Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
CALEB
Melissa Chang is not missing. I don’t know what she’s playing at, but I’m sure that little psycho is fine. Thankfully, she’s Kevin’s problem now and none of my business. I send Lydia a reply to her message.
I’m sure she’ll pop up eventually. She always does. Wedding recap over whisky when I get back?
Our flat is chilly when I get in. Referring to it as ours again makes me smile. Thanks to the time difference, it’s only noon on Monday, and I’m not due at Ivory Bow until tomorrow morning. I send a quick text to Ariella to let her know I’m home, to put her mind at ease. My tummy flips when I think about how sincerely she asked me to promise to let her know when I got home safely.
Home safely Mason. How is my bite?
Which one?
You know the one.
Tender. Stop it, I’m in public. Thank you for what you did. MsPat is teaching me the art of aggressive negotiation. I love you so much.
I can’t wait to come back home to you.
I’ll be waiting. Impatiently.
I call an emergency locksmith and organise the same-day cleaning service I used last time. I then shower, sort through my post and catch up on some work before the locksmith turns up to break into Ariella’s room.
I spend the rest of the afternoon replacing our items around the flat. I put back her clothes that I moved from my drawers, and place some of my clothes back in hers. Her shampoo, conditioner and spare toothbrush are returned to the space I cleared on my shower shelf for her. Then I carefully check the spices I packed away, chuck the ones that have expired and diligently place the good ones in the spaces she reserved for them. I re-hang the print she loves and put our framed cheesy image back on the shelf. I make sure it feels like home again before I text Tim and Jack.
Boys! Pub quiz tonight?
Tim replies first:
Why do they keep letting you back into the country? I’m up for it.
Jack joins in:
Bloody hell. We were doing so well. I suppose we were going to start coming last again, sooner or later. See you there.
I have a quick shower but take my time washing my hair with Ariella’s shampoo and conditioner. Apart from the stuff actually working, it makes me feel close to her. Once the cleaning crew arrives, I leave our flat to them and make my way to the pub.
‘Bad Boy Black!’ Jack laughs out loud when I enter the warm pub, and his piss-taking puts me in an even better mood.
‘I’ll sign your arse if you like, mate.’ I laugh as I pull him into a hug. I’ve missed this loser.
‘Would you? Can you make it out to the Thirsty Girls and Boys With no Standards Club?’
‘Absolutely, Mr President.’
‘You both need to get a room,’ Tim says, walking up behind us.
‘Mate.’ I turn to hug him.
‘What’s up with you?’ Tim gives me a quizzical look.
‘Ariella. That’s what’s up with him.’ Jack raises an eyebrow. ‘He’s radiating happiness, smelling like her and everything.’
‘Shut the fuck up, Jack. What are you two drinking?’
It takes the entire trip to the bar and back with our beers to wipe the grin from my face. They’re right. It’s her.
‘What’s been going on?’ I ask as I sit.
‘Want to tell him or shall I?’ Tim asks Jack.
‘Lou and I are over.’
‘Champagne. Shots. We need to celebrate! When did this happen?’
‘You’re such a dick, Caleb.’ Jack laughs. ‘Last week.’
‘How does it feel?’
‘Freeing. Obviously, we were together for years and that comes with its issues, but it’s all right.’
‘Mate, the only thing I’d miss is that huge apartment.’
‘Wait for it,’ Tim says, holding his palm up.
‘Well…’ Jack starts.
‘Oh, bloody hell, now what?’
‘I’m still staying there at the moment. We agreed I could stay until I found somewhere.’
I put my face in my hands.
‘Jack, for fuck’s sake.’
‘That’s exactly what I said,’ Tim says as he sips on his half pint.
‘She’s in Milan for the next few weeks. I’ll be gone by the time she gets back.’
‘Wait.’ I stop him.
‘Yup,’ Tim says as he crosses his arms, looking exhausted. ‘Ask him, Caleb.’
‘Was Louisa in Milan when you broke up with her?’
‘Yeah. I’d had enough and I needed to do it there and then.’
‘Fine. How did she take it?’
‘She said she understood and that I could keep the Tesla and stay as long as I needed to until I found somewhere else to live.’
‘Lou is as sensitive as a toilet seat. Tim?’ I get the nod and Tim drains his half pint.
‘Van’s outside,’ he says, slamming down the glass. There is still some beer left in it.
‘What?’ Jack asks.
‘We’re going to Lou’s and we’re getting all your shit. You’re moving in with me tonight.’
‘Thanks, mate,’ Tim says, standing, his keys already in hand. ‘I’ve been on him for the last week. He wouldn’t be told, and Em is not helping – she thinks Lou will be reasonable.’
I don’t give Jack the opportunity to argue, I just follow Tim out of the pub. Jack eventually catches up. We get into the two front passenger seats of Tim’s van and head to Knightsbridge. When we finally manage to get through the London traffic and arrive at Lou’s building, our suspicions are confirmed before we set foot in the property. We are asked by the guard from the car park to go through the front.
‘Good evening, Patrick,’ Jack calls to the usually friendly doorman as we follow him in.
‘I’m sorry, sir, but we have been told by Miss Gabrielli not to allow anyone into the apartment aside from you.’
‘Patrick, I’m just getting some things.’
‘We’ve also been instructed not to allow you to remove anything from the apartment, sir.’
‘Come on, Patrick. I’m just getting some of my clothes.’
‘I’m sorry, sir. You’re welcome to go up, but you may not remove anything and your guests must stay here.’
‘Guys, what the fuck?’ Jack turns to us, distressed. ‘She’s not back for weeks!’
Something in Jack’s voice has made Patrick’s hard mask slip. He knows. Of course he knows. Doormen know everything.
‘You know,’ I confront him as I walk up to him. ‘You know what’s going on.’
‘It is not my job to interfere. Sadly, I can only adhere to Miss Gabrielli’s instructions, as the owner of the apartment. As I must adhere to the instructions of any other resident.’ Patrick’s inflection on the word any is all we need. I turn to Jack.
‘Jack. Your neighbours. Please tell me you get along with at least one other person in this building that can invite us in.’
‘I play squash with Ahmed sometimes.’
‘Call him now. You’re going to have to tell him what’s going on. Can you do that?’
Jack unlocks his phone and dials. Within ten minutes, and after making us promise Jack will take just his clothes, shoes and laptop, Ahmed is downstairs vouching for us to get into the building. The second issue is posed by Louisa’s front door camera. To avoid it, we camp at Ahmed’s as Jack fits all he can into three suitcases and brings it to his neighbour’s apartment. That way, he is technically not leaving the building with all his belongings.
‘Jack, have you got everything you need? You can’t come back,’ Tim reminds him, putting a comforting hand on Jack’s shoulder.
He nods silently.
Jack exits the building through the front with his daily personal effects. Ahmed, Tim and I take the lift directly to the car park with the rest of his stuff. When we’ve loaded the cases into the back, Ahmed instructs the security guard to allow Tim’s van to exit. As soon as Jack join us, Ahmed invites us to visit him in Dubai, before going back into the building.
Suddenly, we see the lights of the Tesla come on.
‘Jack! What are you doing?’
‘She said I could keep the Tesla.’
‘Fucking hell, Jack!’ Tim says, exasperated. ‘We told Ahmed we’d only take your personal effects. What else did you take?’
‘The engagement ring.’
‘You have to return it.’
‘No! It cost a fucking fortune!’
‘Tough shit. If you want it back, you’re going to have to fight her for it. If she comes back, sees it’s missing and unravels what we’ve just done – because there are cameras everywhere – you will have put Ahmed in the shit. Give it back!’ Tim is dangerously close to losing it.
‘Come on, Jack.’ I move him away from a stressed-looking Tim and return with him to the doorman. ‘We’d like to leave a couple of high-value items for Miss Gabrielli. Please can you keep these in a safe until she returns?’
He finds us a small postage box, into which we place the ring and the key.
‘Would you like to leave a note?’ he asks and Jack nods.
I watch him scrawl Stay THE FUCK away from me Lou. J. with pride. I think I notice a small smile crossing Patrick the doorman’s face. Once the box is sealed, security-stamped and photographed, Patrick reaches out his hand.
‘Good luck, Jack. I hope I never see you here again.’
Jack takes it. ‘Thanks, Patrick.’
By the time we step out, Tim has pulled up in front of the building. We turn the music up, laugh, sing and celebrate in the car. We stop at my local corner shop for some beers before parking up in front of my building.
When we get in, I remove my mattress topper, then move all my clothes and personal effects from my bedroom into Ariella’s. I get clean sheets from the drying room and toss them on the bed before helping to wheel the cases in.
‘Thanks, mate,’ Jack says before pulling me and then Tim into a hug.
‘You should thank me, you’ve got the bigger room, with the better bathroom,’ I joke.
‘What’s the rent?’ Jack asks nervously.
‘Cover the bills, look after the place, fix whatever you break, buy your own sheets and invest in a new mattress topper tomorrow that you will take with you when you eventually move out. I’m not sleeping on the same bed as your swipey victims, now you’re free to do what you like. We’ll stay in Aari’s room when we visit, so don’t even think about subletting. Aari and I will be gone for a while. It’s yours for at least a year and a half. We’ll give you a six-month warning before we come back.’
‘Are you sure? I want to pay something.’
‘Ariella has refused to stop paying rent and the company pays for everything out there, so I’m good. If you feel the need to pay something, then just pay what you can afford. You should have my bank details from that twenty quid you still owe me,’ I remind him jokily.
‘Are you sure Ariella is going to be okay with this?’ Jack asks.
‘Not only will she be okay with it, if I’d done nothing she’d be fuming in that infuriatingly quiet, polite way she does when she gets annoyed.’
‘Let me guess, when you ask her what’s wrong, she says it’s nothing. When it, very scarily, is something.’ Tim laughs to himself.
‘Yes!’ I turn, surprised at him.
‘Em’s the same. Mate, stay away from anything that causes that. It’s torture.’
‘I know!’ We both howl.
We help Jack unpack, then I order us a takeaway and we open the beers in the living room.
‘So, were you serious about wanting to marry Ariella?’ Tim asks casually, prompting Jack to inhale mid-drink and choke on his beer.
‘When did this happen?’ Jack splutters.
‘Late one night, he texted Em. I think he was drunk. Em’s been looking at floral arrangements, wedding presents, flights to Singapore, dresses for her and suits for me, since. You should see the ridiculous outfits she’s considering putting Alfie in as a pageboy.’
‘I can assure you, Alfie is not going to be my pageboy, ever,’ I reassure Tim, and see the relief flood his face. ‘Alfie’s going to be my best man. I’m asking her parents at the end of the week, when work is done.’
‘Shit!’ Tim and Jack say at the same time.
‘He’s not joking,’ Jack says to Tim.
‘No, he’s not.’ Tim stands with pride in his eyes. ‘Well done, mate. Come here.’
I stand and step into Tim’s hug and double pat on my back.
‘Dads, release your daughters,’ Jack announces, doing the same. ‘We’ve hugged a lot tonight.’
‘A lot has happened,’ Tim says.
‘Can we all relax and go back to being boring now? I’ve only been in the country for ten hours.’ I hold up my beer and toast. ‘To a boring week!’
The boys cheer as they meet my bottle with theirs.
Jack is a good flatmate that week. He is quiet, tidy and buys our takeaways, even though he is insisting that he’ll start cooking when I leave. He is exactly what I need, because the week is tough. All the candidates are qualified and any one of them could do the job, which is making it difficult to give Christopher my top three. Usually, the gym on Wednesdays is a great place to clear my head, but all I can think about during my training and the class with Phillip and the boys is how I, the worst possible choice in Hugh Mason’s eyes, am going to break it to him that I want to marry – according to Dahlia – the love of his life.
‘Caleb!’ Dahlia opens her loving arms and I step into them. There was a time when hugging Dahlia was foreign and unfamiliar, but now her hugs feel safe and assuring.
‘Thanks for making time for me.’ The nerves I feel dissolve, but not completely.
‘Of course! Have you eaten? Would you like something?’ She leads the way to her kitchen.
‘No, I’m okay.’ Eat? I can barely swallow. I take a deep breath as I lean against the kitchen island and exhale. Dahlia studies me quietly for a couple of seconds.
‘Caleb, relax. We think we know why you’re here.’
Dahlia is not making things easier with her revelation. I don’t even have the element of surprise on my side.
‘You don’t know if he keeps guns in the house, do you?’
‘Don’t be silly, it’ll be fine.’
‘It may not be. Hello, Caleb.’ Hugh Mason enters the kitchen from behind me.
‘Hello, Mr Mason.’
‘Okay. We’re here. What would you like?’ He pulls a seat out for himself at the dining table.
‘Hugh…’ Dahlia warns behind me.
If he’s going in hard, I might as well join him, so I stay standing where I am and spit it out.
‘I already know I don’t deserve to be here. It’s not even luck. It’s a miracle. If you’d told the seven- to twenty-seven-year-old me that I’d be here, the sheer impossibility of it would have made it difficult to imagine, because my physical, mental and emotional beatings started early.
‘They started with my own father, continued with the people I didn’t sell drugs fast enough for and was pure sporting fun for those that simply saw and heard that I was from Toxteth. Then there were the beatings I inflicted on myself and to a certain extent still do.
‘I’m telling you this because you are the two people Ariella loves the most in the world and you need to know who I am, before I even think about us potentially making a commitment to each other. She loves and respects you both and she will ask for your opinion. So I’m not asking you for Ariella. I’m asking if you’ll have me as part of this family. It is the only way we will work, because Ariella won’t be who she is without you, and I most certainly won’t be who I am today without your influence.
‘I don’t want to take another step or make another decision without you. Dahlia, you’re the mother I never had, and Hugh, you’re the example I didn’t get the privilege to see. Ariella can make her own decisions. She will either choose to have me or not. But I want you, because we are going to need you. Will you have me if I ask her and she says yes? If your answer is no, then we won’t take any further steps, because I would never do that to her. But if you’ll have me as part of your family, then I will be asking her and seeking your blessing.’
There. Bloody hell. I feel like I’ve given them more reasons to change their locks and phone numbers than to accept me.
Dahlia silently approaches me where I stand, wraps her arms round me and holds on so tightly, I well up.
‘You’ll always be welcome in our home, Caleb.’ Hugh Mason looks at me sincerely. ‘But you’re not ready. I can’t give my blessing for you to ask Ariella.’
‘Hugh Mason!’ Dahlia turns, shocked at her husband.
‘Dahlia.’ Hugh says it so softly, his love wraps around her. ‘Please can I have some time alone with Caleb?’
With that Hugh Mason walks to their sliding door, pulls it open and invites me outside. Dahlia just nods, rubs my back and encourages me to follow him.
When Hugh Mason plants his feet apart and digs his hands into his pockets, I mirror him, ready to hear what he has to say.
‘Remember what happened to the last man that did this?’
‘With all due respect, sir, I’m not the last man.’
‘I know that, but I gave my blessing and look at how that turned out.’ The regret oozes thickly from him. ‘I don’t think I can do that to her again.’
‘Jasper wasn’t a bad?—’
‘Jasper didn’t know how to love her. He had the duty and responsibility perfected, but he didn’t know how to make her shine. He provided anything she could possibly want, then protected her by hiding her from the world, but he only did that because that’s what he saw me do all her life. My worry is that my daughter is so vibrant and bright around you that the pendulum may have swung too far the other way.’
Hugh Mason finally admitting that he sees how happy I make Ariella is such a shock that I forget that he’s telling me that I can’t marry his daughter.
‘I didn’t do that, MrMason. That’s all her. I’m blinded by it too. I mostly stand back and watch.’
‘And that’s my point. You can’t just spectate. Do you have any idea what it takes to love a black woman? There are fights you didn’t even know existed that you will have to jump into. There will be conversations that you won’t understand, but because you love her you will have to stand beside her, feeling absolutely useless, letting her just do her thing. Then you have to go, educate yourself and be ready for the next one. You will feel like you literally have to defend her from the entire world because so much is set up to accelerate her failure. That’s why she has to be tougher than most – and she is. It’s just not in the way people expect her to be.
‘I’ve seen the social media. Both of yours. The micro- and macro-aggressions. People are falling over themselves when you post your half-naked and partying pictures. Meanwhile, she’s out there actually doing good work with the business and this new charity app, but she mostly gets neutral comments or straight-up abuse. At least your company is good at cleaning those up. And that American boy’s brother calling her a gold-digging house Negro. Did you see how silently she moved on from that? She didn’t even complain. It’s gut-wrenching to know that we live in a world where she chooses to deal with that level of disgust quietly, because society often demands that those harmed by this behaviour forgive their perpetrator.
‘The one thing that helps your case is you’ve experienced it too, but from a financial and societal perspective. So you understand it a little. Hypocritically, that’s the pressure I’m putting on you. You need to be stable, Caleb. It’s easy to have a wedding but do you have what it takes to sustain a marriage? What is your future like? Do you have a plan? If Ariella decides she never wants to work again, to look after your kids, can you live with that? Can you help her raise children, keep them safe, love them even when they are behaving like little psychopaths? Can you give them a better life than you and Ariella had? Can you teach them integrity, honour, truth and kindness? Can you get over those battles that you say that you’ve spent your entire life fighting and show them softness?’
This is not the conversation that I expected to have with Hugh Mason. It’s sobering because he’s right. I haven’t even thought of half of those things.
‘You’re not ready, Caleb, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be. I know I’ve held you at a distance and in some cases been positively hostile, but you’re about to assume responsibility for the most important thing in my life. I made a big mistake once already, so you can understand my caution. And just in case you aren’t aware, Dahlia and I want nothing more than for you to be ready. Ariella comes alive around you, and you most certainly have something to do with it.’
Hugh Mason steps forward, pats me on the back and pulls me into a rough side hug.
‘Stay for dinner.’
With that we walk together back into Dahlia’s kitchen, where she is waiting with open arms and a warm smile.