A Part of Me (17 page)

‘She’s beaten you down, then?’ she asked, blowing the fringe out of her eyes. I reached up and ran unsure fingers through my own hair. Phil and I were about as different as two friends could get, but we each understood what the other was made of.

‘It’s such a mess, Phil,’ I said. ‘But she’s right. Nothing’s getting fixed while I’m hiding out here, is it? I know how you feel about him, Phil – I hate him too – but put yourself in my shoes. What would you do if you were me?’

Phil watched me intently, none of her usual feistiness to harshen the edges of her face. Other than James and Mum, she was the only person I’d ever shared the firebox with, the only person I’d let share his memory. She knew what was at stake, and why it was so precious. She blew out a cheekful of air and looked down at the rug.

‘Well, first of all, I’d never fit in your shoes with these
size sevens,’ she said, smiling weakly. ‘And second of all,’ she shrugged, looking intently at me, ‘I’d be asking myself what significance that terrible pie sitting in the kitchen has.’

T
HERE WERE PERKS
to working alongside companies, eager to have us specify their goods on the next chain of hotels or show homes designed by Cyan. Like my kitchen. An arctic tundra of clean lines and minimalist functionality, polished to a mirror-like sheen. James had haggled us the kitchen. It was worth nearly three times what we’d parted with for it. I knew this not because I’d been there when James had gone ahead and chosen it, but because it was a fact he’d enjoyed rolling out each time we’d had dinner guests.

Phil hadn’t said much on the way here last night. She’d helped me with a few bags of my things but she hadn’t come in, even though James hadn’t been here. When he did return home, I didn’t ask where he’d been. It had felt good to be held again, arms stronger than my own locked around me. I wanted to believe what he was telling me, that we could get there again, if we worked hard enough. But there was a sense of being like two icebergs, once split from the same glacier, bouncing around each other aimlessly, trying to find how to fit again.

I tried one last sip of my morning brew before making a mental note to buy more milk on the way home later. I tipped away the watery tea James had made me before leaving. He liked to get a couple of hours cycling in on home days. Said it set him up for the day. I wondered how he would take to losing those hours to the morning routine of a toddler, or cope with soggy biscuit marring the flawless lunar landscape of our kitchen.

You have to stop doing this, Amy. Stop looking for cracks
.

I wondered how long he’d settle for sleeping on the sofa.

I deposited my cup in the dishwasher, grabbed my bag and favourite blazer and moved into the hallway for his car keys. The oversized circular mirror there told me I probably shouldn’t bother asking
who the fairest of them all
was. It sure as hell wasn’t me this morning. I found a hairband in the console drawer and pulled my hair back into a ponytail, realising with some disappointment that my nose didn’t look any less puffy. The chicken broth had worked wonders, but only on the inside, apparently.

*

The sun was dazzling as I stepped outside, bouncing off James’s silver saloon and making our front garden look like the set for some car advert. We could fit four cars on the driveway, but I’d never really needed my own, not with us working at the same practice. I disabled the alarm
and slipped into the driver’s seat. James’s car was yet another immaculate environment, something else he was going to have to learn to flex his exacting standards of tidiness with.

I looked suspiciously at myself in the rear-view.
You’re doing it again
.

I hadn’t been crying, and yet one of those shuddered breaths took over my chest for a moment. I found myself staring at the steering wheel.
I’ve made the right decision. This is where I need to be. We’re going to get the spark back
. The lady from across the street rushed out of her house, a keyboard under one arm and a large brass instrument under the other, shouting at her kids to get their school bags before they got in the car.

We could make this work, not just for the three of us, whenever that came to be, but for James and me, the couple we used to be.

I cranked up the engine and immediately remembered why James was so fond of the car.

The journey to the mill was quick and smooth. When I pulled into the front yard, something had changed. There was a buzz around the place. A couple of new vans in the yard, the odd tradesman milling around.

I gathered my things and locked James’s car, nervously joining John Harper, spectating as an enormous bathtub was winched up to the balcony of Rohan’s first-floor bedroom.

‘He ordered it then,’ I said idly.

John’s eyes stayed fixed on the climbing load. ‘He’s an eager lad.’ He smiled. ‘Nothing wrong in that.’

I decided to go in through the front entrance. If that thing came down, I didn’t really want to be on the gangway beneath it. Across the millpond, two lanky youths were helping Rohan give the boathouse its second coat of paint.

‘Who are the kids?’ I asked John. He turned slowly, like a ship changing course.

‘The one dopey enough to wear a woolly hat in this weather, that’s Lee, and the other’n, with the jeans hanging below his arse, that’s Tristan. Likes to be called
Stan
,’ John said, tapping his finger to his nose. ‘So I call him Tristan.’

‘Where are they from?’ I asked, smiling. ‘They don’t look very old.’

‘Old enough for a good day’s hard graft. And a bloody good clip round the ear. If the buggers had broken into my house, it wouldn’t be a paintbrush I went at ‘em with, that’s for sure. There’s a third’n, too – young Nathan. He’ll be coming after school.’

Neither of the youths was the one I’d seen in Rohan’s kitchen. And I didn’t think it was the police who’d have set them up in their community service down at the boathouse. Rohan glanced back over his shoulder and saw John and I looking his way. He stopped painting and threw a long tanned arm in the air to wave over to us. I thought to wave back and realised I already was.

John let out a small humph of a laugh next to me. ‘You’re happy this morning, you don’t see many girls turning up to work with a smile like that.’ I looked at him, embarrassed. ‘Like to see arses hanging out of scruffy jeans, do you?’

‘Er, no. Not particularly. I’ll see you later, John,’ I said, leaving him with a smile too. Lest he think I was particular in who I dished them out to.

After a morning of much activity and a near-calamitous bath delivery, work at the mill was in full swing. I hadn’t seen Rohan yet, properly. He’d been busy at the boathouse, but I knew by the fresh garden salad I’d just found in the mini-fridge he’d been up here. I’d tried to rationalise the small flutter I’d felt when I’d found my lunch waiting for me. He hadn’t hand-made it or anything, it was in a deli tub with a use-by date and a barcode, but the slices of cucumber illustrated on the packaging sleeve were notably absent from inside.

‘Well, isn’t that the bummer?’ I heard Carter yell from across the landing. I took the salad and mooched across the upper floor towards Rohan’s room, where Carter was appraising the piles of tiles and adhesives covering the balcony. The temporary winch had been used for everything once the contractors had realised how much lugging it would save them.

‘Hey, Carter, nowhere to pull a lotus flower?’ I smiled, digging in for a tomato.

‘It’s lotus,
just
lotus,’ he replied tetchily. I grinned into
my salad tub. I moved closer to the doors and stood at Carter’s left side. Rohan looked like he was walking alongside the millpond. I wondered if he was going to come and have lunch with us.

‘Who are the kids?’ I asked Carter, trying not to watch Rohan walk along the entire length of the path. The two lads were pulling chunks out of the battered little rowing boat while John Harper directed their efforts.

‘They’re the kids who want to ride the ramps every weekend. Ro cut them a deal. No messing around during the week, getting up to no good with the law, and they can use his set-up. Once they’ve helped him clean up, of course.’

‘Are they really going to try to fix up that boat?’ I asked, looking at the rickety hull of the little boat.

‘Hope not. If they do, I won’t be testing it out – not without armbands and a life vest.’

‘You can’t swim?’ I said in surprise. Carter shook his head. I didn’t press him on it. ‘Did the kids whitewash the lounge, too?’

‘Nah, Ro didn’t quite trust them that far, but they’re doing a pretty good job around the boathouse.’

‘Why did he do that? Sounds like they stand to gain more from the arrangement than he does,’ I pointed out, watching Rohan disappear beneath the balcony at our feet.

‘Probably.’ Carter shrugged. ‘But what’s the alternative?’

I popped another cherry tomato into my mouth as a VW
Beetle of the same colour cruised down the lane towards the mill.

Carter tied his hair up in a knobbly bun on his head, watching the car as it drove into the yard. ‘Uh-oh. And it was such a nice morning,’ he said, stepping further out onto the balcony. I moved forward a little, just enough to look down through the open doors onto the scene below.

Rohan was standing in the front yard, watching as the blonde pulled up beside his truck, and something in his stance became less friendly. No one said anything as the blonde got out and rounded the car to the rear passenger side. She looked up to the balcony and I nearly jumped backwards. ‘Hey, Isaac,’ she called, smiling up at Carter. She had a plait made up of a million shades of blonde draped over one shoulder. I was too far away to see if the eye flicks were still perfect.

‘Meg.’ Carter smiled bashfully. Rohan stood stock still as she opened the back door of the bug, scooping something from the seat there. When Megan moved aside, a miniature version of herself was standing outside the car, blonde hair flopping in every direction over her tiny face. ‘Oh, crap,’ Carter muttered under his breath. ‘You might want to close these doors up,’ he said, walking back into the bedroom. I followed him in as the familiar sounds of adult voices forced reluctantly to an even level began sparring in the yard out front.

‘Carter? What’s the matter?’ I asked, looking back towards the balcony.

‘Megan’s just gate-crashed the last of Rohan’s boundaries.’

‘Boundaries?’

‘Ok,
rules
. Actually, it’s just one rule, the one Rohan does not flex on. Ever.’ I frowned, waiting for more information to fill in the gaps. ‘That he always goes to Lily,’ Carter said, as if that explained it.

‘Who’s Lily?’ I asked.

‘Lily!’ Carter smiled. ‘Lily Bywater. Rohan’s daughter.’

*

That fuggy feeling I’d had in my head yesterday made an unexpected comeback, sweeping downwards through my stomach and into my shoes. Carter had just stunned me.

‘This is not part of the agreement between her mom and him. Ro is going to be seriously pissed off that Meg’s just turned up with her.’

‘But … I didn’t even know he had a child,’ I said, dumbfounded. Rohan was not the fathering kind, he’d said so! I hadn’t
imagined
it!

‘Well, he does. And now she’s here. On forbidden ground.’ Carter sighed.

‘But … he told me that …’

‘What? That he
didn’t
have a kid?’

I tried to recap our very brief kid conversations. ‘No, but … What do you mean, forbidden ground?’ For some
reason, I felt that Carter was about to burst a bubble, and tell me Rohan was another indifferent father.

‘Ro likes to keep Lily settled in her home life. He’s never brought her here, or to any of his houses. Too much upheaval for a little kid, he reckons.’

‘But he sees her?’ I croaked.

‘Sure. Every weekend. But only at her place. Only at Megan’s. That’s his rule.’

I didn’t understand it, but then it wasn’t taking much to flummox me at the moment. Rohan had a child … who he
did
see … but he
didn’t
want to really be a parent to? Or did he just not want to be a parent at his own place? Is that what Carter had just said?

Carter was watching me think it all through.

‘But he has all this space? This beautiful place to enjoy.’ He also had a beautiful little girl. What Carter was saying did not make sense to me.

‘It’s just Rohan’s way. And Meg knows that. She’s been pushing him for weeks to take Lils while she flies out with work. Meg’s folks usually stay over when Meg’s on an assignment but apparently her mum hasn’t been well.’

Assignment
. I rolled the word around my head a few times and decided that you had to be both intelligent and engaging to fly out anywhere on an
assignment
. I already had a mental image of Megan seared into my mind, in her denim shorts and khaki vest and beads. In just five minutes, she’d gone from intimidating biker chick to bohemian milf with jet-set lifestyle and great legs. And
then there was the beautiful little toddler, stood beside her.

‘Why aren’t they together?’ I blurted.

‘Who? Ro and Meg? Why aren’t they?’

Had I asked a stupid question? ‘I guess it’s complicated,’ I muttered, trying to undo my intrusion.

‘No, not really. It’s pretty simple.’ Carter scratched his hand over his chest. ‘Rohan is a bit of a mixed bag. He’d jump out of a plane just for the thrill; risk life and limb in the pursuit of an adrenalin rush; run into a burning building to save the idiot who started it. He’s the bravest guy I know, like that. But no man is without fear of some kind, even Ro. And what’s just stepped out of that car down there, well, that’s what Rohan is afraid of.’

I didn’t follow. No surprise there. Carter read my face perfectly.

‘Ro’s afraid of two things, only. One, of being relied upon. And two, of relying on somebody else.’

The voices below had settled into an undercurrent of interchanging sounds. Her voice bubbling up here and there, interrupted by excitable squeals from the little girl.

‘I’d better go and check they aren’t death-staring the hell out of each other,’ Carter said, traipsing out of the bedroom. I waited until he was gone before edging back to the doors, stealing a look through the crack at their hinge side.

She had little legs, brown like her mother’s, dangling over her father’s hip. White sandals were nearly falling
from her feet as she huddled into his arms. Rohan was trying to talk around her, but she was trying to put her fingers in his mouth. Megan was less at ease, one hand on her hip, the other flat on her head. They’d reached a stand-off when Carter bobbed out beside them.

I left them then. Whatever this was, it wasn’t a spectator sport.

Megan hadn’t stayed long afterwards. I assumed that Rohan spent the rest of his day working it out in the meadow. James had offered to cook, so I was making an effort too, and leaving on time.

There was a reassuring rustling in the trees around me when I walked across the yard to James’s car. Behind me, I heard a truck door slide open. I hadn’t expected to see him again today, he still looked uneasy after Megan’s visit. I was probably being paranoid, but he seemed reluctant to stop what he was doing to make conversation with me. I took the hint and began loading my things into the back of the car.