Something Good (20 page)

M
ax couldn't pinpoint what irked him about tradesmen. The electrician who'd come to fit extra sockets had been overly chatty and displayed too great an interest in Max's splint. “Buggered my hamstring,” he announced gleefully, “last time I played five-a-side. That was the end for me. Got to face it, haven't you, mate?”

“Um, yes,” Max had responded, not quite knowing what it was that he had to face.

“There comes a point,” the electrician had rattled on, “when you've got to hang up your boots and admit you're finished.” Max had blinked at him. He was thirty-eight years old. He'd barely got his head around the fact that he might be toppling toward the cavernous void they called a midlife crisis. Now, this stranger was blithely pointing out that he was
finished
.

The painter and the decorator, who'd come to finish the bedrooms now that Max was incapable of climbing a ladder, had given his emulsioning efforts a disapproving stare, as if an unruly child had sploshed paint randomly about the place. These people made you feel so incompetent, as if some doctorate in the Advanced Application of One-Coat Gloss should be gained before you attempted to paint a door frame.

Thankfully, there was no else in the house right now. Max sat on a straight-backed chair in the kitchen, dutifully performing his leg raises—twenty per leg, rest and repeat—figuring that the real problem was that he wasn't accustomed to having to ask for help. All these years he'd lived in a state of reasonable contentment—if depressed, he was only
mildly
depressed—cooking perfectly serviceable meals, trying to be a decent enough father while running the shop and fitting in a weekly cycle down to Kent. Even sex—he was pretty self-sufficient in that department, too. It was, he decided, hugely overrated. Most people said that after the first time, but his had been with Jane, and that had been anything but. When it was all over—approximately one-point-four seconds after it had begun—he'd wrapped his arms tightly around her. They'd fallen asleep that way, and woken up in the same position to a changed life. That had been the best part, waking up and finding her still there. He'd never come close to feeling that way again.

Max tried to summon up the energy for another leg-raise. This was so un-him, exercising for exercise's sake. He'd never done push-ups, owned a set of bar bells or belonged to a gym. Cycling wasn't about exercise, but about having the courage and mental capacity to push himself to the limit. It was about letting go.

He glared around his kitchen, which he'd had refitted in a whirl of pheromone-induced enthusiasm. Actually, it didn't even feel like
his
kitchen. It was Veronica's. She'd even picked the goddamn granite countertop. “So much more hygienic than wood, sweetheart, and don't you think laminate looks cheap?” she'd said. Now, whenever their paths crossed, she greeted him with a pert ‘hello,' as she might with any of Zoë's friends' fathers. Not that Zoë seemed to have any friends, apart from Hannah. Since they'd come back from Scotland they'd hung out together as usual, although he'd detected a shift in their friendship. Hannah had stopped wearing all that atrocious makeup for a start.

The rap on his front door made Max jump. He hauled himself up from the chair and hobbled toward it. He realized it was Jane before he'd let her in, despite the fact that the lower half of her face was obscured by the bubble-wrapped panel. She lowered it, grinned at him, and the twinge in Max's leg melted away.

“Poor you,” she said in the kitchen, resting the panel against the wall.

“It's not so bad,” Max said airily. “Splint's coming off next week. There'll be physio for a few weeks after that…well, I should be shipshape again.”

“So you'll still be able to cycle?”

“Hope so.” They stood awkwardly for a moment. He saw her glance down at the panel. “So,” he added, “can I see it?”

Jane nodded. He watched as she peeled off its bubble-wrap and carried it through to the back room.
How right she seems here,
he thought,
as if she belongs.
He knew, before she held the panel at the window, that he'd like it. Even if he didn't—even if she'd veered wildly away from the colors and shapes they'd discussed—he didn't care at all. He'd still live with it and love it.

“So,” she said, “what do you think?”

His gaze traveled from her face to the swirling reds and golds. He walked toward it, feeling the colored light warming his face. “It's…it's perfect,” he said.

Jane smiled, and he saw relief spread over her face. She placed it against the wall. “I'm so glad. You see, it's not the one I made for you. I made another one but it didn't seem right….” She looked flustered now; her cheeks were pink, and her eyes were avoiding his. Max was overcome by an urge to hold her.

“It doesn't matter,” he said.

“Max,” she continued, “something happened in Scotland, I met some—”

He did it then, not caring what she'd think; he took her in his arms and buried his face in her hair. “I told you,” he whispered, “it doesn't matter.”

She pulled away, still pink in the face. “I'll install it for you later this week.”

“Whenever you have time,” he said.

“Are you sure Veronica will be okay about it?”

He frowned at her. “What's it got to do with Veronica?”

“It's just…I know she's helped you do the place up. The kitchen and everything. And the window—Well, she might feel weird that your ex-wife—”

He laughed mirthlessly. “I never think of you like that. As my ex-wife—”

“Don't you?” she asked softly, meeting his gaze. “How do you think of me, Max?”

He cleared his throat. “As you. As Jane, that's all. Anyway, me and Veronica aren't really…a
thing
any more.”

“A thing?” Jane asked, laughing.

Max lowered himself onto one of the two wicker chairs, the sole furniture in the room. Jane sat in the other, curling up her legs. “Things didn't go too well in France,” he added.

She glanced down at the splint. “I can see that.”

“I mean with me and her. She didn't take it very well—my accident and everything.”

“How does one take an accident? It was hardly your fault,” Jane protested.

“She seemed to think I'd been reckless—not listened to her. It's okay,” he added quickly, “we're still friends…well, not friends exactly, but it's all right. It's not awkward.” He realized his voice had acquired a slightly strangulated, undeniably
awkward
quality.

“I'm sorry,” Jane said, as if she really meant it. Max looked at her, yearning to tell her the real reason it was all over—how Veronica had seen his face when he'd played Jane's message. How she'd read thoughts in an instant. How she wasn't so dippy after all.

“You should get out,” Jane said gently. “Go for a meal or see a film or something. You look like you've been stuck in here for days.”

“Well,” Max said sheepishly, “I have.” Was she suggesting that they went out, just the two of them? In the evening, like a real couple? He pictured them in a restaurant—some friendly, unpretentious place—with Jane not shunting butterless asparagus around her plate, but wolfing her food, hungry for the hottest curry on the menu.

“Why don't you give Han a call?” Jane asked.

He frowned, failing to grasp what she meant.

“The two of you haven't spent time together for ages. I can't remember the last—”

“The aquarium,” Max interrupted, trying to mask the crushing disappointment in his voice. “That's the last time I took her out. I don't think she wants to hang out with me anymore.”

“You could ask her,” Jane insisted. “Why not ring her—she'll be back from theater workshop by now—and see what she's doing later? Come on, Max—she could do with a treat.”

Max studied her face. “Why, what's wrong?”

She paused, biting her lip absent-mindedly. “Something's happened since we came back from Scotland. I think there was some boy, and it's all finished now—maybe he met someone else while we were away. She's trying to be brave about it.”

“Has she said something?” Max asked.

Jane smiled. “I'm her
mum,
Max. I just have a feeling.”

Max felt a wave of shame. He was incapable of “having a feeling” where his daughter was concerned. Jane was right; for months, he'd spent their dad-and-daughter time either with Veronica, or Hannah had been holed up in Zoë's bedroom when she was supposed to have come to see him. He'd lost her and he hadn't even noticed.

“If you think she'd like to come out,” he said, “I'll give her a call.”

“Of course she'd like to,” Jane said, squeezing his hand.

 

What struck him was how sweet and natural Hannah looked. Her purplish hair color was long gone, and now she seemed to have ditched the garish blue eyeshadow and overly glossed lips of her Zoë era. Her eyelashes looked normal, having lost their clogged-matchstick appearance. She had appeared at the door as his cab had pulled up outside Jane's place and skipped toward it, looking almost—no,
truly
—pleased to see him.

And she seemed to approve of his choice of restaurant, Max decided, glancing around the Opal's bustling interior, although it came to something when his own daughter seemed more at ease in such places than he did. He'd chosen it because it was new, not grossly expensive and he couldn't think of anywhere else. Their table had been squished into a too-small corner. Max felt ungainly, as if he should keep his elbows tucked in and somehow shrink into himself. He glanced around at numerous unlined faces. Max had started to feel horribly geriatric.

His crutches didn't help. Although he could manage to hobble around the house without them, he still needed them whenever he left the house. Hannah took a sip of her freshly squeezed juice. “Dad,” she said hesitantly, “Zoë told me something about Veronica.”

“What?” Max asked.

“She thinks she's seeing someone else. Her business partner or something. Some guy with fuzzy hair and glasses who's invested in the aphrodisiac stuff. Pug-ugly, Zoë said.”

Max pictured someone who vaguely fit that description from his party. Or rather, Veronica's party. “It's okay,” he said, trying to keep a lightness to his voice. “We weren't very…well-matched.”

“I didn't think so.” Hannah grinned. Her face had changed over the past year or so; gone more angular, losing its childlike softness. He knew he should ask her about school, about exams and all those dad-type questions, but he suspected she wouldn't want to fill the evening with study-related small talk.

“You can still come and see Zoë anytime you like,” he added quickly.

“I will. It's just with the show being really close, and all the rehearsals and costume fittings, I haven't really had time.”

That was girls for you, Max thought. Fickle and unfathomable. “Anyway,” he said, “how was Scotland?”

“Okay, apart from the end bit. I drew a lot—sketches of the hills and seals and stuff.”

“That's great, Han. You'll have to show me sometime.”

“They're nothing special.” Max could detect a hint of tension in her smile. Perhaps he was capable of reading his own daughter after all.

“And Mum enjoyed her course?” he asked.

Pink patches sprang up on Hannah's cheeks. “I think so.”

“Hannah,” he started, “is there something—”

“She's thinking of leaving her job,” she interjected. “Has she told you? She wants to do stained glass full-time.”

“Really?” Max was incredulous. Was this something to do with Nancy's fit of madness? When Jane had told him about his mother-in-law's shock announcement—he did still view Nancy as his mother-in-law—he'd assumed it was some kind of sick joke. Abandoning her home, her entire London life—how could anyone behave so recklessly?

“She's been at Nippers for ten years,” Hannah added. “She wants to try something new.”

Max was silent for a moment. “What about you?” he asked. “Your mum said she thought something had happened. With some boy.”

“Been discussing me, have you?” she asked. There was a tinge to her voice, as if something sour had landed on her tongue.

“No, it's just that—”

“Yes, Dad, I was seeing someone,” she said curtly. “Turned out he was two-timing me.”

He smiled inwardly at her use of such a teenage phrase. “Sounds as if you're best out of it.”

“I know.” She studied her menu nonchalantly. “Especially as the other girl's pregnant.”

Max felt as if he'd been whacked in the stomach with his own crutch. “Pregnant?” he repeated.