“That’s for your benefit,” said my mother, who had walked in bearing two mugs.
“I did wonder.”
“His mother asked me in the supermarket were you back and I said yes, you were. Don’t look at me like that—I could hardly lie to the woman.” She nodded toward the window. “That one’s had her boobs done. They’re the talk of Stortfold. Apparently you could rest two cups of tea on them.” She stood beside me for a moment. “You know they’re engaged?”
I waited for the pang, but it was so mild it could have been wind. “They look . . . well suited.”
My mother stood there for a moment, watching him. “He’s not a bad sort, Lou. You just . . . changed.” She handed me a mug and turned away.
• • •
Finally, on the morning he stopped to do push-ups on the pavement outside the house, I opened the front door and stepped out. I leaned against the porch, my arms folded across my chest, watching until he looked up.
“I wouldn’t stop there for too long. Next door’s dog is a bit partial to that bit of pavement.”
“Lou!” he exclaimed, as if I were the very last person he expected to see standing outside my own house, which he had visited several times a week for the seven years we had been together. “Well. I . . . I’m surprised to see you back. I thought you were off to conquer the big wide world!”
His fiancée, who was doing push-ups beside him, looked up and then back down at the pavement. It might have been my imagination, but her buttocks may have clenched even more tightly. Up, down, she bobbed, furiously. Up and down. I found myself worrying slightly for the welfare of her new bosom.
He bounced to his feet. “This is Caroline, my fiancée.” He kept his eyes on me, perhaps waiting for some kind of reaction. “We’re training for the next Ironman. We’ve done two together already.”
“How . . . romantic,” I said.
“Well, Caroline and I feel it’s good to do things together,” he said.
“So I see,” I replied. “And his and hers turquoise Lycra!”
“Oh. Yeah. Team colors.”
There was a short silence.
I gave a little air punch. “Go, team!”
Caroline sprang to her feet and began to stretch out her thigh muscles, folding her leg behind her like a stork. She nodded toward me, the least civility she could reasonably get away with.
“You’ve lost weight,” he said.
“Yeah, well. A saline-drip diet will do that to you.”
“I heard you had an. . . . accident.” He cocked his head sideways, sympathetically.
“News travels fast.”
“Still. I’m glad you’re okay.” He sniffed, looked down the road. “It must have been hard for you this past year. You know. Doing what you did and all.”
And there it was. I tried to keep control of my breathing. Caroline resolutely refused to look at me, extending her leg in a hamstring stretch.
“Anyway . . . congratulations on the marriage.”
He surveyed his future wife proudly, lost in admiration of her sinewy leg. “Well, it’s like they say—you just know when you know.” He gave me a faux-apologetic smile. And that was what finished me off.
“I’m sure you did. And I guess you’ve got plenty put aside to pay for the wedding? They’re not cheap, are they?”
They both looked up at me.
“What with selling my story to the newspapers. What did they pay you, Pat? A couple of thousand? Treena never could find out the exact figure. Still, Will’s death should be good for a few matching Lycra onesies, right?”
The way Caroline’s face shot toward his told me this was one particular part of Patrick’s history that he had not yet gotten around to sharing.
He stared at me, two pinpricks of color bleeding onto his face. “That was nothing to do with me.”
“Of course not. Nice to see you, anyway, Pat. Good luck with the wedding, Caroline! I’m sure you’ll be the . . . the . . . firmest bride around.” I turned and walked slowly back inside. I closed the door, resting against it, my heart thumping, until I could be sure that they had both finally jogged on.
“Arse,” said Granddad as I limped back into the living room, and then again, glancing dismissively at the window: “Arse.” He chuckled.
I stared at him. And then, completely unexpectedly, I found I had started to laugh, for the first time in as long as I could remember.
• • •
“So did you decide what you’re going to do? When you’re better?”
I was lying on my bed. Treena was calling from college, while she waited for Thomas to come out of his football club. I stared up at the ceiling, on which Thomas had stuck a whole galaxy of Day-Glo stickers that apparently nobody could remove without bringing half the ceiling with them.
“Not really.”
“You’ve got to do something. You can’t sit around here on your backside for all eternity.”
“I won’t sit on my backside. Besides, my hip still hurts. The physio said I’m better off lying down.”
“Mum and Dad are wondering what you’re going to do. There are no jobs in Stortfold.”
“Treen, I just fell off a building. I’m recuperating.”
“And before that you were wafting around traveling. And then you were working in a bar until you knew what you wanted to do. You’ll have to sort out your head at some point. If you’re not going back to school, then you have to figure out what it is you’re actually going to do with your life. I’m just saying. Anyway, if you’re going to stay in Stortfold, you need to rent out that London flat. Mum and Dad can’t support you forever.”
“This from the woman who has been supported by the Bank of Mum and Dad for the past eight years.”
“I’m in full-time education. That’s different. So anyway, I went through your bank statements while you were in hospital and after I paid all your bills, I worked out that you’ve got about fifteen hundred pounds left, including statutory sick pay. By the way, what the hell were all those transatlantic phone calls? They cost you a fortune.”
“None of your business.”
“So I made you a list of estate agents in the area who do rentals. And then I thought maybe we could take another look at college applications. Someone might have dropped out of that course you wanted.”
“Treen. You’re making me tired.”
“No point hanging around. You’ll feel better once you’ve got some focus.”