He opened the door and gestured for Connie to go through. ‘Come on. We’d better get you home, too.’
‘Oh, I’ve been invited to stay,’ said Connie, as they walked back to the living room. ‘Which is probably for the best, as I don’t think Michelle will be keen on getting up early to the children.’
She clapped her hand to her chest. ‘The children! Have they been all right?’
‘Baby woke up just after I got here,’ said Patrick. ‘I settled her back down, no trouble.’
‘You settled her?’
Patrick nodded. ‘Threatened to eat her. Worked like a charm.’
Connie wasn’t entirely sure if he was joking.
In the living room, Aishe was standing by the fireplace. Her posture was stiffly upright and she straightened still further when Connie and Patrick entered. Gulliver was lying full length on the couch, feet up on the arm. He was blinking as if he’d just woken up.
‘Sorry,’ he said to Patrick. ‘Didn’t mean to go to sleep.’
Patrick walked to the couch and pushed at Gulliver’s feet. ‘Shift,’ he said, and sank down into the space Gulliver made for him. Patrick rested his head briefly on the back of the couch and then turned his gaze to Aishe.
‘Big night?’ he said.
Connie was hovering in the doorway. There was a palpable atmosphere between Patrick and Aishe, and Connie had neither the energy nor the inclination to get caught in whatever drama seemed likely to erupt any second.
‘If you all don’t mind,’ she said, ‘I’m going to bed.’
Aishe began to stalk towards her. ‘And I’m going home. Come on, Gulliver. Move.’
Gulliver hopped off the couch, but then frowned. ‘What about Patrick?’
‘What about him?’
‘Can’t he stay with us?’
‘Where would he sleep?’ said Aishe. ‘In the bath?’
‘Mum, come on!’ Gulliver was clearly embarrassed by his mother’s rudeness.
‘I didn’t invite him, Gulliver. And we have no fucking room!’
Patrick expelled a long breath and hauled himself up off the couch. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll find somewhere.’
‘Mum! It’s two o’clock in the fucking morning!’
‘Do not swear at me.’
‘Stop it!’ said Connie. ‘You’ll wake the children.’
To her surprise, she found she had their full attention. ‘Patrick,’ she said. ‘You can stay here. There’s a second spare room. I’m sure Michelle won’t mind. Gulliver, thank you for babysitting. Come back in the morning for your money.’
Connie looked at Aishe, and her newfound confidence slipped a notch. ‘Is that OK?’
Aishe stared back at Connie in silence. Her whole body, which had been rigid with tension, suddenly sagged. To Connie’s surprise, Aishe reached out and gave her a quick hug.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I’m such a bitch.’
Connie began to protest, but Aishe had already ducked through into the hallway.
Gulliver was about to start after her, but instead he walked back to where Patrick was standing and offered him his hand. Patrick shook it. Connie admired the young man’s bravery. From the look of him, the older man had the strength to crush every one of the bones in Gulliver’s hand to dust.
‘Come round tomorrow,’ Gulliver said. ‘After one. She’ll be at the animal shelter.’
‘No, I want to talk to her,’ said Patrick. ‘What time’s she back?’
Gulliver shrugged. ‘Six?’
‘I’ll come for dinner then,’ said Patrick. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll bring it with me.’
Gulliver tried and failed to keep the big smile off his face. ‘Cool!’
They heard the front door slam. Gulliver grimaced. ‘Better go before Mum locks me out.’
He took off down the hall and the front door slammed a second time.
‘Like mother, like son,’ said Patrick to Connie. ‘Except he seems a shitload more relaxed. Mind you, nations on the brink of nuclear war would be more relaxed than Aishe.’
He checked his watch. ‘You must be dead on your feet.’
‘No, I passed that point long ago,’ said Connie. ‘I’m now into the final stages of decomposition.’
‘Come on, then.’ Patrick touched his hand lightly to her shoulder. ‘Show me the spare room and where the coffee’s kept. A strong cup of coffee in hand, and we’ll be able to cope with any fucking thing.’
Michelle shuffled into her living room at nine-thirty next morning, still wrapped in the blanket, to find Rosie playing peek-a-boo with Connie and Harry watching Shrek while sitting on the knee of a large, dark-haired man. Nobody gave her a single glance, so she shuffled off to the kitchen in search of coffee.
‘Morning,’ she said when she returned, cup in hand. ‘I think.’
She sat in an armchair and stared hard at the dark-haired man. ‘Did I imagine this, or did you pick me up and carry me to my room last night?’
He turned his head and smiled. ‘Yeah.’
Michelle made a face. ‘My. How embarrassing.’
She looked at Connie. ‘Was that the most embarrassing thing that happened to me last night?’
Connie paused, hands halfway over her eyes.
‘I see,’ said Michelle. ‘In that case, you must swear never to tell me, as long as you live.’
‘You were fully clothed, if that makes you feel better,’ said the man.
‘Not even a little bit,’ said Michelle. ‘You’re Patrick, right? Darrell’s landlord-cum-cousin-in-law? She’s shown me photos, in case you’re wondering. I didn’t see you on America’s Most Wanted or anything.’
He made a face. ‘It was easier when I was only Darrell’s landlord. Now she’s one more member of the family to worry about.’
‘Anselo told me she’d buggered off back to New Zealand,’ said Michelle. ‘Any news?’
‘Shh, Mommy!’ said Harry. ‘I can’t hear.’
Patrick and Michelle exchanged a smile. Patrick lifted Harry off his lap and sat him on the couch, then came to stand by Michelle’s armchair.
‘You have a little boy, too, don’t you?’ said Michelle.
Instead of replying, Patrick peered down into her cup of coffee.
‘I’ve already drunk about a gallon,’ he said, ‘but my body clock’s still ticking in another fucking time zone. Want another?’
Michelle made an apologetic face. ‘I think I just drank the last of it.’
‘Local caf?’ he said.
‘Fifteen-minute walk.’
Michelle took a deep breath just to test how she felt. ‘If you can wait for me to very slowy and carefully shower and change, we could all go?’
Patrick tilted his head and assessed her. ‘You look in pretty good shape, considering.’
‘Wonderful. Thank you. Promise you will never elaborate on “considering”.’
Michelle pulled the blanket around her and stood up. ‘Connie?’
Connie had picked up Rosie from her playmat and was stepping slowly from side to side, jiggling the baby on her hip and softly crooning a song to which Rosie was listening intently.
‘Connie?’ Michelle said again. ‘Do you want to come with us to the café in town? We’ll take Harry and Rosie,’ she added, in case Connie thought she was being asked to stay home and do yet more child-minding.
‘Oh, I’d better not,’ said Connie. She smiled at Rosie, who beamed back gummily. Michelle felt a twinge of resentment.
‘She really likes you,’ said Michelle. ‘Little pill is usually horrible with women.’
Connie brought Rosie up to her mother. Rosie wore the expression she usually reserved for puréed greens and arched backwards in Connie’s arms.
‘Or maybe just with me,’ said Michelle crossly. ‘Like I said, little pill.’
Connie smiled and chucked Rosie’s cheek. Rosie let out a happy cackle.
‘I’ll look after her while you get changed,’ said Connie, ‘but then I had better
go on home.’
Michelle hesitated. ‘Do you want to go home?’
Connie looked at her. ‘Phil will be expecting me.’
Michelle fought down an urge to grill her friend about what she intended to say to Phil, what she would do if Phil confessed — and whether or not she’d like Michelle to hunt Phil down and slice off his man-parts. Connie needed to deal with this in her own way, in her own time, Michelle thought, and if Connie decided Phil’s man-parts needed slicing, then she’d work out her own way to do that, too.
But Michelle found she had to say one thing. ‘Just because Becca said it doesn’t mean it’s true.’
‘I know,’ said Connie. ‘And my first reaction was that it was impossible. But then I thought — how much do we really know about the people we’re close to? I have secrets that I’ve barely admitted to myself, let alone to Phil.’
Michelle felt her insides flip-flop with a mix of sinking dread and sharp pangs of expectancy, a sensation that had become a frequent visitor over the last few days. I wonder what secrets Chad has uncovered about himself, she thought. I wonder what that will mean for me? Her gaze took in both her children. For us?
‘Call me,’ she said to Connie. ‘Or, if you need to, come back here and stay.’
‘Thank you,’ said Connie. ‘You’re a good friend.’
She paused to forestall Rosie who, resentful that Connie’s attention had been diverted, had made a lunge for her ear.
‘But whatever the outcome,’ Connie went on, her hand gently restraining Rosie’s small fist, ‘I do not intend to run from it.’
After they’d waved Connie off in a cab, Patrick lifted Harry onto his shoulders and they set off to walk to the café. Michelle shot frequent, slightly anxious glances at her son, who was sitting up so high his head came close to scraping the lower branches of some of the roadside trees.
But Harry was all smiles, and Michelle wondered if he was absorbing a sense of security from the man below. Patrick was very sure of himself, Michelle observed. You could tell by the upright way he carried himself, and the forceful, bordering on impatient way he strode along the pavement — at a pace that Michelle, in charge of Rosie’s stroller, was struggling to match.
It’s a level of self-confidence that would be easy to mistake for arrogance, Michelle thought. But it isn’t, because I get the impression he wouldn’t find it threatening to admit he’s wrong. Arrogant people constantly have to prove their superiority, whereas I don’t sense that Patrick believes his financial success or even his physicality set him above anyone else. I imagine his tolerance for fools, idlers and pretentious twats is low, Michelle decided. But then, whose isn’t?
Outside the café, Patrick swept Harry, giggling with delight at being temporarily airborne, down from his shoulders and set him on his feet. With one hand Patrick then pulled his own sweater up over his head and off with a speed that suggested the garment had been trying to throttle him.
‘Phew,’ he said as he straightened his shirt. ‘Back home, I’d have on a coat as well. Does this place ever get cold?’
‘No idea,’ said Michelle. ‘I haven’t spent a winter here yet.’
And who knows if she would get to, she thought quickly, pushing it from her mind.
Along the front of the café was a wide verandah, on which were a few tables. Michelle peered in the front door and saw that the café was packed with the usual Saturday lunch crowd.
‘Well, there are advantages to a place that’s freakishly hot in November,’ she said, parking the stroller by the nearest free outside table. ‘No impediment to al fresco dining.’
Patrick went in to order. Michelle settled Harry with colouring book and pens and offered Rosie a rusk, which she snatched with a squeal of outrage, as if Michelle had been concealing it from her on purpose.
‘You know, I wish you were older,’ said Michelle. ‘Then if your father decided to play silly buggers, you’d go straight for his jugular, wouldn’t you?’
‘Hola!’
Angel, on his recumbent bicycle, waved as he pedalled past. On his head was a red and white bandana, knotted behind so that the ends hung down the back of his neck like spotted pigtails. It gave him the look of a Mexican bandit who had run away to join the circus.
‘What the fuck was that?’ said Patrick as he resumed his seat. ‘Sorry. Shouldn’t swear around the kids.’
‘Why not? I do,’ said Michelle. ‘And that was my landlord. You and he should meet and swap landlordly intell.’
Patrick let out a long breath and Michelle glanced at him, curious.
‘That’s not the kind of intell I need,’ he said.
Xavier appeared and placed their coffees on the table.
‘Grazie,’ Patrick said to him. ‘I know it’s not Spanish, but it’s the best I can do.’
‘You can speak to me in Klingon for all I care,’ said Xavier, ‘so long as you leave a tip.’
‘Was that a threat?’ Patrick said to Michelle as Xavier bustled off. ‘Is he going to spit in my huevos rancheros?’
Michelle sipped her coffee and gave a sigh of satisfaction. ‘Anyone who makes coffee this good and strong,’ she said, ‘I’d suck down their spit and ask for seconds.’
Patrick laughed. ‘Darrell said you were funny.’
‘Funny ha-ha?’ said Michelle. ‘Or now-I-have-to-hunt-Darrell-down-and-kill-her funny?’
‘The former.’ Patrick stopped smiling. ‘But I’m tempted to do the latter myself.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know what the fuck’s got into her! I mean — running off to New Zealand? Has she gone fucking mental?’
Michelle was torn. Part of her agreed with Patrick. But despite the recent glitch, Michelle still considered Darrell to be her best friend. Friends, no matter how nutso, were to be defended.
‘She needed somewhere she could feel safe,’ said Michelle.
‘But why?’ said Patrick, indignant. ‘She’s surrounded by family at home.’
Michelle gave him a steady look, and wrinkled his forehead. ‘Yeah, all right. Fair point.’
Patrick glanced towards Harry and lowered his voice. ‘Anselo’s shitting himself that she’ll have the abortion there.’
The bald use of the word made Michelle wince, but Patrick was never going to be one for the polite euphemism.
‘She won’t.’ As Michelle said it, she realised why she believed it. ‘Darrell could never bring herself to be responsible for any kind of death, no matter how sanitised and legal the procedure. And no matter how terrified she is of the consequences of not doing it. But she needs time to get that straight in her head.’
‘I still don’t understand why she couldn’t deal with it with Anselo,’ said Patrick. ‘I know what you’re saying about family — too much pressure. But they could have kept it between the two of them, surely?’
‘Even that would be too much pressure for Darrell,’ said Michelle. ‘She needed truly neutral ground. She needed to be away from everyone who might want to persuade her — or judge her.’
‘Darrell makes that face, too,’ said Patrick, after a moment. ‘Her mouth turns right down at the corners, like in a cartoon.’
‘I’ve been a shitty friend,’ Michelle said. ‘At the risk of sounding like a Greek myth, all I’ve done is shove babies right down her throat.’
She glanced fondly at Rosie, who was inexorably reducing the rusk to a substance Michelle knew had adhesive qualities to rival super glue and could only be removed from surfaces by the application of a pneumatic drill.
‘I’m certainly not the world’s best mother,’ Michelle said, ‘but I’m so glad I became one, I can hardly stand it. That’s what I was trying to tell Darrell, but it just came off as a harangue. I couldn’t find the right words to describe it.’ She smiled at Patrick. ‘But you know exactly what I mean, don’t you?’
Xavier appeared again, this time with plates of food. He said nothing but gave Patrick a single nod, which caused Patrick to peer more closely at his eggs.
�
�Fuck it.’ He picked up a fork. ‘Because I’m starving, I’m going to assume that everything moist and glistening here started life in a shell.’
Michelle cut up Harry’s waffle and offered Rosie a spoonful of scrambled egg, which she rejected by arching her back and glowering. Michelle knew it was unfair to ask Harry to share his waffle, so she pulled out a piece of sourdough toast from under her eggs and offered that instead. Rosie snatched it gleefully in a rusk-encrusted hand.
‘Although occasionally I do wonder,’ said Michelle, looking down at her diminished plate, ‘if the sacrifices are worth it.’
It occurred to her that Patrick had gone quiet. Despite his claims of starvation, he wasn’t eating, but pushing his eggs around with the fork. His mind was clearly elsewhere.
‘You all right?’ Michelle said.
Patrick hesitated. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But I’m not exactly sure why, and it’s pissing me off. It’s one of the reasons I came over here. Wanted time to think.’
Michelle gave a small prayer of thanks that Harry was a methodical eater, who ploughed away slowly and silently until he was finished. Rosie might contribute the odd shriek, but another piece of chewy sourdough would solve that. Michelle wanted Patrick to be able to speak uninterrupted. She was secretly glad that someone who seemed so in control of his life had problems, too. And she was still feeling a little guilty about Darrell. A good, enjoyable dose of Schadenfreude would take her mind off that.
‘I don’t know if Darrell mentioned Clare,’ said Patrick, ‘my wife?’
Michelle nodded. Darrell had indeed told her about Clare. It was she not Patrick who owned the house Darrell rented. Darrell had described Clare as gorgeous-looking, smart and amusing, but with a disconcerting tendency to flip into attack mode when you were least expecting it. ‘It’s like you’re happily listening to a nice soothing piece of classical music,’ Darrell had said, ‘and without warning, it switches to the weet-weet-weet theme from Psycho!’
Darrell had concluded that Patrick was possibly the only man in the world with the strength to take on Clare. ‘Still,’ Darrell had said, ‘he must find it like living with Cato from the Pink Panther movies. One moment, tea. The next a karate chop to the vitals.’
The Not So Perfect Life of Mo Lawrence Page 27
