Chapter 1 #2
“That had better not be me,” Oz says somewhat menacingly, but Niall just laughs and exits the room.
I fold my arms. “I’m not eating just because he says I am,” I say crossly. At that moment my stomach gives a massive grumble that’s loud in the quiet room. Oz raises his eyebrow and I huff. “I’ll eat because I’m hungry and not because the Lord and Master orders me to.”
He shakes his head. “Fascinating as this latest development in your and Niall’s relationship is, I’m hungry and knackered because Cora woke me up twice in the night.”
“What development? We haven’t got a relationship to develop,” I splutter.
He pats my shoulder happily. “You know denial isn’t just a river in Egypt, don’t you?”
“Where are you getting these lines from?”
He laughs and drags me to the door. “I think Mark Twain said it first, but I’m a lot prettier than him. I’m just saying that I like this pert side of you and I think Niall does too.”
I shake my head. “I’m the next best thing to a little brother that he’s got. It’s practically built into the job description that I get irritated by him. He just enjoys winding me up.”
“I think he enjoys the sassiness from you most of all,” he murmurs. “He loves it.”
Old memories strike with the force of a blow and I flinch slightly. “Yes, well, he’s got his reasons for feeling like that and he’s more than earned them.”
His frown follows me out of the room but as normal he doesn’t push. However, the time is approaching when I know I’ll have to confide in him or he’ll keep pushing Niall at me, unaware of why it’s never going to happen.
Later that evening I button up my coat before stepping out of the front door. The wind hits me instantly, grabbing at my hair and scarf and trying to tangle them together.
I pause for a second to admire the sight of Chi an Mor in autumn.
To most people, the Elizabethan manor house is at its best in the summer when it seems to glow honey gold against the blue skies.
Not me. I love it best in autumn and winter when the warm stone stands as a fixed point in a landscape dominated by the changing seasons.
Tonight it’s wild. The trees dance and bend, sending wild shadows across the grounds and rain splatters on my face. Seagulls ride on the wind calling joyously to each other.
I set off on the path that will lead me down to the sea. The cove will be wild in this wind and I love that more than anything. The waves crashing onto the shore, the salt-wet wind in my face. It makes me feel more alive than I have in years.
The voice calling my name is flattened by the wind and it’s only the third shout of “Milo” that makes me comprehend.
I turn to see Oz speed walking towards me with the dogs Chewwy and Boris at his heels.
As I wait, he pushes his arm into his coat as it flaps behind him like it’s trying to escape.
“Are you okay?” I ask. “You look in a rush.”
“I had to catch you,” he gasps, coming to a stop in front of me.
“Why?”
“I wanted to say sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?” The incredulity is clear in my voice and he gives me a sheepish smile.
“For going on at you earlier. It’s not my business if you want to stay here, and I never want to make you uncomfortable.”
My lip twitches. “Did Silas tell you off?”
“No,” he immediately scoffs before sagging. “Totally. But in that really gentle, kind way he has that prevents me from telling him to fuck off.”
I laugh. “Ah, marriage. It’s a constant torment.”
He smiles and steps into me, hugging me tight for a second. “I’m sorry anyway,” he whispers. “Personally, I’d be happy if you stayed here forever because I love you loads.”
“I love you too,” I whisper.
He steps back. “But because I love you, I want the best for you, and that might not be what makes me happy.” He sighs and scuffs his feet across the sand. “I guess I just don’t understand what keeps you here, and I know it’s not all Niall.”
I open my mouth to refute that any bit of it is about him, but I can’t, so instead I say what I’ve been dreading doing for ages.
“ Chi an Mor is a bit of a sanctuary for me. A few years ago, I was in a really bad way and Silas took me in.” I laugh humourlessly before reaching into my coat pocket for my inhaler.
Taking a puff, I put it back and continue.
“He said he wanted me to stay because he had hundreds of pictures that needed restoring. He was telling the truth.” I smile.
“It’s just that they’re all of his really hideous ancestors and he couldn’t have cared less if he ever saw their faces again.
Then he spent a year trying to give me a career which would entail me actually talking to people.
The only problem with that was that he apprenticed me with you and you talk enough for ten people, so eventually he let me go back to the silence and my paintings. ”
He bangs me in the ribs with his sharp elbow and I laugh, but his face softens the way it always does when he talks about his husband. “He’s a kind man.”
I nod. “And generous.” I sigh. “I hoped I’d never have to tell you this because honestly I don’t come out of it well and I … I rather like the way you view me as sassy.”
“You’re a lot more than that,” he says fiercely. “And nothing you tell me will change the opinion I have of you now as one of my best friends. Nothing .” He pauses. “Unless you did something really heinous like murder Silas’s mother.”
“I don’t think that would be heinous so much as totally justifiable,” I say wryly. “But no, she lives and breathes on a golf course with her husband Martin somewhere.”
He shudders. “Rather her husband than us, and let’s hope the golf course is very far away.”
I gesture rather awkwardly. “Let’s walk and talk.” It will be easier to talk if I don’t have to look at him.
He falls into step next to me as we walk the sands, the wind tearing at our clothes but the rocks around us neutering the noise so we can talk.
“I’ve told you before that I had a stutter when I was little?
” I say, and he nods. I shake my head. “It was horrible. I fell and hit my head when I was five. Before that, I was apparently very loud, but afterward …” I shudder.
“It was horrible. I would open my mouth and I’d know exactly what I wanted to say, but it was like something was strangling me.
You hear people saying the words are stuck in their throat, but it was literally what happened to me.
They’d almost choke me and meanwhile, while I stuttered and stammered, the person opposite me would be looking at me like I was a fucking freak.
After a bit, I learned to be self-conscious.
I learned to hide myself in full view, to shrink into the room so people wouldn’t have to look at me like that. ”
“Did you have a speech therapist?”
I nod. “So many. Some crap, but in the end, I got a good one. I learned to talk more softly than I had been because it makes it easier to get my words out. But it also made me even more invisible somehow. However, the worst of it slowly disappeared and when I was eighteen, I went to art college. I felt so much better in myself at that point, but my parents still didn’t want me to go.
They were a bit overprotective and they worried about my mental state, but I was determined. ”
“Did you enjoy it?”
I smile. “Of course. And it was wonderful. I made good friends and I enjoyed the classes. Although I loved painting, I wasn’t that good, but I found that I really loved restoration and I was good at that.
Enough to get an apprenticeship at a really prestigious museum and gallery in London.
My confidence was high … and then I met Thomas. ”
“I somehow feel that this merits the Jaws theme tune.”
I sigh and laugh. “All four films’ worth, including the really shitty last two.
” I shrug. “It’s a fairly common story. He was an artist. Extremely talented and temperamental and a bit of a darling of the art world.
Very up and coming. He was gorgeous, and for the life of me I couldn’t understand why he wanted me. ”
“Have you looked at yourself, Milo?”
I shake my head. “Anyway, he totally swept me off my feet. I was in love for the first time in my life and it was incredibly intense. He moved me in with him after a few weeks and we were together for a couple of years. He wouldn’t let me get out of bed for the first month.
” I pause at that thought and shudder slightly before going on.
“He was very popular. He was invited everywhere and I went with him, and it was like he’d sprinkled magic dust on me because I became popular too.
I thought life couldn’t get any better.”
“What happened?”
I sigh. “He was incredibly intense. He wanted my attention all the time. Sulked like a child if he didn’t get it.
He had this way of monopolizing you and making you feel like it was because you were incredibly important to him.
Gradually I lost contact with my friends and I lost track of my apprenticeship too.
I’d try to get up for work, but we’d be hungover and he’d fuck me and before I knew it, it was four in the afternoon and I had another irate phone call from work which I’d forget about by going to another party.
I got the boot eventually, and who can blame them.
He just laughed, opened a bottle of champagne and said we’d celebrate because now I was all his. ”
“Oh no.”