Liza’s dress was of similar fabrics but in a smoky blue, short, clinging to the roundness of her behind, snug at her waist and baring her shoulders. Teamed with snappy, strappy purple ankle boots it made her look … edible. He wanted to nibble his way along the sexy line of her collar bone to the whiteness of her throat. And down—
Liza looked up and noticed him as he followed Miranda, Jos and Ethan across the wooden floor of Middledip village hall. He sent her his blandest smile and she returned one just as neutral, then she gave her attention to her niece who, wearing a dress that looked as if it was made from froth, swung from Liza’s hands. Noisy, excited, red-faced kids frolicked around them like a pack of puppies. A DJ did his stuff up on a small stage and the guests piled cards and presents in an empty corner, then arranged themselves about the tables in an everybody-knows-everybody-else straggle.
‘Shona! Chee-arge!’ bellowed Ethan, racing off and leaving the grown ups to deal with the boring business of finding seats and buying drinks.
‘Chee-arge!’ howled Shona, abandoning Auntie Liza and thundering to meet Ethan like a mini medieval jouster.
Jos, taking a seat beside Dominic on the end of a table of friends, stretched and sighed contentedly. ‘This is great. We can drink beer while the kids entertain each other.’ Jos hadn’t quite made it into a suit, but the blackness of his leather trousers, cowboy boots and embroidered shirt gave him a style all of his own.
Miranda looked equally chilled, eating salted peanuts, which she’d never countenance on her table at home, and nursing a giant glass of red wine. And, apart from a casual enquiry about where Kenny was – he’d remembered an urgent appointment with his walking boots – she’d apparently turned over a new leaf so far as sticking her beak into Dominic’s doings was concerned, chatting with her friends and not even mentioning Liza’s presence. Dominic was free to look around at the hall, with its pitched ceiling and run of French doors at the side.
And notice Liza. Some sort of feather thing nodded in her hair as she scooped her sister’s baby out of his buggy and carried him off to a quiet corner by the gifts to give him a bottle. Dominic looked away.
He looked back. Baby Gus wrapped plump fingers in Liza’s hair as she settled him in the crook of one arm and Dominic was shocked by a sudden clenching of his heart. His baby would have been a little person, like Gus. Dominic would have been watching him grow, getting his head around how narcoleptic dads coped. Wondering if the genetic marker had been passed on. His knowledge of infant development was hazy but he thought that his baby ought to be sitting up and banging toys and laughing, by now. If Natalie hadn’t …
The baby could never have been a person, to her. Just a medical condition to be attended to, like a mole on her collar bone, removed because it got in the way.
And then he realised that Liza was meeting his stare questioningly. He sent her another of those bland smiles, and turned to talk to Jos. It would do Liza good to wonder what was going through his mind.
He’d spent enough time trying to work out what the hell was going through hers.
The buffet looked as if it had been attacked by a plague of locusts. The children were still screaming around the dance floor. The adults lounged on chairs now adorned with discarded jackets and ties. The only ‘speech’ had been from Justin, Cleo’s new husband, who had removed his arm from around his wife only long enough to climb on the stage to say, ‘Thanks for joining us. Have a great time.’ So far as weddings went, it was a great arrangement; the bride and groom doing the ceremony thing and their friends just turning up for the party. But, sitting still for so long, Dominic became aware of the creeping onset of slow-motion heaviness. The change of pace and routine in the last few days had caught up with him; he’d risked a daytime glass of champagne and hadn’t been able to get any coffee to counteract it. Sleep was creeping up on him, ready to clamp its chloroform pad to his face.
He tapped Miranda’s shoulder. ‘I’m going to catch a few extra zeds and fetch Crosswind.’
She nodded and smiled and didn’t, for once, say, ‘Will you be OK?’ He made the five-minute walk back to Great End and Crosswind greeted him with the hysterical yapping joy of a dog who’d feared itself abandoned by humankind. ‘Hello, mate.’ Dominic held onto consciousness long enough to open the back door so that Crosswind could frisk into the garden, then, close to dropping, selected the fifteen minute alert on his phone and crawled onto the sofa. On Sunday, he’d go shopping for a bed and, once it was delivered, the flat would be more or less habitable and he’d be back in his own space—
The phone was beeping. It had reached its crescendo, which explained why Crosswind was whining and panting meaty dog breath in Dominic’s face, giving him the incentive to heave against the sofa arm until he was, roughly, sitting up, and could fumble with the phone until it shut up. Crosswind hopped down onto the carpet and looked expectant.
Dominic gazed at him, letting his head clear. ‘You’ve got potential as an alarm clock but we’re going to have to make some changes to your approach.’
Crosswind laid back his ears and beat his tail.
‘I’m supposed to be taking you back to this wedding to entertain the kids. Fancy it?’
Crosswind whirled in a circle and yapped. Dominic yawned through washing his face and collecting a few items in a small red-and-yellow bucket from Ethan’s toy chest, ready for the Great Crosswind Wedding Show. He changed into a more casual jacket. A suit never looked its best when it’d been slept in.
So that Cleo and Justin could enjoy a carefree wedding day, Liza had taken responsibility for their children. Gus, apart from feeding and changing, seemed shocked into unusual docility by the noise and the number of laps he was passed to, until, finally, he fell asleep and could be snuggled carefully into his buggy.
But Shona was poised to take up any slack in auntie capacity, twirling her sash and demanding that Liza be included in every jump and hop of the games she devised for the mass of children. So it was with relief that Liza saw Dominic stroll in, a kiddies’ bucket in his hand and his fluffy dog trotting obediently on a lead.
‘Crosswind! Dommynic!’ Shona and Ethan screamed off towards the new attraction, a posse of kids on their heels.
Dominic clicked his fingers and opened his arms. ‘Hup!’ Crosswind sprang into the air to be caught against Dominic’s shoulder, safe from the seething mass.
Smoothing her hair, Liza followed the children. She’d kicked off her boots for one of Shona’s games and the worn stone floor was cold beneath her feet. ‘Thank you for not forgetting,’ she said, politely.
‘No problem.’ He looked relaxed and more familiar now he’d ditched the jacket to his suit – although he’d looked as hot as a jalapeño in it. A smile lurked in his spooky eyes as he met her gaze over Crosswind’s folded ears and the late afternoon winter sun shone in through one of the tall windows, colouring him gold.
Liza felt as if something unseen vibrated through her, cutting them off from everyone else in the hall. She wanted to ask why he’d stared at her, earlier, his expression so strange. Why he’d been absent for over an hour.
But that would tell him that she’d noticed.
She took refuge in rubbing Crosswind’s ears, making him go soft eyed in bliss. ‘Shall I make the kids sit down, so Crosswind doesn’t get stressed?’
He raised his eyebrows at the screaming horde milling around his legs. ‘I’ll be impressed if you can.’
Raising her voice over the music, she assumed her grown-up-in-charge voice. ‘Kids, if you want to see the dog do tricks, you have to sit down.’ In three seconds, every child was seated on the dusty village hall floor.
‘OK, I’m impressed.’ Dominic stepped back, the sun still making a halo of his hair. Setting Crosswind on his four bandy legs and unclipping his lead, he scooped a lime green ball from the bucket. ‘Want to play, Crosswind?’ Crosswind launched into a happy dance, bright eyes fixed on Dominic, and barked.
‘He said “yes”,’ Ethan tran
slated importantly, surging to his knees.
‘Everyone needs to sit down,’ Liza reminded him, softly.
Dominic turned and ricocheted the ball from floor to wall; Crosswind soared up to intercept it in mid-air as if he, too, was made from rubber. The children shouted, ‘He’s jumping! He’s catching!’
‘Good lad.’ Dominic gave Crosswind plenty of approving fuss and a dog treat from a pack in his pocket. Then, ‘Skirmish!’ Crosswind dropped his belly to the floor and crawled. ‘Poor Crosswind. Poor, poor Crosswind,’ and Crosswind adopted a pitiful limp, hanging his head as if in misery. The children screamed with laughter.
Liza grinned. Crosswind was so obviously enjoying himself, eyes alight, tail a blur, ears up, patently anticipating fuss and dog treats as his reward for every moment of obedience, gazing at his master with adoration.
‘Watch out!’ shouted Dominic, pointing behind Crosswind, and Crosswind whipped around to look, snarling fiercely enough to see off the scariest of street gangs. Just as quickly, he whipped back to face his master, tongue lolling in a big doggy grin. ‘Feeling itchy?’ Crosswind rubbed his face on the floor. Laughter swelled from the row of adults who’d come to watch from behind the children. Ethan jumped to his feet, but Miranda was there to take his hand and keep him from ruining the show.
‘Gimme five!’ Dominic held his palm out in front of him. With a yip of glee, Crosswind leaped up and touched it with his paw.
Then Dominic uncoiled a rope from the bucket and began to skip. Crosswind jumped in, bounding into the air like a puppet dog on strings, ears flapping, face almost level with Dominic’s.
‘Yeah! The doggie can skip!’
Letting the rope go limp, Dominic dropped to his knees. ‘Wow, that made me hot. I’m hot, Crosswind.’ He held out an arm.
Propelled by his ever-wagging tail, Crosswind gripped the cuff of Dominic’s jacket delicately in his teeth and backed up, pulling the sleeve right off Dominic’s arm. Dominic turned and Crosswind repeated the feat with the other sleeve.
As the children clapped, Dominic folded his jacket into a tight square and put it on the ground. ‘Time for bed.’ Crosswind lay down with his head on the jacket like a pillow, bounding to his paws after a ‘sleep’ that lasted only a scant second.
Crouching, Dominic suddenly levelled a two-fingered ‘gun’ at his dog, brow curling sternly. ‘Freeze!’
Crosswind froze, quivering.
‘Spread ’em!’ Dominic slapped the wall. Crosswind stood up on his hind legs and propped his front paws on the white emulsion, waiting for Dominic to pat him down before he moved. But it seemed that he moved too soon. Dominic extended his hand-pistol again and shouted, ‘Bang!’ And Crosswind dropped instantly to his side on the floor, the image of a mortally wounded dog. Except for the tail, rotating wildly enough almost to move him along the floor and the eyes waiting eagerly for the next game.
The children screamed with laughter, and Liza found herself laughing with them.
Ethan broke free from Miranda’s restraining hand, yelling, as usual, at the top of his voice. ‘Dommynic, Mummy thinks you’re dickless!’
Dominic paused. His blazing gaze flicked to Miranda, who, eyes round in mortification, was shaking her head wildly, a horrified hand across her mouth. ‘She may do,’ he said, gravely, ‘but, hopefully, the word she used was “ridiculous”.’ And he began to laugh. He tipped backwards from a crouch, until he was somehow lodged up against the wall. And became silent, whilst around him the adult portion of the audience enjoyed the joke.
It wasn’t until Crosswind bounded over to stare fixedly into his human’s face, one paw on Dominic’s leg, that Liza realised what was happening. Quieting, a few of the adults began to look askance at tableau of man and dog.
Uncertainly, she took a step.
Miranda did the same.
The knowledge that he’d probably choose Liza’s brand of concern over Miranda’s made up Liza’s mind. She strolled over and dropped down beside him, as if taking a break on the village hall floor was completely natural. Miranda gave Liza a quick smile and turned away.
Dominic’s face was still. After several seconds he blinked, his eyelids somehow not quite in sync. He blinked again, and they were.
‘Your dog’s a lot of fun. The kids have really enjoyed it.’
He blinked again, stirring.
‘Thanks a lot for bringing him,’ she continued, chattily, watching the audience lose interest and disperse now that the entertainment seemed over.
He managed a nod. Obviously recognising the return of normal behaviour, Crosswind jumped to his paws, tail blurring, and Dominic lifted his hand to the dog’s furry head. ‘’M all right,’ he said.
Liza tapped her fingers absently along to Bjork, mulling over the way that Dominic accepted his condition without whinging, even though, in a succession of kicks in the guts, he’d lost his career and his girlfriend and his home. In response, he’d adapted, reinvented. Accepted what he could and couldn’t have. Refused to let the latter screw with the former.
And she saw that her best option was to do the same. It was time to stop mourning an opportunity that had probably never quite been there. She breathed in the last of her regrets, and expelled them. The next breath brought acceptance. ‘If you still want me to manage the treatment centre, if you think that we can work together, I’m in.’
Slowly, one corner of his mouth lifted, and his eyes gleamed. ‘Good. I was hoping you’d try to seduce me into withdrawing my offer for the lease, but OK.’
She laughed. ‘I might have done, if I hadn’t thought you’d cheerfully co-operate up to the point where you had to give up The Stables.’
‘You’re really getting to understand me.’ His smile faded. ‘But, to be serious – that night? It’s forgotten.’
‘Of course,’ she agreed. Of course.
Then Ethan raced up and skidded to a halt against Dominic’s legs. ‘Please will you get me a drink, Dommynic? I’m thirsty-thirsty-thirsty! Mummy and Daddy are talking all the time.’
‘Let’s go to the bar, then. Here, Crosswind.’ Dominic pulled the lead from his pocket, snicked it onto Crosswind’s collar and climbed to his feet, saying, to Liza, ‘Let’s have a planning session. When’s your next day off?’
‘Tuesday.’ The space beside her felt suddenly cold.
‘Wanna drink, Dommynic!’ Ethan swung Dominic’s arm, face screwed up in an expression of wretched neglect.
Dominic let himself be dragged a step nearer the bar. ‘Great. My side of things will be taking most of my attention, but the sooner we do some preliminary joint promo, the better. If we can start a buzz about what’s coming, it’ll make it easier to hit the ground running. I’ll try and make contact with local media before our meeting. Midday in the pub?’
‘Fine.’
‘Wanna drink! I’m thirsteeee …’
And Liza was left on the floor, trying not to notice that he hadn’t offered to buy her a drink. Then she told herself that there was no reason in hell for her to be hurt that he was totally willing to forget ‘that night’ if he thought that remembering it would prevent him from getting what he wanted. The Stables. His lovemaking had satisfied some part of her soul and several parts of her body, but that memory lapse was what she’d demanded.
She’d just thought he’d have put up more of a fight.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Excessive daytime sleepiness was a central symptom of narcolepsy. After two nights with a baby who wouldn’t sleep for more than two hours at a stretch, no matter how often he was fed, changed, rocked or had his feet done, and run ragged during the day by an endlessly energetic four-year-old, Liza was beginning to experience some excessive daytime sleepiness of her own. Eyelids of lead, legs of water, she found herself pretty much living upstairs where it was handy for clean clothes and the toilet.
For what seemed like the hundredth time, she sat on the bathroom floor and changed Gus’s nappy.
Shona crouched companionably be
side her. ‘Gus doesn’t have a front bottom.’
‘Because he’s a boy.’ Liza struggled with baby wipes that refused to emerge from the pack singly. Finally triumphing, she fought to clean Gus up, and he fought to kick her away.
‘I’m allowed to wipe my own front bottom,’ observed Shona.
‘Well done.’
As Liza and the baby wipe won the battle, Gus began to cry.
‘But I’m not allowed to wipe my back bottom because I get poo everywhere.’
‘It’s tricky stuff,’ Liza acknowledged, gravely.
‘So Mummy has to do it. Mummy says she gets all the best jobs.’
‘I know how she feels.’ Liza fastened Gus into his nappy, into his vest, into his suit-thingy, washed her hands and scooped him up. ‘How about I read you a story?’ Gus turned puce with the effort of howling.
Shona bounded to her feet, almost tripping Liza over. ‘No! I want to play “snakes slide downstairs”.’ Shona flopped down at the top of the stairs and balanced on her little round belly.
‘Waaaaah!’ bellowed Gus.
‘Whoa, Shona! You’ll fall.’ Cheeks aching with yawns and head ringing with baby screams, Liza clutched Gus against her shoulder and lunged, abortively, for Shona’s legs.
‘No, I won’t,’ contradicted Shona, breathlessly, bum joggling as she snaked down the first two steps.
‘Waaaaah!’ bellowed Gus.
‘I’m sure Mummy doesn’t let you—’
‘She does!’ Gathering speed, Shona bumped down steps three to eight.
‘Waaaaah!’
‘Shona, I’m sure she doesn’t!’
‘She do-oe-oe-OES!’ Shona jolted down the last few steps to land in a triumphant heap in the hall. The doorbell rang. Gus threw up hotly down Liza’s neck. And stopped crying.
Feeling put upon – and sicked upon – Liza muttered, ‘Hell-hell-hell.’ Clutching the handrail with one hand and the baby with the other, she trod rapidly down the staircase.
‘Bad word,’ Shona pointed out. ‘My tummy hurts.’
Dream a Little Dream Page 23
