Page 42 of Happily Ever After
‘Right.Youtell her that,’ I said, rubbing my arms. ‘When I’m a very long way away. Like Montreal or something.’
Jay put a hand on my wrist. ‘You’ve thought about going out to join your parents? When you hate everything about their lifestyle?’
I didn’t know how to say it. These last couple of nights I’d run through my potential futures, lying in bed with my head itching from the dust and with desperation building. I couldn’t live in the bus, it was uninhabitable, and I was saying this after having spent a couple of months at Templewood. Jude would welcome me, of course, as would Ollie, but there, among all her carefully curated ornaments, working a cleaning job or in a shop or behind a bar I would always be aware of my Cinderella status. The girl who wouldn’t speak up for herself. The second-best sister.
It had dawned on me that I could just swallow my pride, join my parents and take up my empire. Let them put me in front of the camera to talk about my experiences growing up as the daughter of a pair of late-to-the-party hippies, with no fixed abode. The freedom of the road before us and the lack of any roots behind. I could spin it and make it sound TV-worthy. I’d learned how to keep secrets, after all, at Templewood.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It was just an idea.’
Jay moved away and over to the nearest pile of books. He began picking them up, one at a time, staring at the spines and riffling the pages. This did not help the overloaded dusty atmosphere. ‘I missed you, you know,’ he said suddenly, eyes on a page of particularly dense print.
‘Did you?’ I stared at him. The idea was outlandish, ridiculous. Nobody had, as far as I was aware, ever missed me before.
‘Mmmm. I’d had plans for our lunch.’
‘Oh yes,’ I said cautiously.
‘Roast beef, Yorkshire puddings, the full works. Trifle, I thought, for pudding.’ He was still keeping his eyes on the book. I wondered if he wanted to give all of them this close attention; if so, I could resign and hand my job over to him.
‘That sounds nice.’
‘And then I was going to make you a suggestion.’ One eye looked up at me now, angled so I could see a glint in it. I thought, very briefly, about the warmth of his body when we’d sat in the icehouse.
‘Er,’ I said.
‘I was going to ask you if you’d ever considered training as a gardener.’ The book snapped shut, breaking the mood which had become weighted with something – a look, a touch, an imagining.
‘What?’ I started to laugh now. Jay really was the master of tension-breaking.
‘I just thought, you seem to like the outdoors, you’re not afraid of rain, you’re determined and creative and good with people. And I’m not going to be here forever, charming though Templewood is. Even before Mum’s accident I was thinking about going back and taking over the landscaping business, training up someone to work alongside me. What do you think?’
‘Er,’ I said again, probably wearing the same expression as a prisoner who has been incarcerated forever in a tiny cell suddenly seeing the door swing open and the whole of life going on outside and who has no idea how to function in society.
‘I mean, I know you, and you know about the’ – he pointed at his ears – ‘and the…’ He flashed his wrist. ‘It saves time explaining, and you know that you can’t just shout to me across a site and have me respond. It doesn’t have to be… you and me, I think we’ve got a… but that’s incidental, I don’t mind if you don’t want… it could just be as business partners, but I know I’d like… if you felt the same… I’m going to stop talking now, because you look like a fish.’
I closed my mouth. ‘But… but you hardly know me!’
‘I wouldn’t know anyone else I interviewed to come and work with me either,’ Jay pointed out, reasonably. ‘And I know quite a bit about you. Plus, you’ve seen me with my willy in my hand; that tends to bond people quite fast.’
I laughed now. ‘And you’ve seen me in transparent wet pyjamas.’
‘That did feed into my decision somewhat, I will admit.’
I flopped down onto the sofa, as though all my bones had been removed. The Master, sensing a lap opportunity, left Jay’s legs alone to plonk himself up next to me and prod me with a paw. ‘Can I think about it?’ I asked weakly. ‘It’s come as a bit of a shock.’
‘Of course.’ Jay came and sat next to me. ‘You’d be mad not to.’
‘In this house, “mad” is a sliding scale,’ I said, stroking the cat almost without thinking, as though those blue eyes were hypnotic.
‘It’s not sliding,’ Jay reached across me to assist in the cat-stroking, bumping against my shoulder in a touch that was – promising, was the only way I could describe it. ‘You are at one end, perpendicular and hanging on grimly, and absolutely all the other inhabitants are falling off the far side.’
‘You’re all right,’ I said, robustly.
‘I don’t live here. Jasper’s OK, but he got away. The others – how’s Hugo, on a general basis? He’s always seemed all right.’
‘Yes. Hugo’s, er, hobbies aren’t mad. Just a bit “special interest”. It’s really only Lady Tanith who’s hanging over the abyss. Oh, and Mrs Compton.’
We sat for a moment. The heater, powered by the cylinder of gas which I had been instructed by Lady Tanith ‘needs to last the whole month’, popped and the cat purred. Jay was solid beside me, adjusting one side of his hearing aid, dark and maybe just a little bit tortured, but not so badly that he was beyond redemption. He’d lost a sister. I’d lost mine that day she’d demanded a normal life. His hadn’t wanted to leave him, mine couldn’t get away fast enough.
