Authors: Anouska Knight
J
AMES HAD PRETENDED
not to be impressed by the mill when he picked me up. I’d expected the surveyor in him to wangle a full tour, but he was aloof when Rohan had come to lock the mill up after me. When Carter had complimented him on his new BMW, James was borderline rude.
He hadn’t warmed up much on our way here, but then I wasn’t exactly chewing his ears off either.
James had accepted the reasons I gave for not wanting to go back to the house with him, I didn’t mention the visual reminders of what was at stake if we couldn’t make this work again. I knew they’d only confuse the situation. A clear head seemed the best I could offer myself, and as James was reluctant to talk at Mum’s, this seemed the obvious choice. Jackson’s Park, the perennial middle ground.
The bollards were still down when we reached the car park. Silently James pulled into one of the bays facing the common and shut off the engine. Hazy late-afternoon sun dappled through the greenery onto the cyclists and
dog-walkers, still milling around on the network of pathways cutting their patterns across the parkland. I’d rollerbladed every one of these paths. Cycled them, tried out my new Walkman for the first time on them, flown kites and Frisbees, even the all-singing remote-controlled car that Guy had stubbornly never accepted. And they’d been enough for me, trinkets in place of my father’s time.
Both Mum and Phil had texted me just before James had picked me up this evening. Both messages were short and to the point. Mum’s had read:
Good luck, sweetheart. Love Mum xxx
. Phil’s was a slightly more sobering:
Take no shit, hon. Men lie
.
James looked through his window while I watched a grandmother tootling after her charge towards the boat lake and the ducks that had already congregated for them. The grandmother began pointing to the rowing boats so the child could see them all tied together on the waterfront barely moving like a line of obedient seaside donkeys, each with their own colour and number. And then the windscreen began to mist over with too much silent contemplation.
‘Shall we take a walk?’ James asked solemnly.
*
The air outside was a little cooler than it had been this afternoon. James slipped into his jacket and began strolling beside me along the footpath. I’d forgotten how pretty the old Victorian lampposts were along the waterfront,
strings of lights perpetually suspended between each post in readiness for the festive months.
‘Amy?’ he said, surveying the land around us. ‘I’m not going to keep on telling you that I’m sorry. And I know that you’ll think I’m selfish for saying it, but the last few weeks haven’t been great for me either.’ James always liked to open proceeding with something we could agree on. ‘And I don’t want to keep bringing it up either, but I promise you, if we can somehow move on from this, if you’ll just give me a second chance, I promise that this will never, ever happen again.’
There. Everything I wanted to hear. Now let’s kiss, make up and head home. I let out a long release of breath and hoped some of the pressure inside me would eek out along with it. I’d never set out to be an engineer of my own life. I was of the serendipitous line of thinking, right up until it bagged me over the head and left me gasping for air on the floor. I didn’t want to be this person, hung up on meticulous planning and perpetual finger-crossing, but there were some things that I simply couldn’t walk into now, just hoping for the best. Going home with James was one of them.
‘Do you love me, James?’ I asked, slowly following the incline of the path up onto the iron bridge. The string of lights broke here, where shorter mounted lamps followed the bridge railings.
‘I love you, Amy. But even love has to stand up to change,’ he said, resting on the railings. ‘I’ve never met
another woman like you, I probably never will. I’ve been stupid, Amy. I’m not trying to make excuses for myself, but it’s been a hard slog, what we’ve been doing. I’m weaker than you are … I wobbled.’ An itinerary of pressures began racking up in my brain. Pressures that I could have better steered us away from, maybe.
‘Do you want to be a family, James?’ It suddenly occurred to me that this was the first time I’d actually asked him outright.
‘I want what you want, Amy. I know we’d be a great family, you’d make us a great family.’
‘That’s not what I asked. Is it what
you
want, James? Because you can’t wobble again when there’s a child involved. I want to be a mother, a
good
mother, and part of that is protecting my child. I’m not walking into that situation, dragging a little boy or girl who’s already been through the mill into that situation, to find that a few years down the road, we’re meeting here for a weekend ice cream and a reminder that we’d messed it all up.’ The toddler down by the ducks was shaking the last contents of a spent bread bag, crumbs flying all over her hair as the grandmother chuckled. James was looking at the imposing Victorian townhouses flanking the scenery. Park Lane properties rarely came onto the market, and why would they? With all this on their doorstep? This was where James and I had daydreamed of one day affording. We’d come here one afternoon where, on the advice of his mother, he’d offered me the prospect of a huge engagement
ring if I wanted it. I’d said that he could forget the ring, I didn’t need any of that, but I’d settle for one of those beautiful old houses to grow old in together.
‘Is this what you want, James?’ I pressed.
He turned, slipping his fingers through my hair, tucking it away for me. ‘It’s what I want, Amy.’ There was a proviso in his expression. ‘But if we’re doing this, we need to do it now.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Amy, I know how you think. You’re wondering whether or not it’s feasible to delay the adoption, give ourselves time to get over what I’ve done. But I can’t do that. I can’t go through that process again if that’s what you’re expecting us to do. I’m sorry, baby, but I can’t.’
I wasn’t actually sure if you could delay the adoption process at this stage, but he was right – I had considered it.
‘I don’t want to go through all that again either, James.’ I didn’t have the energy.
‘You might think that’s me being selfish, but it’s not just us I’m thinking about, Amy. We aren’t the only ones who’ve invested ourselves in this. All the interviews, the reports, dragging up everything that happened before – I can’t do all of that again. That was why we were having the party, to celebrate the end of all that.’
I felt short-changed that James had seen the party that way. I hadn’t wanted a fuss but I’d still thought of it as a celebration of the wonderful thing to come, not of waving
goodbye to the hassle of surviving the journey. James lifted his chin to the air and let out a long breath. ‘Anyway, that’s done now. I’ve told Mum that we’ve cancelled, so …’ voice trailed off. ‘I know I need to make this work, Amy. Get back to how we were, but if we’re going through with this adoption, it needs to be now. I’m not trying to force your hand, but I don’t want to lie to you about the way I feel on this.’
‘You sound as though you want to just get it all over and done with,’ I said. ‘Like ripping off a big awful plaster.’ But I knew I wasn’t being completely fair to him. I didn’t want to go through the process again either, I really didn’t.
‘Anna’s coming out to the house in ten days, Amy. I know that you’ll want to think this all through again, so I’m not going to put any pressure on you to come home if you’re not ready. But …’ James began bothering at a patch of peeling paint on the old bridge. ‘But if we’re going to get our heads around this meeting, and the matching process – all of it – if we’re going to have this life together, then you need to make a decision, Amy, and soon. We’re either going for this,
now
, together … or we’re not.’
E
VERYTHING MOVES A
little slower when you are carless. It was only Thursday and already, particularly on the days I worked at the mill, the lift situation was exhausting the services of Phil, my mum and now Earleswicke Taxis. It was hard enough not being out-cooled around here when everyone who came by could either defy gravity or don a motorbike helmet without it smudging catwalk-standard eyeliner. Having to bum rides off everyone only added to my growing sensations of loserdom.
On the up side, it was quiet. Other than the sounds of a series of perpetual waterfalls tumbling over the wooden wheel outside, there was little to disturb my work. Unless, that was, you opened the windows on the west face of the mill, then you could hear the hoots of thirty-something men larking around on bicycles.
Something of a routine had begun to emerge at the mill, with Rohan spending several hours in the workshop each morning, sliding into the mill around lunchtime for me to fire any queries at him, then the rest of the afternoon out there, finding new ways to bruise himself. This morning
Blonde Biker Chick had dropped in again after breakfast, and Rohan’s mood seemed to tip again as a result. He’d given me a set of keys into the mill, so at least I could avoid disturbing them in the boathouse again, although I had caught myself wondering what it was she was hanging around for.
It was obvious really, anyone who could double up as an ad for Gucci boxer shorts wasn’t going to be short on the ladies. But this girl wasn’t just a pretty face. Twice now she’d come here and riled him somehow. I liked that she challenged the unfluffable Rohan Bywater, but his taking it out on the ramps, and the resulting racket, had necessitated that my bedroom-come-office windows remained closed all morning.
The trouble with too much peace and quiet, though, was that it provided an open playing field for a wandering mind. Mum hadn’t grilled me on my time with James yesterday evening, but like James’s offer of a little more breathing space, I knew neither reprieve could go on for ever. I did love James, I did. And it may not be as vibrant as it was, or as unblemished, but it was there just the same, asking for a chance to grow again.
I stopped tapping my pen against my lips and let my eyes set on the movement outside the bedroom window where two helmeted heads were rising and falling over the ridge-line in the distance.
The view was slightly different to that back in the studio. Phil had been watching James and Sadie like a
hawk, not that I wanted her to. I didn’t want to hear it, I was making a concerted effort to keep toxic thoughts out of my head, to focus on the good.
Rohan and co were gathering momentum, flipping their bikes out from underneath themselves. I could imagine theirs was a love started by a first trike at Christmas, or a birthday perhaps, followed by years of fun with their pals. Boys and bikes went together, I guess. It wouldn’t be long before Samuel and Harry were tearing off down the street on theirs, Guy in flustered pursuit.
James had kissed the sonographer when she’d told us we were expecting a boy. I didn’t want to find out, but James was like a child on Christmas morning, consumed with curious excitement. It had taken us an age to get back out of the hospital. He’d shown the black-and-white images to anyone who would look at them – the strangers queuing at the parking ticket machine, the women in the hospital florist where he’d bought us an
It’s a Boy!
balloon to giggle our way home with. He’d looked so goofy as he’d driven us home, enraptured with talk of junior golfing academies and Scalextric.
I don’t think either of us had a preference any more. I couldn’t recall hearing James mention either sex at any time since we’d made the initial call to social services.
I was still thinking of that enormous balloon when something slammed fiercely into the window beside me.
I counted to ten, twice, before my heart stopped thudding.
Given the near-perfect imprint of a winged creature spread-eagled in dusty silhouette on the window, you didn’t need to be an expert on unidentified flying objects to decipher it was a fairly open-and-shut case.
My grandmother had kept a cockatiel, a scrawny bad-tempered creature, in a cage. Its ugly scaly feet had put me off our winged friends for life, but still I found myself baulking at the prospect of anything suffering on the ground outside.
I was hoping a plan might present itself by the time I made it down along the oak-framed stairs. Dealing with suffering animals, that was a boys’ job, but all the boys around here were playing in the meadow. I crossed the empty kitchen and walked out into the yard. It was cooler out here, the breeze sweeping up beneath the ponytail I’d tied neatly behind my head. It was easy spotting the little blackbird, dazed on its back against the chalky gravel of the yard. I wasn’t entirely sure it was alive until it blinked beseechingly at me.
‘I’m not going to eat you, bird.’
I’m not even going to touch you
. Definitely a job for the boys. I began to walk for the brow of the hill when over in the grasses I caught sight of the first cat I’d seen since working here. It was already nosing over towards the mill.
I followed its line of vision to where the blackbird lay prone. ‘Oh, come on!’ I groaned.
I huffed my way back towards the kamikaze bird, knowing full well that even if there was a box or cloth for
me to use inside the mill, that cat wouldn’t wait for me to go fetch it.
After banishing all thoughts of Alfred Hitchcock from my imagination, it only took me around ten minutes to pick that blackbird up with my own bare hands. Banishing the sound of my grandmother’s voice unfortunately wasn’t so easy.
It’s more scared of you than you are of it
. I doubted that there was very much in it. On each of my twenty or so attempts to touch it without recoiling, I became more and more aware that I was probably slowly scaring one of us to death. By the time the vacant bird was safely hammocked in my skirt, we were both about ready for a brandy.
Max was glugging from a drinks bottle when I reached them across the meadow. He gave me a friendly nod before pulling a beany on over his mop of blond hair. Carter had said Max was a qualified podiatrist, but he had to be having me on. At the base of the ramp, Rohan was sat on an upturned crate, smoothing down a pressure sock over the top of his exposed thigh. Beside him, one of two prosthetic legs stood propped against the crate, waiting for deployment.
‘Have you got a minute?’ I asked, trying not to suddenly panic and fling the bird at him with a shudder. Rohan looked down at my legs.
‘Sure.’
His forearms flexed as he stretched a second sock over his thigh. There was movement inside my bundled skirt,
but I tried hard to ignore it while Rohan pushed himself into the prosthetic socket, securing his limb in place with a series of muffled clicks.
‘So, how’s it going?’ he asked, looking to my skirt again. He moved his hands to unclip the helmet strap underneath his chin, ruffling fingers through richly brown hair where the helmet had tried to flatten it into submission.
‘Good. But, I had an issue in the bedroom.’
He smiled cheekily, well-practised laughter lines forming beneath the beginnings of dark stubble. ‘And you thought I’d be able to help you out with that?’ He lifted one of his eyebrows. ‘I’ll do my best.’
I rolled my eyes, a new movement in my skirt cutting short the action. Rohan got to his feet and came to stand in front of me. He nodded at my legs. ‘The issue?’ he asked, a smile in all but his lips. ‘Do you want me to … take a peek?’
I held open the fold of powder-blue fabric. There was a cream polka dot on there, but you couldn’t see it without paying attention.
Rohan came in closer, the scent of him magnified by his recent exertion.
‘Hello, fella,’ he said quietly, peering down between us at my feathered refugee.
‘It flew into the bedroom window. I didn’t know what to do with it, I thought it might get eaten if I left it.’
He looked at me, smiling. ‘He should be okay, he’s just stunned. He’ll be flying around again once he gets his bearings.’
Uhuh. I’d been hoping for something slightly more interventional.
‘So … do you want to take it, then?’ I asked hopefully, looking up at him.
‘Do you want me to take it for you?’ He grinned.
Something hard, beak or – I could barely think it –
claw
-like, pressed against my thigh. ‘No. No, I’m good,’ I lied. ‘I’ll just set it down over here. In the grass.’
Quickly!
I moved away from him hurriedly.
‘Best to take it back,’ he interrupted. ‘It’s probably got young nearby, so I’d go leave it where you found it. The less intervention the better.’
Right
.
I peered down into my skirts. ‘I don’t believe it,’ I groaned, ‘it’s pooped all over me.’ Max began laughing under his breath.
Podiatrist my backside
.
Rohan came back towards me for another look. ‘It’s supposed to be good luck.’ He smiled. ‘Anyway, it adds to the polka-dot effect.’
I was thinking of something to say back when the bird suddenly decided to launch itself, flapping and squawking, from its cradle. ‘Whoa!’ Rohan yelped as the blackbird darted out between us. I seized up with fright. Over a trembling chest I reprimanded myself for trying to do a good deed. Birds were evil, I’d always known it.
‘I gotta head off, Ro,’ Max called, laughter still affecting him. ‘See ya.’
Rohan threw Max a goodbye as he rode away from the far side of the ramps. It wasn’t far back to civilisation if you cut over the public footpaths running from here to Earleswicke. I could probably cycle to the mill from Mum’s, if I ever really needed to.
The smile had returned to Rohan’s features when he turned back to me. I tried not to feel self-conscious about being stood here, covered in bird poo. ‘Would you like to give it a whirl?’ he asked, gesturing at the bike ramps.
‘Excuse me?’
‘You can use my bike, if you fancy a crack at it?’ he asked earnestly.
‘Thanks, but I’ll be fine. I’ve got to get back to work.’
‘It’d only take a few minutes, unless you like it, of course. Adrenalin can be addictive.’ For some reason, I felt that he was challenging me. Spattered in bird poop with builders turning up in an hour, I was about all challenged-up for one day.
‘Honestly, I’m good. I’ll catch you later,’ I said, turning for the embankment.
‘Lots of people are scared at first, it’s natural,’ he called after me.
I stopped where I stood, and humoured him. ‘I’m not
scared
, I just don’t see the thrill in throwing myself off a steep incline,’ I replied.
‘Well, that’s because you’ve never tried it. Come on,
don’t worry about the height issue, we can start small. I won’t let anything happen to you. Trust me, the worst thing you’ll feel is the wind in your hair, I promise.’
‘It’s not a height issue,’ I lied. ‘Thanks for the offer, but as it happens I’m not here for …
windy hair
, or to play all day with my mates,’ I said, waggling my finger first towards my head then to the bike ramps.
Rohan held his hands up as if warding off any offence. ‘Look, it was just a suggestion. I thought you might feel more at ease while you’re here if you relaxed a little.’
‘I am relaxed!’ I said indignantly, my voice heading for the octave higher.
It’s you who un-relaxes me
, I wanted to protest.
Rohan shot a look at his feet, hiding another smile. He looked like a naughty school boy, trying not to fire up the school ma’am. It irritated me.
‘Thanks for your help with the bird. I’ve got to get back, I’m walking the builders around the mill after lunch.’
Rohan nodded. ‘I’ll finish up here and come over, unless you’d rather I kept out of your hair?’
Yes, Bywater. That’s exactly what I’d like. I don’t need the wind, or you, in my hair
.
‘No, it would be good for you to say hello to them.’
‘Great.’ He grinned, clipping his helmet back in place.
‘Great. I’ll leave you to it then.’ I sucked in a deep breath and turned for the mill.
Great
.
I’d counted fifteen footsteps over spongy grass before I heard him back on the ramps behind me. The gradual build of his wheels climbing higher, like a pendulum up each side of the curved wood until the breaks in sound told me he was throwing himself effortlessly into the air at each summit.
The wind carried his movements to me, nearly until the top of the ridgeline when the familiar thump of bike and body thudded against the timber slope behind me. I hadn’t meant to look back, but suddenly there was too much silence on the breeze. As it turned out, there was a downside to Rohan’s affinity for
going with the flow
. It was called gravity.
I scanned the scene, remembering the last time I’d been suckered. He wasn’t making a big deal about his fall, and even from here I could see that his prosthetic hadn’t disconnected itself from his stump again. But honestly, he had less sense than that daft blackbird. I decided then that Rohan would also be okay, flying around again once he got his bearings, the less intervention the better.
*
The building contractor had shown up at the mill early. It was a good sign. I’d talked him through my intentions with the interiors, content that he’d taken the time to properly get to grips with the project. I was just seeing him off when Carter’s campervan pulled into the yard.
‘Good arvo,’ Carter chirped, wrestling an armful of paint tins from the van.
‘Hey, Carter. What are you up to?’ I asked, looking over the five tins of exterior emulsion.
‘Ro wants to get the boathouse spruced up. I think he’s trying to keep me out of your way while you work on this place. That the builder I just passed?’ he asked, looking down the lane.
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘He seems nice, knowledgeable. Just have to see if he comes back with a reasonable quote.’ Carter slid the door shut on the van and lifted two of the large tins. ‘Do you need some help with those?’ I asked, moving towards the paint.
‘No, that’s okay, don’t want you breaking a nail.’ He smiled, nodding to the plaster that still sat over my finger. I thought about whipping it off and showing him what a real broken nail looked like. Thanks to the kid-proof door lock on my kitchen cupboard, my finger still throbbed when I got it wet. ‘Ro can get the other tins. Where is he?’