Page 39 of The Trouble With Love

Your mother.

I looked at Kai. He was still very pale and his eyelashes were spiky with moisture. ‘What do I do, Holly? What do I do?’ The poised, hard, journalistic façade was gone, cracked into a million pieces with the splinters reflected in his eyes. He hugged the leather jacket around himself and stared down at his feet. ‘I don’t even know what I feel now. I hated her so much all those years, and now this,’ he flipped the letter I still held. ‘David,’ his voice was cracked and far away. ‘My name was David.’

‘Come on Kai.’ I grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the alley. ‘Let’s go home. You need to think about this properly, and here is not the place.’

Jerkily I led him back to the car park. He still kept stopping to look at mothers, staring to such an extent that one or two gathered their children to them, halting their pre-Christmas wonder with a firm grip around wrists and glaring at Kai. He didn’t even notice the animosity, just switched his stare. I had to almost drag him past two pregnant girls enjoying a shared pasty outside the bakers’, his head swivelled as we drew level to keep them in eyeline.

‘Fuck off, you fucking weirdo,’ one of them called as he gazed at her swollen middle, shoving its way between the curtains of her unbuttoned coat.

‘Come on.’ I tightened my grip and increased my pace until by the time we reached the car I was panting. ‘Do you want me to drive?’

‘No. I want you to . . . just be here, Holly. It’s knowing you’re here that’s stopping me falling apart right now.’

We drove back to Barndale. Kai was driving on automatic pilot, accurately but too fast, and when we hit the snow-belt again even the Jeep was struggling to cope with the combination of speed and frozen road. I didn’t dare say anything, he was lost in his head and I had to trust that he’d got enough experience in these conditions not to kill us both. ‘Put the radio on,’ he said after about ten miles of silence, and made me jump. ‘Apparently there’s weather warnings going out for more snow.’

It was so off-topic that I had to get him to repeat what he’d said. ‘Seriously? You’ve got all this on your plate and you’re worried about the weather?’

He looked at me slowly and I winced as the Jeep slid a few yards. ‘This has always been on my plate. Always. You never forget it, Holly, that your mother didn’t want to know you, couldn’t bear to have you around even for a few days. She didn’t even try . . .’ His knuckles whitened on the wheel and he was silent for a few seconds. ‘If it comes in to snow again, I’ll need to go and pick up some supplies. We’re nearly out of bread and tea, and Cerys . . .’ another second where the only sound was the roar of the four wheel drive chewing its way through the diesel, ‘you know she likes her toast.’

I put the radio on without another murmur. We sat through a selection of 70s hits and they seemed so out of place, so inconsequential that I went to turn it off again but Kai stopped me. ‘Please,’ was all he said, so I left it and tried to ignore Marc Bolan and the Bay City Rollers chanting about their great loves.

The forecast came and surprised me by being far more localised even than the York station usually gave. ‘North Yorkshire is predicted very high winds with more snow, giving rise to structural damage and disruption on the roads. Police are warning motorists not to travel if it is not essential. Local businesses are closing early and everyone is being told to stay at home until the storm has blown itself out, around teatime tomorrow.’

‘Teatime?’ I frowned at the radio. ‘That’s not very precise. I mean, I often have tea around sevenish, but Megan likes hers at half past three.’

Kai gave a weak smile. ‘Split the difference and expect it to stop around quarter past five.’

‘And it’s only our area. Normally storms like this go right up the east coast.’

‘Maybe this is more of your excitement.’

‘Still not the sort I really wanted.’

‘Then what did you want?’ His question echoed Vivienne’s. ‘What did you have in mind? If it wasn’t Nicholas going AWOL or your man turning up, or ferocious snow storms, what did you want?’

I shrugged. Couldn’t think of anything to say.

Kai dropped me, without another word, at my car. ‘Are you sure you’ll be okay?’ I hesitated with my key to the lock. There was a wildness in his eyes that I didn’t really like the look of, the look of a man who wants to destroy something and might destroy himself if nothing else presents itself.

‘I need to think.’

‘Yes. You do. Maybe talk to Cerys . . .’

He cut me off with an angry gesture. ‘No. Cerys knows nothing about this. Merion and I . . . we kept it all from her, never wanted her to think she’d been conceived just to get us out of the shit-pit we were in. I mean, to a certain extent she was, but . . . no. Not Cerys. And especially not now, with the twins so near and everything.’

‘Okay.’

He revved the Jeep engine. ‘But thanks for being there.’

‘Any time, Kai. And if you need me, you know where I am.’

He nodded, back in his own private world again, and sent the Jeep leaping between the two huge elms which guarded the entry to the track through the woods. I wondered for a moment about following him, collecting Nicholas and heading home to sit out the snow storm. But then I remembered Aiden, and decided that, all things considered, Nicholas was better off where he was.

To delay the Aiden moment, I went home via Megan’s.

‘Have you seen the weather forecast?’

‘Well, I’ve heard it.’ I took the tiny portion of sofa that Rufus wasn’t occupying. He raised his head from his paws and gave me a toothy stare but let me sit down.

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