Alicia looked beautiful. She was beautiful. Much more beautiful than Roan’s wife. And she was getting more beautiful the longer her affair with Roan went on, like he was pumping her full of some magic elixir. She had her red hair down in long waves and was wearing a black coat and red Chelsea boots and a pink scarf and red lips and black tights. She couldn’t stop smiling. He looked more circumspect, held the door for her, as was his way, quick look over his shoulder as he went in.
I watched them being led to a table right at the back of the restaurant.
I wouldn’t be able to see them from where I was standing so I put my phone back in my pocket and went home.
Aaron was there. He’d bought a Christmas tree and that cheered me up. One good thing about Granddad going was that Aaron got to sleep in the bedroom now, not in the living room,and we could have a proper Christmas tree, not the funny little skinny space-saving one we’d been using for years, which sat on a tabletop. The tree smelled so good. I stood with my face buried inside its branches and breathed it in.
Aaron passed me the box of decorations from the cupboard in the hallway. ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘Girls’ work.’ He winked and I gave him a shove. Aaron’s not exactly a feminist but he’s no chauvinist either. He likes the idea of the world being run by women. He likes women.
I dressed the tree and stared from the window every now and then, down to the plaza below where the posh little restaurant was and as I stared I found myself wondering what I was doing, following Roan about the way I did, taking pictures of everything he did. I wondered where it was all heading. I wondered if I was mad, maybe. But I didn’t feel mad. I felt totally fine.
Aaron put our dinner on the table. He said, ‘It’s nice to have you here. For once.’
He said this with a smile because he wasn’t having a go at me. He meant it as it sounded.
‘You know,’ he said, spooning yellow rice on to his plate, glancing over my shoulder at the twinkling tree, ‘it feels kind of strange. First Christmas without my dad. If you want to talk about it …’
I just smiled and shook my head and said, ‘I’m fine. Really.’
‘I do worry about you, Saff. We all do.’
I threw him a questioning look.
‘The family. Me. Lee. Tana. The girls.’
‘Not much of a family really, is it?’ I said.
‘Oh. That’s harsh.’ He smiled. ‘It’s quality, not quantity, yeah?’
I smiled too. ‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘Just keep us in the loop, Saff, OK? Whatever it is that’s bothering you.Whoever it is that’s bothering you. We’re all here for you. Yeah?’
I looked up at him. ‘But what about you?’ I said. ‘Who’s here for you?’
He looked kind of abashed. ‘What do you mean?’
I said, ‘You’re nearly thirty. You work two jobs. You haven’t had a girlfriend since you were like twenty-four or something. Who’s worrying about you?’
Aaron put down his knife and fork and looked at me very sternly. Aaron looking stern, I should add, is not very stern at all. He has the face of an angel.
‘Saff,’ he said, ‘I don’t need worrying about, OK. Please God, don’t worry about me. Just focus on yourself. Focus on school, on these A-levels. Then focus on getting into university. Then focus on getting a good degree. And then, maybe then, I’ll let you worry about me. But until then, we’re good here, OK?’
I nodded but I felt a lurch in the pit of my stomach. Aaron would be thirty-one by the time I left university. And then what? I thought of Clive, or Owen, or whatever his name was, and his sad little bedroom and his sad little stripy dressing gown and I thought he looked like he was probably about thirty-one and I didn’t want that for Aaron.
‘I might not even go to university,’ I said.
‘ ’Course you will,’ he said.
‘Why? Just because I’m clever, there’s no law about it. I can do whatever I want to after I’ve left school. I could get a job and get my own place and then you could have this flat to yourself.’
He laughed. ‘I don’t want this flat to myself! Why would I want this flat to myself?’
‘So you can start a family.’
He laughed again, loud and hard. ‘I don’t want a family, fam! You’re my family!’
I laughed too, but inside I was starting to feel panicky. Aaron was such a good man. He’d worked hard at school, like me, and got good exam results, but here he was working in a betting shop and doing people’s gardens and then coming home and having to worry about me, wasting the prime years of his life, and I thought, you know, maybe it would be better if I wasn’t there.
