A trickle of cold sweat had formed between my shoulder blades. I felt like I had the one and only time I’d got food poisoning. I found I couldn’t meet Richard’s eyes and my gaze skittered away to the window and the reeds bordering the canal. The conservatory felt stifling all of a sudden, as if the air was being sucked out of it.
‘Will you be my business partner?’
The oxygen came rushing back in as if a switch had been flipped. My lungs filled and I took a great big gasp at the same time as Mum did. Though for different reasons, I’d bet. I met her eyes and saw she was trying to hide her disappointment. Dad just looked mildly perplexed.
‘You want Tabby to go into business with you?’ Dad said, hesitantly.
‘Yes.’ Richard squeezed my hand, smiling at me. ‘I just heard from my last investor yesterday and Hollings Property Development is officially fully funded and ready to move into the next phase. And, as a future Hollings, I want you to be a part of it with me.’
Mum made the ‘OMG, is that Harry Styles???’ noise again, though slightly less aggressively this time. More of an ‘I think I’ve just seen Zayn Malik’ whistle instead of a full-on squeal.
‘But… I already have a business,’ I pointed out, hating how hesitant I sounded. It was obvious, so why did I feel bad about pointing it out? Like I was the one ruining everyone else’s good time.
At that moment the first course came out and there was a general stiltedness as we waited for the two waitresses to set down the plates and leave. I eyed Dad’s quartet of mushroom ravioli jealously over my own salad of pea shoots and samphire. It looked like something you’d shake out of a lawnmower, complete with anchovy slugs.
‘I know you’ve got the shop to think about for now,’ Richard said, once the waitresses left. ‘But given our conversation the other day, it sounded like you were aware that you weren’t going to be able to keep running it forever. This business is going to be ours – our family business. And after the amazing job we did renovating the shop, I think you can agree property development makes a lot of sense for us.’
We? The amazing jobwedid? I looked at him, speechless. But there wasn’t even an ironic twist to his mouth or a hint of embarrassment around his eyes as they looked beseechingly into mine. He’d put my wonky sign right and that was pretty much it, as far as I was aware. Well, that and spent weeks complaining about the smell of white spirit on my clothes or the bits of sawdust I managed to track into the flat.
Mum leapt into the silent void of my disbelief. ‘That is a great idea, isn’t it, love? Just imagine the pair of you working together. You’d get to spend so much time with one another – so many couples don’t get that these days.’
‘And Tabby does have a lot of construction knowledge,’ Dad put in proudly. ‘You’ll be able to let Richard know what needs doing.’
I tried to suppress a little laugh at the frown this put on Richard’s face. Even as I did so, I was mildly hurt that Dad didn’t think I could, or should, do any of the things he’d taught me to do. I was knowledgeable but he’d much rather it was Richard getting his hands dirty. He still thought Richard had done most of the work on the shop too. Because that’s what I’d allowed him to believe. I was so embarrassed by Richard’s lack of interest in helping that I’d replaced Emma with him in the renovation stories I told my parents. They thought he’d been mucking in with me every day, that it was him who’d taken the captured rats away to release them in the wild. I’d even made extra effort to get the paint off my hands and the smell of bleach off myself, so they wouldn’t guess how much of the work I was doing.
I’d done it all for the same reason I’d lied to them about Richard being busy at work when he didn’t want to go to their parties or Sunday dinners. The same reason I never told Mum that he hated her cooking, or Dad that he regularly insulted contractors as ‘not having a single GCSE or a tooth between them’ – because I wanted them to like my boyfriend. More than that, I wanted them to see at least one aspect of my life as being successful. Mum was happiest and most approving of me when I was in a relationship and it was going well. So I convinced her and myself that it was.
I felt suddenly very hemmed in by my own mistakes and lies. Sure, Mum and Dad were happy that Richard wanted to go into business with me, that he wanted to marry me someday soon. But how much of that was due to the things I’d allowed them to believe about him? That he was hands-on and chivalrous and loyal? Would Mum have urged me to give him a second chance if she really knew him?
Well, yes, probably. She was so dotty over the idea of grandchildren, she’d probably encourage me to get hitched to the Devil himself as long as he was fertile and owned his own car. But Dad would have his doubts. I was sure of that.
‘So, thank you for coming to our celebratory lunch,’ Richard said, and I realised that my ‘yes’ to this whole plan had been taken for granted. That we were celebrating that acceptance and not the offer itself. I wanted to speak up but I couldn’t get my thoughts straight, couldn’t think of a way to put things that wouldn’t cause a scene.
So I just nodded and smiled, and ate my pea shoots, valiantly trying to make my stomach stop churning.
Chapter 26
Somewhere between the dressing-lessgreen salad and grilled chicken, and the berry compote and clotted cream (hold the cream), I decided I needed some air. Dad had gone outside to vape and Richard was having his ear talked off by Mum, so I muttered something about the ‘ladies’ and left the conservatory.
In the pub itself I ignored the signs for the toilets and found a rear door propped open into the gardens. It was just a bit of grassy bank out of view of the conservatory, with a falling-down drystone wall to stop people going into the canal. I stumbled over the lush, wet grass and leant my hands on the crumbling stone. If I hadn’t left my bag at the table, I’d have called Emma. As it was, I only had the willows and nettles for company. After a few deep breaths of cidery autumn air, I opened my eyes and looked down at the slow, green water. Suddenly, all I wanted to do was talk to Cooper.
‘It’s okay… it’s all going to be okay…’ I told myself softly.
‘You sound like me on my wedding day.’
‘Jesus! Dad!’ I whirled around and gaped at him, where he was leaning against the wall of the pub. ‘What are you doing back here?’
‘Same thing as you, I think. Trying to get my head around what my other half’s thinking.’ He shook his head and tucked his vape back into the too-tight jacket of his suit. ‘God love her, but your mum is a mystery to me sometimes. Like when she ordered that bloody sofa… and today.’
‘I don’t know what you…’ I trailed off at his look. Dad wasn’t the most emotionally articulate person but he knew when he was being blatantly lied to.
Dad tramped over the grass and came to stand by me. Together we looked out over the canal and the woodland beyond. A rabbit hopped through the undergrowth and I thought about how wonderfully simple its life must be – munching grass and sleeping in a nice warm burrow. Sure, there was the ever-present danger of being hit by a car or eaten by a fox but that had to be better than relationship drama, doing laundry and paying taxes for the rest of my life.
‘She wants you to be happy,’ Dad sighed, and I tore my eyes away from the rabbit to look his way.
‘I know. I just don’t think she really knows what that would look like. I’m not that sure any more either.’
We stood in silence for a moment. I knew Dad wasn’t about to go delving any deeper. He wasn’t one to invite emotional upset into his life. But he was giving me a moment away from the table, from Mum and Richard and all their expectations. I appreciated that. He knew something was up, he just didn’t really know how to ask or talk to me about it.
