I set my phone down and walked over to where Delphine stood near the window. For the first time since I’d met her, she didn’t seem to need to fill the silence, and for the first time since I met her, I wished she would.
But after a long time, I looked over to see that she had drifted closer to me. Her eyes were still down on the street, which on a weekday was mostly empty, and she was still silent. But she was close enough now that I could touch her if I wanted. Close enough that I could see the goosebumps on her arms. I had the strangest urge to run my fingertips over them. To smooth my palm over her skin and warm her up again.
And then the doorbell rang.
Kofi.
I went down and got the food, thanked him, and then brought the soup up to the kitchen to serve it. Delphine moved of her own volition for the first time that night, coming over to the kitchen island, her cute nose twitching as she took in the peppery aroma of the soup.
“What’s this?” she asked, peering down at the bowl I put in front of her.
“Fufu with light soup.” I got her a fresh glass of water. She would need it. “It’s comfort food. Here, watch.” I showed her how to pinch off pieces of the soft, doughy fufu and use it to soak up the soup, which was made with tomatoes, onions, eggplant, chicken, garlic, ginger, spices, and—
“Oh g-golly—” Delphine coughed, sputtering.
—and shito peppers. Probably a couple Scotch Bonnets too, if I knew Auntie. I pushed the water glass closer to Delphine, and she took it gratefully, looking up at me over the rim with the look of a puppy who’d just been kicked.
“It’s quite spicy,” I conceded. “But you’ll feel better soon. You’ll see.”
Delphine set the glass down and looked at her bowl with trepidation. “Are you sure?”
“It’s comfort food. Whenever I was sick, my mother made this for me, and I always felt better after eating it. Probably because whenever you eat fufu, the next thing you want to do is take a long nap, and who doesn’t feel better after a long nap?”
Delphine’s mouth twitched. Almost a smile. “Fair dues.”
“Go on,” I urged her. “Have some more.”
“And no—no spoon?”
I gave her a look. A look I gave both subs and interns at the office when they deserved it. “Fufu is the spoon. Come on, Delph.”
The nickname slid between my lips before I could stop it, and it seemed to take us both by surprise. Nicknames were for friends, and we weren’t that, we would never be friends. Yes, I was helping her, yes, I was feeding her my favorite food, yes, she was seeing parts of my life that only romantic conquests and Auden Guest saw. But that didn’t mean I liked her. That didn’t mean she was Delph to me.
I hid my discomfort by bending back over the bowl and eating again.
After a moment, she did too, her cheeks turning pink and her pert little nose slowly turning a bright red. She was in a tank top and pajama bottoms, and the tank top was low enough to expose the top part of her chest, which was also a little flushed with the spice. But she ate it all—enough to make even Ma happy—and I was a little discomfited by how happy I felt about it myself. A satisfaction had swelled in my chest at seeing her eat, at seeing her color return. The same satisfaction I felt during a good scene, during good sex. A primal, carnal pleasure.
This is dangerous, Rebecca, a voice warned me. I ignored it.
I was hardly in any danger of becoming besotted with Delphine Dansey.
“You’ll wash your hands and brush your teeth again,” I told her. “And then it’s time for bed. Our fufu nap.”
“Yes, Rebecca.” She did as I asked, and I cleaned up after us, went and brushed my own teeth. I put my hair up in my bonnet and changed into pajamas in the bathroom. I went to my bed to grab a pillow and then started off toward the living area.
“Where are you going?” Delphine asked.
I turned and looked back at her. She was standing next to the bed, seeming very lost and very sweet. I had the sudden, powerful urge to take her into my arms, and I had to force myself to stay where I was.
“I thought I’d sleep on the sofa while you were here,” I explained. “So you didn’t have to share the bed.”
“I don’t want to sleep alone,” she said sadly.
It was the first thing she’d told me she wanted since she came here.
My body was a riot of confusion—part of me rebelled at the idea of sharing my bed with her, and the other part of me kindled to life, thinking of plush curves and warm secrets.
But it would be better to say no, right? More proper?
More thoughtful and host-like?
But it turned out that it wasn’t up to me, not really. One look at her face, with those mournful eyes and that delicate pout, and I was already heading back to bed. “I just want you to know that I talk in my sleep,” I warned her. “And sometimes I steal blankets. And I don’t snuggle.”
Delphine was already tucking herself into bed, bothered not at all by my prickly qualifications. “Yes, Rebecca,” she said.
And when I woke up the next morning, I found her snuggled against me, her hair on my pillow and her arm and leg curled over me, as if I were a long teddy bear given to her to cuddle.
I waited for the irritation to come. The discomfort.
It never did.
Instead, I laid there for a very long time, listening to her breathe.
And so it went.
I asked direct questions, I gave direct orders. Shower, eat, drink, sleep. Just as I would a sub stuck in permanent subspace.
I made sure she wasn’t cold; I let her cuddle me when she wanted, which was an increasing amount. When I worked during the day, she would find her way to the floor by my chair, resting her shoulder against my knee while she read books on her phone. When I stood at the windows, she’d come next to me and take my hand. When we slept, we slept close and intertwined, and when we ate, we ate together.
I took her to her daily appointments, I checked in with Auden and her parents, I kept up with work. Slowly, she stirred to life again, talking more, smiling more, doing more, and by the time the rains lifted enough that the Danseys could fly home to her daughter, she was almost herself again. Enough herself that her therapist graduated her to every three days instead of every day.
On the day the Danseys came to pick her up from my flat, I helped her pack her holdall and fed her one last meal—homemade jollof rice, leftovers from last night. I found my hands shaking as I cleared away our final meal together. My stomach was lined with lead.
It had only been a week. And yet in that week, I’d grown so used to her that the idea of parting felt like a bisection, a severing off of something vital.
She would have people who loved her once she was gone, I knew that. She would have professionals helping her find her strength. But whose feet would she sit by during the day? And who would she snuggle innocently into at night? Who would take care of all the parts of her—not just the daughter, not just the client—but the woman who liked to read at a friend’s feet and nap in the sun?
I told myself that was why I was upset that she was leaving, that it was impersonal worry and nothing more. It had nothing to do with me, nothing to do with missing her, not at all.
And yet when I walked her to the door and prepared to open it for her parents and said, “Come back if you need to,” I meant it almost as a plea. Almost like a prayer.
And when she said, “Yes, Rebecca, I will,” I had the strangest thought.
It was that she did too.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Rebecca
The headache is a living thing, and its intention is to kill me.
It was there when I fell asleep after getting my hair done, and there when I woke up this morning before Delphine. It followed me to work, it kneaded at my scalp as I drank coffee and answered the first round of emails. And somewhere between the first meeting of the day and the second, it grew a soul and teeth. It grew fingers and fingertips. It grew trailing, squ
eezing tentacles, and it squeezed my temples, my eyes, the cavities of my upper sinuses.
My scalp stings like it’s being turned inside out. My stomach swirls uneasily, not sure what to make of the pain.
I remind myself that it’s only the occipital and trigeminal nerves registering compression. It’s biology, it’s mechanics. Nerves and nerve endings passing news of the pain like children in a whispering game. Pressure, electricity, chemicals. Pain doesn’t exist, only the perception of it does.
Which is to say, ironically enough, the headache is all in my head.
“Rebecca, are you listening?” my father asks. It’s only the two of us in here reviewing the Severn riverfront budget, but of course he would demand my full and utter attention.
I look up from the file I have open in front of me, trying to force myself to focus again. “My apologies. I have a headache.”
I wait for his inevitable frown, for the quiet, firm reminder that work doesn’t wait for headaches. I’m ready for it, for the cool disapproval that always accompanies anything that might be a hindrance to focus and productivity.
So when he covers my hand with his own and meets my eyes, I’m staggered. Even more so when he asks, in a genuinely concerned tone, “Are you feeling well? Do you need to take the rest of the day off?”
The rest of the day off? Who is this man and where is the real Samson Quartey?
“What? Daddy, no. It’s just my hair. It always hurts for a couple days after I have it done.”
A line appears between his brows. “It does?”
I let out a puff of air that’s half amused disbelief and half genuine irritation. “Yes, Daddy. Every time.”
“Oh,” he says, looking puzzled. “I see.”
I look down at the fatherly hand folded over my own, not sure what to do. For years he’s resisted any show of paternal affection in the office, and now he’s touching my hand like he wants me to feel comforted, and I don’t know what to make of it.
I thought this was what I wanted—I could have sworn it was—just one single unconditionally given crumb of love. But now that I have it, I don’t know what to do with it, I don’t know how to feel. I should feel happy? Or grateful?
Relieved?
But all I feel is my headache.
I pull my hand back. “I’ll be fine,” I say. “Let’s keep going.”
The rest of the day is no better.
Our site in Wiltshire has started to flood. A German company won a project we were bidding for on the Isle of Wight. The team working on the final parts of the Thornchapel maze removal are encountering more rock under the soil than we planned for and they need me to sign off on bigger equipment.
And I’m worried about Delphine. Something was wrong yesterday, in the shower, something was off, but I didn’t have time to delve, and anyway, it seemed rude to pry if she didn’t want to tell me. But then why didn’t she want to tell me? And is it even fair to expect her to open up when I don’t do the same with her? When I haven’t told her about my parents’ potential divorce, about how hard it is to be my mother’s daughter, how lonely I feel even when I’m in a room full of people?
When I tell her she’s wrong when she says she loves me?
God. Of course she doesn’t feel comfortable telling me what’s upsetting her. Not when I’ve treated any talk of emotion from her as complete anathema.
Tonight, I decide, pressing my fingertips to my eyes. I really want to massage my temples, but it would only make the headache worse. I’ll fix it tonight.
She wants to go to the club for the exhibition. We’ll play there, and when we get home, I’ll insist she opens up to me and tells me what was bothering her yesterday. I’ll fix it, like I have to fix everything.
I try to ignore the lacy tendril of bitterness that accompanies that last thought. I’m not bitter. It’s fine. It’s fine.
It’s all fine.
So if it’s fine, then will you do the same? Will you open up to her? About your parents? About how hard you work and how it never seems to be enough for anyone? About how you wish that people would be there for you for a change?
I scowl across my desk, as if the thought has crawled out of my head and taken shape in front of me.
What craven thinking, what cowardice. Wanting to dump my pointless and cliched fusses on the lap of someone I care about when I can carry them just as easily by myself. As if the small, stupid dissatisfactions of my life aren’t weaknesses enough on their own. As if I must compound the sins by making them Delphine’s problem too.
No. No, I refuse to do that. I may not go to church anymore, but I know what’s moral and what’s right, and burdening other people isn’t it.
“Rebecca,” Shahil says, sticking his head through the door. “There’s someone from a rural green energy company on the phone, and they’re saying they’d previously secured permission to run lines through the lacrosse field at the Wiltshire school. Should I put them through?”
I stare at him a minute, my headache fusing with the potential crisis at hand. “And they only just now bothered to remember this? And the council couldn’t have told us this last year?”
Shahil is very skilled at the rueful assistant shrug—the I’m on your side, those fucking twats shrug. “Would you like me to close the door?”
“I’d like you,” I say, my scalp screaming and my eyes pricking with the tears I always get with a bad headache, “to drive to Wiltshire and politely murder everyone who had a hand in these planning permissions.”
“Certainly,” Shahil says cheerfully. “I can’t drive though. Shall I walk instead?”
“Yes. A pilgrimage, like in Chaucer. Find a saucy widow to walk with you.”
He grins. “I do like experienced women. Shall I put them through now?”
“Ugh. Fine.”
“And would you like me to bring you ibuprofen for your headache?”
I glare at him. “No.”
“You’d feel better . . . ”
“My stomach lining in ten years wouldn’t.” Taking a pain reliever feels like a concession, a dangerous one. A surrender to weakness, and I already have enough weakness slithering inside me.
I refuse to admit entrance to any more.
“Put the arseholes through,” I say, bracing my elbows on my desk and pushing my fingertips against my forehead.
The call eats into my afternoon, necessitating a new conference call with the council, someone from the boarding school, and for some unknown reason, a concerned citizen who wants to lodge a complaint about the proposed walking path that will loop behind her garden. By the time I’ve finished, the afternoon has edged into evening, Shahil has gone home along with the rest of the office, and my head hurts worse than ever.
I hang up the phone and realize my eyes are leaking with the hot but effortless tears that come from physical pain. I could kiss away a sub’s tears forever, but I hate crying myself, it feels like an indulgence, a waste of energy when I could be carrying on with whatever needs done. But my head hurts so badly and I’m fuming about this Wiltshire problem and I’m still confused by my father and the person he’s becoming and how it isn’t fair that he gets to change after he’s already made me who I am—
My phone rings, and I’m about to ignore it. I can’t right now. I’m crying and my head hurts and I can’t.
Except that I see it’s my mother calling, and the only thing heavier than my headache is guilt.
Sticky, unfiltered daughter guilt.
I have to answer.
It’s a video call, so I hurriedly wipe at my face so she can’t see I was crying. I don’t have the energy to fend off her questions right now. I don’t think I can pretend to be okay.
But it turns out I needn’t have bothered, because when I answer, the first thing I see is my mother crying herself.
“Oh Ma,” I say.
“Becky,” she says through her tears. “I told your father I would agree to his divorce.”
His divorce. This does not bode
well.
“And what will I say to everyone?” she cries. “How will I tell them?”
It feels like all the hair is being ripped out of my scalp all at once, and it takes everything I have not to snap at her that she’s worried about the wrong things, that if she’s more worried about perception than reality, she should’ve been divorced years ago. But I don’t say that, I don’t know how, and my mother keeps going before I can speak anyway.
She’s angry, she’s fearful, she’s guilty. She should have come up to London; she should have put her foot down and insisted Daddy and I move back home. What will happen to her now—but also I shouldn’t worry about her, she’ll be fine—but also why am I not more worried about her? Why do I always take his side? But also I should make sure to comfort him now that he’ll be divorced, I should make sure he’s well-fed and that he’s going to church, because who else will? Not some professor across the ocean, that’s for sure.
At some point, the headache gets too much and I tell Ma I’m still listening but need to rest my head on my desk for a moment. And so we stay like that for I don’t know how long—me with my head on my arms, sorely wishing I’d taken Shahil up on his offer of ibuprofen, tears leaking onto a stack of international lacrosse field comps I’d had an intern collate for me—and my mother cataloging how lonely she’ll be, how widespread and pernicious the gossip will be, what Ima will say.
“Ima didn’t want me to marry him at all, you know,” Ma says as I lift my head just in time to see a text from Delphine pop on the screen.
I’m worried, Bex. Let me know if you’re okay. xx
I look out the window to where the world has gone the gold-orange of mid-evening. I’ve been at the office for nearly twelve hours at this point.
I tap out a quick: I’m fine, as Ma asks, “Becky, are you listening? I don’t want to bother you if you’re busy.”
Anger and guilt combine to make a noxious slurry in my blood.
Anger because I know I don’t want to bother you is Mother-Speak for I know everything else in your life is more important to you than me, and you’ll never appreciate me as much as I deserve.
Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel Book 3) Page 36
