Page 50 of Daydreamer
Hetty shrugged. “No. Missed a big deadline as well. It was a bit of a palaver. That’s why she’s so fussy about using her noise-cancelling thingies and not being bothered by Gandalf. She’s on a mission to finish the manuscript.”
“She was in pain?” I couldn’t help it then; my voice broke over the words, and my throat felt tight. “I caused her pain? I think… I think I’m going to throw up.” With that, I shot up to my feet, only just making it to the small bathroom under the stairs in time to see my breakfast make a dramatic reappearance.
There was silence in the kitchen when I returned after washing my mouth out at the sink and looking at my pale reflection. I sat at the kitchen table again as my hands came up to cover my face. I couldn’t look at any of the Mayweathers. How had I sunk so low? How could I havehurt her?
“Come on, Felix, love,” Hetty’s soft voice cut through my self-loathing, her hand had settled on my shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “It’ll all be right. You’re going toputit right. Nothing you couldn’t do as a boy was there? Any tree you wanted to climb you were the first up there. Didn’t want anything from your dad, so you worked your arse off in the pub with Jimbo to buy a car for yourself, but I know you gave it all to Mikey to help him set up his workshop. And when Lucy was being bullied at school, you went to pick her up and cornered those little shits.” Hetty dropped her own pound coin into the jar with her hand that wasn’t on my shoulder. “You helped her with her maths. And don’t think I don’t know that you were the first person to encourage my daughter to become a storyteller.Yousaw that potential.”
“Hetty, I didn’t even know she’d published her books,” I said in an agonised voice. “How could I not have known?”
I looked at Hetty then. Her eyes were fixed on me and slightly narrowed.
“I reckon once you left Little Buckingham you wanted to reallyleave. Too much pain for you here, wasn’t there, love?”
I broke eye contact with Hetty to look down at the table. She was right. I had needed to leave this village behind. On some level, I knew I loved Lucy; even as a child, I knew our bond ran deep. And nothing was going to pull me back here, not after what Dad did.
“She’ll never forgive me,” I whispered, staring down at my tea and feeling the bottom drop out of my world.
Mike huffed. “Ugh, bloody hell. You always were a dramatic little bitch.” I glanced at him. He was no longer puffed up with righteous anger; in fact, there was almost a touch of pity in his expression as he sank down into one of the chairs opposite me at the table. “She’ll live. It’s not like she lost a finger or anything.”
I felt the blood drain out of my face. My stomach clenched again.
“Calm down, love,” Hetty said. “None of that now. You can’t win my daughter back if you’re covered in vomit or passed out on the floor.”
Vomiting had been a stress response for me as a child, and Hetty was always able to recognise the signs. I took a deep breath to stave off the nausea and took a sip of tea as instructed. Hetty was right – tea really did make everything better.
“Mum?”
I let go of the mug with a clatter at the sound of Lucy’s voice. Some tea spilt over the side, but I ignored it. She didn’t see me as she made it through the door. That was because, bizarrely, she was pushing a small, fat pony from behind to force it into the kitchen, huffing and puffing with the effort. The small pony’s head was in the air, and it was bracing its hooves to try and go back against Lucy’s pushing.
“Can we please keep Legolas outside my shed? He keepsbutting my arm when I’m trying to write, and he ate one of my maps! This place is a bloody madhouse. You’re not meant to have—” She froze, and her mouth snapped shut when she caught sight of me. Straightening up slowly she kept her gaze locked to mine as she reached up to pull her headphones off. “You’rehere.”
And I just couldn’t help it. I knew I didn’t have the right. I knew I had to wait for her to come to me. But there was nothing I could do about it. My legs were pushing up from the chair and taking me over to her before I had really registered the thought to do it. She’d managed to push her way around the pony now and was standing in the kitchen. I stopped right in front of her. Her mouth opened to speak, but she snapped it shut as I gently took both her hands in mine.
Very, very carefully, I turned them over to look at both sides. She winced slightly and my eyes shot to hers.
“They’re still a bit sensitive,” she said in explanation, and I closed my eyes slowly, feeling the heat building behind them. I hadn’t cried in front of anyone since the Benji incident when I was thirteen years old. My father told me that day that crying was for pathetic losers. I vowed then that I would never cry again and that I would hate my father forever. Both promises I’d kept until now.
When I opened my eyes, Lucy sucked in a shocked breath at the tears swimming there.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” I said in a ravaged whisper, unable to get anything else past my tight throat.
One of her hands went up to my face. Her thumb swiping the tear that had fallen. “Felix,” she said softly, her voice full of emotion. Then her eyelids swept shut, her hand fell away from my face, the other pulling easily from mine. I wanted to hold onto her to stop the inevitable retreat but I didn’t want to risk hurtingher fingers. So I let it slip away as she took a step back. There was total silence in the kitchen now. Mike shifted uncomfortably in his chair – I don’t thinkhe’dseen me cry since I was six.
“I can’t ever take that back,” I said, my voice hoarse. “I can’t ever take back the fact I hurt you.” Lucy rubbed her hands together and the urge to take them both in mine was so strong I had to shove my own in my pockets. I sniffed as my eyes started to sting again. Jesus, I couldn’t blub again. Heartbroken or no, Mike would never let me live it down.
“Felix, why are you here?” Lucy said in a small voice.
“I told you I wouldn’t give up. I–I can’t let you go. Please, Lucy, just give me a chance to make it up to you.” I paused, swallowing past the lump in my throat. “Please, Shakespeare. I love you.”
Lucy looked to the side and bit her lip. “How could you have forgotten about the stories?” she whispered after a long moment’s pause. “I know I didn’t push enough to tell you. To make you listen to me when I tried to explain but how could you have forgotten how important the stories were to me? Did you think I just gave them up?”
I took a deep breath in and let it out in a stuttering whoosh. “Of course, I remembered the stories.”
Lucy was shaking her head, her hands balled into fists at her sides and I frowned down at them.
“Baby, your hands,” I said softly and her eyes flashed but she did relax them slightly – the white knuckles regaining their colour.
“Youdidn’tremember. Not until you found out about LP Mayweather,” she said. “If you’d remembered, you would have known that I’d never give them up.”
