After You
Page 28
‘Okay. So when can I come and stay?’
To my right, I heard the clatter of Della almost dropping a cup. She stooped slightly, righting it on the tray.
‘Stay?’ Mr Traynor bent forward, as if he weren’t sure he’d heard her correctly.
‘Well. You’re my grandfather. I thought maybe I could come and stay for the rest of the summer? Get to know you. We’ve got so much to catch up on, haven’t we?’ Her face was alight with anticipation.
Mr Traynor looked towards Della, whose expression halted whatever he might have been about to say.
‘It would be lovely to have you at some point,’ Della said, holding the tray in front of her, ‘but we have other things going on just now.’
‘It’s Della’s first child, you see. I think she’d like –’
‘I just need a little time by myself with Steven. And the baby.’
‘I could help. I’m really good with babies,’ Lily said. ‘I used to look after my brothers all the time when they were babies. And they were awful. Really horrible babies. They screamed, like, all the time.’
Mr Traynor looked at Della. ‘I’m sure you’ll be simply brilliant, Lily darling,’ he said. ‘It’s just that right now is not a very good time.’
‘But you’ve got loads of room. I can just stay in one of the guest rooms. You won’t even know I’m here. I’ll be really helpful with nappies and stuff and I could babysit so you could still go out. I could just …’ Lily trailed off. She glanced from one to the other, waiting.
‘Lily …’ I said, hovering uncomfortably near the door.
‘You don’t want me here.’
Mr Traynor stepped forward, made as if to put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Lily darling. That’s not –’
She ducked away. ‘You like the idea of having a granddaughter, but you don’t actually want me in your life. You just – you just want a visitor.’
‘It’s the timing, Lily,’ said Della, calmly. ‘It’s just – well, I waited a long time for Steven – your grandfather – and this time with our baby is very precious to us.’
‘And I’m not.’
‘That’s not it at all.’ Mr Traynor moved towards her again.
She batted him off. ‘Oh, God, you’re all the same. You and your perfect little families, all closed off. Nobody has any room for me.’
‘Oh, come on. Let’s not be dramatic about –’ Della began.
‘Get lost,’ Lily spat. And as Della shrank back, and Mr Traynor’s eyes widened in shock, she ran, and I left them in the silent drawing room to race after her.
CHAPTER TEN
I emailed Nathan. The answer came back:
Lou, have you started on strong meds? WTAF?
I sent him a second email, filling in a little more detail, and his normal equanimity seemed to return.
Well, the old dog. Still had some surprises for us, eh?
I didn’t hear from Lily for two days. Half of me was concerned, the other a tiny bit relieved just to have a brief interlude of calm. I wondered if, once she was free of any fairytale ideas about Will’s family, she might be more inclined to build bridges with her own. Then I wondered whether Mr Traynor would call her directly to smooth things over. And I wondered where Lily was, and whether her absence involved the young man who had stood and watched her in my doorway. There had been something about him – about Lily’s evasiveness when I asked about him – that had stayed with me.
I had thought a lot about Sam, regretting my rapid exit. With hindsight, it had all seemed a bit overemotional and weird, running away from him like that. I must have seemed the exact person I kept protesting I wasn’t. I resolved that the next time I saw him outside the Moving On Circle I would react very calmly, perhaps say hello with an enigmatic, non-depressed-person smile.
Work sagged and dragged. A new girl had started: Vera, a stern Lithuanian, who completed all the bar’s tasks wearing the kind of peculiar half-smile of someone contemplating the fact that they had planted a dirty bomb nearby. She called all men ‘filthy, filthy beasts’ when out of earshot of Richard.
He had begun giving morning ‘motivational’ chats, after which we all had to pump the air and jump and shout, ‘YEAH!’ which always dislodged my curly wig, at which he would frown, as if it was somehow a failure indicative of my personality, not an inbuilt hazard of wearing a nylon hairpiece that didn’t actually stick to my head. Vera’s wig stayed immobile on hers. Perhaps it was too afraid to fall off.
One night when I got home I did an internet search on teenagers’ problems, trying to work out whether I could help to repair the damage of the weekend. But it had quite a lot on hormonal breakouts and nothing on what to do when you had introduced a sixteen-year-old you had just met to her dead quadriplegic father’s surviving family. At half past ten I gave up, gazed around at the bedroom in which half my clothes were still stored in boxes, promised myself that this would be the week I did something about it, and then, having reassured myself that I totally would, fell asleep.
I was woken at half past two in the morning by the sound of someone trying to force my front door. I stumbled out of bed, grabbed a mop, then put my eye to the spy-hole, my heart thumping. ‘I’m calling the police!’ I yelled. ‘What do you want?’
‘It’s Lily. Duh.’ She fell through the door as I opened it, half laughing, reeking of cigarettes, her mascara smeared around her eyes.
I wrapped my dressing-gown around myself, and locked the door behind her. ‘Jesus, Lily. It’s the middle of the night.’
‘Do you want to go dancing? I thought we could go dancing. I love dancing. Actually, that’s not entirely true. I do like dancing but that’s not why I’m here. Mum wouldn’t let me in. They’ve changed the locks. Can you believe it?’
I was tempted to answer that, with my alarm clock set for six a.m., funnily enough, I could.
Lily bumped heavily against the wall. ‘She wouldn’t even open the stupid door. Just shouted through the letterbox at me. Like I was some kind of … vagrant. So … I thought I’d stay here. Or we could go dancing …’ She swayed past me and headed for the music system, where she turned up the sound to a deafening level. I raced towards it to turn it down, but she grabbed my hand. ‘Let’s dance, Louisa! You need to bust some moves! You’re so sad all the time! Cut loose! C’mon!’
I wrenched my hand away, and rushed to the volume button, just in time for the first thumps of outrage to land from downstairs. When I turned, Lily had disappeared into the spare room, where she teetered and finally collapsed, face down, on the camp bed.
‘Oh. My. God. This bed is soooooo rubbish.’
‘Lily? You can’t just come in here and – Oh, for God’s sake.’
‘Just for a minute,’ came the muffled answer. ‘Literally a stopover. And then I’m going dancing. We’re going dancing.’
‘Lily. I have work tomorrow morning.’
‘I love you, Louisa. Did I tell you that? I really do love you. You’re the only one who …’
‘You can’t just collapse here like –’
To my right, I heard the clatter of Della almost dropping a cup. She stooped slightly, righting it on the tray.
‘Stay?’ Mr Traynor bent forward, as if he weren’t sure he’d heard her correctly.
‘Well. You’re my grandfather. I thought maybe I could come and stay for the rest of the summer? Get to know you. We’ve got so much to catch up on, haven’t we?’ Her face was alight with anticipation.
Mr Traynor looked towards Della, whose expression halted whatever he might have been about to say.
‘It would be lovely to have you at some point,’ Della said, holding the tray in front of her, ‘but we have other things going on just now.’
‘It’s Della’s first child, you see. I think she’d like –’
‘I just need a little time by myself with Steven. And the baby.’
‘I could help. I’m really good with babies,’ Lily said. ‘I used to look after my brothers all the time when they were babies. And they were awful. Really horrible babies. They screamed, like, all the time.’
Mr Traynor looked at Della. ‘I’m sure you’ll be simply brilliant, Lily darling,’ he said. ‘It’s just that right now is not a very good time.’
‘But you’ve got loads of room. I can just stay in one of the guest rooms. You won’t even know I’m here. I’ll be really helpful with nappies and stuff and I could babysit so you could still go out. I could just …’ Lily trailed off. She glanced from one to the other, waiting.
‘Lily …’ I said, hovering uncomfortably near the door.
‘You don’t want me here.’
Mr Traynor stepped forward, made as if to put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Lily darling. That’s not –’
She ducked away. ‘You like the idea of having a granddaughter, but you don’t actually want me in your life. You just – you just want a visitor.’
‘It’s the timing, Lily,’ said Della, calmly. ‘It’s just – well, I waited a long time for Steven – your grandfather – and this time with our baby is very precious to us.’
‘And I’m not.’
‘That’s not it at all.’ Mr Traynor moved towards her again.
She batted him off. ‘Oh, God, you’re all the same. You and your perfect little families, all closed off. Nobody has any room for me.’
‘Oh, come on. Let’s not be dramatic about –’ Della began.
‘Get lost,’ Lily spat. And as Della shrank back, and Mr Traynor’s eyes widened in shock, she ran, and I left them in the silent drawing room to race after her.
CHAPTER TEN
I emailed Nathan. The answer came back:
Lou, have you started on strong meds? WTAF?
I sent him a second email, filling in a little more detail, and his normal equanimity seemed to return.
Well, the old dog. Still had some surprises for us, eh?
I didn’t hear from Lily for two days. Half of me was concerned, the other a tiny bit relieved just to have a brief interlude of calm. I wondered if, once she was free of any fairytale ideas about Will’s family, she might be more inclined to build bridges with her own. Then I wondered whether Mr Traynor would call her directly to smooth things over. And I wondered where Lily was, and whether her absence involved the young man who had stood and watched her in my doorway. There had been something about him – about Lily’s evasiveness when I asked about him – that had stayed with me.
I had thought a lot about Sam, regretting my rapid exit. With hindsight, it had all seemed a bit overemotional and weird, running away from him like that. I must have seemed the exact person I kept protesting I wasn’t. I resolved that the next time I saw him outside the Moving On Circle I would react very calmly, perhaps say hello with an enigmatic, non-depressed-person smile.
Work sagged and dragged. A new girl had started: Vera, a stern Lithuanian, who completed all the bar’s tasks wearing the kind of peculiar half-smile of someone contemplating the fact that they had planted a dirty bomb nearby. She called all men ‘filthy, filthy beasts’ when out of earshot of Richard.
He had begun giving morning ‘motivational’ chats, after which we all had to pump the air and jump and shout, ‘YEAH!’ which always dislodged my curly wig, at which he would frown, as if it was somehow a failure indicative of my personality, not an inbuilt hazard of wearing a nylon hairpiece that didn’t actually stick to my head. Vera’s wig stayed immobile on hers. Perhaps it was too afraid to fall off.
One night when I got home I did an internet search on teenagers’ problems, trying to work out whether I could help to repair the damage of the weekend. But it had quite a lot on hormonal breakouts and nothing on what to do when you had introduced a sixteen-year-old you had just met to her dead quadriplegic father’s surviving family. At half past ten I gave up, gazed around at the bedroom in which half my clothes were still stored in boxes, promised myself that this would be the week I did something about it, and then, having reassured myself that I totally would, fell asleep.
I was woken at half past two in the morning by the sound of someone trying to force my front door. I stumbled out of bed, grabbed a mop, then put my eye to the spy-hole, my heart thumping. ‘I’m calling the police!’ I yelled. ‘What do you want?’
‘It’s Lily. Duh.’ She fell through the door as I opened it, half laughing, reeking of cigarettes, her mascara smeared around her eyes.
I wrapped my dressing-gown around myself, and locked the door behind her. ‘Jesus, Lily. It’s the middle of the night.’
‘Do you want to go dancing? I thought we could go dancing. I love dancing. Actually, that’s not entirely true. I do like dancing but that’s not why I’m here. Mum wouldn’t let me in. They’ve changed the locks. Can you believe it?’
I was tempted to answer that, with my alarm clock set for six a.m., funnily enough, I could.
Lily bumped heavily against the wall. ‘She wouldn’t even open the stupid door. Just shouted through the letterbox at me. Like I was some kind of … vagrant. So … I thought I’d stay here. Or we could go dancing …’ She swayed past me and headed for the music system, where she turned up the sound to a deafening level. I raced towards it to turn it down, but she grabbed my hand. ‘Let’s dance, Louisa! You need to bust some moves! You’re so sad all the time! Cut loose! C’mon!’
I wrenched my hand away, and rushed to the volume button, just in time for the first thumps of outrage to land from downstairs. When I turned, Lily had disappeared into the spare room, where she teetered and finally collapsed, face down, on the camp bed.
‘Oh. My. God. This bed is soooooo rubbish.’
‘Lily? You can’t just come in here and – Oh, for God’s sake.’
‘Just for a minute,’ came the muffled answer. ‘Literally a stopover. And then I’m going dancing. We’re going dancing.’
‘Lily. I have work tomorrow morning.’
‘I love you, Louisa. Did I tell you that? I really do love you. You’re the only one who …’
‘You can’t just collapse here like –’
