Marshmallows for Breakfast

by Dorothy Koomson

  The entrance to my flat, Mr. Gadsborough had told me, was on the right of the house behind high, ornate iron gates. After unlocking the gate, I'd wheeled my luggage along the stone path and the side of the white house. The back opened up to a large, grass courtyard surrounded by large, slate-grey flagstones. Opposite the main house stood my flat.

  Mr. Gadsborough was an architect and had designed and rebuilt the flat that sat above a former garage as a self-contained studio for his wife. It was white on the outside, with a row of six large picture windows that looked over the courtyard and three skylights embedded in the slanted roof. At the center of the building, where the entrance to the garage had been, was the blue front door.

  As I'd approached it, it had felt like my flat, even though I'd only seen the pictures that Mr. Gadsborough had e-mailed me. It felt like the place where I could start again. Leaving Sydney had been a decision made in haste. I had no idea where I was going to live, no family in England I could impose upon, so I'd spent hours trawling the Net until I'd seen the ad for this place. After a few conversations with the owner, when we'd gone through the process of couriering contracts back and forth, and transferring money, it was mine. All mine. I'd felt a calmness flow through me when Mr. Gadsborough told me I could rent the flat. I had somewhere to live, somewhere to hide.

  I'd wheeled my metal-grey suitcases around the grey flagstone path to my flat. The navy-blue front door had a brass knocker. Behind the door would be stairs that led up to what would become my space.

  The chill of the place had come rushing down the stairs to greet me as I'd swung open the door. It was cool outside, but colder inside—the absence of someone in the house had left its mark.

  I'd stared up at the wooden stairs with a gentle turn at the top—there was no way I'd make it up in one go. Leaving my suitcases on the doorstep, I'd climbed the stairs.

  I'd shed my rucksack and bag, then pelted back down and bumped one of my suitcases up the stairs, pelted back and bumped up the other one. After shutting the door behind me I'd stopped. It seemed to be the first time in weeks I'd done that, stopped. I'd stopped and allowed the stillness that came from a place that hadn't been inhabited for a while to descend upon me. I'd closed my eyes, inhaled the sensation of motionlessness deep into my lungs, then exhaled it. Pushed it out to join the quiet around me. This was what tranquillity felt like. This was what I wanted when I'd boarded the plane for home.

  I'd opened my eyes and for the first time properly took in the room. The entire flat was about forty feet long, most of it open plan. To my right was the living area with a sofa, the television and a coffee table. Beside the sofa was the doorway that led to the bedroom. To my left was the small and round dining table with three chairs. Beyond that, at the far end was the kitchen with a whole wall of glass that let light flood in. Beside it, the door that led to the bathroom. The entire flat, apart from the bathroom, had stripped wood floorboards, topped with brightly colored rugs that sat like islands at equally spaced points along the floor.

  On the dining table stood a box of chocolates tied up in a pink bow, a piece of white card propped up against it. I'd picked up the note.

  Welcome to your new home, Kendra.

  From the Gadsborough family.

  A sweet and unexpected gesture that told me they were good people. Normal, kind. I'd felt that every time I'd spoken to Mr. Gadsborough. They were decent and friendly.

  Friendly. That had caused a trickle of anxiety to run through me. Their potential friendliness could be a problem, I'd thought, as I'd put down the note and stared at the chocolates. I needed to be left alone for a while. I felt like a fugitive, running away from Australia, and I needed solitude now that I was home. A place where I could spend time on my own, licking the wounds that had made me leave Sydney; get myself together. Get stronger as I eased myself back into being around people again.

  My biggest fear as I'd fingered the cellophane covering of the chocolates was that they wouldn't leave me alone long enough for me to start rebuilding my life. That they wouldn't leave me alone, full stop.

  I paced the bedroom floor, wringing my hands, fretting. An irrational terror was growing bigger and more real with every passing minute. The kids had probably gone back over to the house and told Mrs. Gadsborough what had happened. “She's quite pretty,” Summer would say casually.

  “She had no clothes on, did she, Dad?” Jaxon would blithely add.

  Any moment now Mrs. Gadsborough would be marching over here, frying pan in hand, to read me the riot act. To tell me to keep my clothes on, even in the shower. Especially in the shower.

  Even if she didn't come over here for that confrontation, it would hardly endear me to her. It'd put a seed of doubt in her mind about me, make her wonder if I had an eye on her husband and make her decide to keep an eye on me.

  With that thought crystallized in my head, I pulled on a V-neck jumper, struggled into a black cardigan and put on my long black coat. Quickly, I wrapped a stripy, multicolored scarf around my neck, grabbed my bag and made for the door. I'd go visit a few estate agents, get the train into central London and spend the day there. I'd be back as late as possible, by which time they'd be asleep. I could keep doing that—staying out till late—until I found somewhere else to live.

  Before I stepped out of the flat, I eased open the front door a sizeable crack and peeked out, checking that it was all clear. Across the courtyard stood the house, large, white and imposing. From where I was, I could see the large kitchen window. The wooden slatted blinds were up and I could make out Mr. Gadsborough standing at the kitchen table, gesticulating wildly at the two children who sat at the table, both of them engrossed by what he was saying. Mrs. Gadsborough was nowhere in sight. This was my chance to escape.

  I stepped over the threshold and eased the door shut. Just as carefully, I slipped the key into the dead bolt, gently turning it. Then, I slid the key into the Yale lock, turned that just as soundlessly to double lock it.

  Biting my lower lip and tensed to move stealthily across the courtyard towards the gate, I turned—and found Mr. Gadsborough, box of Weetabix in one hand, right behind me.

  “JESUS CHRIST!” I screeched, leaping back and clutching at my heart. “DON'T DO THAT!” What was it with this family and its talent for appearing from nowhere?

  All at once my landlord looked stricken, as though he couldn't believe he'd done that to me. “Oh, God, I'm sorry,” he said, reaching out to me with his free hand. I flinched back, pressing my body flat against the door to stop him from touching me. We'd already crossed far too many barriers in the last half hour, we didn't need to trample down any more.

  He drew back his hand, stepped away from me, gave me room. I moved a little away from the door, now that he was at a safe distance.

  “Miss Tamale, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you,” he said.

  “Call me Kendra,” I said cautiously, my heart still racing.

  “I'm sorry, Kendra, I didn't mean to startle you. That's the last thing I wanted to do.”

  “It's OK, Mr. Gadsborough, I'm fine. Really. I'm just a bit jumpy.”

  “Call me Kyle,” he said.

  “OK, Kyle.”

  “I was giving the kids their breakfast,” he said, pointing to the kitchen behind him, “and I saw you. I wanted to catch you before you left to apologize. I didn't know what time you'd be back and we're probably going to go straight to sleep after breakfast. Jet lag. But I want to apologize for before. You know… Before…” His voice trailed away and he flushed a gentle carmine as the memory obviously refreshed itself in his mind.

  “It's fine,” I dismissed automatically, although it wasn't. It hadn't been intentional, which made it a little fine.

  “It most certainly isn't fine,” he interrupted. “I've just spent the better part of half an hour explaining to the kids why it's not fine. I'm so sorry.” His voice was smooth and gentle, a hint of an accent, northern maybe, overlaid his words.

  “It's OK, really.”
>
  “It's not. I just want to assure you it won't happen again. It's the kids, you see. I don't know if you've ever had kids?” His eyes trailed down my body, as though he could assess whether I'd had kids from examining the curves of my form, then his face bloomed red again as he obviously remembered seeing these same curves in a towel.

  “I know of kids,” I said, a touch of sarcasm to my tone. If I had kids would I have moved into his house without them?

  “Well, my two, when they get an idea in their heads, they won't let up. When I told them I'd rented the place to you they wanted to know everything all at once. They wanted to meet you straight away. Wanted a picture. Wanted to find out where you were right then. Wanted to fly over to Sydney. They couldn't understand why we couldn't go to Sydney on the way to New York because, you know, there's a plane ride involved in both of them. But, when we got to New York, nothing. Didn't bring it up at all. I thought they'd forgotten, but on the way back from the airport just now, Jaxon, I think it was, remembered all of a sudden, reminded Summer and off they went. I couldn't get them to stop until I let them in to prove you weren't there, which of course you were.”

  The strong silent type Kyle was not. All the while he talked his eyes, which were the deep maroon of mahogany, danced. Close up, he was an attractive man. Ignore the exhaustion, the paling of his skin and the semicircles of darkness under his eyes and you had a handsome soul. Rugged physique, soft lines at his jaw, strong but striking features, an air of natural inquisitiveness his daughter had inherited. Woven into his height, his body, his persona, was a gentleness that would put most people at ease—when he wasn't creeping up behind them.

  “We did knock,” Kyle said to end his explanation.

  “I was probably in the shower,” I said, with a deadpan face just to see him redden again, which he did, right on cue. When Kyle blushed, dipped his head a little, he became a bashful boy who had been caught looking through his mother's underwear catalogue; he became the adult version of Jaxon.

  “It won't happen again,” he promised. “Look, if you want to take the spare keys back and give them to someone else, feel free.”

  “No, I'd rather someone nearby had them, you know, just in case I slip in the shower and can't get up.”

  He didn't blush this time; instead he tilted his head to one side and his lips slid up into a smile. He had a nice smile, warm, sweet, inviting. “You're going to keep on making shower jokes for the rest of my natural life, aren't you?” he asked.

  “Yup, pretty much.”

  “As long as we haven't scared you off. I hope you weren't going out to find a new flat. Because it absolutely will not happen again. I'm going to learn to keep the kids under better control. That's my mission.”

  “Oh, they're fine. Just spooked me a bit, that's all.”

  “Yeah, you say that, but you don't know how often they run rings around me. I'm new to all this, you see.”

  “Oh,” I said. Weren't they his kids after all? Where was his wife?

  “My wife and I are separated,” he said in answer to my silent query. “Very recently. Well, a few weeks. That's why I'm renting out that space—it was her work studio,” he said with a nod towards the flat. “We've just been to New York, that's where she's thinking of moving to. Without us. We're getting divorced. I thought the trip was a reconciliation, but on our last night we're lying on the huge hotel bed, the kids are asleep between us, and she whispers, ‘I want a divorce, Kyle. We can't make it work so I want a divorce.’ Nice huh? We slept in the same bed the whole two weeks. All four of us, just like old times, and that's how she ends it. I hadn't even known we'd been trying to make it work.”

  With every word my toes had been curling under, clenching themselves in my trainers while every muscle in my body strained with the effort of not turning around and running away from him. I knew all about divorce. I'd just fled from divorce. I did not need to run straight into another one.

  Kyle stopped talking and we stood, unmoving and silent. His act of emotional bloodletting that had dragged me into the deepest recesses of his family vault stood between us, an unexpected horror. Neither of us knew what to say and an uncomfortable, stifling quiet flowed over us.

  “You're going to move out in the middle of the night, aren't you?” he said sadly. He shook his head, ran a hand over his cropped hair. “I'm sorry, this must be the world's worst introduction for you—first the stuff in the flat, and now a brief history of my failed marriage. I'm sorry.”

  He hadn't been like this on the phone. Admittedly we'd been discussing business but he'd seemed quiet, as though many thoughts went on in his head but few made it out. Maybe it was the jet lag combined with the sudden realization that he was going to be a single father that had loosened his tongue. Either way, I didn't know what to say.

  From the Gadsborough house, loud and shrill, the phone started ringing. The knots of tension twisting my shoulders and stomach relaxed and my toes unclenched themselves. I didn't have to say anything, he'd go answer the phone and I could get as far away from him as possible. He stared at me as though waiting for an answer to something. I stared at him waiting for him to answer his phone. The ringing continued in the background.

  “Do you want to get that?” I said, pointing to the house.

  Surprise sprung onto his face as he glanced behind him. “Oh, right,” he said, turning back to me. He still made no move towards his house. He gave me a small, bashful smile, then glanced down at his feet before raising his head a little to me. “Would you … I don't suppose you'd want to come in? Have breakfast with us and meet the kids properly?” He shrugged. “They'll only keep on at me until they do meet you. Well, Summer will keep on, Jaxon will give her backup. Silent backup, but just as effective … Look, I promise I'll shut up if you come for breakfast. If you want to?”

  If I was honest, truly honest, I didn't want to have breakfast with them. It was nothing personal. The Gadsboroughs seemed very nice, but I'd only been around them for an hour or so and life seemed to have become a tangle of embarrassment, anxiety and complications. Mrs. Gadsborough had left, which was why I had a place to live. I'd literally flown halfway across the world only to end up back where I started—on the front line of a divorce; now I would witness everything I tried to run from. I'd see firsthand how brutal, ugly and vicious a permanent separation became. And then there were the kids. Being around children was a form of torture for me. It tore me up inside, reminded me of missed opportunities, made me feel a deep, searing pain. Living near them would be fine, engaging with them would not.

  I should not have moved in here, I realized as I stared at my landlord, the phone still ringing in the background.

  “Please?” Kyle asked.

  “OK,” I said. I really had no way out.

  CHAPTER 3

  In the kitchen, Jaxon and Summer sat in silence at the wooden dining table.

  Summer was at the head of the table and was making her blue floppy bunny hop around her place mat— occasionally the bunny would jump high in the air, then would make a kamikaze dive into the empty white cereal bowl in front of her, only to leap out again, unscathed. Jaxon, who sat to Summer's right, had his elbow on the table, resting his face on his hand, and was staring down into his bowl as though divining the secrets of the universe.

  The table was ready for breakfast: on it sat a box of cornflakes, spoons, a white ceramic bowl heaped with sugar, glasses, a carton of milk and an unopened carton of fresh orange juice. Kyle deposited the box of Weetabix on the table as he dashed past to answer the phone.

  I hesitated before I stepped into the doorway. The kids, who watched their father run out of the kitchen without saying a word to them, both turned in my direction.

  Summer's face lit up when she saw me. She beamed, then raised a hand and waved at me. Jaxon looked from me to Summer, then scrunched his mouth, frowned and glared at his sister as though she had betrayed him.

  “Hi,” I said cautiously, scared to move from the doorway. Scared to e
nter the room and be with them when their father wasn't there as well. Neither of them spoke, even though Summer's beam grew across her face.

  “Your dad asked me to stay for breakfast,” I explained. “Is that OK with you?” Summer glanced at Jaxon, as if asking his permission. Jaxon stared back at her, a sliver of an expression flitting across his eyes before he lowered them to the table again. It didn't take a mind reader to know he wasn't happy about this. He really didn't want me there. Summer grinned at him, then turned to me.

  “You have to get a bowl,” she stated and pointed to one of the white cupboards on the wall.

  “OK,” I said and dumped my bag beside the chair to Summer's left, opposite Jaxon. I shed my coat, but kept on my cardigan. I followed Summer's pointing finger and went to the cupboard, found a bowl that matched the ones on the table. I took it back to the table and went to sit down. “And you have to get a glass for juice,” Summer said, just as my bum had touched the wooden seat.

  I followed her pointing finger to the cupboard next to the bowl-and-plate cupboard, and from inside its depths I retrieved a straight, smooth drinking glass. “Anything else?” I asked. Summer shook her head and treated me to one of her smiles. Jaxon, who had been studying me, raised his hand and pointed to the drawer beside the cupboard I was leaning against.

  “Oh, yeah, a spoon,” I said.

  Jaxon nodded and a hint of a smile crossed his face before he cast his eyes down to his cereal bowl again.

  In the background, through the doorway, Kyle paced the corridor, the white cordless phone pressed to his ear, an expression of intense displeasure soaked into his face.

  He was talking to his wife. His soon-to-be-ex-wife. Only someone you loved could make you wear that kind of expression. Someone who had once loved you knew how to get to the part of you where pain lived. They knew where you kept that softest, most tender part of your heart; they knew which words and looks and actions would slice deep into you at that spot; they knew which cuts would take an eternity to heal.