The Happy Hour

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-One

He almost didn’t go. He almost walked down to the jetty beyond the Cutty Sark, got on the boat and went home. He wanted to go back to the market and find Jess, but then he’d have to give her an explanation that went beyond burrowing into her like she was his security blanket, and muttering a lame excuse about it not being relevant to what they had.

It wasn’t Felicity and the terrible state she’d got herself into – though of course it wasn’t easy to see someone so broken. He actually felt like he’d helped a little, that he’d shown her it was OK to work through it slowly, that she could get there, however long it took. That was the key with so much of what he did: being careful, letting them find the answer or come to a realisation in their own time. He was the trail of spotlights that lit up a pathway in the dark, switching on whenever someone approached, guiding them to the end. But they needed to do the walking, travel down that path, themselves.

No, what had got to him, threatened to undo all his careful composure, was what Felicity had said about her husband. She could have been talking about Nico Lombardo, not her ex.

It made him wonder how he was broken, because if hoarding was her way of coping, then what was his? Was it working too hard, spending too much time alone in his flat? Was his inability to find any empathy for his dad, even though he was dying, proof that he was fucked up? He’d told himself that seeing Jess, finding that connection with her, was healthy; a sign that, now his dad was here and he’d committed to seeing him, he was working through things, healing himself. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

He stopped at the end of the path, staring at the white door and the brass plaque that read Cherry Blossom Lodge. It conjured up a memory of the bench in the park, Jess and him laughing about Diamanté the demon dog, which he supposed was the point: it sounded more hopeful than the reality you got once you stepped over the threshold.

He cared too much about Jess. He had, less than half an hour before, clung onto her in sheer desperation. He wasn’t sure that the amount of time he spent thinking about her, the overwhelming way her touch and her words affected him, was that healthy, after all.

‘Hey, you.’ Peggy was standing in the open doorway, staring at him. ‘You look like hell, and I don’t know if it’s just because you’re drowned. I should take pity and come out there, but it’s pissing it down, so you’ll have to come to me.’

Ash felt the tightness in his neck loosen a fraction. He hadn’t even noticed how hard it was raining. He walked up the path, trying to conjure up some courage.

‘Difficult day with Jess?’ Peggy hurried to the desk and returned with a towel so he could dry his face and hair.

‘We’ve been helping one of her friends.’ He kept it vague because Peggy lived in Greenwich, and he wasn’t sure if the rest of the area was as tight-knit as the market. ‘She’s struggling right now, so Jess and I are supporting her. So it was... But I mean, it’s never hard seeing Jess.’

Peggy frowned. ‘Are you sure you should be adding that to your day? Not being with Jess, but whatever is going on with her friend.’

He sat heavily in a chair. ‘I can help, though.’

‘You need to help yourself right now.’

He let himself remember Jess stroking his hair, how he’d felt ridiculous – like one of Felicity’s cats – and also unbelievably calmed. ‘I am getting help,’ he said. ‘Being with Jess helps.’

Peggy looked unsure, but – unusually for her – she didn’t push him. ‘Now, I have some Jammie Dodgers, or we’ve got piccalilli and Nutella on sourdough. What do you fancy?’ She tapped her chin thoughtfully and Ash laughed.

‘Peggy, you’re one of the most delightful people I’ve ever met, but you are also a monster.’

‘I like to show my dark side occasionally,’ she said. ‘Keep things edgy.’

She waggled her eyebrows then went into the small kitchen, and Ash thought how he had come to see this routine, where she went and got him coffee, as invaluable. Then he thought about how he’d started doing that on the way to see Jess, getting them a drink before he met her at her shop, and how, already, it was a ritual he didn’t think he could do without.

He had wanted to impress her from that very first day, to show her that he was someone worth knowing. Only a few weeks in, and he didn’t think he’d be able to find happiness without their Sunday mornings just behind him, so he could replay them, or ahead – keeping him going through the rest of the week.

But this part of his life, inside Cherry Blossom Lodge, had an unknown but inevitable end date. There were so many reasons he couldn’t think about that now, including the sense he got that Jess liked their meetings because they were contained, with a structure and boundaries, and he didn’t know if she’d be willing to change that. They’d had two hours this morning, but that had been for Felicity, not them. And Ash wanted, more than anything, for a ‘them’ to exist: one that wasn’t tied to his visits to this depressing place. He wanted Jess to spill over into every part of his life, but he wasn’t that confident that she felt the same way.

‘Why do bankers need emotional... support? If they have committed to that job, they have no real emotions.’

Ten minutes later, Ash was by his dad’s bedside. His breathing was painfully laboured, but it was the first time he’d seen some of the old Nico spark, as if he was getting better, rather than deteriorating.

‘That’s not... you can’t say that, Dad.’

‘Why not use your skills to help more worthy people? Trauma victims. Nurses.’

Ash clenched his jaw. There were so many things he could say: how everyone deserved support; that you couldn’t define anyone by their job, assume they were devoid of humanity because of how they earned a living; how Nico had spent his life chasing wealth, that his get-rich-quick schemes had helped only himself when they worked, and hurt others when they didn’t. But time within these four walls was limited, and his blanket of guilt would be even more suffocating if he didn’t show some kindness.

‘Did you go to the park much, Dad? The museums? I get the boat down from London, and the view from the river... it’s so different.’

His dad stuttered out a laugh.

‘What?’ Ash took a sip of his quickly cooling coffee.

‘You were always good at deflecting,’ Nico rasped. ‘Whenever Julie and I got in an argument, even when you were little, you’d thrust a toy between us, or pull me into the garden to show me something. Like you couldn’t bear us fighting.’

‘Do you blame me? No kid wants to grow up in the middle of warring parents. And Dylan was always so upset.’

‘You knew the right thing to say, even then. How to change the subject, turn to something happier. Sometimes you’d do a silly dance, so that Julie and I couldn’t help but laugh. I suppose this is what you do with your bankers, too?’

‘I don’t dance in the office, that’s for sure.’ He shook his head. ‘We work through things. You can’t skirt round your problems, you have to walk right through the middle of them: examine them in detail, destroy them, whatever. I couldn’t fix you and Mum; I could only deflect.’

‘To accept your deflection, then, I haven’t been to the park, or the museums. All this promise beyond the window, and I am stuck here for whatever time I have left.’

Ash looked at a bland painting of a tulip in a frame on the wall. ‘Why Greenwich, then?’

‘This place was the best,’ Nico said. His voice was fading, the wheezing more pronounced. ‘I searched, and this was top, and I had the money.’

Ash’s first thought was thank you. If his dad had picked somewhere else, then he never would have met Jess. But he was also indignant on his mum’s behalf, on Dylan’s, because they could have done with money after Nico left. Julie Faulkner had brought them up, juggling long hours at two jobs with looking after them, no question of childcare or nannies because they would have taken what little salary she was bringing in. It had meant that Ash, at twelve, took care of Dylan after school, had never had playdates with his own friends or joined the school football team.

‘The park’s great,’ he heard himself say, and Nico scoffed. ‘I’m not bragging, I’m just telling you. The views over London, the river – when you get to the top of the hill – are impressive. You can see so much of the city. And there are cherry trees, and parakeets, and people walking hundreds of different breeds of dog. There’s the Meridian Line, which runs over the observatory courtyard and people are always standing across it, taking photos, so it turns into a bit of a scrum.’

‘Tourists are stupid,’ Nico said.

Ash couldn’t help grinning. ‘Only because they’re excited to be somewhere they’ve heard about. We see the photos and we want to be a part of it. There’s so much to see out there.’

Nico shook his head, and Ash recognised the tightness in his dad’s jaw, because he saw it in the mirror so often: when he was shaving, or after a long day – or after being here. He wondered if he’d fucked up.

‘You did— you’ve done a lot with your life, Dad. Travelled the world, done some pretty outrageous things.’ Left your family behind,he didn’t add.

‘You don’t need to cosset me in your therapist language. Past tense is fine.’

Ash rubbed his cheek. ‘Tell me about Positano the last time you were there.’ He wouldn’t let his dad fall into bitterness so he could use him as a punchbag. It was self-preservation, sure, but wasn’t it only fair to Nico – to anyone, really – that the last conversations he had were as bright as they could be? His mum and Dylan weren’t coming, so it was up to Ash: he was the custodian of some of his dad’s final hours, and that felt like a big responsibility.

‘What do you want to know?’ Nico was still breathing heavily, but Ash could see a glimmer of his old steeliness, and knew he wanted to keep talking.

‘The people you met, the deals you made. The nights when you stayed out until the sun came up. It’s been a long time since I had proper Italian food, so tell me about that.’

And, as he watched his dad’s jaw unclench, and the look in his eyes turn misty, Ash tried to listen to what he was saying, to appear entirely engaged, while also thinking about what Jess was doing right this moment, and whether she’d greet him with a grin or an eye roll the next time she saw him. It didn’t matter what it was, what mood she was in – it was always so much better than this: stoking the embers of a relationship that had died a long time ago, trying to rekindle them again for appearances’ sake and knowing that, before they fizzled out for the final time, it was more than likely that he’d end up getting burnt.