43. FORTY-THREE
There was a small carpark outside Poppy’s mum’s place, the bays tiny, the markings worn, access impeded by a cluttered row of wheelie bins. “Apparently that’s our one,” Poppy said, nodding to a mossy bay under a skinny poplar tree. It was occupied by a broken-down motorbike, the algaed tarp half off and flapping in the light breeze. “But that’s been there longer than we have. So park anywhere. It doesn’t matter, given your car’s going to get nicked in five minutes.”
She was joking. Probably. She was grinning at him, anyway, the bright spark in her eyes fighting through the anxiety that had clouded them since last night. His brain offered him an unhelpful but heartfelt thought along the lines of I wouldn’t mind having my car nicked so long as it made her laugh. But he gave the DBS a warning look as he locked it and mentally told it, Stay.
The block of flats was one of those eighties ones, made of pebbled concrete. A squat rectangular building, three stories high. He followed Poppy into the entrance hall and up green-linoleum-clad stairs that reminded him of an underfunded secondary school. Or how he imagined such a place. Something institutional about it, anyway. A hospital perhaps. One that hadn’t been cleaned in a while.
Poppy let herself in through a white door at the end of the second-floor corridor, calling, “Mum? It’s me.”
Roscoe followed, self-conscious. He had asked her if she wanted him here, offered to wait in the car—because surely he was intruding? But she had considered it for a moment before shaking her head and saying, “No. Come. I’d like you there.”
There was a metre-long hall—windowless bathroom on the left, almost windowless kitchen on the right—then immediately at the end of the little hall was the lounge, a window at the end overlooking the carpark. A woman stood by the window, cup of tea in her hands. She looked around at Poppy’s voice. So did a dark-haired teenaged boy sitting cross-legged on the floor, scowling in confusion over his shoulder as he took in Roscoe behind his sister.
“Oh!” Her mum visibly started at the sight of him. “Erm. Hello.”
“This is Roscoe,” Poppy said, taking his hand. “He drove me here.”
“Right,” said her mum, obviously flustered. “Hello.” She looked about forty. Fairly pretty and petite, with light reddish-blonde hair.
“Sorry to intrude,” said Roscoe.
The woman stared at him for a moment. Harvey—Poppy had told him her brother’s name—pulled a face, mouthing something indecipherable at Poppy. She narrowed her eyes at him, pulling a face he remembered often seeing on his sister Evie. Harvey seemed about as cowed by it as he or Hugo had ever done. The boy shrugged one shoulder then returned to his video game, seeming to dismiss them all from his thoughts.
Poppy towed Roscoe to the sofa at the same time as her mother gestured towards it saying, “Sit, sit. I’ll make tea. Do you want tea, Roscoe? Coffee?”
“Coffee, please. Milk, no sugar. Or I can make it?”
“No, no. You sit. I’ll get right on it.” She walked off to the little kitchen but not before shooting Poppy a look that very clearly said, You have some explaining to do. Poppy pretended not to notice it.
When her mum returned with their drinks, he sipped his and kept quiet, listening without looking like he was trying to. In fact, he tried to sink into obscurity, give them what privacy he could. Though he felt huge and ungainly in the small room, his weight making the sofa dip until he felt the hard edge of its frame. Or was it a sofa bed?
There was one other door in the corner of the room. It appeared to be a one bed flat, which meant it must be a sofa bed, the living room doubling as a bedroom. Three people in a small one-bed flat. His mews house maisonette was only one bedroom but built on a bigger scale entirely. This living room would fit into his kitchen. And this was where they all lived? Poppy’s mum and her two brothers?
“…and they’re cutting jobs anyway,” her mum was saying. “They’re going to cut my hours, and then—”
Her voice cracked. Poppy lay her hand on her arm.
“Harvey,” Roscoe said, leaning towards the boy. “Do you like cars?” It seemed a fair bet, given he was playing a racing game.
The boy looked suspicious. “Yeah…?”
“Come down and see mine.”
So they went down to the carpark, and Harvey didn’t have to see his mother cry.
Roscoe was quiet on the drive back to his flat. But Poppy knew what was coming. “No,” she said, when he opened his mouth to speak.
He flashed her a glance, jaw stubborn. “Why not? You know how easy it would be for me to help them.”
“How would they ever repay you?”
“I wouldn’t want them to.”
“It’s only a blip,” she said. “Liam will find something else. And I’ll tide them over in the meantime.”
“By not doing your course. By not going part-time at work. Or by moving back home. Four people in a one-bedroom flat.”
“If that’s what it takes. We’ll sort it out. We don’t need charity.”
“It’s not charity. It’s me helping someone I care about.”
She said nothing, thoughts stuck on a blunt, heedless refusal, panic at its edges. He had just started to see them as equal, just stopped seeing her as someone too vulnerable and pathetic to even touch. And now this. But it was an opportunity to show him she was strong, that she would never be dependent on him. She could do it all herself. Fix it all herself.
Why show him the flat? That unglamorous side of her life? Maybe so he could see how far she had come.
“Yesterday,” began Roscoe, “you asked me to give you myself and stop holding back. But now you’re holding back from me. You’re not letting me give you myself. The money is nothing to me. It doesn’t matter. I just want to help you.”
Her stomach gave a guilty twist. His eyes were fixed on the road, but she still saw the hurt there. The frustration he had spent the whole day doing his best to temper.
“Don’t they get a choice, Poppy? What do you think they would choose? If you won’t let me help you, at least let me help them.”
“It’s too much, Roscoe,” she protested, though his tactic was starting to work, slipping through her defences. Could she really decide for her mum, Liam, Harvey…? They might hate having to do it—her mum at least, Liam a little—but they would say yes.
“If I’m not contributing,” she explained, “they might end up needing support for months until Liam finds work. It could be thousands of pounds.”
“I’ll pay their rent for a year.”
She shot him a look.
“What do they pay each month?” he asked. “A thousand, two? Look at my fucking ridiculous car. You know that’s nothing to me.”
She couldn’t speak for a moment. “No… That’s too much… Way too much…”
“But it would take the pressure off, wouldn’t it? Your mum wouldn’t have to worry about her hours. Liam could have time to find a job he wants. Maybe even train, do something vocational. They could pay the excess into their savings. Go on holiday. I don’t know. I don’t care what they do with it.”
When Poppy didn’t answer, he looked briefly away from the road. She felt the pass of his gaze, soft and searching. When he spoke, his voice was calm, gentle. “I once read that people with my sort of money talk about it with two zeros removed. So if you want to translate how much things cost to me, take off two zeroes. Twenty-four thousand is two-hundred-and-forty-quid. It’s really not much at all. You’d give that to a friend in need in a heartbeat if you could, wouldn’t you? I know you would.”
Poppy let out a reluctant breath. “Yes.”
“Let me help. I’ll be miserable if I can’t.”
She nodded. Then, remembering he couldn’t properly see her while he was driving, she said, “OK. Thank you. Really… Thank you, Roscoe.”
“It’s my pleasure.”
And she thought that she might actually believe him.