by Tilly Delane
I take and shake it. Her grip is firm.
“I won’t,” I say.
Then I leave my last therapy session, half an hour early.
I swing by the Allsorts’ house to give Barbara a squeeze goodbye and then by the gym to do the same with Alan before I go and finish packing my backpack.
Raven
I’m in the kitchen, emptying the fridge of rotten food, when Tristan and Rowan appear in full hiking gear, backpacks shouldered and ready to leave. I turn around and lean back against the counter when I hear them.
“Bye, Raven,” Tristan says and waves.
“Take care,” I answer, nodding sharply but not moving from my spot.
We said goodbye already, we had our hug. He understands and leaves, pushing past Rowan and out of the house. The front door shuts.
And then it’s just us.
The man who healed and destroyed me anew, all in one night, and me. There is so much warmth and love and agony in his dark brown gaze and I can’t deal. Again. I hold my hand up in a warding off gesture. I don’t want to talk to him. I can’t. The pain takes my breath away, cuts off my capacity to produce sound.
But it appears I don’t need to. He doesn’t say anything either, and I turn my back on him.
I hear his backpack land on the floor with a thud and before I know it, he is on me, slinging his arms around me from behind and holding me in a vise-like grip.
I start struggling, but he doesn’t let go.
I stop thrashing when his lips find my ear, and against all rationale, his hot breath fanning over my cheek makes my knees go wobbly and turns my insides to mush with desire.
“I’m going now,” he rumbles in my ear. “But I want you to know, I’m in love with you, Raven. I’m so deeply and utterly in love with you, it hurts knowing that you exist. It kills me that you hate me. But I get it. And I deserve it. I deserve it anyway for being an arsehole. And I deserve it specifically for making you do shit that was unprofessional. But remember this, Simon dying was not your fault, or mine, or ours. It just happened. Shit happens. Don’t beat yourself up about it. I’ll get out of your hair now and that’ll make it easier for you, but if at any point in your life you want me to come and hug you, or fuck, or both, ring me. I left my number on your bed. Whenever, wherever. Even if you’re on the other side of the world getting around with a Zimmer frame. I’ll be there like a shot.”
He slips a hand around my neck and tilts my head, making me look over my shoulder at him. Then he kisses me, forcefully yet with great care at the same time, until my already violently beating heart wants to explode in my chest, and I see stars.
He releases me, and I have to brace myself on the countertop, so my legs don’t give out.
Then, just as suddenly as he was on me, he’s gone.
I hear him grab his backpack and seconds later, the front door falls shut once more.
I pick up a fuzzy yogurt and pour it into the sink.
Rowan
They’ve made a bedroom for me out of the old living room while I was gone.
Sheena’s house in Shoreham, a small town just along the coast from Brighton, is a classic two-up two-down.
Silas and Grace share the master bedroom upstairs and there is a Polish language student called Kalina, who is currently residing in my room from yesteryear, next to theirs. Sheena sleeps on the ground floor in what was once the dining room. Before I came to The Village, I was kipping on the terrible, too-short pull-out sofa in the living room for a couple of weeks, but while I've been in rehab, they’ve given the room a complete make over.
They got rid of the furniture, moved the TV into Sheena’s room, gave the walls a coat of paint and made me a bed out of some pallets, with the biggest mattress I’ve ever seen on top. In the middle of the mattress, Sol and Luna, the two resident cats, are currently curled up around each other, clearly taking the job of testing it out for me very seriously. The bed more or less fills the room now and that makes me smile.
During my time on the underground fight circuit, I got used to sleeping with my feet off a bunk or tucked into a ball. If there even was a bunk. Having a bed I can stretch out on is high on my list of favourite things in the world.
Sheena also got me a wardrobe and a desk that both look suspiciously like surplus from the Palais, the hotel where she works.
“It’s not much,” Sheena says when she shows me. “We were going to put some finishing touches on. But you came home early.”
She doesn’t ask me why.
The beauty of Sheena O’Brien, the woman who became my second mother when I was twelve, is that she always either knows the whole story already or will wait until you volunteer it. I’m not volunteering anything right now.
I haven’t told Silas or Grace either, but they’re not stupid, they can put two and two together. Last time they saw me, I had a girl. Now I’ve come home early, alone.
The two of them are in the kitchen right now, cooking dinner for us all, leaving the big reveal of my new habitat to Sheena.
Standing in the centre of the room with Sheena by my elbow, I look around and swallow hard.
“Are you sure about this?” I ask, turning to her.
“Look at me,” she says.
And I do.
She looks different. When I first came back to town a few weeks ago, I was shocked to see how much she had changed. Sheena used to be a model before Silas was born, worked for some seriously famous photographers. She has the most amazing bone structure a woman can have. Yet when I first saw her again, after years away, I barely recognized her. This once glamorous woman had turned into a drab, pale shadow of her former self.
My fault.
But with the threat of repossession not hanging over her head any longer, she’s obviously felt the freedom to start digging out that old self.
While I have been doing my thing at The Village, she’s bleached her short grey hair, got it properly styled and has started wearing makeup again.
And she’s back in the designer trouser suits she used to favour when we were kids.
“You look good,” I say.
“Yeah.” She smiles. “My boys are back together. I’m happy.”
She comes closer, reaches up and cups my face in her hands.
“Rowan O’Brien, I might not have given birth to you and I might not have spent the first twelve years of your life with you, and I’d never dream of trying to replace your real mum, but I love you. I strongly believe that fate brought me and James together purely, so I could become your next mummy. And so Silas could have the brother he craved. When I signed those adoption papers, I signed them for life. Through thick and thin. Not till you turn eighteen, or till the first moment you fuck up a little.”
I take a deep breath, wanting to protest the ‘little’, but she is one step ahead of me.
“Or a lot,” she adds.
“So what you’re saying is that a Rowan’s for life, not just for Christmas,” I quip, and that makes her laugh.
“Something like that. Now bend down here, you big hulk, and give me a hug. My neck's getting stiff.”
I do as I'm told and squeeze her hard. She pats me on the back then withdraws.
“Better leave you to unpack,” she says and does just that.
I don’t have much. Everything I own is in my backpack, everything important I own is in my jacket pockets, so it doesn’t take long before I’m done.
As soon as I’ve packed away the last couple of things and stowed away my rucksack, I don’t quite know what to do with myself. I need to keep busy, so I don’t keep thinking about Raven.
During the journey home, I was okay as long as I was sharing the train ride with Tristan. Once he starts talking, the kid’s really good company, and we had a proper laugh. But when we got to London, we had to split, finding different stations for our different destinations. I left him with my number and Sheena’s address, telling him to look me up if he ever comes down to Brighton, before we said our goodbyes at Waterloo.<
br />
That’s when reality started kicking in for me. As long as I had the kid with me, it was almost as if we hadn’t quite left The Village yet. I think there was a part of my brain that was kidding itself into thinking we were just on a little day trip and would go back tonight.
The truth hit me full force when I’d made it across London and boarded the train homeward at Victoria.
Whoever said it’s better to have loved and lost was a complete and utter idiot. On the outside, I might have been this massive bloke in a seat by the window, who looked like you don’t wanna mess with him, but on the inside I was curled up in the foetal position around a ball of pain.
It strikes me that, actually, that is what I want to get back to. Curling up in a corner. I want to think about her, want to feel the loss, if that’s the only way I can be close to her now. But before I can shell myself out of my clothes and crawl into bed, Grace calls through the house, calling everyone to the kitchen for dinner.
So I go and have stew.
It’s sitting down to eat one of Silas’ thick soups, more than anything else, that makes me feel the disconnect.
Five people around a table.
A week apart.
Different setting, different faces, different voices.
I look at Kalina, Grace, Silas and Sheena and wonder if all of them are still going to be here in the morning.
I think of Raven in a now empty cottage.
I wonder if she’s staying there tonight or if she’s gone to sleep over at Christine’s maybe. I don’t want her to be alone with the ghost of Simon rattling around the house.
Suddenly I feel like a complete cunt for leaving her.
I drop my spoon and look up into the round.
“Sorry, guys, I need to go make a phone call.”
I leave the table in a hurry and retreat into my new bedroom.
I don’t have Raven’s mobile number, but I know how to dial through to our cottage and that’s what I do. She picks up on the second ring.
“Good evening, The Village, Ravenna Vanhofd speaking,” she answers like the pro that she is.
“Raven? It’s me.”
She doesn’t react immediately. I can hear her breath hitch and I wonder if she’s been sitting on the bed, crying.
“Did you forget something?” she asks coolly after a second.
“No, I...I wanted to make sure you’re alright.”
“I’m a nurse, Rowan. I’m fine,” she says in that clipped tone she is so fucking good at.
The one that cuts you down to nothing.
I am nothing.
“Anything else I can do for you? Because Halosan staff don’t fraternize with clients before, during or after they’ve left the program, and I have things to organize here. As you may remember, I’m handing over to Christine next week, and then I’ll be going home. So you can imagine there is still a lot of paperwork and packing to do.”
“You’re going home?” I ask bewildered. “I thought you were going to travel Europe first.”
She sighs audibly at that.
“I don’t feel like that’s appropriate under the circumstances,” she answers matter of fact, before her voice softens a little. “I’m just waiting for the coroner’s report and for the police to unseal Simon’s room, and then I’m gone. I rang my foster parents to ask if I can come home for a bit when I leave here. Elena cried with relief when I asked. John took a tumble coming out of church on Sunday and broke his ankle. They’re struggling. They got a full house and they’re not young, so I’m going home to help out for a while. I’ve got my month holiday and once that’s over, the bosses said we can talk about compassionate leave until John is back on his feet.”
There is this magical moment while she is telling me all this, when it feels like I’ve got her back and my heart starts beating double time.
“You want me to come with you?”
It’s out before I can think about it.
There is a pause. And then she delivers the final blow.
“Absolutely not,” she says, voice below freezing. “Whatever this was, it’s over, Rowan. Accept it. Move on. Have a nice life.”
She hangs up.
I sling my phone away and it lands somewhere on the carpet. I rip the socks off my feet, peel myself out of my trousers and t-shirt and crawl into the middle of the bed. Then I let the tears flow freely.
Through the haze of my pain, I hear the clinking of dishes as they're getting washed up and the voices of the others. There is no laughter, I note, just serious, slightly subdued conversation.
I hear the kettle being boiled. Once, twice.
About an hour after dinner, Sheena goes to her room and switches the TV on. It stays with me as a low murmur, reverberating through the wall.
A little later, the tiny Polish girl’s soft footsteps pad up the stairs. Kalina does her bathroom run, and then I can hear her bed creaking above my head as she, too, settles down for the night.
Silas and Grace are still in the kitchen, but so quiet I can barely hear them through my never-ending tears.
Eventually, I half drift off to sleep, an image of Raven alone in the cottage ghosting through my mind. I send her my love through the ether, even though I know it will be ill received.
Then, I finally fall fully asleep.
I don't know how much time has passed when I wake from the door to my room being gently pushed open. The house is plunged into darkness, bar the few rays of yellow streetlight that make it around the gaps in my curtains. The road outside is deadly quiet, so I guess it's past pub closing time, because our house is opposite a pub car park.
I realise I’ve been crying in my sleep. I guess I never stopped.
Silas slips into the room.
“You okay?” he asks in that quiet voice of his that’s always rasping just above a whisper.
It’s still amazing to me how that happened. Our voices breaking. Mine literally broke. One minute I was a normal kid with a normal voice, the next I had these thunderclaps coming out of my throat whenever I opened my mouth. His just gently, quietly matured into this mellow rasp.
I don’t answer him and turn away, towards the window.
Undeterred, he walks further into the room, negotiating the dark perfectly until he reaches the other side of the bed, so I’m facing him. He sits down on the mattress by my side and his scent invades my nostrils. He smells of Silas, and sex.
“Hoof over,” he says.
I hesitate for a moment, but then I do it anyway. He clambers into the bed and slips under the duvet, pulling at it until he’s freed it from beneath my bulk. He throws it over me and wraps his arm around my shoulder. A fresh flood of tears makes its way up my throat. He brings his hand up to cradle the back of my head and draws me into his shoulder, absorbing the shakes wracking my body.
When I first came to live here, it had been a year and a bit after Mum had died. The shock was only just wearing off and I’d finally started crying at night. And there was this new kid in my life, who I was suddenly sharing a room with, and he came and held me. Just like this. Every time.
