THIRTY
Evie watched Zig and Fi leave the portacabin with relief, her pulse still racing. It was so strange, so risky, having these two parts of her world collide, Zig and Fi both knowing why she had been sent to Conyers, what she had intended to do to Aubrey. She’d pleaded with them not to say anything, explained how things were now, but Zig had been scornful, and Fiona quietly disappointed.
“You don’t really have to help,” she said to Aubrey, not quite meeting his eyes. “Think of your poor shoes.”
She heard the laugh in his voice. “My shoes will survive.” But she didn’t feel she could meet his eyes fully yet, couldn’t quite act natural, not with the memory of his laptop on her knee suddenly fresh in her mind. But she hadn’t done it, she reminded herself fiercely. Surely that was what mattered? She hadn’t done it. And he would never know.
“Come on, then,” she said, leading the way back outside.
It was cold, drizzling again, the afternoon rapidly fading to the dull, brown murk of a late autumn evening. Winter was in the air, in the sharpness of the breeze. But it had been like this last year. Doing what they could in the brief daylight hours, no money for spotlights. Fingers red and stinging with cold, noses running, huddling round a camp stove and drinking scalding tea from chipped, steaming mugs. She’d loved every second. And this time would be better still, because despite the pressure of responsibility that squeezed her chest at the thought, this place was now hers. Forever. There would be a garden here for generations—she would set up a trust, something that protected the space after her death. And the people living in the crowded streets, the children in the gardenless tower blocks, they’d all have somewhere green and alive that was their very own, safe, a little gem of green saved from the relentless spreading concrete.
Maybe it wasn’t wise bringing Aubrey here, letting him talk to Zig and Fi, but she hadn’t even hesitated. She’d wanted him here, needed to share this with him. It wasn’t like she could keep this a secret anyway. It was too big. One of the biggest, most wonderful things that had ever happened to her. And her first thought had been to tell him.
She looked around the site now, wondering if this could be it—the thing she focused on. Urban gardens, urban greenspaces, something that connected the two things she cared most about: people and nature. A wave of excitement ran through her.
“Where do you want me, then?” Aubrey asked, surveying the muddy, grubby scene. She laughed at his expression.
“It’ll be beautiful one day, I promise.” She gestured ahead of her. “There’ll be apple trees there, and pears, and blackcurrant bushes. And beds of strawberries, and potatoes growing in old tyres, and peas trailing all over the place. There’ll be butterflies, Aubrey, and bees. Birds singing.”
He rolled his eyes, though he was smiling. “Children laughing and rainbows everywhere?”
“Yes!” She tapped him lightly on the chest. “You’ll see.”
“I believe you,” he said, then he kissed her, hands either side of her face, searingly sweet and all too quick. He pulled back, smiling, eyes warm, and she felt a bizarre sting of something like tears. Ridiculous Evie. Crying over pigeons. Crying because she was happy.
“Out the way! Coming through!”
They stepped apart, making room for some guys carrying a large sheet of boarding to the pile in the corner. It had the Bluedeen logo on it, smeared now with mud from her friends’ hands, all the people who came the moment she called—her odd collection of comrades in arms, ragtag, young and old—because they believed, like she did, that this was worth doing.
She wasn’t mad, was she? To think this was worthwhile? To believe it might make the world a tiny bit better? It wasn’t for nothing that Eden was a garden. Paradise was a garden…
Zig waved her over, wanting to talk about railings. She walked over to his familiar face, recalling a hundred conversations, a hundred plans, all the ways that they had tried and failed to save the world. Maybe there was another piece of land just like this one with the Bluedeen logos going up, the bulldozers moving in. Another Evie cried somewhere else because a woodland was being torn down, all the living green scraped from an ancient field, an old orchard razed…
Perhaps she could have stopped it all. If she hadn’t lost her courage. Hadn’t doubted. If she’d got the evidence from Aubrey’s laptop, perhaps they could have brought Domnall down, sent a shockwave through the system that put profit before life itself… But that wasn’t the choice she had made.
Zig nodded at her as she stopped by him. His eyes went briefly past her shoulder to where Aubrey stood. He scowled.
“Is he worth it, then? Your man in the suit?”
“Yes,” she said, almost entirely sure it was true.
Evie was a mess by the time they finally gave up on the fading light and locked up the site. She apologised to Aubrey for the mud as she got into his car. She was dirty everywhere, damp, aching and bone-weary.
“How do you—” She sneezed, then sneezed again. “Sorry. How do you still look so clean?”
“Oh, I barely lifted a finger,” he said as they pulled out into the rush hour traffic.
That wasn’t true at all. He’d worked as hard as anyone, even after an early start helping Roscoe this morning, and then—
“Oh shit! How did I forget? You had a job interview today. How did it go?”
“It didn’t. It was cancelled.”
She turned in her seat, stared at his set jaw, his eyes fixed on the complicated traffic. “Cancelled? Why?”
“My name is mud right now.”
“My father’s doing? Because you had a fallout?”
“Yes.”
“But why…! That’s so unfair!”
“I said some things he probably can’t forgive.”
“Like what?”
Aubrey paused, let out a breath of dark laughter. “Oh… I can’t quite remember. Something along the lines of hoping he dies abandoned and alone because he doesn’t deserve the company of his children.”
“Oh. Wow.”
“Yes. Sorry.”
“Sorry? Why?”
“He’s your father.”
“Only in the most technical sense.” She laughed to herself, shocked, trying to imagine it. “Did you really say that?”
“I’m fairly sure I said he doesn’t deserve you.” He flashed her a look, no humour in it. “Which is true.”
Her heart gave a painful flip, and she swallowed, an ache in her throat. “I… Thank you. For saying that.”
“I should have said more.”
The car stopped, a bus close in front, red lights crystallised by the drizzling rain. Aubrey flipped the wipers on and shifted his shoulders with a sigh.
“Achey?” Evie asked.
“Not really. You?”
“All over. Everything hurts.”
“That’s because you work like a maniac. I’m not sure you even breathed.”
“There’s so much to do!”
“It’s not going to get done in one day.”
“I know that,” Evie said. “I’ve done it all before, remember.”
“Mm.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“It’s true enough.”
The bus pulled away, and the car followed it, the wet, leaden streets crawling by.
“Will you be OK?” Evie asked. “If you don’t find a job soon?”
“I have some savings.”
“I’ll talk to my father. He can’t—”
“No.” Aubrey cut her off, his voice firm. “You’re not going to talk to that man. Certainly not on my behalf. I don’t want him ever talking to you again, not now I know how he treats you.”
“He’s my dad…”
Aubrey didn’t answer, eyes glowering at the crowded road ahead.
“I’ll have to talk to him eventually… Not that I really want to. But… You know. Family.”
“I wish you didn’t.”
“You didn’t seem to care that much. At Conyers. I’m fairly sure you agreed with him that I should be muzzled.”
Aubrey gave a small laugh. “Still a plan with some merit.” But he flashed her a glance. “Evie… I was half a second from throttling him the whole time. Couldn’t you guess?”
“No.” She felt absurdly warm at the idea, violent imagery aside. “You must be a good actor.”
He just smiled. “We all have our secrets.”
But her flood of warmth vanished, her own secret looming large again. She shivered, miserable with guilt.
“You,” said Aubrey firmly, giving her another look, “are getting a hot bath the minute we get home.”
True to his word, Aubrey ran her a bath. Then insisted on undressing her himself in the bathroom, telling her to stand still, stop fidgeting, while he drew her wet, muddy clothes over her head, and pulled her damp, dirty jeans down her legs.
He started on her socks, kneeling on the floor, and she squirmed out of his grip with a yelp.
“I told you to stand still,” he chastised her, gently slapping her thigh.
“I’m ticklish!”
“You weren’t ticklish last night,” he said, gripping her ankle and running a curious hand up her calf.
“Well, I’m not when I’m horny!”
He looked up at her with a wicked grin. “Interesting.” Keeping a tight grip on her ankle, he tickled her experimentally behind the knee. She yelped again.
“Seriously! Stop it!”
He relented, laughing, and whisked off her socks before she could protest again. Then he reached up and drew down her knickers. “And you’re sure you’re not horny?”
She was, admittedly, becoming increasingly so, with his face inches away from her bare pussy. He smiled up at her, clearly reading her mind, then stood up, probably purely to annoy her, and took off her bra.
“In the bath with you. You’re filthy.”
“Takes one to know one.”
He laughed again, but made no move to touch her, merely watching intently as she moved over to the bath and climbed in.
“Temperature OK?”
“Perfect.”
It was. Blissfully hot on her cold skin. Just the way she liked it. Perfect for her achy back. And it was piled with bubbles from the bubble bath he’d bought the first time she came here, when he’d made her a cup of tea, brought her a hot water bottle. Come to think of it, her period was probably due again soon. She ought to check.
“Good,” he said, watching her in satisfaction for a moment before picking up her clothes from the floor, presumably to go and wash them. “I’ll make dinner.”
She laughed to herself as the bathroom door shut, sinking down into the bubbles, remembering Zig’s scowl. Was it worth it? Yes, right now, she was absolutely sure it was worth it.
She sank a little lower, bubbles crackling gently around her shoulders, the water silky and soapy with them. She closed her eyes, muscles relaxing, heat soaking into her bones. Her mind was active, though, the day replaying in a jumbled whirr. There was so much to do but all winter to do it. No rush at all, because the site was hers, couldn’t be taken from her.
What would Aubrey make of it in the spring, in the summer? Would all the green, growing things work their magic on him and make him understand why it was that she cared so much? Would he ever care in the same way she did? It used to be an unspoken dealbreaker for her. Any partner had to care. Their souls had to move in the same way as hers. But what were she and Aubrey? Two mismatched cogs, somehow clicking together. Could it work? Would the friction, the gaps, the missed connections be too much?
She lay with her eyes closed, trying to see… Kept probing for a reason why… But she was too happy. Everything seemed possible. Everything inside her sang yes .
She liked him. She liked Aubrey Ford. Truly, deeply. And if it hadn’t been for the memory of a laptop, its hot weight on her lap, the strange keys awkward under her fumbling hands, then her happiness would have been complete. But she sat up again in the bath, eyes open, listening to the bubbles pop.