‘What?’ he asked.
‘I just – I’m not sure you should tie yourself down again for a while. You mightn’t feel like this in six months. You might start wishing you’d had a break and – and sowed some wild oats, rather than jumping straight into another big serious relationship.’
Jed’s eyebrows rose. ‘Sowed some wild oats?’ he said.
‘Yeah, okay, it’s a particularly lame phrase. But you know what I mean.’
‘To be honest, the idea of breaking it off with you and finding some random woman to shag instead doesn’t really do a lot for me.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ I muttered.
‘Lia, I wasn’t actually going to rush out tomorrow and buy half the garage.’
I went around the end of the counter and put my arms around him. ‘I’m being an egg. I want you to stay more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.’
‘Sure?’ he said, running his good hand gently up and down my back.
‘Yes.’
‘Because you did tell me once that you exaggerate, and I shouldn’t believe anything you say.’
‘Did I? I was probably exaggerating.’
‘Muppet,’ he said, and kissed me.
* * *
There’s something very soporific about happiness, especially at the far end of a day that began with blind terror. Letting my cup of tea go cold, I went to sleep on the couch against Jed’s shoulder. I woke up, sort of, when he eased himself out from under me to stand up. The living room curtains hadn’t been drawn, and outside I could see a sliver of moon above the high wooden fence at the back of the section.
‘We should shut the curtains,’ I said drowsily. ‘Remember that first night when I thought someone was watching us? He was.’
Jed’s shoulders went rigid, but all he said was, ‘Come on, let’s go to bed.’ He reached down and pulled me to my feet.
He closed his bedroom curtains with meticulous care before going to brush his teeth. I undressed and climbed into bed – awkwardly, my bad knee having gone stiff – pulling the sheet up under my chin to hide the bruises.
Coming back, he shut the door behind him, shed his clothes, turned the light off and got into bed beside me with a sigh. ‘Lying down is good,’ he said.
‘Yes, yes it is,’ I said, slipping my hand into his. His unbroken hand, luckily; I’d forgotten to check.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.
‘Bit sore . . . Grateful, mostly.’
His fingers tightened painfully around mine. ‘Did you get any warning?’
‘Yes. Nothing specific, but when I went into the kitchen at home this morning I was suddenly really scared. It was like – like watching a horror movie. You know, when the creepy music starts, and the suspense is building, and you know something awful’s going to happen. So I turned around and ran back out to the car, but he got me as I was getting in.’
‘Fucking little arsehole,’ said Jed savagely.
‘Jed, he honestly wasn’t in his right mind.’
‘Don’t you dare feel sorry for him.’
I did. I always will, and I’ll always feel partly responsible, and I’ll always wonder what I should have done differently. But saying so didn’t seem particularly helpful, so I just squeezed his hand.
There was a long silence, and I was nearly asleep when he said softly, ‘Love you.’
‘You too,’ I whispered, and sleep rolled over me like a warm, dark wave.
Chapter 27
‘Dad!’ Craig shouted. ‘I’m hungry!’
The shock woke me instantly and completely, and I jumped as though I’d been spiked with a pin. The sun was shining through the curtains, bathing the room in sickly mustard-coloured light. For the second before I recalled the events of the previous day, horror at being late for work mingled with horror at the psychological damage my presence in his father’s bed was going to inflict on Craig. Then I remembered, and my entire horror quota veered Craigwards.
‘Get yourself a yoghurt!’ Jed called back. Brushing my shoulder as he sat up, he said, ‘Morning.’ Followed, as he looked at me, by, ‘Jesus Christ.’
‘Well, go and see him!’ I hissed, retreating rapidly beneath the sheet. ‘I’ll climb out the window.’
‘What?’
‘So he doesn’t find me here!’
There was a patter of footsteps as Craig galloped along the hall – they went straight past the door and dwindled off into the distance. I stuck my head out from under the covers to see Jed roll out of bed and pull his shorts on, wincing as he tried to use his broken hand.
‘Or how about you just get dressed and come and have breakfast?’ he said.
‘Then why were you so horrified that I’m still here?’
‘I wasn’t.’ He leant down and kissed me very softly. ‘It was your neck. It’s quite special.’
I found, on getting up, that I ached all over, and when I examined it in the bathroom mirror my neck did indeed look quite special. There was a wide band of bruising running ear to ear, ranging in colour from pink to red to deep purple-black. Wishing I had a scarf, I pulled the collar of Mum’s blouse up as far as it would go, left my hair down and went slowly up the hall.
‘Why?’ I heard Craig ask as I came into the living room.
‘So we can look after her,’ said Jed, pouring milk left-handed into a bowl of Rice Bubbles. ‘She got hurt yesterday.’
‘What happened to her?’
Jed put the Rice Bubbles down in front of him. ‘A man hit her.’
‘A baddie?’ Craig demanded.
‘Yeah,’ said Jed, meeting my eyes over his head.
‘Did Batman come and smash him?’
‘No, your dad did,’ I said.
Craig twisted to stare at me from his high stool. ‘Like – pow?’ He did an air-punch to demonstrate, nearly knocking his Rice Bubbles to the floor. Jed moved the bowl away from the edge of the bench.
‘Yep. Just like that.’ I looked at Jed. ‘Sorry. Was that endorsing violence?’
He shrugged and smiled. ‘What would you like for breakfast?’
‘Toast and coffee, please,’ I said, getting myself a plate out of the cupboard.
‘It’s only instant.’
‘As long as it’s got caffeine in it, it’s all good.’
‘Then what happened to the baddie?’ Craig asked.
‘We took him to the police station and the police locked him up,’ said Jed.
‘Oh. Why did he hit Lia?’
Jed didn’t reply, so I said, ‘He wasn’t thinking right. He was all mixed up.’
‘Like Mummy?’
Yikes, I thought.
‘That’s right,’ said Jed evenly, putting two slices of bread into the toaster on the corner of the bench top. ‘It happens. Sometimes people’s brains get a little bit broken, and they do silly things.’
‘But Mummy’s not a baddie.’
‘No,’ he said.
‘But was the man who hit Lia a baddie?’
‘Yes.’
I looked at him quizzically.
‘Just trying to keep things simple,’ he said.
Craig bent over his Rice Bubbles, deep in thought.
‘How’s your throat?’ Jed asked.
‘A bit sore,’ I said. ‘Not as sore as it looks. How’s your hand?’
‘Okay.’
‘The other day,’ said Craig, ‘I hit a baddie. Like this.’ He did another air-punch, which made him wobble precariously on his stool. ‘Smash. And then I took him to the police station, and they locked him up in a dudgeon, and some rats bited his feet.’
* * *
They dropped me off at Mum’s just before eight, en route to day care and work respectively. Letting myself in the back door I found Mum in the kitchen, sipping something lemon-scented that steamed gently.
‘Morning, love,’ she said, and her hand went involuntarily to her mouth as she saw my neck.
‘Have you got a scarf I could borrow?’ I asked.
�
��Yes.’ She stood up. ‘Come and choose one. How do you feel, my darling?’
‘Stiff and sore, but honestly not too bad. It looks much more dramatic than it feels.’
‘Thank goodness for that,’ she said, leading the way along the hall to her bedroom. ‘Right. Scarves.’ She opened a drawer in her bedside table and began pulling them out, rather like a magician from a top hat.
I sat down on her faded green velvet bedspread and breathed in the familiar scent of her bedroom. Incense, old wood, clean washing, lavender-scented hand cream – smell is so much more evocative than the other senses, and this one transported me instantly back to the world of my childhood; a small, safe, happy world, where Rob and I were quite sure that we looked after our mother rather than the other way around. That, of course, is a big part of Mum’s charm – the ability to make people feel that she couldn’t possibly manage without them. Everyone loves to feel needed.
‘When did Mike head off?’ I asked.
‘Hmm? Oh – seven thirty or so. He wanted to be back by lunchtime.’ She handed me a strip of turquoise gauze and a paisley silk horror in shades of olive and tangerine. ‘One of these? You’ll want something reasonably lightweight, or you’ll overheat in this weather.’
‘What about that white one?’
‘Not your colour,’ she said firmly, passing me one made of buttercup yellow polyester instead.
I looked at it doubtfully before wrapping it around my neck.
‘Very nice,’ she said. She adjusted it to drape better, and then took my face in her hands and looked at me searchingly.
I smiled at her. ‘Alright? No obvious signs of psychological damage?’
‘No obvious signs,’ Mum said, kissing my forehead and letting me go. ‘Although I suppose they might take a while to develop.’
She read the paper while she finished her morning tea, and I read the recipe section of an old gardening magazine. ‘Would violets in the middle of your ice cubes be cute or revoltingly twee?’ I asked.
‘Cute, I think,’ said Mum. ‘Bit hard on the violets, though. Come on, let’s go out.’
We drifted out across the top lawn and paused at the edge of the rockery, where a creeping phlox had formed a solid mat of hot pink flowers a metre across.
‘Wouldn’t it be nice if Mike did come up here?’ I said, bending down to pull out a milkweed seedling, tweaking a whole range of muscles I hadn’t realised I’d strained and straightening again with a grunt.
‘Very nice,’ said Mum. ‘Sit down and rest, love.’
I subsided onto a handy rock. ‘Do you think he will?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, starting to deadhead a carpet rose. ‘Gray’s a fool.’
This was unusually harsh, for Mum, and I blinked. ‘For taking Mike for granted?’
‘Among other things. He’s got this grand vision of himself as some sort of patriarch, creating an empire for future generations, and yet he’s spared no effort to alienate his entire family. It’s a bit hard to be a patriarch when none of your children want anything to do with you.’
‘True,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Poor old Dad.’
‘Well, yes, but –’ She broke off, sighed, tossed a handful of withered flowers under a shrub and sat down beside me. ‘Craig’s a nice little boy, isn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is he going to be living with Jed permanently, now?’
‘Probably not,’ I said. ‘I’m sure that’s what Jed would like, but he wouldn’t ever try to stop Tracey from seeing him. They’ll probably share custody once she’s well enough to look after him again.’
‘Hmm,’ said Mum. ‘I have my doubts about her parenting skills.’
‘Have you been talking to Monty?’ I asked suspiciously.
‘No, I’ve been talking to Craig.’
‘Mum!’ I protested.
‘He says he likes living with Dad, because Dad talks to him. Mummy doesn’t talk; she’s always busy looking at her phone. Mummy doesn’t like it when he makes a noise. Mummy always gives him Weetbix for tea.’
‘Mum! You can’t go around asking small children leading questions about the standard of care their parents provide!’
‘And why not?’ she said, drawing herself up. ‘If there are any concerns about whether a child’s being properly cared for, I’d much rather be the busybody who stuck her nose in than the person who didn’t like to ask for fear of causing offence.’
A good point. ‘Still, I don’t think Weetbix for tea is grounds for child neglect,’ I said weakly.
‘Hmm.’
‘Now if it was chickpeas . . .’ I added.
She gave me a mechanical, I’m-only-humouring-you-because-someone-tried-to-strangle-you-yesterday sort of smile, and said, ‘Heaven knows I’m no advocate for staying in a loveless marriage, but it’s hard on a child being shuffled backwards and forwards between his parents.’
I sighed. ‘Yeah. It is. But then it’s not fair on Tracey not to let her see him, either. She sounds spectacularly useless, as far as I can tell, but she does love him. And I’m sure it wouldn’t help her mental state to take her child away. I suppose the best thing for her would be if Jed moved back in; then Craig’d have a nice stable home again. But . . .’
‘I wasn’t suggesting that for a moment,’ said Mum.
‘I know you weren’t. And I’ll fight to the death before I see Jed sacrifice himself – and me – to someone who’s made his life miserable for the last four years. But it does feel a bit like being happy at Craig’s expense.’
‘Well,’ said Mum, and this time her smile was real, ‘you’ll just have to be a fabulous stepmother to make up for it.’ She dusted her hands on her skirt and held them out to me. ‘Come down to the bottom lawn and admire my flowering gum. It’s stunning.’
* * *
The flowering gum was a vision in traffic-cone orange, which looks much better than it sounds. Having admired it, I spent the rest of the morning reclining in the hammock, with I Capture the Castle on my stomach, a plate of ginger biscuits at one elbow and a water bottle at the other. I dozed off, dreamt of being chased through a pine forest and woke with a gasp of fright as Mum crossed the lawn with the portable phone in her hand.
‘It’s Anna,’ she said.
I took the phone, still struggling free of the last cobweb strands of panic. ‘Hello?’
‘Hey. How are you feeling?’ Anna asked.
‘Okay,’ I said, with a small, residual shiver. ‘Shall we do some cooking after lunch?’
‘Actually, I think you should stay where you are and let me handle it.’
I didn’t want to stay where I was; I wanted to be busy and thus unable to dwell on unpleasant things. ‘Thanks, but I need to get some clothes and things. Would you mind picking me up on your way there?’
‘I’m there now,’ she said. ‘I can easily pack you a bag and drop it off at your mum’s place on the way home. What d’you need?’
‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘No, I’d honestly rather come up. I’ll get Mum to bring me in a bit.’
* * *
Mum drove me home up the hill after lunch. There was a blackboard propped up against the base of the sign at the bottom of the driveway which read: Sorry, we’re closed today. Normal service will resume tomorrow!
The phone rang as we pulled up behind the café, but Anna didn’t answer it, although I could see her through the kitchen window. She came to the door drying her hands on a tea towel, looking as pretty and delicate as a porcelain figurine in denim shorts and an eggshell-blue hooded T-shirt – the kind sold as sportswear, although it seems a crime to sweat in anything so pretty.
Behind her the answer phone picked up and a woman’s voice said, ‘Hello, it’s Maureen Miller here. I’m just ringing to see how Lia is. Hope all’s well. Okay, then, bye-bye.’
‘That’s very kind of her,’ I said, following Mum up the porch steps. I only knew Maureen Miller by sight, to smile at in passing.
‘The phone’s been ringing
solidly all day. I’ve had to stop answering it or I’d never have got anything done,’ said Anna. Then, looking at my neck, ‘Oh my god, Lia.’
I’d tired swiftly of the yellow polyester scarf, which was hot, scratchy and far too like something off the set of George and Mildred, but at this I pulled it out of my pocket and wound it hastily back around my throat.
‘Isaac will appear in court to be charged on Thursday,’ Mum told me, evidently just remembering. ‘The police rang this morning while you were asleep.’
‘Will Lia have to be there?’ Anna asked.
‘No. No, not at all. Unless you want to be, love?’
‘No.’ And changing the subject much too abruptly, I said, ‘Anna, I had an idea about ice-cream sandwiches. Don’t you think they’d sell well?’
‘What, those ice-cream slices between two pink wafers?’ she said.
‘No, an upmarket homemade version. We could put the ice cream between two big flat chocolate biscuits – maybe peanut brownie mixture without the peanuts.’
She considered briefly. ‘We’d need a biscuit that didn’t go hard as a rock in the freezer. What about those gluten-free peanut butter ones?’
‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘Maybe. I’ll freeze one and see what happens to it.’
‘Yes, but not today,’ said Mum. ‘You need to rest and recuperate.’
‘I’ve got this,’ Anna said, smiling at me. ‘I owe you a day, anyway.’
‘I’d rather be busy,’ I said.
Mum looked stricken. ‘Oh, sweetie,’ she murmured.
‘Mum, don’t look like that. I’m okay, I just don’t want to sit around and think about it.’
She blinked hard, smiled shakily and said, ‘Okay, love. Well, then, I’ll head off. I’ve got a house on Harbour View Drive to clean. Just give me a ring when you’re ready to come home; I’ve got my phone.’
She kissed us both and left, and I sat down on the window seat and rummaged through my handbag for my cell phone. It was dead flat, and I plugged it into the charger on the windowsill.
‘Coffee?’ Anna asked, crossing the kitchen to turn on the machine.
‘Yes, please. I think we should ask Mum to help out tomorrow, don’t you? Then I can lurk in the background and try not to scare the customers. The bruising’ll probably look worse tomorrow, if anything.’
The Pretty Delicious Cafe Page 23
