The Last Piece of My Heart

by Paige Toon

  He’s been working on a tree house this week, but it’s unlike any other tree house I’ve ever seen. It looks absolutely incredible – the ladder steps and supporting posts are made out of gnarled-looking wooden branches, and he’s even thatching a roof for the top. I thought it was almost finished, but Charlie says he probably still has another week working on it to go. I can’t imagine how productive he’d be if he had more help with April.

  The sun is still high in the sky and it’s warm and clear when we walk into town that evening. The wind and rain from earlier on in the week are a distant memory.

  ‘Why don’t you take anyone up on their offers to help with April?’ I ask Charlie. I’ve seen Jocelyn around a couple of times since that first day out on the street, and yesterday I overheard her telling him that she’d be happy to look after April any time. He replied with a grateful thank you, but said he was managing fine.

  He said the same thing to his sister-in-law, Kate, when she called earlier this week, and, when Charlie was out of the room and Pat and I were talking about his tree house in the garden, Pat confided that she’d offered to have April at the campsite on Mondays and Tuesdays, but Charlie had said no.

  ‘I just. . . I don’t need to. If I’m up against it, maybe, but I’d rather take on less work and be around for April. At least for this first year. I know Nicki would have wanted that.’

  ‘But April adores your mum. Does she get on with your dad, too?’

  ‘Oh, she loves him,’ he replies. ‘It’s a shame you haven’t met him, yet, but one of them has to stay behind at the campsite in case anything goes wrong.’

  ‘So April might quite like to spend Mondays and Tuesdays with her grandparents?’

  ‘I wouldn’t like it,’ he mumbles.

  ‘You’d miss her,’ I realise, smiling.

  He shrugs. ‘Yeah. She’s my world.’ A beat. ‘That sounded really corny.’

  I flash him a sidelong smile, but he’s staring down at the footpath. His hair is still damp from the shower and partially falling into his eyes. It looks darker when it’s wet.

  ‘To be honest, if it weren’t for Nicki’s book, I wouldn’t have a choice,’ he confides. ‘I’d have to take on more work to make ends meet. It’s probably just as well the sequel is going ahead.’

  ‘Did you take some persuading?’ I got that impression from Fay.

  ‘Mmm. To be honest, I was shocked when Fay asked me about them drafting in a ghostwriter. I think Nicki would’ve hated the idea of someone else finishing the story she’d poured her heart and soul into.’

  I feel a bit sick listening to this.

  He casts me a sideways look. ‘Sorry, perhaps I shouldn’t have told you that.’ He can sense my discomfort.

  ‘It’s fine, go on,’ I reassure him, even though it’s not fine and I’m not sure I want him to go on.

  ‘It was Kate who swayed me,’ he continues without further encouragement. ‘She showed me some of the reader reviews. I couldn’t believe how many people desperately wanted a sequel. Kate thought that I had a responsibility to them. She felt that Nicki would’ve agreed with her.’

  ‘Maybe she’s right,’ I say, feeling grateful to Nicki’s sister for convincing him. Nicki’s teenage diaries haven’t given me the best impression of her, but they were both only young when Nicki wrote about her, and she’s obviously very supportive of Charlie now.

  ‘Yeah.’ He sighs. ‘Anyway, the additional money coming in from Confessions means that I can work less and look after April. I know Nicki would have prioritised her daughter over her book, so I guess someone else finishing it might be what she would have wanted, after all. I’ve been consoling myself thinking that, in any case.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ I say as he takes a deep breath. I think he wanted to get that off his chest.

  I hope he feels better for having done so, even if his confession has made me feel queasy. If this were a film, Nicki would probably haunt me into getting the sequel exactly how she wants it. Christ, what a thought! It’s just as well I don’t believe in ghosts.

  ‘Thanks,’ Charlie says. ‘Now we should probably talk about something else or I’ll end up crying into my pint.’

  No argument from me, there. I’m more than happy to change the subject.

  ‘This is my first night out since she. since we lost her,’ he adds.

  My eyes widen at his revelation. No pressure to make tonight a good one, then.

  Chapter 17

  ‘You’re here!’ Adam jumps to his feet and engulfs his brother in a bear hug, before giving me one, too. He’s found a table outside the pub in the early-evening sunshine. ‘So glad you guys made it. What are you drinking?’ He digs into his pocket for his wallet.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Charlie says.

  ‘Sit down,’ Adam replies firmly. He takes our orders and heads inside.

  Charlie climbs over the bench seat facing the pub’s courtyard and I slide in opposite him, looking up at the quaint buildings lining the other side of the road. Adam returns a couple of minutes later, spitting out two packets of crisps from between his teeth, and settling himself beside his brother.

  ‘Cheers, you bastards, here’s to a good night!’ he says.

  We chink pint glasses and then he rips the crisp packets open and sets them in the middle of the table.

  ‘What have you been up to this week?’ he asks, and the first pint slides down to the sound of amiable general chitchat.

  Pint two is a bit different. ‘That girl over there looks really familiar.’ Adam frowns as he stares past me.

  ‘Which one?’ I ask nosily.

  ‘Light-blonde hair, black top, two o’clock my time. Don’t make it obvious.’

  ‘I won’t, I’m good at this game.’ I oh-so-casually tuck my hair behind my ears, turn my head, and give the two o’clock tables a quick once over before returning my gaze to Adam.

  ‘Pretty,’ I say, nodding.

  He’s still frowning with the effort of trying to place her. ‘I think I might’ve shagged her once,’ he says.

  Charlie puts his pint down. ‘How can you forget someone you’ve shagged?’ he asks.

  ‘Because I’m a great big slag,’ Adam replies with a grin. ‘It’s all right for you, you’ve only had sex with two people, they’re easy to remember.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ Charlie replies with annoyance.

  ‘I haven’t had a shag in way too long.’ Adam gives the girl across the courtyard a lustful look. After a moment, he purses his lips and gazes into his pint.

  ‘I give it an hour,’ Charlie says, raising his eyebrows at me.

  ‘Before he hits on her?’ I don’t need a reply because Adam’s cheeky face says it all. ‘Best of luck,’ I say sarcastically. ‘I’m sure she won’t be in the least bit offended that you don’t remember having sex with her. But of course, there’s also the very real possibility that you were completely forgettable, yourself.’

  Charlie laughs and Adam sneers at me. ‘I’m unforgettable.’

  ‘Sure you are,’ I reply, putting my legs up on the bench seat in front of me and crossing them at the ankles. I’m leaning against the wall. It’s quite comfortable here. I could stay here all night. Maybe I will.

  ‘How long has it been since you had sex?’ Adam asks me.

  I know I don’t have to indulge his line of questioning, but I don’t actually mind. ‘Well, I haven’t seen Elliot since December, so that’s. . .’ I count on my fingers. ‘Eight months.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘It’s all right. I’ve gone longer. You know the thing I miss most?’ I look at them both and they stare back at me quizzically. ‘Hugs,’ I state.

  Adam laughs. ‘Hugs?’

  ‘Yeah, actual human bodily contact. I really miss hugs.’

  ‘I’m going to the bar,’ Adam says with mock disgust, standing up and walking away from the table.

  Charlie and I grin at each other. After a moment he nods and looks down at the table. ‘I get that,’ he says, dr
awing a circle around the line of condensation left by his pint glass. ‘I miss them, too, that feeling of having another person in your arms.’

  ‘A nice, warm, actual other person,’ I say nostalgically.

  ‘Did you know, you’re supposed to hug for at least seven seconds to get the full benefit of it?’

  ‘Really?’ I ask.

  ‘Yeah, I read that recently. Apparently, seven-second hugs stimulate the release of serotonin, the feel-good hormone.’ He smiles and looks down at the table. ‘Nicki was an awesome hugger.’

  ‘I wish I’d known her,’ I say quietly.

  ‘I wish you had, too.’ When he looks up at me, his eyes are shining.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I whisper, my heart breaking for him as he tries to swallow the lump in his throat.

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ He looks down again and draws another condensation ring, even though the water has almost dried up. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not about to start crying into my pint. I’ll be all right for at least another couple, I reckon,’ he jokes.

  ‘Okay, I’ll try to get you home before your fourth.’

  ‘Don’t do that,’ he says with alarm. ‘I’m having fun.’

  ‘Are you?’ I ask.

  ‘Yeah.’ He gives me small smile, though his eyes are serious. ‘And anyway, I’ll be the one getting you home.’ He shrugs and downs the rest of his pint.

  ‘Don’t be silly, I can walk back on my own.’

  ‘There’s no way you’re doing that,’ he states in a not-up-for-debate tone of voice, and then Adam returns, juggling three glasses.

  ‘That was my round,’ I suddenly remember. My stomach has gone slightly squirmy. Am I hungry? I think I might be hungry.

  ‘You can get the next one,’ Adam says with a shrug.

  ‘I think we should order some food first,’ I reply.

  Chapter 18

  Three pints and a pie-and-mash later, Adam starts to pester me for information about the guys from my blog.

  ‘Charlie doesn’t want to hear this.’ I frown in his general direction.

  ‘Sure I do,’ Charlie replies. ‘I’ll start you off. Elliot.’

  ‘Okay, well, he was my first proper boyfriend,’ I find myself saying, before adding in a slightly dreamy voice, ‘Utterly gorgeous, totally devastated me when he moved to Australia.’

  ‘How old were you?’ Adam asks.

  ‘Sixteen.’

  ‘Same as me,’ Charlie reveals, and I presume he means he was sixteen when he had his first proper girlfriend.

  ‘Too Perfect Tisha?’ I ask, giggling when he looks perturbed. ‘Nicki’s diaries,’ I remind him.

  He blanches. ‘I forgot you’ve been reading those.’ He doesn’t look too happy about it.

  ‘What’s this? You’ve been reading Nicki’s diaries?’ Adam looks back and forth at us in disbelief.

  ‘Yeah.’ I shrug. ‘You did give me access to them,’ I point out to Charlie, defensively.

  ‘Yeah, I know, I know.’ He brushes me off.

  ‘Ooh, that’s freaky,’ Adam interjects, still shaking his head.

  ‘Shut up,’ Charlie and I both say at the same time, but Charlie’s the one to continue. ‘She needs to understand Nicki if she’s going to do her characters justice. Nicki would’ve wanted that. And there’s stuff in there that relates to the new book.’

  ‘Have you really never read them?’ I ask.

  He shakes his head. ‘No, but she was pretty open about what they contained.’

  I wonder how open.

  ‘Anyway.’ I move on.

  ‘Who’s Number Two?’ Adam asks.

  ‘Jorge. I used to go and stay with my mum when she was working on various cruise liners around the world. When I was seventeen, she was doing Europe and it was the first summer I’d been aboard on my own – before that my dad and aunt used to take me. Jorge worked in the casino. He was from Barcelona – a twenty-one-year-old, hot-blooded son of a matador,’ I add with a grin.

  I loved that cruise. I’d been gutted about Elliot’s letters drying up, so, when Mum asked me to come and join her, I agreed. As the daughter of a staff member and a paying customer, I had exactly the same perks as the rich kids, while also being allowed to hang out in the staff areas. I was caught between two worlds – above and below deck – but this wasn’t purgatory: it was heaven.

  Most of the staff were crazy, young and fun and seemed to come from every country under the sun. Mum was busy hostessing, so I had to occupy myself, and, as she’d told her boss that I was over eighteen, I went wherever I wanted, from the casino to the pool, with nobody batting an eyelid. It was all very civilised.

  Below deck was a different matter.

  The staff were at it like rabbits. It was a place of rampant sex and late-night drinking games – Aunt Wendy had been right to keep me well away from it.

  But Aunt Wendy wasn’t there. Aunt Wendy was in Wembley.

  At first I was scandalized by what went on behind the scenes – I was only seventeen, after all – but I was a pretty fearless seventeen, and was capable of fending for myself.

  I fancied Jorge the moment I saw him, but it was forbidden for staff to hook up with passengers, and I was a hybrid of the two, so he was wary of me.

  My breakthrough came one night during a pool tournament when we both found ourselves playing each other in the semi-final. Dad had pool tables at the pub where he worked, so I’d already wiped the floor with several of the kitchen boys.

  I shared the rest of my beer with Jorge, and, when he later won the tournament, he took me to the staff bar, claiming to owe me a drink. We ended up kissing on the deck under the stars as he walked me to my room. We were in each other’s pockets for the rest of the summer.

  ‘Three?’ Charlie prompts.

  ‘Gabriel. Another cruise-ship romance. I was nineteen,’ I explain. ‘His dad was a wealthy property developer in Brazil who’d recently remarried. Gabe was pissed off at having to spend the summer on a boat when he could have been home with his mum and his friends. I was actually at university studying journalism, but Mum had swung a job for me, working with the cruise coordinating team that summer. I helped to organise the various tours for passengers to take at the different ports. Anyway, staff members weren’t meant to have flings with passengers, so Gabe and I did a lot of sneaking around. I think he felt like he was getting back at his dad by slumming it with me.’

  Charlie pulls a face.

  ‘I met up with him a couple of months ago. He was even more of a spoiled brat than he was when he was twenty-one.’

  ‘Four?’ Adam prompts.

  ‘David, my university boyfriend. He was lovely,’ I say with a smile. ‘He had a girlfriend in his first year, but they split up after the summer and we were already friends. We were together for about a year and a half. But. . . I don’t know. I just stopped fancying him. I’ve never really been able to work out why because he had so much going for him. He’s now living in South Africa with his wife and three kids. I caught up with him recently and he seemed very settled and happy.’

  ‘Five?’ Adam asks.

  ‘I’d better speed this up or we’ll be here all night,’ I say. ‘Am I boring you yet?’

  They both deny it, so I carry on.

  ‘Five was Freddie. I’d decided to go travelling around America for a bit, and I met him on the road. He was a Norwegian wildlife photographer.’ As wild and free as the animals and landscape he photographed. He snapped off a piece of my heart as easily as breaking off a KitKat finger. ‘He encouraged me to buy a camera and taught me how to take photographs so I could submit pictures along with my articles.’

  He had loads of contacts, too, which he generously shared. I’d been writing for years about the places I’d been visiting, working from the ship’s internet café during my downtime, but I hadn’t had much published. Freddie changed all that.

  ‘He really helped kick-start my career. He was a bit older than me.’

  ‘How much older?’ Charlie asks
with interest.

  ‘I was twenty-one and he was twenty-eight. I loved him desperately. I was heartbroken when things fell apart and he went back to Norway.’ I smile sadly and shrug.

  ‘Six!’ Adam chirps.

  I groan. ‘Vince. When I came back from America I decided to try to get a job at a travel magazine, but knew that would probably involve doing unpaid work experience, so I helped behind the bar at my dad’s pub to get by. Vince was a regular.’

  Or, at least, he became a regular while I was working there. He was a landscape gardener doing a big job on a house nearby. He’d come in every day after work for a pint of beer, and I liked that he always looked a bit grubby from a day’s hard labour.

  ‘He had a certain arrogance about him that initially wound me up. Freddie and I had only recently separated, so I wasn’t looking for anyone else, but I soon warmed to Vince. He was funny and confident, and, even though I’d sometimes call him a twat to his face, he never gave up.’

  Charlie and Adam grin. You can tell a mile away that they’re brothers when they’re side by side and smiling like this.

  Eventually, my dislike of Vince was only pretence. I used to inwardly smile when he walked through the door, while outwardly rolling my eyes. When he asked me out on a date on the eve of his job finishing, I agreed. It had been a month since he’d first sat down at the bar.

  He was twenty-seven, stable, settled and not about to fly off to a far-flung country and desert me.

  Looking back, I see I’ve bounced between settled, stable boyfriends and wild, free, untamed men all my life.

  ‘Dad had started seeing someone while I’d been away, and, even though she was always nice enough to me, she wasn’t thrilled that her partner’s grown-up daughter had invaded their love nest. I stayed more and more at Vince’s, and, before I knew it, I was living with him. He turned out to be a proper arse, though. Very controlling.’

  Charlie looks concerned. Adam looks bored.

  ‘Right, that’s it,’ I say, taking the hint. ‘My round, and then we’ll talk about something else.’

  ‘No!’ Charlie protests.

  ‘Yep. Six is halfway. That’s a good end point.’ I get up and go to the bar.