Page 52 of Gideon
As such, I’d like you to remember that drinking to excess isn’t good for you. Neither are drugs, random twinks, and keeping the same hours as Keith Richards.
Now, going to bed early, eating regular meals, and leading a monastic lifestyle – they’re allfantasticfor your health.
That’s my spiel as your nurse done. Now for my tips as your new friend. Please make time for your brother and let him in. I promise you won’t be disappointed. I know this from just a few days of watching the two of you together. He wants to get to know you and, speaking as someone who’s done that over the last few weeks, I have to say that it’s worth doing.
Go for plenty of walks, not just for your health, but because it gives you space to think. You really need to do this because it seems to me that up until now you’ve just bobbed along on life’s stream like an oblivious and very grumpy cork. Take control of your life, and if it means that you won’t ever let Frankie talk to you again the way he did on the ship, then your friend will be very happy.
I’d like to see you take up some hobbies too that don’t end up with you being stoned, drunk, or passed out. I know those activities filled most of your timetable before, but trust me, there is life outside a hotel room.
Well, that was your introduction to life as my friend. I hope it wasn’t too bossy. Who am I kidding? It was totally bossy and totally needed.
I fall back against my pillow with a smile on my face. Right at this moment it’s like he’s with me, his Welsh lilt sounding warm and sunshiny in the room as he bosses me around with a smile. I miss him fiercely already. It just feels wrong to not have him here. I feel awkward around my brother and friends, and it strikes me that I’ve never felt that with Eli. When I’m with him I feel whole, as stupid as that sounds. I’m me, and I’m not constantly looking for the door to escape.
I shake my head. Time to shower and dress. However, the smile lasts even through my shower in the tiny bathroom where you’d be hard-pressed to wash a Borrower without inadvertently squashing them. When I’m finally dressed in grey shorts and a blue T-shirt, I bound downstairs, feeling my stomach rumble. I’m starving.
The knock on the front door startles me but I pad over and open it, finding myself staring at a dark-haired man with a sharp-looking face and very blue eyes who has a small dark-haired toddler on his hip. She has a mass of silky curls held back by a pink bow.
“Can I help you?” I say slowly.
“Thanks, mate” he says in a voice heavily tinged with an Irish accent, and to my amazement he hands me the child and saunters past me.
The child and I look at each other appraisingly. I expect her to cry, but instead she gabbles something and bops me in the face with a tiny fist.
“Ouch!” I say and the stranger turns.
“Cora, we don’t do that to strangers, lovey.” He looks at me appraisingly. “Unless they’re Gideon Ramsay come to cause trouble, my love.” He runs his fingers over the wooden mantle and stares at me unblinkingly.
I feel my lips tugging into a smile, and I settle the little girl onto my hip comfortably and with the ease of practice, relishing the surprise he can’t quite hide. I’m well used to small children. I was ten when Milo was born, and I’ve worked with many children in my career. “You must be Oz,” I say, walking through to the kitchen and hearing his footsteps following me. “I didn’t meet you on my last visit here because you were visiting your mum. I’ve heard a lot about you, though.” I pause. “Although the words never quite managed to conjure up what a smart mouth you’ve got.”
He snorts almost reluctantly. “All the better to lecture you with, Mr Ramsay. I think when you descended on us before, you stayed at Niall’s house and caused a wee bit of trouble.”
His voice is light but there’s an undercurrent of warning there. I try hard to be outraged, but I can’t summon up even a tiny bit. This man is my brother’s best friend, and he’s looking out for him. How could I be annoyed?
I switch the kettle on and turn back to him, shifting his daughter on my hip. This must be Cora, Silas’s daughter. I feel a sudden sense of shame that I’ve never seen her before. This is my oldest friend’s child, and I wouldn’t know her if I passed her on the stairs. I never meant to stay away despite the invitations that Silas sent me. It just seemed like I was an outsider here the same way I was at home, where everyone seemed to belong to each other and no one to me. That feeling gets very old, very quickly.
I look at the little girl and she gives me a toothy smile, reaching for my face. I grab her fingers and kiss them soundly, making a smacking sound that makes her chuckle delightedly. I look up and Oz is watching me closely, surprise and something else running across that clever mobile face.
“Let’s get this over with,” I say wryly, handing him his daughter as the kettle boils. “I love to start my day with a lecture. Either that or a big old punch in the face.” He laughs, and I look at him. “I’m not here to make trouble. I know you’re here to warn me.”
He sits down at the table, letting his daughter down to the floor and watching as she toddles around the room, looking at the place appraisingly as if sizing it up for trouble. “Thatiswhy I came,” he says slowly. “You caused a lot of trouble last time you were here.”
“And Milo is your best friend, and you want the best for him and Niall, and you don’t need me butting in.”
“You know, a lecture and a warning is much more satisfactory if the recipient doesn’t take over warning himself.”
I laugh suddenly, a harsh bark, and for a second we look at each other before he grins, his face lighting up.
“You don’t need to warn me,” I say steadily. “I love my brother, and I’m ashamed of the way I behaved before.”
“Would you do it again if you had a do-over?”
“Probably,” I say honestly. “Which might make me a bad person, but at least I’m a predictable one.”
“I don’t think you’re predictable at all,” he says, his eyes bright in the sunshine. “But I like honest people.”
“How about grumpy ones, because I can say with certainty that no matter how many epiphanies I have in life, that facet of my personality will never change.”
He laughs suddenly. “Fuck, that’s good to hear. There are far too many Suzy Sunshines on this estate. I like a bit of vinegar with my chips.”
