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‘How are your shins now, James?’ I trembled, a disconcerting calm settled into my shoulders. Six months. Not a momentary mistake at all. Another rap on the door. ‘Did the bike I spent a month’s wages on – while you were at it with Glitter Knickers – did it help ease the pain in your shins?’
Another phone started ringing on the shop floor. No one answered it this time.
‘What are you talking about?’ James asked as the boardroom door handle began to rattle.
‘Your shins, James? How are they shaping up?’
James looked perplexed, so I saved him the hassle of asking again. I launched the toe of my red Mary Jane hard and sure into James’s leg. James yelped, grabbing at his assaulted limb. It hurt me, but it hurt him more.
‘AMY! What the f—’
‘I’m sorry, James!’ I retorted mirthfully. ‘I didn’t mean it! That deliberate, hurtful, action … I DIDN’T MEAN IT!’
‘Er, sorry to interrupt …’ The uncertainty in Phil’s voice rendered it almost unrecognisable.
‘What?’ I growled, the threat of tears driving on my anger. How could he? How could he sit through all of those meetings, the panel hearing, pretending that he wanted a family with me when all the time…?
Phil shifted awkwardly, taking in the spectacle of James sat on the photographs, purple-cheeked and clasping at his leg.
I quickly appraised the dark stranger standing next to Phil. Jeans and T-shirts didn’t usually feature this far from Tom’s end of the office. Baseball caps didn’t feature anywhere at Cyan. ‘Can’t you take delivery of those, Phil?’ I said breathily, nodding at the cardboard tube poking from the stranger’s backpack. Drawings were usually emailed in, but occasionally someone paid to have them couriered instead. ‘James and I are just … having a meeting.’
The delivery guy considered James, who was trying unsuccessfully not to grimace where he sat. Delivery Guy looked away, the beginnings of a smile eking across his boyish face. ‘I think she likes you, mate,’ he said, turning strangely pale hazel eyes this way. They were startling next to his dark hair and lightly tanned complexion.
Phil looked at James and began fighting a grin of her own. Delivery Guy pulled his cap from his head, revealing a choppy brunette crop that made his eyes all the more staggering. He instantly looked older. James winced and got to his feet. ‘Shin splints,’ he volunteered to the other man.
Delivery Guy pouted his acknowledgement. ‘Nasty old business, shin splints, my friend. Painful stuff.’ He was taller than James. Broader, too – his shoulders wide beneath the black tee, framed by the straps of his backpack. James couldn’t make him out either. He looked at me only briefly before hobbling out between the two adults trying to remain straight-faced in the doorway.
Phil moved further into the boardroom. ‘Um, Amy?’
I began absently tidying the photos on the table. ‘Yep?’
Six months. It was a lot of sex-time. A lot of time for hand-holding and secret-sharing.
‘Your next meeting …’ Phil said.
I looked up at her. ‘Hmm? What about it?’ Phil was smiling awkwardly, trying to convey something in the set of her lips. I frowned. ‘My next meeting what? Are these for me?’ I said, holding out my hand out for the tube of drawings.
Phil gave up. ‘Amy Alwood, Rohan Bywater. Mr Bywater is your next meeting. Shall I get Hannah to bring you some fresh coffees?’
I felt the colour drain from my face. Phil shrugged, pairing it with an I tried rise of her eyebrows. Mr Bywater sunk hands into his jean pockets and cocked his head, a dazzling smile reaching over his face as I squirmed on the spot. The drawings I’d practically snatched from his hands felt red-hot in mine now.
‘Er, Mr Bywater … sorry, come in … take a seat,’ I stuttered.
‘Should I grab some shin pads first?’ he asked, jabbing a thumb at the open doorway. An angry bruise leached purplish-red across his right elbow. I felt my cheeks flush a similar colour. Phil slipped back out of the boardroom leaving me to fend for myself.
‘About that, Mr Bywater.’ He was smiling. Amused lips, putting me off my already pathetic attempt to redeem myself.
‘Call me Rohan.’
‘What you just saw, regrettably, was er … not the norm, Mr Bywater, I can assure you …’ A white peep of teeth slowed me again.
‘Call me Rohan.’
‘Er …’ I nodded to expedite myself back to my point. ‘It’s no excuse … and I won’t bore you with the finer details, but …’
Rohan Bywater moved around the table to look at the stack of photos I’d neatly ordered in front of me. I waited for him to gather them up and take his business elsewhere. Adrian was going to go berserk.
‘Have you had a chance to look through these yet?’
‘Er, just a quick look,’ I bumbled. ‘To try to get a feel for the scale of the project.’
‘If you want to do that, you’ll need to come and see it for yourself.’ His skin was the colour of the many contractors I’d worked with – bronzed from daily exposure to the elements. He looked serious now, I wasn’t sure I didn’t prefer the smiling. I felt the back of my earring give under my fingers.
‘So, how does this all work?’ he asked, leaning back against the table’s edge.
My brain found a foothold. ‘Well, we can arrange a site meeting, take a look at the spaces involved. You already have plans and ellies drawn up—’
‘Ellies?’
‘Sorry, elevations. We’ll measure up and check them, talk through your requirements, put a fee proposal together for you.’ He was listening intently. ‘If you’re happy with the quote, we’ll get a contract of works drawn up for you to sign and then we can get down to the bones of your project.’
‘Get down to the bones of it?’
He folded his arms in front of his chest. It was an impressive bruise he had.
‘Starting with a meeting so that we can formulate an in-depth design brief together.’
‘Together? As in …?’
‘As in, yourself and a representative of Cyan’s interiors team.’
‘Uhuh,’ he said, lolling his head again. ‘And do all the representatives of Cyan’s interiors team wear red heels? I’m just asking because, hey, I like a challenge, but I’ve seen first-hand how you get down to the bones of things around here … as in directly through your friend’s trouser leg.’ He wore an expression of nonchalance now. He found my discomfort amusing. I found his amusement … annoying.
A knock at the door and Hannah provided a welcome distraction. ‘Sorry to interrupt. Can I get anyone any coffees? Teas?’
‘Er …’ I turned back to face Rohan Bywater.
‘No thanks. I have to get going. I’ll call the office to arrange a site visit then, Miss Alwood?’ He pushed himself off the table and stood before me. ‘I’ll leave these with you?’ He nodded at the papers he’d brought.
‘Um, yes. Thank you, Mr Bywater.’ I offered my hand to conclude our unorthodox meeting.
‘Call me Rohan.’ He reached for my hand, but instead of shaking it he turned it over in his, carefully placing my silver stud on my palm. I hadn’t even seen him pick it up.
‘It’s been nice meeting you, Miss Alwood,’ he said firmly. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
I felt my naked earlobe as I watched him follow Hannah out into the office to where James was talking to the marketing team. Rohan Bywater playfully slapped James on the back, pointing to the leg I’d kicked. He laughed, his hand on James’s shoulder. James began to laugh too, all boys together. Then Bywater pulled his trouser leg up. It was hard to tell from here, it could’ve been a birthmark or a graze perhaps, but I reckoned it to be another bruise that engulfed Bywater’s knee. Whatever it was, it was large and painful-looking. James stopped laughing, outdone where I hadn’t kicked him hard enough for him to compete with the bigger boy’s injuries. James looked defeated.
Rohan Bywater put his cap back on and with a parting glance almost caught me watching. He gave James a last friendly slap, then disappeared through the studio doors.
Common assault wasn’t what I’d been aiming for, but I’d have taken a sore leg over the sickening weight of revelation. Six months. Had they been sleeping together all that time? Or could I cling pathetically to the delusion that they might’ve been building up to it with a chaste courtship? Yeah, right.
I leant against the door frame, watching James across the office, already flexing his charisma, holding court once more. I must have been mad to think that if I could just stick it here, act normal, things might have a better chance of getting back that way. It hurt just to look at him. The way I’d felt when he’d walked into the boardroom made me wonder whether or not I should just get my things now. But I’d never loved anyone except James. Anna would be contacting us at some point, and I couldn’t do any of it without him. I wasn’t even sure that I knew who I was without him.
Phil’s face bobbed round the boardroom doorway, startling me with an expectant stare.
‘What?’ I grimaced.
‘Oh, I just wanted to say, well done on the cool, Ame. You nailed it. You were cooler than cool. In fact, I think you might have just knocked The Fonz off the top spot.’
CHAPTER 6 (#ulink_54f2b81d-1eae-5d94-b1fc-3db1fb0076a8)
APRIL HAD HAD a change of heart. It had decided it didn’t want to be a rubbishy month of late frosts and wet winds any more, it wanted to be daffodils and crocuses and bugs venturing onto the breeze for the first time since last year. I didn’t expect the sun would hold, but it was nice to see the lush green of young wheat fields rolling past the window.
I sat in the passenger seat, looking for signs pointing to Briddleton Mill while Hannah hummed along to the tune crackling from the stereo. It was pretty here. Just ten minutes’ drive south-west of Earleswicke, I’d enjoyed bike rides with my dad on the public footpaths near here before Jackson’s Park had become our agreed rendezvous point on the weekends Petra could spare him.
‘Is that it?’ Hannah called, slamming her brakes on. I lurched forward, the plush cheeseburger and fries toy dangling from Hannah’s rear-view mirror flapped into the side of my head. I batted them aside and read the sign.
‘Yeah, that’s it. Where the lane forks, we need to take it all the way round to the left, and the mill should be there.’ Trusting Hannah had enough information, I rooted around my bag for my compact. Sleeplessness took its toll on the over twenty-fives and I was starting to look like a panda. I swept a little more powder beneath my eyelids. Warpaint in place, I was ready to pretend to the world that I hadn’t stayed up into the early hours this morning, reading and rereading the messages James had sent me before he’d gone to bed. I was also ready to show Rohan Bywater that I really wasn’t a complete psycho.
‘Wow,’ Hannah said bluntly. ‘Welcome to my crib, MTV.’
I clasped shut the compact and slipped it back into my satchel. ‘Pretty beautiful,’ I agreed, taking in the tree-lined millpond stretching like a mini lake across the foreground. The mill itself, rising from the far edge of the black waters, seemed to double in size as Hannah pulled the car closer to the two VW vans parked out front. One was an old battered orange affair, a campervan like those I’d lusted after in my carefree student days; the other a very sleek and shiny truck you could easily imagine the A-Team exploding from.
‘Right then, you ready to measure this place up?’ I asked, cranking open the door.
‘It’s massive!’ Hannah laughed. ‘We’ll be here all night.’ Not if I could help it. I still wasn’t convinced Bywater wasn’t wasting our time but he’d booked the survey anyway, so here we were.
I climbed out of the car and reached for my things. ‘You all set?’ I asked, checking Hannah had hold of the drawings. Hannah nodded, agog over the grand design in front of her.
‘Okay, let’s do it.’ I said, slipping into my jacket, pulling my hair free. Dry weather was preferable for the artificially straightened.
Hannah followed me to the only obvious entrance. Further to the right of the door, the original water wheel was turning steadily – fed, I assumed, by the River Earle somewhere over the far side of the mill. We stood there expectantly for a minute or so before I tried the door knocker again.
‘They did say ten, right?’ Hannah asked, checking her watch.
I knocked again. ‘We’ll give it a minute, then I’ll call the office.’ Who was I kidding? That was the last number I wanted to call. I’d thought the sideways glances were bad enough on Monday afternoon, but the whispering had gone into overdrive after a large bouquet had landed on my desk yesterday. Sadie still hadn’t shown her face.
‘Wait,’ Hannah said, ‘do you hear that?’ I listened for the sounds of somebody approaching the door from the other side. I couldn’t hear anything over the gentle gushing sounds of the water wheel. ‘They’re round the back,’ Hannah said. ‘I can hear them yelling.’ Hannah’s bionic hearing led us from the stone path onto the timber walkway reaching out over the millpond where small clouds of insects hung like mist above the water.
We took the timber gangway wrapping itself around the mill’s water side, leading us over the pond into a gravelled yard the other side of the mill. I could hear it now: men’s voices, laughing from somewhere over the grassy ridge that ran a sweeping line around the yard here.
A crunching on the ground behind us and we both turned to find Rohan Bywater stepping from the mill’s rear double doors stained black to match the cedar cladding above them.
He looked less boyish today, pushing navy sweater sleeves up over olive forearms. ‘Hey. You found it then?’ He was already smiling. Hannah’s cheeks seemed to be getting redder. I cleared my throat, striding confidently towards him until I’d made it within hand-shaking distance. There was an approach that went with being female in this industry, forged by enough years of burly builders attempting to make me blush. Phil had never struggled but I’d had to learn how to show no fear.
‘Hello again, Mr Bywater,’ I said, offering my hand. Hannah ambled up behind me, perplexed by my sudden burst across the yard. ‘This is Hannah, one of our interns. Shall we get started?’
Bywater looked a little perturbed too. I realised I was probably overusing the power-walk.
‘Sure.’ He smiled, taking my hand. His skin was rough against mine, not smooth like James’s. We broke contact then, him reaching to casually muss the back of his hair. ‘Come on in.’
Inside this first room, whatever this room was, it was just as Adrian had described it, well-proportioned and spacious, but with nothing to punctuate the endless wheat tones of newly-plastered surfaces.
‘Blank canvas,’ Bywater said, walking in after us. His voice lost some of its smoothness as it echoed off the bare concrete floor. Other than protruding cables and the occasional socket fascia hanging off a wire, there was nothing in here to suggest anybody called it home.
‘Are all the rooms like this, Mr Bywater? Plastered, wired …?’
He folded his arms and leant back against the door reveal. ‘Pretty much.’
‘Electrics and plumbing all working?’ I asked, taking the papers from Hannah’s arms and opening them out on the dusty floor. Mr Bywater nodded. ‘Do you know if these drawings are accurate? Just the general layout, I mean.’
He moved to look down at the drawings beneath me. ‘They look right. But I’d like this and the next room to be knocked through,’ he said, crouching beside me. I followed his finger over the plans. Nearly all of his knuckles were grazed.
‘The kitchen is next door?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, but I’d like to open it out across the back of the building. I have friends over, they eat a lot. Makes sense to make all this back here bigger.’ I began scribbling notes on the drawing under us. Bywater watched as I wrote. I hated that. It always seemed to render my handwriting illegible for some daft reason.
‘Nice pen.’
As soon as he spoke, I scrawled kitten instead of kitchen.
‘Thanks. And upstairs? Are you planning any structural changes up there?’
‘I’m leaving the second floor as storage, for now. As you can see on the plan,’ I caught a waft of something faintly spiced as he reached across me to the second drawing, ‘there are four bedrooms on the first floor. The previous owners intended to make this bedroom the master, overlooking the river on the north side, but I’d like to take the south bedroom, overlooking the millpond. I know I’m spoilt for choice, but that’s definitely the best view in the house.’
I glanced over the general layout of the south bedroom. ‘Is the existing en suite in there sufficient?’
Bywater straightened up. ‘Actually, I’ve seen something I wanted your opinion on,’ he said, pulling a brochure from his back pocket. He began thumbing through it, finding his page then passing it straight over my head to Hannah. ‘What do you think?’
Hannah, surprised that he’d addressed her, studied the image. He watched her, expectantly waiting for her feedback. I hadn’t worked with very many clients who bothered to include the juniors. Often they simply looked straight through them. ‘Well, you’re on a private road.’ She shrugged. ‘Why not?’ She passed me the brochure. The room in the picture was some sort of alpine chalet, doors flung open revealing the snowy vista outside. In the middle of the scene a Nordic beauty lounged in her bathtub, looking out onto the views.
‘Showers are for office types. I’m more of a bath guy.’ Bywater smiled, burying his hands into his jean pockets. ‘So do you think we could do something like this up there?’ He lifted his chin towards the exposed beams arching like a ribcage above us.
James was definitely a power-shower kind of person, but I knew he’d drool over a bedroom tub like this. When I thought of bathtubs, I thought of rubber ducks and no-more-tears shampoo, but James was all about the lines. ‘I’m sure we could. Are we okay to go take a look?’ I asked, getting to my feet.
‘Sure. Would you like me to show you around? I can’t be in too much danger,’ he said, peered down at my shoes. I ignored him. I didn’t know why he made me so uncomfortable, other than acting like a total idiot in front of him at Cyan two days ago, which technically was my fault, not his.
It could be worse, I supposed. I could be back at the office.
‘That’s okay.’ I smiled passively. ‘We’ll come and find you when we’ve finished measuring up.’ Hannah gave him a warmer smile and followed me towards the door.
‘I’ll be in the back if you need to talk bathtubs,’ he called after us.
We’d soon found our way around the upper floors, each room offering its own astounding views over the countryside – the tumbling river, the still millpond and the woodland encircling much of the property. It was almost impossible to resist fantasising about what your life would be like to live in a place like this. Hannah had already given me the lowdown on what her friends would say if the mill were hers; I’d found myself imagining Anna here. Showing her around the endless lawns, and the playroom I’d put in next to the kitchen. It was a fantasy all right. Right now, I’d be lucky if I could show her a rational couple managing to stand in the same room as each other. And yet this was the only plan I had – pretending everything was fine, bluffing our way through it long enough to complete the adoption. We could work out all the ugly business afterwards. Simple. I just had to find a way to be around James again without wanting to kick him.
I could not lose another child. Not even a child I didn’t know yet.
*
