‘Gorgeous. Sexy. High maintenance. Surprisingly insecure.’
‘What does she have to be insecure about?’ The words left my mouth before I could help myself.
He looked almost amused. ‘You’d be surprised,’ he said. ‘Girls like Lissa trade on their looks for so long they don’t think they have anything else. Actually, I’m being unfair. She’s good with stuff. Things – clothes, interiors. She can make things look beautiful.’
I fought the urge to say anyone could make things look beautiful if they had a wallet as deep as a diamond mine.
‘She could move a few things around in a room, and it would look completely different. I never could work out how she did it.’ He nodded towards the house. ‘She did this annexe, when I first moved in.’
I found myself reviewing the perfectly designed living room. I realized my admiration of it was suddenly slightly less uncomplicated than it had been.
‘How long were you with her?’
‘Eight, nine months.’
‘Not that long.’
‘Long for me.’
‘How did you meet?’
‘Dinner party. A really awful dinner party. You?’
‘Hairdresser’s. I was one. He was my client.’
‘Hah. You were his something extra for the weekend.’
I must have looked blank because he shook his head and said softly, ‘Never mind.’
Inside, we could hear the dull drone of the vacuum cleaner. There were four women in the cleaning company, all wearing matching housecoats. I had wondered what they would find to do for two hours in the little annexe.
‘Do you miss her?’
I could hear them talking amongst themselves. Someone had opened a window, and occasional bursts of laughter filtered out into the thin air.
Will seemed to be watching something in the far-off distance. ‘I used to.’ He turned to me, his voice matter-of-fact. ‘But I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve decided that she and Rupert are a good match.’
I nodded. ‘They’ll have a ridiculous wedding, pop out an ankle biter or two, as you put it, buy a place in the country, and he’ll be shagging his secretary within five years,’ I said.
‘You’re probably right.’
I was warming to my theme now. ‘And she will be a little bit cross with him all the time without really knowing why and bitch about him at really awful dinner parties to the embarrassment of their friends, and he won’t want to leave because he’ll be scared of all the alimony.’
Will turned to look at me.
‘And they will have sex once every six weeks and he will adore his children while doing bugger all to actually help look after them. And she will have perfect hair but get this kind of pinched face –’ I narrowed my mouth ‘– through never saying what she actually means, and start an insane Pilates habit or maybe buy a dog or a horse and develop a crush on her riding instructor. And he will take up jogging when he hits forty, and maybe buy a Harley-Davidson, which she will despise, and every day he will go to work and look at all the young men in his office and listen in bars to who they pulled at the weekend or where they went on a jolly and feel like somehow – and he will never be quite sure how – he got suckered.’
I turned.
Will was staring at me.
‘Sorry,’ I said, after a moment. ‘I don’t really know where that came from.’
‘I’m starting to feel just the tiniest bit sorry for Running Man.’
‘Oh, it’s not him,’ I said. ‘It’s working at a cafe for years. You see and hear everything. Patterns, in people’s behaviour. You’d be amazed at what goes on.’
‘Is that why you’ve never got married?’
I blinked. ‘I suppose so.’
I didn’t want to say I had never actually been asked.
It may sound as though we didn’t do much. But, in truth, the days with Will were subtly different – depending on his mood and, more importantly, how much pain he was in. Some days I would arrive and I could see from the set of his jaw that he didn’t want to talk to me – or to anyone – and, noting this, I would busy myself around the annexe, trying to anticipate his needs so that I didn’t have to bother him by asking.
There were all sorts of things that caused him pain. There were the general aches that came with loss of muscle – there was so much less holding him up, despite Nathan’s best attempts at physio. There was stomach pain from digestive problems, shoulder pain, pain from bladder infections – an inevitability, apparently, despite everyone’s best efforts. He had a stomach ulcer from taking too many painkillers early on in his recovery, when he apparently popped them like Tic Tacs.
Occasionally, there were pressure sores, from being seated in the same position for too long. A couple of times Will was confined to bed, just to let them heal, but he hated being prone. He would lie there listening to the radio, his eyes glittering with barely suppressed rage. Will also got headaches – a side effect, I thought, of his anger and frustration. He had so much mental energy, and nothing to take it out on. It had to build up somewhere.
But the most debilitating was a burning sensation in his hands and feet; relentless, pulsing, it would leave him unable to focus on anything else. I would prepare a bowl of cold water and soak them, or wrap cold flannels around them, hoping to ease his discomfort. A stringy muscle would flicker in his jaw and occasionally he would just seem to disappear, as if the only way he could cope with the sensation was to absent himself from his own body. I had become surprisingly used to the physical requirements of Will’s life. It seemed unfair that despite the fact he could not use them, or feel them, his extremities should cause him so much discomfort.
Despite all this, Will did not complain. This was why it had taken me weeks to notice he suffered at all. Now, I could decipher the strained look around his eyes, the silences, the way he seemed to retreat inside his own skin. He would ask, simply, ‘Could you get the cold water, Louisa?’ or ‘I think it might be time for some painkillers.’ Sometimes he was in so much pain that his face actually leached colour, turning to pale putty. Those were the worst days.
But on other days we tolerated each other quite well. He didn’t seem mortally offended when I talked to him, as he had at the start. Today appeared to be a pain-free day. When Mrs Traynor came out to tell us that the cleaners would be another twenty minutes, I made us both another drink and we took a slow stroll around the garden, Will sticking to the path and me watching my satin pumps darken in the damp grass.
‘Interesting choice of footwear,’ Will said.
They were emerald green. I had found them in a charity shop. Patrick said they made me look like a leprechaun drag queen.
‘You know, you don’t dress like someone from round here. I quite look forward to seeing what insane combination you’re going to turn up in next.’
‘So how should “someone from round here” dress?’
He steered a little to the left to avoid a bit of branch on the path. ‘Fleece. Or, if you’re my mother’s set, something from Jaeger or Whistles.’ He looked at me. ‘So where did you pick up your exotic tastes? Where else have you lived?’
‘I haven’t.’
‘What, you’ve only ever lived here? Where have you worked?’
‘Only here.’ I turned and looked at him, crossing my arms over my chest defensively. ‘So? What’s so weird about that?’
‘It’s such a small town. So limiting. And it’s all about the castle.’ We paused on the path and stared at it, rising up in the distance on its weird, dome-like hill, as perfect as if it had been drawn by a child. ‘I always think this is the kind of place that people come back to. When they’ve got tired of everything else. Or when they don’t have enough imagination to go anywhere else.’
‘Thanks.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with it per se. But … Christ. It’s not exactly dynamic, is it? Not exactly full of ideas or interesting people or opportunities. Round here they think it’s subversive if the tourist shop starts selling place mats with a different view of the miniature railway.’
I couldn’t help but laugh. There had been an article in the local newspaper the previous week on exactly that topic.
‘You’re twenty-six years old, Clark. You should be out there, claiming the world as your own, getting in trouble in bars, showing off your strange wardrobe to dodgy men … ’
‘I’m happy here,’ I said.
‘Well, you shouldn’t be.’
‘You like telling people what they should be doing, don’t you?’
‘Only when I know I’m right,’ he said. ‘Can you adjust my drink? I can’t quite reach it.’
I twisted his straw round so that he could reach it more easily and waited while he took a drink. The faint cold had turned the tips of his ears pink.
He grimaced. ‘Jesus, for a girl who made tea for a living you make a terrible cup.’
‘You’re just used to lesbian tea,’ I said. ‘All that lapsang souchong herbal stuff.’
‘Lesbian tea!’ He almost choked. ‘Well, it’s better than this stair varnish. Christ. You could stand a spoon up in that.’
‘So even my tea is wrong.’ I sat down on the bench in front of him. ‘So how is it okay for you to offer an opinion on every single thing I say or do, and yet nobody else gets to say anything at all?’
‘Go on, then, Louisa Clark. Give me your opinions.’
‘On you?’
He gave a theatrical sigh. ‘Do I have a choice?’
‘You could cut your hair. It makes you look like some kind of vagrant.’
‘Now you sound like my mother.’
‘Well, you do look bloody awful. You could shave, at least. Isn’t all that facial hair starting to get itchy?’
He gave me a sideways look.
‘It is, isn’t it? I knew it. Okay – this afternoon I am going to take it all off.’
‘Oh no.’
‘Yes. You asked me for my opinion. This is my answer. You don’t have to do anything.’
‘What if I say no?’
‘I might do it anyway. If it gets any longer I’ll be picking bits of food out of it. And, frankly, if that happens I’ll have to sue you for undue distress in the workplace.’
He smiled then, as if I had amused him. It might sound a bit sad, but Will’s smiles were so rare that prompting one made me feel a bit light-headed with pride.
‘Here, Clark,’ he said. ‘Do me a favour?’
‘What?’
‘Scratch my ear for me, will you? It’s driving me nuts.’
‘If I do you’ll let me cut your hair? Just a bit of a trim?’
‘Don’t push your luck.’
‘Shush. Don’t make me nervous. I’m not great with scissors.’
I found the razors and some shaving foam in the bathroom cabinet, tucked well back behind the packets of wipes and cotton wool, as if they hadn’t been used in some time. I made him come into the bathroom, filled a sink with warm water, got him to tilt his headrest back a little and then placed a hot flannel over his chin.
‘What is this? You’re going to be a barbershop? What’s the flannel for?’
‘I don’t know,’ I confessed. ‘It’s what they do in the films. It’s like the hot water and towels when someone has a baby.’
I couldn’t see his mouth, but his eyes creased with faint mirth. I wanted to keep them like that. I wanted him to be happy – for his face to lose that haunted, watchful look. I gabbled. I told jokes. I started to hum. Anything to prolong the moment before he looked grim again.