived, Eve was almost enjoying herself. She might have been able to embrace the evening fully if she didn’t feel like such a fraud for having slipped on her engagement ring two minutes before she left home. If she hadn’t been wearing it, without the excuse of having come straight fromwork, Annie would want to know why and tonight definitely wasn’t the time to have that conversation. Especially if they wanted to avoid tears on Annie’s birthday.
‘That was good.’ Max said, pushing his plate away from him when he finished the last of his chips, before letting out a loud burp that seem to reverberate around the restaurant.
‘Max, for God’s sake! That’s disgusting.’ Annie dropped her spoon into her bowl and Eve had to admit her own half-finished plate of food suddenly felt far less appetising.
‘Why? Jamie says it’s a sign of respect for the chef in a lot of countries. And when we get our own place we’re going to do it at the end of every meal if we want to.’ Max shrugged. He’d taken a real shine to Jamie, another resident at Oakwood Park, who had been a chef in a pub before sustaining a head injury in a motorbike accident that had left him unable to work. The current plan was for Max and Jamie to move into one of the semi-independent living bungalows together.
‘Well, it’s not acceptable here, or any place where I am.’ Annie’s voice was low but steely. ‘That was not the way you were brought up and it’s a repulsive thing to do while other people are still eating their food right next to you. Everyone else in this whole restaurant is looking at us.’
‘Oh, chill out, you’re supposed to be resting your jaw, not flapping your lips.’ Max mined the sound of a beak opening and closing with his hand. ‘I never asked to come here anyway. No one cares if I burp at Oakwood Park, you need to take the pole out of your arse.’
‘That’s enough now,’ Nigel interjected for a second time, but there was no hint of amusement on his face this time. He lookedalmost close to tears himself and Eve knew why. It wasn’t so much Max’s behaviour, even though Annie was right, he’d never have acted like that before, and if she was honest she found sitting next to someone who belched while she was still eating every bit as repulsive as his mother did. It was just another sign that trying to shoehorn Max into the outline of the person he used to be was a recipe guaranteed to make them all unhappy. If Annie wanted to have fun with Max on her birthday, she needed to focus on the things that he found fun, like the virtual reality games at the American diner where, with the overly loud music and food served ‘chips in a basket style’, no one would notice if Max didn’t observe polite etiquette while he was eating. Annie wouldn’t have to worry about people looking at them and judging them, they could just have a laugh together. It might not be Annie’s idea of the perfect night out, but it was far easier for her to adapt to his behaviour than it was for Max to adapt to her expectations. He could try and learn some of those things, but it would never come easily to him and his impulse control had also been severely affected, which was one of the reasons why he’d probably never live completely independently. It turned out that was something else Annie hadn’t accepted.
‘I think we need to look at moving him away from Oakwood Park.’ Annie’s voice was shaking as she looked directly at Nigel, the rage that was thrumming just below the surface making it look as if her whole body was pulsating. ‘He’s not making any progress, he’s going backwards if anything and at this rate he’s never going to be able to leave there and get his own place again.’
‘Let’s not make this into a big?—’
Max cut off his father’s response, before he could finish. ‘I don’t want to leave Oakwood Park. I just want to get a place in one of the bungalows, because Bev said me and Jamie can get a dog if we live there together.’
Bev was the deputy manager who oversaw Max’s care plan and she definitely wouldn’t have made that kind of promise unless it was a real possibility. His eyes were shining, in much the way they had been when Eve had taken him out to the diner, but Annie was already shaking her head.
‘No, no, no. You are absolutely not making that your end goal, Maximus Pascoe. You’ve got a fiancée here and you owe it to her to keep trying to make the progress you need to make to get back to the person you used to be.’
‘No, he doesn’t.’ The words were out of Eve’s mouth before she could stop them. It had never been the plan for all this to come out tonight and she wished it hadn’t happened on Annie’s birthday, because she knew it was going to hurt her, but suddenly it seemed like the perfect time to say what needed to be said. ‘The only person Max owes anything to is himself, and what he owes himself is the right to be as happy as he can possibly be. I think that’s what he’ll find in one of the bungalows at Oakwood Park, with Jamie, and their gaming and their dog, with support on hand for the bits they need it for. Max and I had so many wonderful years together and nothing will ever change that. I’ll always love him, but we can’t keep pretending that it’s going to go back to how it was. I just want to find a way of being in Max’s life that adds to his happiness, not detracts from it because I make him feel as though he needs to be different from how he is now.’
Annie was just staring straight ahead, almost as if she hadn’t heard the words and Nigel took his wife’s hand.
‘You know she’s right, sweetheart. We all wanted Max to make a complete recovery, but we’ve got to acknowledge that it’s never going to happen. Now, all I want is for him to be happy, and for you to be okay with whatever that happiness looks like.’
‘I just don’t know if I can be.’ Annie turned to look at her husband and before he could even answer she burst into noisysobs that made everyone else in the restaurant turn to look at them for a second time.
Felix was spending more of his spare time than ever volunteering at Domusamare, but that didn’t stop him missing Eve. In a way it made it worse, because working for the charity had broken down barriers between them. He woke up thinking about her every morning, and she was still on his mind when he went to bed at night. He wondered how she was and he wanted to talk to her about things that had happened during his day. He’d picked up the phone more than once to call her, to talk about the fact that Sophie had finally made contact with her dad, and the tentative steps she’d been taking to get to know him and the rest of his family. It had lifted his spirits to see Sophie have new hope, and he knew the only other person at Domusamare who’d feel quite the same way about it was Eve, but he couldn’t reach out to her. Every day he questioned whether he’d done the right by thing pulling away from her. But right now Annie and Nigel needed Eve. It was just that Felix wanted her, too, more than he ever would have believed.
The weird thing was that he also missed Max. Wanting to avoid the chance of bumping into Eve as much as possible, he’d asked one of his colleagues to swap with him to take over the final OT sessions that were helping to prepare Max for semi-independence. He’d also asked Nathan to take over arranging the Waves 4 Everyone sessions with Max, unsure if he could look the other man in the eye, given how he felt about the woman Max had once proposed to. He missed Max’s dry sense of humour and the determination he showed when they were working on something he considered worthwhile, as well as thehonesty he displayed when they were working on something he considered a waste of time. There was no hidden agenda with Max. Felix knew exactly where he stood and exactly what the other man thought of him, which was refreshing.
‘Flora came back again.’ Tilly who worked full time at Domusamare frowned as she imparted the information that made Felix’s heart even heavier.
‘She must think Duncan is still here somewhere. Did you take her back to the foster family?’ Flora was a scruffy little border terrier with crooked bottom teeth and eyebrows that wouldn’t have looked out of place in anAngry Birdscartoon. She was also gentle, incredibly affectionate and desperately sad in the wake of the death of her former owner. Duncan had been homeless and a regular client of the services Domusamare offered, often spending overnight stays in the hostel. After his death, Flora had been housed with a foster family, while a local dog rescue charity tried to find her a new forever home, but she was a bit of a Houdini and kept escaping back to Domusamare, looking for Duncan.
‘Yes, Mitch from Dogs R4 Life came to pick her up, but he said they’re getting increasingly worried about finding somewhere that will work for her long term, if an experienced foster family can’t even keep her safe. So Flora might have to stay in the kennels at the charity for the rest of her life.’ Tilly shook her head. ‘It’ll be like being in prison for her, she was so used to having freedom with Duncan. According to Mitch, the other problem is that they’d need to find somewhere her new owner will be home all day, and with no other dogs, because she’s used to being the only one. On top of that he said the person taking her would need enough energy to take her for long walks, and that she’s most likely to settle with a male owner. All of that narrows down the options even more.’
‘There must be someone out there who could take on a dog like that. If I won the lottery and didn’t need to work, I’d take her myself.’ Felix managed a wry smile, which Tilly mirrored for a moment, but then she looked downcast again.
‘Not that many lottery winners in the Three Ports area who want to take on a dog with a face only a mother could love, though, are there?’
‘There must be a least one. I’ll put an appeal up on all our social media pages and link it to the Dogs R4 Life website. We’ll find Flora a lovely new home, I promise.’ Felix was already moving towards the office, hoping that his promise to Tilly hadn’t been a rash one, but he firmly believed there was someone for everyone, even when it came to matching up a dog with its new owner.
