Page 24 of The New House

Harper laughs ruefully. ‘I’m not gonna lie, it took a couple of days.’

‘Wait till you hit forty.’

‘You were really kind to me the other night,’ she says, suddenly serious. ‘I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.’

‘Not at all. You didn’t. I had a great time. And at least you didn’t puke on my shoes.’

She produces a glossy bag with string handles and pale blue tissue paper peeping out of the top. ‘I just got you a little something to say thank you for looking after me,’ she says, pushing it across the counter. ‘It’s not much—’

‘You didn’t need to do that!’

‘I wanted to.’

I move the plate of Hobnobs aside and take out the wad of tissue paper. Nestled in the bag is what is clearly a very expensive linen shirt.

‘I saw this, and I thought, it’s the exact same shade of blue as Tom’s eyes,’ Harper smiles. ‘I had to get it.’

Millie doesn’t do personal gifts, not like this. She never forgets a birthday – she’s far too efficient – and she knows what I like, but her presents are practical, something she knows I want or need. An all-singing, all-dancing power tool. Tennis lessons. Tickets to see ZZ Top. But romance isn’t her thing. We’ve never celebrated our anniversary or Valentine’s Day, though she lets the kids make a fuss of her on Mother’s Day. But that’s more for them than her.

Not that Harper’s gesture is romantic, of course.

‘That’s incredibly kind,’ I say, touched. ‘But I can’t accept this.’

‘Well, it’s too late to take it back,’ she says.

‘I’m sure your husband—’

‘I wantyouto wear it.’

‘OK. I don’t know what Millie’s going to say,’ I laugh, putting it back in the bag. I’m only half-joking. ‘But thank you. It’s lovely.’

I know what’s going on here. I’m not an idiot, and I don’t think I’m flattering myself by picking up on a little subtext. If I wanted to try my luck, I don’t think I’d be slapped down.

Except she’s nearly fifteen years younger than me, and I’m hardly a sex symbol: moreGérard Depardieu than Timothée Chalamet. Even if I didn’t love my wife, I’m notthatmuch of an old fool. Whatever daddy issues Harper has going on, a fling with me isn’t going to solve her problems.

‘You were really nice to me at the gala,’ she says earnestly. ‘You didn’t have to be. Everyone else looked down their noses, but you treated me like I was just as good as them. No, they did,’ she adds, as I start to protest. ‘It’s OK, it doesn’t bother me. I’m not doing this for me. I’m doing it for my boys. I want them to have a better start than I did, you know?’

‘I do know,’ I say.

‘Kyle thinks we shouldn’tget above ourselves,’ Harper says, pulling a face as she draws quotes in the air around the words. ‘He thinks if something was good enough for us, it should be good enough for our kids.’

‘You don’t?’

‘I’ve been hustling my whole life and what I do, it’s not a great career but it’s not nothing,’ she says. ‘I want more for the boys. Good schools.Connections. Maybe they won’t turn out to be very clever, but if they are, I want them to feel like they can be anything they choose. Lawyers and doctors and that.’

‘Is that what you wanted? To be a doctor?’

She picks up her mug of coffee, and wraps both her hands around it. ‘I grew up in a car,’ she says, after a long moment. ‘Well, a few cars, really. Sometimes a van, depending on what Mum’s latest boyfriend was driving. Now and then we’d wind up in a shelter or a B&B, and I’d go to school for a few weeks. Once, I even made it through an entire term.’ She puts the mug back down on the counter without drinking from it. ‘I didn’t have friends, because we were never in one place long enough. Mum killed herself when I was fifteen, and my dad was an addict who OD’d before I was even born. I’m not telling you because I want you to feel sorry for me,’ she adds quickly. ‘But maybe if things had been different, I could’ve got some exams.Icould’ve been different.’

I guess that explains the daddy issues. She and Millie have more in common than I imagined: parental addiction, neglect, suicide – Millie’s mother took the better part of two decades to starve herself to death after her dad died, but her story ended in the same place as Harper’s mother’s.

I know what it takes to make it through the kind of childhood she had, because I know what Millie had to do to make it through hers.

Harper’s learned how to make hard choices. She’s aware the world’s a cold, unforgiving place, and that life is nasty, brutish and short. The weakest in the herd are picked off: only the fittest survive.

Kill or be killed.

‘Look around you,’ I say gently. ‘In a few weeks, this house will be yours.Youdid this. You’ve come a long way from the back seat of a car.’

---