Something Good (26 page)

T
his wasn't a Max thing to do at all: take an impromptu Saturday off work and be driven to Cornwall by a woman who he'd known—at least, known properly—for just a month. It wasn't Max behavior to book into a small hotel, agree to stay a second night, then find himself staring into an estate agent's window in a sleepy fishing village.

They'd come to the village where Hettie had grown up. He hadn't known Hettie was from Cornwall when they'd been in Chamonix; he'd written her off as a fluffy PR or media type, in a Veronica mold, the type of which there were millions in London. In fact, on holiday he hadn't given her much thought at all. That lunch in Victoria Park had changed all that. He'd noticed nothing
but
Hettie. The time had whooshed by, and by the time he'd checked his watch it was 5:00 p.m. and he'd missed a whole afternoon's work.

They hadn't discussed when they'd meet up again or whether she'd come back to his place for supper. It had just happened. They'd picked up chicken, salady bits and white wine on the way home. They'd cooked together, chatting and sipping wine, and she'd stayed the night. They'd had breakfast together—she hadn't scoffed at the Coffee Time biscuits in his cupboard—and the first thing he'd done after work that day was call her and ask her to come over. It had been as easy as riding a bike.

“D'you want to look at it?” he asked her now.

She tore her gaze away from the picture of the cottage and looked at him. “I don't know, Max. I'd made up my mind to move back here after Jasper and I split up—he was the one who'd wanted to live in London. But now…” She shrugged.

“Looking won't hurt,” he told her.

“Are you sure about giving up the shop?”

Max nodded. He wouldn't be giving it up as such; just handing over the reins to Andy, who was as obsessed with cycling as ever. It was different for Max. Since the accident, he'd known he wouldn't ride competitively again, but it no longer seemed to matter. He'd spent sixteen years building up the business and could have expanded, opened a second branch, yet he had never had the push to make it happen. Maybe that should have told him something—that someone else, someone with more drive and ambition than he could ever muster, should steer Spokes to greater things…world domination, maybe.

Hettie smiled reassuringly and squeezed his hand, then pushed open the estate agent's door. Max followed her in, Jane's offer ringing clear in his head:
You could take over Mum's clippings library. It just ticks along these days—it wouldn't take all of your time. She'd be happy—she has no intention of coming back and wanted it tossed—but it seems such a shame, after all those years' work. What d'you say, Max?

The thought of living here, far away from his miserable street with its overflowing skips, made him feel lifted and free. Hannah could spend the summers here. Jane could come down with the baby. And Dylan—weren't he and Hannah always jaunting off to the coast? The cottage was tiny but he'd squeeze each of them in somehow.

The young estate agent was on the phone but motioned for Max and Hettie to sit down at his desk. Hettie caught his eyes and grinned, and Max tried to quell the excitement that whirled in his stomach. Was he really such a screw-up when, somehow, through all the mess with Jane and Veronica he'd somehow wound up here?

The estate agent finished his call. “Sorry about that. Now, how can I help you?”

Max was aware of the smile flickering across his lips, and Hettie's fingers brushing against his as he said, “We're looking for somewhere to rent.”

“H
ow did you know Conor would be okay about the baby?” Dylan asked.

He and Hannah were lying in the park, even though the grass was damp and the promised Spring heatwave hadn't materialized. Luke, Jane's baby, was four months old now, and the most charming, smiliest child that Hannah had ever met. Not that she'd met many babies. Now, though, she knew that they were capable of doing all kinds of things apart from crying and pooping: like smiling. Every time she looked at him, this walloping, toothless grin surged across his face. She wondered if babies possessed a limitless supply of those kind of smiles, because so far he was showing no sign of running out. “I know,” Hannah said, “because he told me.”

“You've spoken to him?” Dylan exclaimed.

“Not exactly. I wrote to him without telling her. It seemed wrong, him not knowing about his own kid.” She paused, thinking of Ollie in the park with his girlfriend and their baby.

“And he wrote back?” Dylan asked.

She nodded. “Said he's never been able to forget her and can't wait to see her and the baby.”

“God,” Dylan murmured. “You're lucky your mum doesn't read your letters. Mine rips them open the minute they drop through the door. Like that one from the publisher. The one with the check in it.”

“Maybe,” Hannah laughed, “she was worried you'd blow it all on drugs or something. Anyway, I had to make sure I grabbed the post before Mum saw it. She's usually still in bed with the baby first thing, so it wasn't that difficult.”

Dylan paused. “You know what, Han? You're pretty smart, buying her train ticket and everything….”

“Well,” Hannah said firmly, “I guess I'm lucky that she's been so wrapped up in looking after Luke, otherwise she'd have wondered why I'd been saving my allowance all these weeks, and why I suddenly don't have any money.” She grinned at Dylan and flicked a ladybug from his sweater sleeve. It landed on the grass, and she flattened her finger for it to walk onto.

“You're mad,” he said affectionately. “How did you know she'd actually agree to go?”

“I'm her daughter, aren't I? Sometimes you just know these things….”

“No, really,” he protested.

Hannah sighed. “She'd been writing to Conor for months—ever since we came back from the island. Of course, she never sent the letters. That would have been far too bloody sensible. All she did was scrunch them up and throw them in the bin, which she never empties—you know how messy she is.”

Conor plucked a piece of grass and chewed it. “Does your dad know she's gone?”

“Yeah. He gave me the last twenty quid.”

Dylan shook his head. “Your parents are weird. And him, when's your dad moving again?”

“Next weekend. We promised to help him pack, remember?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Hannah rolled from her front to her side and pulled the small yellow box from her pocket. “I never told Zoë, you know,” she murmured.

“What?”

“That I knew she'd made up that stuff about going to my old house. That she'd nicked the worry dolls from you.”

Dylan leaned forward and pushed Hannah's growing-out bangs from her eyes. “That's what I like about you. You could've made her feel embarrassed and stupid, and you didn't.”

Hannah shrugged. “She's chuffed, isn't she, getting work experience on
Cosmo
?”

“Un-bloody-bearable,” Dylan replied, laughing. “You'd think they'd made her the editor.”

Pulling herself up, Hannah said, “Come on, let's get a bagel or something. I'm starving.” She knew, as she took his hand, that Dylan's success with his comic strip had infuriated Zoë. Still, at least it had spurred her onto badger editors with e-mails, resulting in the
Cosmo
job.

“Don't forget your dolls,” Dylan said, indicating the yellow box on the ground.

Hannah followed his gaze. “Remember when Zoë nicked that doll's head and left it on a picnic table for someone to find?”

He nodded, and the smile sneaked across his face.

“I know they're yours really, but if you don't mind…I'm not really a doll person anymore, Dylan.”

“Me, neither,” he said.

“And I don't have any worries right now.”

He touched her face, and she felt herself glowing all over, just as she had last Sunday when he'd kissed her on the Brighton Pier. Suddenly, she wasn't hungry at all. “I'm glad about that,” he said.

“Come on, let's go back to mine. Mum left the place in a right state—clothes all over the place. You should've seen what she was packing. Just T-shirts and stuff, no warm things at all. Having a baby must do something to your brain.”

He sniggered and said, “So you put her right….”

“Someone had to! I made her pack wellies and proper walking boots.”

They started to walk across the park, leaving the yellow box on the grass. “Good job she's got you to look after her,” Dylan added.

“Well,” Hannah said, stopping to kiss his warm, sweet lips, “someone's got to be the grown-up around here.”

S
he didn't leave in the night, but on the first train from King's Cross to Glasgow, then took another train north, which snaked perilously close to the sea as it approached the ferry port. Hannah had booked her a room in a pub where a disco thumped on until 2:00 a.m. Luke slept in Jane's bed. He'd been in his own cot at home for weeks now, but Jane was grateful for the excuse to sleep beside him again. It was those eyes of his. She'd wake at odd hours and see him sleeping, then his eyes would pop open and reassure here that everything was going to be all right. She needed to believe that it
would
be all right. It had been awkward when Conor had called her. So much had happened, she hadn't known where to begin. As she'd pictured him with wind in his hair, he'd seemed further away than ever.

“So you'll definitely come?” he'd asked her.

“Yes,” she'd said, knowing she had to, if only this once.

Next morning, with Luke in a sling and their clothes in her backpack, Jane followed the winding lane to the ferry port. She shouldn't have come away, with her in-town restoration job almost complete, but what could she do when Hannah had planned everything so meticulously? “You don't have to go,” Hannah had retorted snarkily. “You can rip up the ticket and waste all my money and never know what might have happened.”

Jane had been lost for words. She'd already hurt Hannah's feelings by explaining that Biffa—that filthy old doll that had acquired a rather unpleasant odor over the years—wasn't really suitable for a baby.

And now, here she was, with nothing to lose. The ferry crossing was smooth, the sea flat as glass, and Jane felt lulled by the grumble from the engines. She wondered if Conor had managed to persuade anyone to restore the windows of that church. Someone who'd go to painstaking lengths to source the right colors and textures and degrees of opalescence. That's what was needed with restoration work. A perfect match.

There were only two other passengers on the ferry—a man and a woman who were dozing on each other's shoulders, her brown hair merging with his blond like some curious dual-colored animal. Jane fed Luke his bottle and stood up, watching the island looming large before her as he snoozed into her neck. Would Hannah be okay on the train to Cornwall, she wondered? “Of course I will,” she'd retorted. “I'm sixteen, Mum. Not a baby. Anyway, Dylan and Amy will be with me.” Jane was glad she'd picked up her friendship with Amy. It was as if she'd been patiently waiting for Hannah to come back to her, after all this time.

The ferry was docking. Steadying herself with the handrail, she climbed the metal stairs to the deck. She could smell smoke from the cluster of ramshackle cottages by the pier. It wasn't an acrid burning smell, like burnt toast or a ruined birthday cake, but woody and sweet.

The ferrymen were setting up the gangplank. Jane stepped onto the wood, then the pitted concrete of the pier. Luke stirred against her chest. She started walking alongside the road that led to Hope House, figuring that it would take her forty minutes or so; she had no intention of hurrying, even if she'd been able to with Luke and the backpack. Clouds gathered and swirled as if blown by a wind machine. A seagull squawked, and a gentle wind caused the branches of trees to sway and dance.

Jane's breathing came shallow and quick. She tried to calm herself by replaying Max's words to her:
You know you have to do this, don't you? You have to see him.
Then he'd made a quip about her not being allowed to waste the ticket that Hannah had bought her. Max seemed so different since he'd been with Hettie. It was as if he had finally forgiven himself and been able to let go of the past.

Jane turned the corner. She expected to see Conor then, but there was only a gull swooping slowly, as if suspended by invisible thread. Conor had known she planned to catch the eleven o'clock ferry, and she'd imagined he'd meet her at the pier. His cottage would come into view in a few moments. Despite having spent only five days here, she remembered every bend in the road, every kink in the jagged outline of the Fang. The island was etched in her brain. She wished Hannah were here, walking beside her and talking about the stuff they'd been discussing at home. Like whether Hannah might go to art school, and how she'd begun to work on comic strips with Dylan.

She saw Conor then, a tall figure in the distance, not hurrying, but almost dawdling. She tried to smile, but it felt as if it didn't fit her face. From her backpack, Luke's fingers teased her hair. Jane waved to Conor but he seemed distracted, and kept looking over his shoulder. Her heart quickened as she remembered how awkward they'd been on the phone. It was as if so much had happened and neither of them had known where to begin.

Something else appeared around the corner. A smaller being—not a person exactly, but an alien whose body armor consisted of a laundry basket covered with cardboard and sprayed gold, with a sink plunger sticking out of its front. Jane felt relief wash over her, and a smile flooded her face. She could see now that Conor was grinning, too. He quickened his pace—the laundry basket stumbled to keep up—until he was practically jogging toward her, the Dalek lagging behind now. Then he was right there, kissing Jane and Luke saying, “I've been waiting for you.”

Jane took his hand, which felt so warm and right in hers, and said, “I've been waiting for you, too.”