Chapter Sixteen
From: [email protected]
Subject: Not seen you in a bit.
Hi, long time no see!
I hope our little moment hasn’t put you off? I haven’t seen you around lately. But then, I’ve been pretty much ‘confined to barracks’ myself; we’re trying to get the final bit of the roof on before the weather turns (and the forecast is horrible, hope that doesn’t put a crimp in your weekend or anything). Mr Moore told me about your suggestion that you go into school to talk to the kids about writing — he seemed a bit half-hearted about it, which I really don’t understand, it’s not as if we’ve got people queueing up to visit. And Scarl is missing you a bit. She asked if she could come by tomorrow, just to say hello, if that’s okay with you? She knows you’re busy . . . All right, I’ll admit it, I sort of suggested that we pop in. I’m a bit worried about you. Mum told me that your ‘editor’ is B he did a kind of polite charge that made me step back inside the living room, and kept on coming. ‘It’s like the Arctic with better retail.’
I slid myself round the tiny table. ‘I mean, what do you want?’ I took it as a good sign that my hands weren’t inadvertently trying to punch him, and that I wasn’t sweating, although my heart was causing a tidal surge of blood to my cheeks.
‘Thought I’d given you enough time to think about things.’ He swept further into the room and tried to throw himself nonchalantly onto one of the chairs. ‘Bloody hellfire, what’s this made out of? Hacksaw blades and teeth?’ Nonchalance reverted to a straight-backed wariness. ‘Maybe I could be the first bloke to bring cushions to Yorkshire. I can see the headlines now: “Southerner brings soft-furnishing relief to a million Northern backsides.” What?’
‘Nothing.’ I’d been staring at him, I knew it. Watching, because I couldn’t help it. There was something about Dan’s long body, the way his shoulders, broad in the embellished black of his coat, drew the eye. Something magnetic in his movements and the way his cheekbones broke dark stubble like plough blades in a night field.
‘Well, come on then. Spill. What’s been happening on the scribbling front? How are we looking on word count? And how the effing chuff do you manage to write anything sitting on these things?’ He tried to hook a leg up over the chair arm but the over-polished wood and lack of any protective padding sent him spiralling around until he only just prevented himself from crashing onto the floor by grabbing hold of the table. ‘This is not furniture, is it?’
‘Everything is okay.’ I flipped the laptop’s lid down. Although he wouldn’t have been able to tell how long it had been since I’d looked at the book, I didn’t want him to have any ammunition to fire at me. ‘Go away.’
To my surprise, Dan stood up. I thought, for one glorious moment, that he was going to do as I’d suggested, that he actually believed me when I said things were okay. But this was Daniel and I should have known better. He shucked off the big coat and folded it into a wedge, placed it back on the chair, then sat on it. ‘That’s better.’ And then, ‘ Now what?’
‘It’s just you without your coat on. You’ve always got that coat on.’ Underneath, Dan was wearing a tight, black T-shirt, which made him look remarkably buff, and a pair of what looked like designer suit trousers. ‘And no wonder you’re cold. You should put a jumper on.’
‘You’ve seen me without the coat loads of times, Win.’ Almost as though he were pleased, he leaned back and raised his eyebrows at me. ‘Hell, you’ve seen me in nothing but a Durex, why so surprised suddenly?’
I shook my head and forced my eyes to look somewhere else. ‘Whenever I think of you, it’s always the whole’ — I waved my arms alongside my body to indicate a flowing garment — ‘thing.’
‘So you do think of me?’ His voice was very low and I was glad I was staring at the mantelpiece at that moment, not at his face. ‘It’s the image, Win. You know that. You, of all people, know you keep the image going because most people don’t look any further than that. I’m the bloke in the coat and the boots, and that’s all they need to see.’
‘I didn’t mean . . .’
‘People only see what you show them. Basic psychology. No one wants to look any deeper just in case they see a reflection of themselves.’ And then a sudden shifting noise as though he was moving us both away from a conversation that might hurt. ‘So . . . word count. Hit on any new material?’
I pointed at the books on the table, splayed out like a half-shuffled deck of cards. ‘I’ve done some reading, made notes.’
‘Aha. So no actual work eh?’ He sounded amused and I had to look at him now. He’d got a hand raised, shoved into his hair as though supporting the weight of his head. ‘Still got a deadline, girl, still need to hit it.’ And then he was up, out of the chair and stalking around the room, that excess of energy that he always carried making the air crackle with his passing. ‘This place. Dark. You need some light, some air, although probably not the stuff they’ve got going on out there, which is not breathable unless you’re a penguin. You need space to get the ideas . . .’
There was a slow, tentative tap on the front door, and he whipped around. ‘Ah. A “visitor from Porlock”. Hold the thoughts . . .’ and before I could stop him he’d opened the door to reveal Alex and Scarlet, hand in hand, on the step.
‘I b-brought b-b-buns.’ Alex held up a bag and then, realising it wasn’t me standing in front of him, lowered it. ‘Oh. H-hello.’
‘Hey. Daniel Bekener.’ Dan held out a hand, which meant Alex had to juggle the bun bag in order to shake. His gaze travelled over Dan’s shoulder and into the room, where it settled on me in a kind of embarrassed wariness and his eyebrows lifted.
‘Dan, this is Alex Hill,’ I said. ‘And Scarlet. And Light Bulb.’
Dan bent down. ‘Hello, Scarlet,’ he said to the hobby horse. ‘And hello, Light Bulb. I can tell that you must be a very bright young lady.’
Scarlet laughed. ‘ I’m Scarlet,’ she said and then flung herself past the men to arrive somewhere around my knees. ‘Hello, Winter!’
‘Daniel is my editor.’ I made a face at Alex, who relaxed a little. ‘He was just . . . actually, I’m not sure what he was just doing, but he was complaining a lot while he was doing it.’
Alex’s presence had given me my confidence back. Dan wouldn’t dare say anything personal in company, would he? No. He’s more of a knife-in-the-back man, not someone to drag stuff up when there’s an audience.
‘H-have the b-buns,’ Alex said. ‘And w-we’ll b-be going.’
‘Oh, Alex, you promised, you promised if I was good we’d ask Winter to come to the RSPCA with us, you promised !’ Scarlet was almost beside herself, jumping up and down in front of me and landing on my toes more often than not. ‘And I was really good, Winter, honestly . . .’ Even Light Bulb looked downcast, his ears seemed floppier than usual and it looked as though someone who’d watched more Kirstie Allsopp than was good for a person had attempted a repair job to some loose stitching round his mouth. He now had a ziggy-zaggy kind of smile that made him look a bit psychotic.
‘I d-decided you w-were r-right about a p-pet,’ Alex said. ‘W-we thought maybe a g-g—’
‘We’re going to get a guinea pig!’ Scarlet carried on bouncing. ‘Tomorrow. Did you have a guinea pig when you were little, Winter?’ And then, surprisingly she jumped a circle, ‘Did you, Daniel?’
‘I did,’ Dan, equally surprisingly, answered. ‘Two. And then seven. And then, because my parents weren’t up to playing “Guess how many in the hutch today”, one.’
‘Then you should come too, to help us choose.’ Scarlet stopped bouncing, for which my shoes were glad. ‘Because you know about guinea pigs.’
Alex and I exchanged a look of complicated horror. ‘Scarlet, Dan is busy,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you?’
Dan wiggled his eyebrows. ‘Never too busy to help those in need choose a squeaky pet,’ he said, and, to Scarlet’s obvious delight, he jumped up onto one of the chairs and began to declaim in a hushed voice, ‘This guinea piggy went to market, this guinea piggy stayed at home, this guinea piggy became Scarlet’s . . .’
‘H-he’s mad,’ Alex whispered into my ear as we watched the performance.
‘He’s something,’ I whispered back. ‘I’m not sure what. Possibly unexploded.’
Scarlet laughed and clapped as Dan took a flying leap from the chair which sent him almost into the fireplace, where he stopped suddenly, and I wasn’t quick enough to prevent him from picking up the two photographs. ‘Nice,’ he said.
‘That one is Winter and her sister. They’re twins,’ said Scarlet, proudly. ‘And that one is Winter’s sister grown up. Her name is Daisy and she lives in Australia.’
Dan looked at the pictures, his head moving from one to the other. ‘Yes,’ he said, quietly. ‘I know.’
Alex laid his hand on my arm. ‘Scarl, I th-think we should g-go now.’
But Scarlet, immune to the atmosphere which was gathering around Daniel like a storm cloud, carried on chattering. ‘They look exactly alike. There are twins in my school but they don’t look the same because Hettie has long hair and she has plaits and Jacob’s hair is really short.’
‘Yes,’ Dan said again. ‘They do.’ And now he was looking at the picture of Daisy in her bikini in that Australian sunshine, tapping one of his rings against the glass that held her in place. He laid the picture carefully back down on the shelf and carried on staring at it. ‘Daisy,’ he said, softly, almost as though the name hurt, and then he raised his eyes to find mine. Wouldn’t look away, and the expression in his eyes was like someone laying a weight across me.
I did the only thing I could think of, changed the subject completely. ‘So, RSPCA tomorrow?’
Alex’s fingers still lay on my arm, stroking gently. ‘Over at Yarton. About t-ten? If y-you’re sure . . .’
‘Of course.’ Dan had flipped his mood again, and was pulling his coat from the chair to put it back on. ‘We’ll meet you there, I can drive Winter in my car and we can talk about . . .’ and the merest pause, just a break in rhythm that only I would notice, ‘work. We’ll find you a guinea pig to rescue. Do you have the hutch and stuff? Only . . . guinea pigs? Tricky little critters, they might not dig and they might not chew but they can forge escape papers and be over the border before you can say “Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious”.’ He winked at Scarlet, who giggled again and then walked out of the door, dragging his coat around him as he went, and vanishing into the shoppers outside.
‘T-that guy is w-weird.’ Alex let go of my arm. ‘No w-wonder you w-want to k-keep away from him.’
‘He’s funny,’ Scarlet said. ‘And he knows about guinea pigs.’
He knows about lots of things. Things that hurt. ‘Let’s open those buns,’ I said.
Daniel Bekener @EditorDanB
Is there a word for when you do something and you don’t know if it was stupid or not?
ElliottTravels @Tripsky02
@EditorDanB Yeah. Life.
Daniel Bekener @EditorDanB
@Tripsky02 Seriously, mate, I have no idea what I’m doing. Making it better or worse.
ElliottTravels @Tripsky02
@EditorDanB Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better.
Daniel Bekner @EditorDanB
@Tripsky02 And if they don’t get better?
ElliottTravels @Tripsky02
@EditorDanB Then at least you know.
Daniel Bekener @EditorDanB
@Tripsky02 Wise, mate.
A.N. Editor Blog
You know that thing, when you go back to something and you think it’s all different now and then suddenly it isn’t? When everything comes roaring back at you to remind you of what was so great and what went so wrong, and it’s all still there, going round and round like one of those fairground rides that you want so much to go on and then can’t wait to stop so you can get off?
That.
Is it better to ride the tiger, or get off and look it in the face, tell it what it is? If I carry on riding this tiger — well, it could just run off into the darkness with me. And if I face it? Ah yes, looking her in the eye and telling her what is going on, tried that one. And yet, here we are again, giving it another go. Another attempt to explain to the tiger what is wrong. And why? Because I feel it’s worth it, because, deep down, there is something here, something that means so much to me that I can’t let it go. Can’t turn that tiger loose into the jungle and watch it vanish, not when that tiger is wounded and in danger.
From: [email protected]
Subject: New arrival
We’re doing it! We’re getting a guinea pig! I thought about what you said about Winter’s idea, and your hamster suggestion, but a hamster might be a bit too small, you know how excited she can get, and I worried that it might not stand up to the amount of cuddling I can foresee in its future, so we’re off to the RSPCA in the morning. Maybe you could come by in a couple of days, say, after school? Pop in and say hi and meet our new arrival? Or maybe you’ll be sick of hearing about it by then!
Mum says to tell you that she’s ordered that book you wanted, and it should be in at the library by next week. I told her she could email you herself but you know what she’s like.
Al x
I thought about faking every disease known to man and even a few that, I suspected, were actually diseases of sheep. Daniel is worming his way back in, doing what he did before, being just there. Wild and unpredictable and around every corner, until you just have to give in and ride the crazy-train along with him. But at least now you know. Know what he’s capable of, know that he’ll whip around and betray you without a second thought.
He double-parked the big silver car outside the cottage and leaned on the horn until I couldn’t pretend any more and had to come out.
‘Wow. Not sure if that counts as dressing up or dressing down.’ He looked at me through wide eyes. ‘Cute, but you’ll freeze and I should know because I am wearing fourteen layers and my reproductive organs have still packed up and flown south.’
I was in pyjamas and an old silk kimono which I’d dragged on over the top. And he was right, I was freezing. ‘I’m not coming. Well, I am, but not with you. I’ll drive over on my own and meet Alex and Scarlet there, there’s no need for you to come.’
Dan put his head on the steering wheel. ‘And no doubt you’re going to say that you’ve got work to do? Because you and I both know that’s bollocks, don’t we?’ Now he raised his head and turned eyes that had lost the wide ‘innocent appeal’ look in favour of a cool heaviness on me. ‘So. You sit here in this, well, it’s got a roof and walls so I’m guessing it’s a house but come on, the Borrowers want their place back, and you . . . what?’
A car, squeezing past on the bit of road Dan had left unencumbered by vehicle, beeped its horn and Dan responded with a raised middle finger, without looking. ‘You trawl through your friends on Facebook, you head onto Twitter to tell everyone what a busy day you’ve got lined up, you drink some coffee . . .’ He stretched across and opened the passenger door. ‘And I’m offering you a ride out into the unknown. Well, unknown with guinea pigs.’
I hopped from bare foot to bare foot and tried to double the wrap around me. ‘I don’t want to go with you, Daniel. I said I’d work with you to get the book finished, not go cruising around the countryside in search of rodents.’
‘We can work in the car. Now, go and put something on that doesn’t make your nipples stick out like two stumps of Blu-Tack when the poster’s fallen down.’ I glanced down, saw that he was right and pulled the kimono even tighter around my chest. He gave me a bright smile and a wink and then nodded towards the front door. ‘Two minutes. Go.’
I wanted to argue, I really did, but he was right, it was freezing standing barefoot on the frosted pavement with nothing but brushed cotton and a layer of silk between me and the increasingly intrusive elements, and I had the horrible idea that if I just slammed back inside and closed the door on him, he’d sit there all day, leaning on the horn and charming his way out of parking tickets. So, blue-fingered, I changed into jeans and jumper and the huge anorak and went back outside, where Daniel was chatting through the open driver’s window to two women who were evidently asking him for directions.
‘So where did you send them?’ I hopped up into the warmth of the passenger seat as he buzzed up the window and waved the women off across the road.
‘No idea,’ he said, cheerfully. ‘I told them I wasn’t local but they just kept asking, so I made it up.’
‘Poor women.’ I looked back through the windscreen.
‘Oh come on! I sent them down to the Tourist Info centre down beside the river — God, you really do think I’m a total twat, don’t you?’ He sounded a bit upset, wrenching the huge car out into the traffic rather harder than I thought it needed to be wrenched.
‘I’m just going on evidence,’ I said, tightly, and kept my eyes on the scenery outside the window. ‘Whose car is this?’
‘Greg’s wife’s. Astra got flattened.’
‘What, left it parked somewhere you shouldn’t, did you? Charisma won’t rescue you from traffic wardens and the clamp brigade, you know.’ He didn’t answer, and eventually I had to look at him. Silence from Dan was like a bee with no buzz. He was just driving, but there was a jerky pull to the gears that gave away some emotion, a resolute straightness to his gaze out along the road. ‘What?’
Now he turned. His jaw was thrust forward, bringing his lips into a tight overbite as though he was clamping them together. ‘Winter.’ His voice was the kind of level you could use to smooth concrete. ‘I am your editor and I am trying to get this book out of you with as little pain as possible for both of us, therefore I hope you will take this comment as a one-off demonstration of my complete and utter fuckitude but you are not the only person in this world, all right? I get that you hurt, I get that you’ve got problems and that your life hasn’t been a bed of kittens, but . . .’ He crossed his wrists on the wheel, rubbing his tattoo on the back of the other hand. ‘My sister Beth borrowed my car and got hit by a lorry. Head-on.’
I felt the horror pull over me like a too-tight jumper. When Dan and I had been . . . well, Dan and I, he’d talked a lot about Beth, so I knew that they’d been the closest of brother-sister combinations. It was down to her refusal to allow him to cruise along at school that had got him his spectacular results, excellent degree and, now, his dream job. Beth had been the only member of his family that he’d told about our relationship. I wished now that I’d had the chance to meet her. ‘God, Dan, I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’
‘No. Well.’ And then the flip, the ‘alternate universe’ Daniel coming out to play. ‘She’s doing okay, spinal injuries but, well we can hope, you know? And she gets to use this cool chair, it’s like watching Davros coming down the road.’ Banter in his tone but not in his eyes, they continued shaded and self-protecting. ‘So. What’s next after this book, any thoughts?’
I stared down at my feet. I wanted to keep my eyes from looking at him, noticing those long fingers on the gear stick, the way he steered by laying his jutting wrists around the wheel and turning with his forearms. Things about Dan that I used to know and had forgotten, and I wasn’t sure if it was the fact that I had ever known or that I had managed to forget that disturbed me. ‘Not really, no.’
‘Your mum and dad, how are they doing?’
‘Still divorced.’
‘Yeah, I just meant . . . okay.’ He blew out a little whistle between his lips. ‘You are being chuffing hard work at the moment, love, you know that?’
‘Work, Daniel. That is all I want to talk about. This book, in the here and now, nothing else. No “probing questions”, no pretending that you even care about my life, all right?’
He winced at my tone. I’d sounded defensive. ‘Right. Okay. So you’re all about the here and now, are you? The past is, what? Gone? You sure?’
I sighed and turned to look out of the window. ‘Shut up, Dan.’
We fell into silence for a few miles. I could see him reflected in the window I pretended to gaze out of, flicking me occasional quick looks and once looking almost as though he had raised a hand to touch my arm, but drawing it back in time to say, ‘Hey, Yarton, this is us.’ The car lurched as he pulled a tight right-hander and drew us into a car park to a cacophony of barking from a row of kennels. ‘What’s your man driving?’
‘Alex isn’t my man.’ I scanned the parked cars. ‘And I’ve no idea what he drives.’
‘Looks he was giving me, he thinks differently. Maybe you want to watch yourself there, kiddo. Nothing worse than a relationship that one of you thinks is something when the other one thinks it’s a fruit bowl, okay?’
‘And this is about work, is it?’
An angle to the head that made his eyes look bigger, darker. ‘Could be,’ he said. ‘Could be. Come on, let’s go find them and start sorting that little girl out with a proper pet. I’m guessing that the hobby horse is a transitional object, yes? Mum and Dad separated, Mum left her to “go and find herself”, little girl hanging on to Light Bulb as a reminder. Am I getting warm?’
‘Except Alex is her uncle, her mum is dead, her dad isn’t anywhere on the scene, and Light Bulb is part toy, part weapon . . . yes, you’re spot on.’
‘Freeoow. Take it back, kiddo, you are complicating your life like a fractal.’ Dan jumped down onto the car park. ‘Why? Not bizarre enough for you already that you’ve got to add a single dad and his offspring to the pile? How much does he know about you, this Alex? Enough to make a judgement call?’
But I’d seen Alex and Scarlet now, standing in the reception area to the rehoming unit, and I walked off to join them without speaking to Dan again.
‘Please let me come home with you,’ I muttered to Alex under my breath as we watched Dan showing Scarlet how to hold a guinea pig properly. ‘I don’t think I can stand a return journey.’
Alex looked at Dan for a moment. Dan was on his hands and knees in sawdust in a pen of assorted rodents and rabbits, holding a brown and white guinea pig in an upright posture, so that it looked as though it was sitting on the palm of his hand, paws over his wrist. He passed it to Scarlet, positioning her hands so that she held it the same way.
‘He s-seems okay. S-Scarl likes him.’ Now Alex looked at me. ‘I d-don’t know, ob-obviously, b-but maybe . . . maybe h-he’s not so b-bad?’
I felt my eyes widen. ‘Oh, not you too! This is what he does, he suckers people in with the whole “I’m just adorable” routine and then, wham, next thing you know he’s got you pinned to a wall and he’s ripping your heart out with his teeth.’
Alex looked from me to Dan and then back. ‘You d-don’t think th-that you m-might be overreacting a b-bit?’ he asked, carefully.
‘Dan took it into his head that I was too dependent on my sister. Now, I don’t know what made him think that, or why it was such a bad thing, but asking me to give her up in favour of him? That was just wrong. And me making the choice to stay with Daisy — what part of that is overreacting?’
Dan was making the guinea pig ‘talk’ to Scarlet, squeaking ‘pick me, pick me!’ and waving its paws in the air. As I watched his performance, he looked up and saw me looking, dropped me a wink that made my face heat up, then gave the guinea pig a kiss on the top of its head. ‘Your choice,’ he said to Scarlet, but I had the itchiest little thought that he’d heard what we’d been talking about, and the phrase had been directed equally at me. ‘Just remember that you choose for life.’
Alex patted my shoulder. ‘Y-you know him b-best,’ he said. ‘M-maybe he’s j-just good with ch-children.’
‘I want this one.’ Scarlet took the guinea pig from Dan and held it under her chin. ‘I’m going to call him Bobso.’
Alex took her to fill in the paperwork so they could come back and pick up Bobso the next day, leaving Daniel and I together in a room full of squeaky over-excited fur.
‘I’m going home with Alex,’ I said, watching Dan brushing wood shavings off his knees. ‘You can leave now.’
Dan focussed on a small white rabbit which was attempting to dig its way out of the big plastic run. Scratch scratch scratch, then pause, then back to the frantic scrabbling at the corner where the Perspex walls met. ‘Some things,’ he said, still watching the rabbit, ‘you can’t escape from. You might be able to see the world out there, but however hard you dig you just can’t get through to join in.’
‘Was that meant to be allegorical or something? Because I think you are getting a bit too literary for your own good.’
Dan seemed to pull himself together. His gaze moved from the rabbit to me. ‘Just your editor, Win,’ he said. ‘Just here to get the book done. Like I said before, no agenda.’
I waved an arm. ‘Coming to help Scarlet choose a guinea pig is “no agenda”? Dan, do you even know what an agenda is?’
His shoulders came up in a shrug and he nestled his chin down into the collar of the coat, which was now liberally dusted with guinea pig pooh and little strands of white fur. ‘Agenda sunt. Latin. Those things which must be driven forward. Like you, Winter, and here I am just driving on with soft words and carrying the big stick of . . . well, I’m not really sure. Why are you writing this book? Wasn’t Book of the Dead enough?’
‘Just because people are dead doesn’t mean their story is over,’ I said, moving to one side to allow a family to come past and bend down to eye up the rabbits. ‘Their graves tell a story too, and, if the last book is anything to go by, people are interested in previous generations; they want to know what their lives were like.’
Dan put a hand on my shoulder to manoeuvre me so that a young couple could come by on the other side. Arms around each other, they took up all the available space and Dan and I had to step closer together, almost forced to mirror their physical closeness. I was pushed into Dan’s chest and the sudden feel of his body, the smell of vanilla and expensive body spray, the brush of his coat against my skin made me dumb for a moment. So familiar. The scent of comfort that sat on the edge of challenge, a wildness that could bring sudden transformation from sitting over a pint in a pub to racing across a windswept heath. Daniel.
He was looking down at me, smiling slightly at our forced proximity with one eyebrow cocked. ‘Hey, just like old times,’ he said, in a half-whisper. ‘Remember?’ And his fingers tangled in my hair, pushing it back away from my face, his other hand cupping the angle of my jaw, tilting my face up towards him.
My pulse was so fast it was a solid thing in my throat. I could feel the softness creeping now, starting beneath my belly button and crawling slowly up my body, bending everything I thought, everything I wanted, into cooked-spaghetti shapes. Just fold. Fold into him, let his strength take the pain away.
And then the image again, of Daniel on that bridge. Staring off into the distance as the wind danced in his hair and whipped tears from his eyes. Making me choose.
‘What about Daisy?’ I asked, softly, because my voice wouldn’t come out any louder, as though that crawling malleability had reached my vocal chords. ‘What about those things you said about her? Because that is what I remember.’
He took a couple of steps back, and his hands fell to their customary positions, pushed deep into pockets. ‘Yeah. You’re right. There’s still Daisy standing there between us, isn’t there?’
The brightly-lit room with the excited chatter of the children choosing a new pet, the smell of sawdust and incontinence all came flooding back in, washing the feeling of Dan away from my skin. ‘Daisy will always be standing there.’ I had my teeth gritted, and the space where his hand had been felt cold.
‘Winter! We can come back tomorrow after school and get Bobso, they just want to make sure that we’ve got the right sort of hutch and a garden for him, and that he’s got food and a water bottle.’ Scarlet bounced back through from the far room and flung herself into the gap between Daniel and me.
‘That’s good.’ I tried to give her my attention but it was hard with him standing there so full of things only half-said. ‘Daniel has to go now.’
Dan bent down to the little girl’s level. ‘Remember, he needs to run on the grass, not just sit in a hutch all day,’ he said. ‘And things to nibble to keep his teeth from growing too long. And love. Lots of love — guinea pigs will purr if you sit them on your knee and stroke them, when they know that you love them.’ Then he stood up again. ‘Bye.’
Without another word, without any kind of leave-taking or indication that he’d see me again, he walked out of the room like a shadow walking away from the light. I must have been staring after him, because Scarlet had to attract my attention by pulling on my sleeve and half-dragging me across to Alex, waiting in the car park.