‘Anywhere,’ she said, finally. ‘I’ll finance it. Any trip you want. I’ll pay for you. For Nathan. Just – just see if you can get him to agree to it.’
I nodded.
‘If there’s anything else you can think of … just to buy us some time. I’ll pay your wages beyond the six months, obviously.’
‘That’s … that’s really not an issue.’
We finished our coffees in silence, both lost in our thoughts. As I watched her, surreptitiously, I noticed that her immaculate hairstyle was now flecked with grey, her eyes as shadowed as my own. I realized I didn’t feel any better for having told her, to have passed my own heightened anxiety on to her – but what choice did I have? The stakes were getting higher with every day that passed. The sound of the clock striking two seemed to spur her out of her stasis.
‘I suppose I should get back to work. Please let me know anything that you … you can come up with, Louisa. It might be better if we have these conversations away from the annexe.’
I stood up. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘you’ll need my new number. I just moved.’ As she reached into her handbag for a pen, I added, ‘I moved in with Patrick … my boyfriend.’
I don’t know why this news surprised her so much. She looked startled, and then she handed me her pen.
‘I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.’
‘I didn’t know I needed to tell you.’
She stood, one hand resting on the table. ‘Will mentioned the other day that you … he thought you might be moving into the annexe. At weekends.’
I scribbled Patrick’s home number.
‘Well, I thought it might be more straightforward for everyone if I moved in with Patrick.’ I handed her the slip of paper. ‘But I’m not far away. Just by the industrial estate. It won’t affect my hours. Or my punctuality.’
We stood there. Mrs Traynor seemed agitated, her hand running through her hair, reaching down for the chain around her neck. Finally – as if she could not help herself – she blurted out, ‘Would it really have hurt you to have waited? Just a few weeks?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Will … I think Will is very fond of you.’ She bit her lip. ‘I can’t see … I can’t see how this really helps.’
‘Hold on. Are you telling me I shouldn’t have moved in with my boyfriend?’
‘I’m just saying that the timing is not ideal. Will is in a very vulnerable state. We’re all doing our best to keep him optimistic … and you –’
‘I what?’ I could see the waitress watching us, her notepad stilled in her hand. ‘I what? Dared to have a life away from work?’
She lowered her voice. ‘I am doing everything I can, Louisa, to stop this … thing. You know the task we’re facing. And I’m just saying that I wish – given the fact he is very fond of you – that you had waited a while longer before rubbing your … your happiness in his face.’
I could hardly believe what I was hearing. I felt the colour rise to my face, and took a deep breath before I spoke again.
‘How dare you suggest I would do anything to hurt Will’s feelings. I have done everything,’ I hissed. ‘I have done everything I can think of. I’ve come up with ideas, got him out, talked to him, read to him, looked after him.’ My last words exploded out of my chest. ‘I’ve cleaned up after him. I’ve changed his bloody catheter. I’ve made him laugh. I’ve done more than your bloody family have done.’
Mrs Traynor stood very still. She drew herself up to her full height, tucked her handbag under her arm. ‘I think this conversation has probably ended, Miss Clark.’
‘Yes. Yes, Mrs Traynor. I think it probably has.’
She turned, and walked swiftly out of the cafe.
When the door slammed shut, I realized I too was shaking.
That conversation with Mrs Traynor kept me jangling for the next couple of days. I kept hearing her words, the idea that I was rubbing my happiness in his face. I didn’t think Will could be affected by anything that I did. When he had seemed disapproving about my decision to move in with Patrick, I had thought it was about him not liking Patrick rather than any feelings he had for me. More importantly, I didn’t think I had looked particularly happy.
At home, I couldn’t shake this feeling of anxiety. It was like a low-level current running through me, and it fed into everything I did. I asked Patrick, ‘Would we have done this if my sister hadn’t needed my room at home?’
He had looked at me as if I were daft. He leant over and pulled me to him, kissing the top of my head. Then he glanced down. ‘Do you have to wear these pyjamas? I hate you in pyjamas.’
‘They’re comfortable.’
‘They look like something my mum would wear.’
‘I’m not going to wear a basque and suspenders every night just to keep you happy. And you’re not answering my question.’
‘I don’t know. Probably. Yes.’
‘But we weren’t talking about it, were we?’
‘Lou, most people move in with each other because it’s sensible. You can love someone and still see the financial and practical advantages.’
‘I just … don’t want you to think I made this happen. I don’t want to feel like I made this happen.’
He sighed, and rolled on to his back. ‘Why do women always have to go over and over a situation until it becomes a problem? I love you, you love me, we’ve been together nearly seven years and there was no room at your parents’ house any more. It’s actually pretty simple.’
But it didn’t feel simple.
It felt like I was living a life I hadn’t had a chance to anticipate.
That Friday it rained all day – warm, heavy sheets of it, like we were in the tropics, making the guttering gurgle and bowing the stems of the flowering shrubs as if in supplication. Will stared out of the windows like a dog denied a walk. Nathan came and went, a plastic bag lifted above his head. Will watched a documentary about penguins, and afterwards, while he logged on to his computer, I busied myself, so that we didn’t have to talk to each other. I felt our discomfort with each other keenly, and being in the same room as him all the time made it that much worse.
I had finally begun to understand the consolations of cleaning. I mopped, cleaned windows and changed duvets. I was a constant whirl of activity. No dust mote escaped my eye, no tea ring my forensic attentions. I was dislodging the limescale on the bathroom taps using kitchen roll soaked in vinegar (my mother’s tip) when I heard Will’s chair behind me.
‘What are you doing?’
I was bent low over the bath. I didn’t turn round. ‘I’m descaling your taps.’
I could feel him watching me.
‘Say that again,’ he said, after a beat.
‘What?’
‘Say that again.’
I straightened up. ‘Why, are you having problems with your hearing? I’m descaling your taps.’
‘No, I just want you to listen to what you’re saying. There is no reason to descale my taps, Clark. My mother won’t notice it, I won’t care, and it’s making the bathroom stink like a fish and chip shop. Besides, I’d like to go out.’
I wiped a lock of hair from my face. It was true. There was a definite waft of large haddock in the atmosphere.
‘Come on. It’s finally stopped raining. I just spoke to my dad. He said he’ll give us the keys to the castle after five o’clock, once all the tourists are out.’
I didn’t feel great about the idea of us having to make polite conversation during a walk around the grounds. But the thought of being out of the annexe was appealing.
‘Okay. Give me five minutes. I need to try and get the smell of vinegar off my hands.’
The difference between growing up like me and growing up like Will was that he wore his sense of entitlement lightly. I think if you grow up as he had done, with wealthy parents, in a nice house, if you go to good schools and nice restaurants as a matter of course, you probably just have this sense that good things will fall into place, that your position in the world is naturally an elevated one.
Will had escaped into the empty grounds of the castle his whole childhood, he said. His dad let him roam the place, trusting him not to touch anything. After 5.30pm, when the last of the tourists had gone, as the gardeners began to trim and tidy, as the cleaners emptied the bins and swept up the empty cartons of drink and commemorative toffee fudge, it had become his private playground. As he told me this, I mused that if Treena and I had been given the freedom of the castle, all to ourselves, we would have been air punching with disbelief and getting giddy all over the place.
‘First girl I ever kissed was in front of the drawbridge,’ he said, slowing to look towards it as we walked along the gravel path.
‘Did you tell her it was your place?’
‘No. Perhaps I should have done. She dumped me a week later for the boy who worked in the minimart.’
I turned and stared at him in shock. ‘Not Terry Rowlands? Dark slicked-back hair, tattoos up to his elbows?’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s him.’
‘He still works there, you know. In the minimart. If that makes you feel any better.’
‘I’m not sure he’d feel entirely envious of where I ended up,’ Will said, and I stopped talking again.
It was strange seeing the castle like this, in silence, the two of us the only people there apart from the odd gardener in the distance. Instead of gazing at the tourists, being distracted by their accents and their alien lives, I found myself looking at the castle for perhaps the first time, beginning to absorb some of its history. Its flinted walls had stood there for more than 800 years. People had been born and died there, hearts filled and broken. Now, in the silence, you could almost hear their voices, their own footsteps on the path.
‘Okay, confession time,’ I said. ‘Did you ever walk around here and pretend secretly that you were some kind of warrior prince?’
Will looked sideways at me. ‘Honestly?’
‘Of course.’
‘Yes. I even borrowed one of the swords off the walls of the Great Hall once. It weighed a ton. I remember being petrified that I wouldn’t be able to lift it back on to its stand.’
We had reached the swell of the hill, and from here, at the front of the moat, we could look down the long sweep of grass to the ruined wall that had marked the boundary. Beyond it lay the town, the neon signs and queues of traffic, the bustle that marked the small town’s rush hour. Up here it was silent apart from the birds and the soft hum of Will’s chair.
He stopped the chair briefly and swivelled it so that we looked down at the grounds. ‘I’m surprised we never met each other,’ he said. ‘When I was growing up, I mean. Our paths must have crossed.’
‘Why would they? We didn’t exactly move in the same circles. And I would just have been the baby you passed in the pram, while swinging your sword.’
‘Ah. I forgot – I am positively ancient compared to you.’
‘Eight years would definitely have qualified you as an “older man”,’ I said. ‘Even when I was a teenager my dad would never have let me go out with an older man.’
‘Not even if he had his own castle?’
‘Well, that would change things, obviously.’
The sweet smell of the grass rose up around us as we walked, Will’s wheels hissing through the clear puddles on the path. I felt relieved. Our conversation wasn’t quite as it had been, but perhaps that was only to be expected. Mrs Traynor had been right – it would always be hard for Will to watch other people moving on with their lives. I made a mental note to think more carefully about how my actions might make an impact on his life. I didn’t want to be angry any more.