Chapter Eighteen
Bo was working in the garden, tending to Madelief.
It was a rare day off for her, one where she wasn’t needed in Ida’s flower shop, and she was determined to enjoy it.
She’d changed into her oldest, most awful gardening clothes.
She’d made a coffee and poured it into her best thermos.
She’d pulled out her kneepads and settled into a particularly deep patch of mint which was threatening to spread into her raised beds.
She worked for hours in the sunshine, clipping and trimming and ruthlessly pulling at weeds, and she only stopped when a shadow fell over her, blocking her light.
“Hey,” she complained, peering up at Max, who was illuminated by the sunshine. “I’m too Australian for you to steal my warmth like that.”
He chuckled. “And I’m too British not to want to know what my neighbour is up to.”
She gestured to the soil around Madelief’s stem. “What does it look like I’m up to?”
“For all I know you could be burying the body of your last lover.”
“He’d deserve it,” Bo commented wryly, thinking of Oliver and his wandering eye, before shaking her head.
“I’m not burying anything; the opposite, in fact.
I’m pulling up weeds. This is a Japanese rose, a Pearl Maxwell to be specific.
It’s a rare camellia. They’re hardy but picky plants, and she needs to be protected from ice, frost and full sun, as well as from creeping weeds like this apple mint. ”
“She?” Max looked confused.
“Oh.” Bo frowned. “Umm, yeah, I call her she. She was Geoffrey’s favourite, you see. He named her Madelief.”
Max nodded slowly. “For the woman he loved the most.”
He remembered what she’d told him about Madelief previously, not that Bo was surprised.
She was almost certain Max still had questions about Geoffrey, curiosities about what life events had made him into the kind of man who would abandon both a lover and their child.
She wasn’t sure the story of Madelief and Geoffrey would help Max; wasn’t certain it would give him any of the answers he was clearly still looking for, but all the same, she understood why he wanted to know.
Bo looked down, away from the sun-soaked outline of Max and back to Madelief. “Yes. The woman he loved the most.”
“What happened to her? To Madelief?” Max asked, and Bo shrugged.
“I don’t know. Neither did Geoffrey. He looked for her though. For years and years.”
Max cleared his throat. “Will you, umm, tell me the story one day?”
Bo chewed on her lip. “It isn’t my story to tell. It’s Geoffrey’s. Remember I told you about the worst thing he ever did?”
“You mean, aside from cheating on his wife and abandoning both me and my mother?” Max returned sharply, before he took a deep breath. “Sorry. I’m trying not to take my anger at him out on you.”
It was the first apology Bo had ever had from Max, and she stared at him for a long moment.
“What?” he asked, but she shook her head.
“Nothing. It’s just, sometimes you remind me of him. Most of the time I can’t see any of Geoffrey in you . . . but sometimes, when you get that sad sort of anger in your eyes, I’m reminded of him.”
“I hope not. I never want to be like him,” Max replied simply, before he paused. “Was Madelief the worst thing Geoffrey ever did? Not the plant,” he added, nodding to the camellia under Bo’s hands. “I mean the real-life woman. The one he searched for.”
Bo nodded slowly. “Yes. He always regretted what he did to her.”
“He didn’t murder her, or anything like that, did he?”
“No. Like I said, he looked for her afterwards. For years and years.”
Max nodded, seemingly lost in thought for a moment.
“Max?” Bo stared up at him. “Are you okay?”
He shrugged. “Yes. It’s hard for me though. You knew him so well, but me . . . well, to me he was almost a stranger. He was my father, and I hardly know anything about him. The real him, I mean. Not the politician anyone can read about on the internet.”
“I wish I could tell you,” Bo said honestly. “But Madelief and Geoffrey . . . it isn’t my story to tell, Max. It’s Geoffrey’s story, and her story too, I guess.”
“Geoffrey’s dead,” Max remarked, in a pragmatically blunt tone, “and Madelief may well be dead too by now.”
She nodded. “Maybe. But then, maybe some stories are meant to die with the people who made them.”
“And yet Geoffrey told you.” Max shoved his hands into his pockets, kicking at the grass at his feet. “So, maybe he didn’t want the story to die.”
Bo thought for a moment. “You know how we talked about Geoffrey leaving you the house as absolution?”
Max nodded.
“Well, I think he told me about Madelief as his last confession.”
At that, Max offered a thoughtful half-smile. “Back in Catholic schoolgirl mode again, are you?”
She laughed. “The nuns would be surprised to see it. I was never a great student.”
Max smiled again, wider this time, though he still kicked again at the grass, and Bo blinked up at him.
“Did you want something, Max?”
“What?”
“Did you want something?” she asked again. “You came out here to talk to me.”
“I came out here to be nosy.”
“Nosy people have better phones than a Nokia 3310,” Bo replied drily, before she stood, dusting off her legs. “You want something.”
Max nodded, before clearing his throat. “I have to go to Berlin,” he announced, and Bo felt her stomach clench a little.
“Oh. Umm, when?”
“This Saturday. Some friends of mine are having a party. I said I’d go.”
Berlin. A party. She’d turned down Willa’s offer to fly her to LA for him, and now here he was, happily leaving her behind.
“Right,” Bo replied, trying not to show how utterly crestfallen she suddenly felt. “Will you be, uh, gone long?”
“Three nights.”
Bo said nothing, still trying to bury her emotions beneath a veneer of pleasant indifference.
She was such a bad actress though. Honestly, would it have hurt her to take a class or two?
She might have gotten more work if she had.
Might have learned how to hide her feelings better.
Might have been able not to blush in front of Max on a more regular basis.
“Raphaella will be there,” Max suddenly said, apropos of nothing, and now she stared at him.
“Oh.”
Oh? Is that all you can say? Bo thought desperately.
This was ridiculous. The man she was sleeping with casually had all but told her he was seeing the clever, well-spoken and musically inclined ex-girlfriend he’d been with for three years, and all she could say was “oh” while looking at him with wide and hurt eyes?
You need to recover this, her mind ordered.
Keep to the arrangement. Don’t let him see how much this bothers you.
“Look, Bo, I was actually wondering if you—?”
“Actually, that’s good timing, as I was thinking about going away myself,” she abruptly blurted out, cutting Max off and lying through her teeth on her feet. Max stared at her.
“Were you now?”
“Yes. I, umm, thought I might go and visit Wills.”
The words came easily, but they weren’t really a lie.
She did want to see Willa. She wanted it more than she wanted most things these days.
Bo could picture her even now: Willa with her perfect hair pulled into a careless knot that still looked editorial, her ridiculous designer sunglasses, the smile she wore when laughing with Bo over everything and nothing. She missed her.
“Wills?” Max, always analytical, looked momentarily concerned, and Bo realized with a start that he had no idea who Willa was. She’d talked about her friend, and how she and her friend had argued, but she hadn’t told Max any more than that.
“Yes. Wills, my friend. Willa. Willa Abbott.” Bo paused as a thought struck her. “You might have heard of her. She’s an actress.”
Max shrugged. “No. Can’t say that I have.”
“Oh, well, she was in this big movie years ago. Fields of Salt and Blood?”
An odd look crossed Max’s face. “Wait. Fields of Salt and Blood? I do know that movie.”
“Yeah. Everyone went to see it. It was an unexpected hit. Skyrocketed Willa’s career.”
“No, I never went to see it,” Max replied easily. “Actually, I was lead piano on the soundtrack. London Philharmonic.”
Of course. Of course that would be how Max knew of the biggest film of Willa’s career.
“And you still never went to see it?”
Max shrugged. “They invited me to the premiere, but I was already booked to play a series of concerts in Asia.”
“Right,” Bo said with a nod. “Well, Willa’s kind of a big deal. She’s also my best friend.”
“Wait,” Max said. “Is this the friend you argued with? The one you argued with about me?”
Bo nodded. “We haven’t spoken since that argument, and I need to fix it.
Wills won’t answer my calls though.” She stood taller, doing her best to put on a bright front.
“So, you going away this weekend works perfectly. You can go and see your friends . . . and, uh, Raphaella.” Bo swallowed down a rising mouthful of bile. “And I’ll go and see Wills.”
Max looked at her for a long moment, as though searching for something in her eyes.
Bo couldn’t help herself from turning pink under such intense scrutiny, hoping against hope that the afternoon sun disguised the new tinge to her cheeks.
Max shoved his hands into the pockets of his chinos — and, oh God, why did he have to be wearing the clothing that Bo found the sexiest on him? — and his expression hardened.
“So, you don’t mind my seeing Raphaella then?” he asked bluntly, and Bo put on another bright but entirely false smile.
“Why would I mind? You and I are just, you know . . .” she waved her hand awkwardly. “We have an arrangement, right?”
“Right.” Max nodded, and his tone was curt.
He sounded like the Max of old, the Max of before, the Max who’d been a stranger to her.
He didn’t sound like her Max, and then Bo did a double-take, because when had she started thinking of Max as hers?
Exactly when had this sense of belonging to him and him belonging to her begun?
“Max—” she started, even though she had no idea what she wanted to say. She only knew they couldn’t leave their conversation here, on this sour note. But Max cut her off before she could even really begin.
“You’re right. It’s just an arrangement. Thanks for the clarification, Bo.”
She nodded again, but it didn’t matter. Max had already turned and was walking back to the house, and Bo watched him go with a sinking feeling that was made of both dread and sadness in her stomach.
They had an arrangement, and she was sticking to it.
So, why did it feel so awful? Why did it feel so wrong?