Chapter 1 #3
“Oh no, indeed. From that moment he changed. He’d switch moods so quickly.
He’d be so possessive. Couldn’t bear anyone to talk to me.
Couldn’t bear my attention to be away from him.
Then the next minute he’d belittle me. Tell me how ugly I was, how stupid.
How I was worthless and no one would ever want me.
” I shake my head. “My stutter came back for the first time and nothing I tried that had worked before, worked again. He’d mock me all the time in front of his friends and they’d join in.
If I ate, he’d tell me how fat I was. I lost a stone because my throat would close up whenever I tried to eat.
” I shoot him a look. “It’s utterly pathetic. Very far from strong and sassy.”
“Don’t say that,” he says fiercely. “You are strong. If you got through that then you’re the strongest person I know.”
I huff. “Not that strong. A real man would have told him to fuck off. Not taken it and stuttered while I was doing it.”
He comes to a stop and drags me round to face him and I realise that he’s very angry.
“A real man ? Can you hear that? What is a real man, Milo? I’ll tell you what a real man is.
He’s someone kind and generous and loving.
Someone who has had his spirit crushed yet gets back up and carries on making ugly things beautiful.
” I swallow hard and he hugs me. “Tell me something awful happened to him?”
“You could say that,” I say wryly. “Hurricane Niall came calling.”
“Oh my God, tell me,” he breathes, and I grin. It’s the first time I’ve ever smiled about this, but it lasts all the way through my telling of Niall’s rescue.
“It was like when you open your windows in a stuffy room and the wind blows in and cleans everything,” I muse.
“He was like that. A fresh, clean breeze. He brought me back here, moved me into the rooms he was in and basically nursed me back. He never made me do anything, but somehow I did exactly what he wanted. You know Niall.” Oz smiles.
“He listened,” I say softly. “Even though it must have been fucking torturous because everything I said took an hour. He listened and never displayed an ounce of impatience, and he made me get the poison out. Then one day he decided things had to change.”
I think back to the memory and smile, but it’s bittersweet because it underscores how pathetic I was.
I come awake when the curtains in my bedroom are swished back by an energetic hand.
I squint through the dazzling light to see who is standing in my bedroom and then groan.
It’s Niall. He looks full of life and very awake, dressed in jeans and a thick, black jumper.
With his face flushed from the wind outside, it’s obvious that he’s been at work already.
I peek at the clock and wince. Probably for a while now because it’s eleven o’clock in the morning.
“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty, and let down your lovely locks,” he says, his rich deep voice full of amusement.
“You’re mixing up your f-f-fairy tales,” I say slowly.
“I don’t think stories, where some silly bint lets a total stranger use her preternaturally long hair in order to gain access to her locked home, are necessarily big on realisation,” he offers.
I fall back against the pillow and groan pitifully in the hope that he’ll leave me alone.
It doesn’t work. It never has since I came here months ago.
In all that time, he’s badgered and pushed me until I could scream.
When I got to that point but subsided, he always looked disappointed and then went right back to pushing me.
First, it was speech therapists and counsellors who were shoved my way.
Silas and Niall had worked as a team, Silas easing the way with me using sweet words of reassurance and then Niall badgering the professionals until they agreed to see me immediately just to get him off their backs.
I know they’ve done some good but God, it’s been hard, and at times it’s seemed impossible.
Niall chose food as his next battleground.
He dedicated himself to finding out my favourite foods, and when Mrs. Granger couldn’t manage them he cooked them himself, coming in from work and serving up rich stews and cottage pies and custard tarts.
God knows where he gets his energy from, but I wish I could find the source because some days I’ve felt too tired to even get out of bed.
It’s on these days that he’s been at his sweetest. He’d sit patiently waiting for me to eat breakfast with that amiable smile on his face which somehow made me eat, and then he’d bundle me up and take me out for long walks with him all over the estate.
Or, on the days when I was too tired to move, he’d put me in the car and take me with him as he motored all over the estate checking the progress of jobs and calling in on the estate tenants.
I’d sit quietly with him, listening to his deep voice discussing business while eating whatever piece of cake had been thrust on me, my cheeks glowing from the wind and cold.
And slowly I found that I could digest food again once Thomas’s glowering presence had been replaced by Niall’s steely sweetness.
I sit up when he moves around the bedroom. “What are you doing?” The strength in my voice is thrilling, but I hold it close to my chest in silly superstition just in case it makes my stutter come back.
“I’m getting your clothes, dearest,” he says, throwing some jeans and an old sweater of his onto the bed.
It’s one I’ve been wearing all the time because the comforting bigness of it clings to my body, offering warmth and a phantom gust of his scent.
I flush, suddenly more aware of him than I’ve been in the years since I had my teenage crush on him.
That had been broken abruptly when I was seventeen and the scales had fallen from my eyes, and I sincerely hope I’m not going to start it all over again.
It’s the last thing I need after Thomas.
That’s a sobering enough thought to get me out of bed and it’s reinforced when I catch sight of myself in the mirror, because really, why on earth would Niall look twice at me anyway?
I’m still scrawny thin, although I’ve filled out a bit, and my wavy hair is the longest it’s been since I moved in with Thomas.
I raise my hand to push the messy waves away.
“What’s up?” he asks, ever sensitive to what I’m thinking.
“Maybe I should cut my hair.”
“Why?”
“Thomas said I should. He said it was ugly when it was long.”
His eyes narrow but that’s the only sign of his agitation. “Well, if that turd said you should cut it then it’s obviously an indication to me that you should grow it so long you could plait your toes in it.”
Unbidden I laugh, and his eyes lose their chilly coolness at the mention of Thomas and warm as they look at me. “Cut it or don’t cut it,” he says steadily. “It’s your hair and your body, Lo. Do what you want to do with it.”
I offer him a small smile and settle for pulling some of it off my face in a topknot before following him out of the room.
I traipse after him down the corridor outside and frown as he starts up the staircase that leads to the first floor of the attic rooms. “Where are we going? I thought we were going out for a walk.”
He looks back, his blue eyes almost navy in the dim light. “Nope. I have something to show you.”
“Oh God, it’s not p-p-porn, is it?”
He laughs, the sound rich and warm in the stairway. “No. That’s why God invented computers and locked doors.” He pauses. “And socks.” I laugh, and he gestures to me. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
Intrigued, I follow him up until we stand outside a white painted door. “Okay,” he says, breathing in deeply which is the only sign of nerves about him. He throws open the door and gestures me in. “After you.”
I stare at him and wander into the room only to stop dead. “Niall,” I breathe. “What is this?”
“It’s your workroom,” he says steadily. “Where you can start restoring pictures again.”
I stare around the room with the large window letting in tons of light.
My glance skips over the huge table with the expensive-looking microscope on it, the easel in the window and the table next to it on which are set pots full of wooden sticks and cotton-wool swabs.
The floor-to-ceiling cupboards are open showing oil paints, their colours jewel bright in the glass bottles.
I inhale and already I can smell varnish on the air.
I notice a picture on the easel and walk over to it. “Jesus,” I say instinctively. It’s an oil painting of an old man, but that’s as far as I can say because the picture is darkened by layers of grime. However, it doesn’t quite manage to dim the malevolence that dances in the old man’s eyes.
He nods. “I know. Apparently, it’s one of Silas’s forebears. If he’s anything like Silas’s father you’ll probably be sorry if you bring him into the light, but then art restorers can’t be picky.”
I turn to him. “You must have spent a fortune on this. How did you know what to get?”
“I made a few calls,” he says airily, and I know instantly that he’s made dozens of calls and probably badgered the life out of people.
Niall is relentless if he’s doing something for someone he cares about.
I know I come under that remit because of Gideon, which is a sharp splinter that lodges under my skin.
“Why have you d-d-done this?” I whisper.
His eyes soften. “Because it’s what you’re good at, Lo.
You always used to find beauty in everything.
You just forgot how to do it for a while when you were living with ugliness.
I think you need this for your soul.” He flushes as if he’s startled himself then smiles and ruffles my hair.
“Besides, you’ll be doing Silas a huge favour.
He’s got fucking tons of these ugly old buggers lying around. ”
I stare at him. He knows I’ll do it because it will please him and it’s a chance to do a favour for Silas who’s given me everything and taken nothing in return.
However, I wish passionately that for once I didn’t need this.
That just for once Niall wouldn’t have to rescue me and take care of me, because we seem to be locked in these roles now and nothing will ever change.
I come back to the now and shrug. “And that’s how Niall dragged me back into the land of the living.”
Oz laughs but there’s a softness to his face. “And that was it?”
I nod. “It wasn’t easy. I went to speech therapy and saw the therapist they found for me, but my real salvation was that picture.
I swore and cried at the bloody thing, but it was my way back and I took it.
” I pause. “Although thinking of the ancestor I discovered under the dirt, I think everyone might have wished that I hadn’t bothered. ”
He stops and hugs me, his smaller body strong and warm. “I love you, Milo,” he says fiercely. “And nothing will ever change it.” He pauses. “Niall’s actually getting easier to love the more stories you tell me about him.”
“I don’t love him,” I say sharply and shake my head emphatically when he looks at me.
“I know you think there’s something between us, but there isn’t.
I’m not what he’s looking for. He goes for confident people who are the life and soul of the party.
He thinks of me as a little brother. Someone to look after and watch over all the time.
Someone a bit pathetic who needs rescuing. ”
He opens his mouth but the knowledge that he can’t argue with this statement is plain in his face along with a tiny hint of pity, so I rush on.
“I don’t want rescuing. I don’t ever want that to happen again.
I won’t do anything anymore unless I can see the way it’s going to be.
I don’t like surprises. The next time I go out with someone, I want them to be calm and easy-going.
I spent too long being swept along by the force of someone’s will to want to go back. I need a clear, safe, and calm path.”
I look out to sea and the red sky and nod to emphasise my point. He looks at me for a long second but then, to my relief, he nods. We walk silently for a few minutes, but my words still seem to hover on the breeze like smoke.