The One You Really Want (10 page)

‘Actually it isn't.' Mia beamed with pride. ‘It's a proper one.'

Appalled, Connor said, ‘But you're only
sixteen
.'

‘Exactly. I'm practically a grown-up.' Patting the dolphin with pride, Mia said, ‘But it's so sweet, Daddy, that you don't know the difference between a transfer and a real tattoo.'

‘Sixteen,' Connor groaned. In his head, she was still a dungareed four-year-old with worms in her pockets and gaps in her teeth.

‘Calm down, Dad. Honestly, you're such a dinosaur. You know, I'm officially old enough to get married.' Mischievously Mia said, ‘Thank your lucky stars I haven't done that.'

 

Connor winced at the memory. At least there hadn't been any more tattoos in the last eight months. None that he knew about, anyway. Then he winced again, because his mouth had just caught fire.

‘Oh, sorry,' said Mia. ‘Bit hot for you?'

Through watering eyes, Connor saw that his daughter was calmly eating her way through a plate of fried eggs on toast, swimming in a pool of flame-red chilli sauce.

Pointing to the relatively modest dash of sauce on his own plate, he said, ‘A bit hot for
me
? It's possibly the hottest chilli sauce on the planet. Where did you get this stuff?'

‘There's this brilliant deli in Dublin. It's called Scotch Bonnet sauce. Here, have some water.' Mia was already on her way back from the sink with a brimming glass. ‘Poor Daddy, I've only been here ten minutes and already you think I'm trying to poison you.'

Having downed the water in one, Connor gingerly checked his teeth hadn't fallen out. ‘So how long are you staying, then?'

Mia put down her fork. ‘Well, the thing is, I've been considering my future. Mum and I were having a chat about it the other day and basically I've spent the last sixteen years living in a self-sufficient smallholding in the wilds of Donegal. Which has been great, in its own way, but I feel I need a change of environment if I'm to become a fully rounded person.'

This was a more convoluted answer than Connor had been expecting. The chilli sauce was performing a kind of terrifying afterburn in his throat, ensuring he wouldn't forget it in a hurry. He nodded to show that he was still listening, in a distracted kind of way.

‘I mean, there's so much more to life than cleaning out chicken coops and weeding the vegetable patch.' Raising her eyebrows, Mia said, ‘At my age I should be expanding my horizons, discovering new people and places, experiencing new stuff—'

‘If you ever,
ever
take drugs, I'll—'

‘Oh shut up, give me a break Dad, drugs are for losers. Anyway, so like I said, Mum and I have had a really good talk about it and the thing is, how about if I came here and lived with you?'

The chilli was probably still burning but Connor was no longer aware of it.

‘When?'

Mia spread her yellow and black striped arms and said encouragingly, ‘Well, here I am, so how about now?'

‘And where would you go to school?'

‘I'm not going back to school. A-levels are meaningless these days. I'd rather get a job, start building a career. It's OK, Mum and I talked it all through.'

‘What kind of work did you have in mind?' Connor didn't doubt for a moment that she had something in mind.

‘Well, I thought I'd train to become the next national chilli-eating champion.' Mia grinned, trawled an index finger through the pool of chilli sauce on her plate and popped it into her mouth. ‘Actually, I'd like to come and work for you.'

‘And your mother's happy about that?' Connor had to ask, although it certainly sounded as though Laura and Mia had covered all the angles.

‘Mum's great. She understands how I feel. I've spent long enough living in the middle of nowhere. It's time to move on, find out how it feels to live in the middle of
somewhere
.' Mia gazed anxiously at him. ‘As long as you're happy about it too.'

Happy? He'd spent the last few years dreaming about this day. In his imagination he hadn't expected it to happen until Mia had finished university, but by then she'd be twenty-one and the chances of her even wanting to live with her old fogey of a father would be remote. What self-respecting twenty-one-year-old would even consider it, after all, when she could be sharing a grotty flat in Hoxton with a crowd of equally grotty twenty-somethings and wall-to-wall squalor?

‘I'm happy.' His heart expanding with love for his beautiful strong-minded daughter, Connor smiled and said, ‘I can't imagine anything nicer.'

‘Yay!' Jumping up from the table, Mia hugged him. ‘Thanks, Dad. OK if I have my bath now?'

The phone rang fifteen minutes later. Sounding strained, Laura said without preamble, ‘It's me. Listen, Mia's disappeared. I don't know where she is. Has she spoken to you at all? Oh God, the school rang and told me she hasn't been in—'

‘Whoa,' Connor broke through the stream of jerky sentences. ‘Mia's here. She turned up an hour ago.'

‘What?'
Relief was replaced within a split second by irritation. ‘Connor, did it not even occur to you that I'd be out of my mind with worry? You should have phoned me!'

‘I thought you knew. Mia kept saying you were happy for her to leave school and come and live with me.'

‘Oh, for crying out loud, are you serious?
Leave school?
She's supposed to be at school this minute! Put her on,' Laura ordered.

‘She's in the bath.' Connor realised that he'd been well and truly set up.

‘Send her back, then,' said Laura firmly. ‘She can't do this, she's only sixteen. Just tell her she can't mess around like this, and send her back.'

 

‘God, I love this house.' Wet-haired and wearing an oversized T-shirt emblazoned with the words Treat Animals With Compassion, Mia reappeared forty minutes later. ‘You have no idea what a luxury it is to run the bath taps and know that hot water is going to come out. And dry yourself in real fluffy towels instead of horrible ancient ones that feel like sandpaper—'

‘Why don't you give your mum a ring, just to let her know you've arrived safely,' Connor suggested.

Mia's eyes flickered guiltily away from him. Then she straightened her shoulders. ‘OK, Dad, here's the thing. I lied.'

‘Here's another thing,' said Connor. ‘I know.'

‘Oh.'

‘Laura just rang. She was worried sick.'

‘I'm sorry. I'm really sorry,' Mia blurted out. ‘I did try and talk it through with her, but she just wouldn't listen, and I'd
so
much rather be here.'

‘She wants you to go home.' Connor saw her wince. ‘And I want you to promise never to lie to me again.'

‘I won't.' Miserably, Mia shook her head. ‘Lie, I mean. Oh God.' She buried her face in her hands. ‘Do I have to go back?'

‘No.'

Mia's head shot up. ‘What?'

‘I persuaded Laura to let you stay.'

‘She's not happy about the school thing,' Connor warned.

‘Well, I already knew that, we've been over it enough times. But I'd rather build a career,' argued Mia before he could start making going back to school a condition of staying in London. ‘I mean, in the old days getting a degree meant something to employers, but these days everyone goes to college,
everyone
has a degree and it just seems . . . well, what's the big deal? Can they do a job?'

Luckily for her, Connor was in agreement. He'd interviewed more than his fair share of clueless graduates in his time. Instinct told him that Mia would achieve whatever she set out to do, workwise. She had more energy and determination than anyone he'd ever met.

‘I said pretty much the same. That's why we're going to give it a go.'

‘Daddy, you're a genius.'

‘I know.'

‘Shall I phone Mum now and apologise?'

‘Might be an idea,' said Connor.

‘Then I'll get dressed and we'll set off.'

Bemused, Connor said, ‘Set off where?'

Mia shook her head in despair. ‘Come on, Dad, keep up. To the Lazy B of course. I want to make a start on my job.'

Nancy felt it was all wrong. The ease with which she'd got over Jonathan was actually embarrassing. She'd read the problem pages, watched the daytime TV shows, seen it often enough in the papers: when your marriage unexpectedly broke up, you were meant to be distraught for at least a year. It was a life-changing occurrence, after all. One minute she'd been married in Scotland. Now she was down here in London and single all over again. The least she could have had the decency to do was lose her appetite.

But instead of moping around feeling depressed, she was loving every minute. Staying married because you felt obliged to stick to your vows had - she was able to admit it now - been a burden. Being released from that obligation felt great.

Rrrrrinnnnggg
went the doorbell, and Nancy jumped. Bugger, if that was Rennie she was in trouble.

Hastily wiping her hands on a yard of kitchen roll, she bundled everything into a bowl and hid it in the tumble dryer in the utility room. The object she'd spent the last two hours working on she shoved out of sight in the oven, which thankfully wasn't switched on.

Rennie's ability to lose his keys - or walk out of the house without them - was going to get him into the
Guinness Book of Records
at this rate. As she headed for the front door, Nancy wondered if tying one on a string round his neck might do the trick.

But it wasn't Rennie.

‘Hi! I'm Mia Corrigan. I just moved in next door.' The bright-eyed girl in khaki vest and combats looked about seventeen, which Nancy couldn't help thinking was too young for their neighbour. ‘Well, not just moved in. I arrived yesterday afternoon. The thing is, I thought I'd pop over and say hello anyway, but I'm trying to make a Yorkshire pudding. I've done all the egg-beating business and now I find out there isn't any flour in the house, so I was wondering if you had any to spare?'

Khaki combats. Long silver earrings. Small dolphin tattoo just visible beneath the vest. It was such an unlikely question that Nancy almost burst out laughing.

‘Um . . . yes.'

‘Great! Can you lend me a bit? Only these houses might be the bee's knees, but they aren't what you'd call handy for the shops. Well, not the sort of shops that sell plain flour,' Mia Corrigan amended. ‘Of course if it's shoes you're after, costing thousands of pounds, we're spoiled for choice. And antique shops selling Ming vases for about a million. Sorry, am I talking too much? My mum says I talk for Ireland. Don't you think it's just mad though? How can some daft bit of pottery be worth that much just because it's old and hasn't got broken yet?'

The girl might be sparky and vivacious, but she was
way
too young for Connor O'Shea. Nancy hadn't met him yet - he'd only arrived back from holiday in Barbados, or wherever it was, a couple of days ago - but she'd glimpsed him leaving for work yesterday morning and knew from Carmen and Rennie that he was in his thirties. How could Mia's mother even allow her to move in with a man at her age?

‘Now that's what I call a proper food cupboard.' Mia nodded approvingly as Nancy opened the cupboard and located the plain flour. ‘You should see ours. Hopeless. I'm going to have my work cut out over there, I can tell you. There's milk and beer in the fridge, pizzas and ready meals in the freezer, and that's it. It didn't occur to me for a second that there wouldn't be flour in the food cupboard. Then when I opened it, I found a CD player and a rugby shirt.' Shaking her head in despair she said, ‘Let me tell you, things are going to change. Give me a week and that kitchen won't know what's hit it.'

Realising that Mia had hoisted herself onto a kitchen stool and was making herself thoroughly at home, Nancy said, ‘Would you like a cup of tea?'

‘Love one, thanks.' The girl beamed at her. ‘I don't know your name.'

‘Nancy.'

‘Nancy. That's a great name! Well, it's a pleasure to meet you.' Mia watched as Nancy made the tea, then she reached across the table and peeled something blue off the surface. ‘What's this? Playdough? Hey, I didn't know you had kids! If you ever need a babysitter—'

‘I don't have children. And this is my friend Carmen's house,' Nancy explained. ‘I'm just staying here for a while.' Then, because it was almost five o'clock and she really wanted to get the job finished before Rennie came back, she headed over to the tumble dryer and took out the mixing bowl she'd bundled inside earlier. Mia, to her credit, didn't bat an eyelid. Next, opening the oven door and retrieving the cake on its silver board, Nancy carried it over to the table.

‘Wow,' said Mia. Realising that the playdough wasn't playdough after all, she popped the little wodge of rolled icing into her mouth. ‘And I mean, seriously,
wow
. Did you actually make that yourself?'

The birthday cake was an edible plate of chicken Madras with three-colour pilau rice, complete with edible fork, side orders of mango chutney and cucumber raita, and with extra pickled chillies on top.

‘It's for Rennie, Carmen's brother-in-law. He's staying here too,' Nancy explained, ‘and it's his birthday tomorrow. Chicken Madras is his favourite meal.'

‘That is so cool! How much of it can you eat?'

‘The whole lot. It's sponge underneath. The glycerine makes the sauce shiny.'