Chapter 49
Forty-Nine
T he afternoon dragged and my usually cosy cabin became a hothouse of tension, all courtesy of Mark. By the time my doctor’s appointment rolled around I practically ran out the door.
I wasn’t relishing the idea of telling my GP that I’d lost my pills but I was glad of an excuse to get out of there.
An hour later, the pills were in my hand and I breathed a deep sigh of relief.
Being disorganised was cute and everything but I needed to start paying better attention to where I was putting things.
No further encounters sounded like hell on earth and once Alfie found out it probably would be.
I decided to head straight home and pulled out my phone to text Alfie, telling him to pick me up there instead of work, but an unread message was already sitting on my screen waiting impatiently for my attention.
I’d never thought of texts as impatient before, but Alfie’s definitely were.
I swiped my phone and opened the message.
I have to go to London. I’ll see you tomorrow.
A.
Well, Mr Tell, how very romantic.
His bluntness should annoy me, but behind the message I could imagine him in a boardroom, head of the table, miserable and dead-eyed, the way I’d seen him so many times now. I wished I could be with him but considering the 24-hour abstinence rule this actually solved a lot of potential arguments.
Besides, it meant I got to spend some time with my family. I needed to make the most of them while I could, because in two weeks, one way or another, I would be leaving them. Telling Rosie had been hard enough. How I was going to break it to the only family I had left, I had no idea.
“No, no, no Auntie Lo! He needs to be way fatter than that!” My darling nephew scolded my attempted illustration of Geoffrey the Ice-Cream Eating Giraffe.
I’d spent the last hour of my Monday evening at the dining table, being berated by an eight-year-old as I failed to draw a suitably obese giraffe.
I’d run into a solid wall of guilt when I got home. The house was a mess, Ryan was having a fit about something, and my sister looked exhausted. I’d left her on her own for four days. What kind of sister was I?
Then I remembered that in two weeks I’d be leaving her for good.
As I looked at her, with circles around her eyes and slumped shoulders, I wondered what kind of shitty person I must be to ditch the only family that I had to follow my own selfish needs.
So, I did the only thing I could do at that moment—I gave her the night off.
I’d thought she might go out and see some friends, but instead she was spending her rare night of freedom having a bubble bath and reading a Georgette Heyer novel in the private serenity of her bedroom.
My attention was drawn back to the temperamental urchin in my lap by his elbow digging into my ribcage.
The back of his neck was smeared with dirt, there was paint, glue, and several other questionable substances on his t-shirt, and his hair stuck up in tufts all over his head.
Ryan would be more at home in Fagin’s Den than my gran’s little cottage.
He wriggled in my lap, readjusting his bony bottom until he was comfortable again, then snatched the pencil out of my hand and re-drew the giraffe himself.
I watched him colouring carelessly over the edges of the paper so small yellow lines spilled onto my gran’s wooden dining table, replacing the ones that I’d left there when I was a child.
My phone buzzed. I glanced at it over the top of Ryan’s head, not at all surprised when Alfie’s name flashed on the screen. I held it out of the way of Ryan’s all-seeing eyes, as I wasn’t sure if what Alfie had to say would be child appropriate.
I strongly dislike being away from you.
A.
I smiled, my heart warming as I awkwardly typed with just one hand, the other still wrapped around my nephew's middle.
Effusive as ever, Mr Tell. I’m not a fan of it either. How’s London?
I pressed send and within seconds my phone pinged again.
Suppliers have fucked up. Distract me please.
A.
Distract him? I could just imagine the kind of distraction he was after.
I’m not sending you nudes, Alfie.
Again, his reply was immediate.
Good. I don’t want them. Just talk to me.
A.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Nudes just seemed beneath him somehow. A Botticelli-style portrait of my bare arse would be more up his street.
But he wanted me to talk to him? Talk to him about what? My phone buzzed again and I opened the message.
Tell me what you’re doing. I want to imagine you.
A.
Instead of typing a reply, I took a photo of what was directly in front of me.
The back of Ryan's head, some rejected sketches of a fat giraffe, two plates that once contained blueberry muffins and a half-drunk mug of chamomile tea. It was my life in a heartbeat. I expected another instant reply but it didn’t come.
I waited. And waited. Then my patience ran out.
What’re you doing?
After another moment I finally got a reply. It was a photo and my jaw dropped.
Are you on a helipad?!
The image was of a helicopter, clearly on a rooftop somewhere, with the deep night sky filling the background.
Yes, I have to go to Paris. I hope to return tomorrow.
A.
I sat back in my chair and chewed my lip.
The thought of him leaving the country made me feel nauseous.
I gave myself a mental slap. I could handle this, it would be fine.
If I chose to take my college place I was going to have to put up with us being a lot farther apart than this.
In fact, whether I pursued my dream or not, we were going to have to be apart a lot whilst he was at work, unless I became his personal fuck slave and followed at his heels wherever he went.
Any and all roads in front of me seemed bleak at the moment.
I sighed and tried to push the grim thoughts away.
Ryan was still scribbling away, blissfully oblivious to my worries.
I read Alfie’s text again, trying to read between the lines.
He was trying to tell me something without saying it.
Every day I spent with Alfie seemed to bring me closer to him.
I was learning that work, for whatever reason, filled him with a deep sadness that I didn’t understand yet.
When you get back, we’re eating gateaux in the jacuzzi while I whisper sweet nothings in your ear.
I sent the message off and worried at my lip.
Had that been the right call? What if that was stupid and not at all what he wanted?
I gave myself another mental slap and clamped down on the self-doubt spiral.
I squeezed my eyes shut and only opened them again when my phone pinged with a single worded message.
Agreed.
A.
Agreed? He really wasn’t giving me much to work with, but then again, he was about to cross the channel in a helicopter so he probably had other things on his mind.
I decided not to send another reply. He would text me again if he wanted to.
I was about to lock my phone when I noticed something.
I clicked on the photo Alfie had sent. What was that red thing inside the helicopter?
My stomach sank as suspicion grew. I zoomed in on the flash of red and yes, there they were.
Attached to a pair of thin legs, seated comfortably inside the helicopter my man was about to board, were the tell tale red shoes of Angie Carter.
She was his assistant. His personal assistant .
I was trying really hard not to bite on that, but no matter what I did I couldn’t shake the thought that my man was on his way to the most romantic city in the world with my sworn enemy.
Okay, so ‘ sworn enemy’ might be a little melodramatic, but I really hated that woman.
I could just imagine Alfie’s face if I told him I was jetting off to Paris with Bradley.
He’d have an aneurysm, yet when he did it, it was perfectly acceptable.
The double standard bothered me no matter how much I tried to stop it, but what bothered me more was the realisation that Angie Carter was going to be a part of my life.
It hadn’t occurred to me that if I went with him, I was going to be seeing a hell of a lot more of that pinch-faced witch.
It was a definite mark for the con list.
I eyed my phone over the top of Ryan’s head, daring it to do something.
To give me a sign that Alfie and Angie were not currently fucking in some decadent Parisian hotel.
She would wear expensive lingerie for him, all pure silk and lace, unlike my store bought cotton.
And I bet she’d know the difference between a fish fork and a salad fork.
She wouldn’t look out of place at a Michelin star restaurant.
People wouldn’t stare at them and wonder why they were together.
I administered my third mental slap of the evening and sighed.
“Why do you keep huffing, Auntie Lo?” Ryan asked as he coloured in the last of Geoffrey’s legs.
“I’m not huffing.”
“You are, I can feel your shoulders going like this.” He bounced his bony shoulders up and down, a comical exaggeration of what I’d done.
“And now you’re going to feel my arms doing this.
” I scooped him up as best as one could scoop a wriggling, squalling child and carried him upstairs for a bath.
I pushed away thoughts of Alfie and Angie.
My time with my family was running out and watching Ryan happily dive-bombing flying sharks into innocent cargo boats, just brought home how much I was going to miss.
I loved my nephew so much, even if he was more Artful Dodger than Oliver Twist.
Eventually, when his skin was wrinkled and the paint and dirt had been washed away, I lifted Ryan out and wrapped him in the fluffiest towel I had.
He chatted away about everything; his plans for his novel, his upcoming football match, his not so subtle hint at wanting a skateboard.
I listened, soaking in every piece of inane gossip from his day.
These were the things that made up his world and I committed all of them to memory as I towelled his hair and tamed it as best I could.
I dressed him in teddy bear pyjamas—a misleading costume for such a devilish child.
I watched him brush his teeth and then took him to bed, tucking him into the covers before settling in next to him to read Peter Pan.
Ryan had a love of all books. He’d become obsessed with many characters over the years, but Peter Pan was his idol and Natalie couldn’t decide whether that was a good or a bad thing.
By the time Wendy was kidnapped by Hook, Ryan’s eyes were finally drooping.
I closed the book gently and set it on his night stand.
Half-asleep, he reached out his skinny arms and turned his face up to be kissed.
His cheek was warm and baby soft, and I held him close with his arms wrapped tightly around my neck.
When his breathing had become heavier, I laid him down. I whispered a soft goodnight and left him, switching out the light but leaving the door open a crack because this mischievous little boy, for all his talk about his love of monsters, was still just a little afraid of them.