Chapter 8 #2
Now he smiled and again it was a smile that lifted him into another category.
At least, it raised him from the somewhat depressed tramp status he’d been maintaining until he joined the rest of the population.
‘Don’t. It’s actually very popular for some inexplicable reason.
Like Grand Designs only a bit more so. People like to criticise what other people with bigger budgets do with their money.
Anyway.’ He cast a quick look at Tilly, who had begun to wriggle.
‘Long story very, very short. It’s filmed over two years.
First year the architect submits plans, they’re judged on those, then the shortlist goes forward to be filmed constructing their proposed building.
There are a few stipulations: they must already own the land and have planning permission – I guess that filming land registry transfers and planning officer visits is too tedious. ’
‘For a programme that is basically about building,’ I put in. ‘For an audience of three Schadenfreude-filled retired architects?’
Ross ignored me. ‘So last year I bought Elm Cottage and the land, got the permissions and entered my drawings. I’m shortlisted.
This year I have to do the actual construction work.
But, of course, I need to demolish Elm Cottage first and the TV people require it to be vacant possession.
Which I thought it was. But it turns out not to be, and if I go in or send bailiffs in, then the occupant can start shouting and make it difficult.
I have to be seen to actually have the ability to start building as soon as they are ready to film, you see. ’
Things clarified. ‘So that’s why you have to be squeaky clean and have no contact with the occupant?’
‘Yep. Any hint of a legal challenge and they’ll drop me from the shortlist faster than you can say Norman Foster.
He’s an architect,’ Ross said, seeing my lack of comprehension.
‘A famous one. And I really, really need this. Getting on the TV is good, actually winning is practically a career-making thing. Given that my business has been reduced to designing a public lavatory block in Scarborough and two independent house builds, The Great British Build is my only hope for keeping the business going.’
‘I see,’ I said, slowly. ‘But you’ve definitely got five thousand pounds to pay me?’
Ross looked defensive. ‘I can get it,’ he said, dropping his head and looking at his feet. ‘Pretty sure the TV company will pay up for that sort of thing.’
‘What if they don’t? I face certain death at the hands of a bunch of flappy birds and a woman who can’t or won’t speak, for nothing?
’ I stopped pushing Tilly and stood in front of him.
‘Because you aren’t the only person who’s desperate around here, you know, and that money could get Tilly and me somewhere proper to live and a decent Christmas. ’
Ross continued to stand with his back against the swing frame, hands in pockets and his coat flapping around him, so he looked like a deeply depressed tent. ‘I’ll get the money. I just need you to get whatever-her-name-is…’
‘Isobel.’
‘Yes, Isobel, out of the house. I need to send the construction teams in before the weather gets too bad, so we’re well under way before winter.’
‘All right,’ I conceded. ‘But I can’t do anything until next week.’
Brass flew out of the swing, over the top of Tilly’s head and was fielded by Ross, who stuck out a hand almost unthinking and caught the red felt of the tail. ‘Push, Mummy!’ came the imperative voice.
I pushed.
‘I’m not sure it will wait until next week. Can you fit it in any sooner?’ Ross held the toy dragon out to me.
‘I have to wait for Tils to be in nursery. I’m not going through yesterday again, and if she’s not in nursery then she’s with me, unless my neighbour Tia has a spare five minutes and I can’t rely on that.’
Ross jiggled himself upright against the post. ‘I could…’
I fixed him with a stare that could have burned holes in metal.
‘No. You couldn’t. I am not leaving my daughter with a man I don’t know.
To be honest, I wouldn’t leave her with a man I do know.
’ He’d recoiled with such horror that I softened my voice.
‘Nothing personal, just protective-mother stuff.’ Or, at least, mother who lives in fear of her daughter being taken…
‘I’m sorry. Of course, I didn’t think.’ His lower lip was drawn up between his teeth again. It made him look so agonised that I felt sorry for him.
‘Look. I’ll go and have a quick look around tomorrow, all right?
Isobel might have packed up and gone now she knows the place is going to be knocked down.
And I have to go and get Tilly’s wellies back.
I can’t afford…’ I stopped. My lack of funds was not really Ross’s business.
‘But any hint of birds and I am out of there.’
He slumped again. ‘Thank you, Libby.’
His use of my name made me stop. It made everything feel more personal, as though I’d been pulled into some nefarious plan to make an old woman homeless. ‘Just for a look around, mind you.’
‘Yes, yes, I get that. No bird assaults.’ He stopped. ‘Would your daughter…’
‘Tilly.’
‘Would Tilly like a hot chocolate or something? There’s a little café over there and I feel I owe you.’
You owe me five thousand pounds, mate, I wanted to say but Tilly had heard her name in conjunction with the word chocolate and was attempting to screw herself out of the swing seat.
‘Chocolate!’
I sighed. ‘You’ve done it now. We’ll be lucky to get out of here without ear-to-ear chocolate application and a helping of cheesy chips. Tilly can be very persistent.’
I lifted her out of the swing and the moment her feet touched the ground she was off, sprinting across the play park in her almost-outgrown shoes. At least she was sprinting away from the pond this time though. Ross and I followed, me shoving the buggy ahead of me with Brass taking the seat.
‘Couldn’t you leave her with her father?’ Ross said conversationally as we walked. ‘I mean, he must have her sometimes, even if you’re not together any more?’
I shook my head. ‘No. He’s not around.’
‘Grandparents?’
It struck me suddenly that anyone looking at us, crossing the muddy grassland of the park behind an overexcited toddler, would think that we were a family.
Mum, Dad and daughter, out for a day at the playground, heading to the café for a restorative drink.
A harassed mother dragging a buggy with the father stalking alongside, head tilted into the wind, and their child stomping in puddles and screaming with delight as the water splashed to the height of her head.
We looked like the family Tilly would never have.
‘No,’ I said, trying to kill the conversation.
‘Come on, she’s not an immaculate conception.’ Ross sounded almost amused. ‘I’m fairly sure the Second Coming won’t wear a glittery top and dungarees with Babar the Elephant sewn on.’
‘It’s her favourite top,’ I said sulkily.
‘I just think that, should the Messiah return to earth, he or she will have a better taste in clothing,’ Ross said, sounding as serious as if he really had considered the sartorial choices of Jesus for a reappearance.
‘That’s because you’re weird,’ I said firmly and carried on dragging and shoving the buggy through the mud ruts and bird poo that ornamented what, three months ago, would have been a restful grassy stretch.
Tilly had reached a little clump of trees and was walking around it, patting each trunk. I was glad she’d slowed down because my lack of fitness was showing and I was sweating inside my coat. ‘Chocolate,’ Tilly said firmly, looking Ross squarely in the eye. ‘Now.’
‘Yes, we’re just going to the café, over there.’ I pointed.
‘Hot chocolate all right?’ Ross said, with the enforced jocularity with which most men speak to unfamiliar small children.
It wasn’t how David had spoken to her though.
I had a sudden red-hot memory. Tilly, just a tiny baby, David reading to her from his copy of The Stage, speaking to her not as though she were a child but as though she were an adult who understood the ins and outs of auditioning, because he didn’t know how else to speak to her.
I’d snatched her up in my arms, watched her small face crease into a frown and then into tears and had that overwhelming feeling of failure again.
She’d been happy listening to audition calls and now she was crying.
I shook my head to clear the memory. It had razor blades around the edges.
‘Are you all right?’ Ross broke my memory by touching me lightly on the shoulder. ‘You went all still.’
Tilly was staring at me too, one hand on the door to the café. ‘Mummy?’ Her voice trembled slightly and I remembered that I had to be the grown-up here.
‘No, it’s fine.’ Pushing away the memory, shoving down the dry crumbling feeling of fear, of incipient danger, I gave an unnaturally bright smile to both of them. ‘Just… thinking.’
Ross held the door for me as I dragged the recalcitrant buggy inside, like trying to get an unwilling horse into a trailer. As I passed him he raised a single eyebrow and it gave his usually careworn face a cynical cast.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ he muttered. ‘You aren’t on the run from a cartel of international drug thieves who are about to descend on this place?’ He glanced towards the blameless dragon, caught into the buggy by straps around his red felt scales. ‘And that’s full of heroin?’
My heart had settled now the flashback had passed. ‘No,’ I said shortly.
‘Shame. We could have flogged it and made a couple of million.’
My face stretched with disbelief. ‘Really? You’d take on international drug cartels?’
There was an empty table by the window. I hustled a highchair over. Although Tilly was technically too old to need one, I didn’t want to risk anything.
‘Why not?’ Ross shrugged. ‘I could do with a couple of million and you seem a sensible sort of person to go on the run with.’
He kept doing this, I thought, as we pretended to scan the menu.
I hoped he’d been serious about the hot chocolate as I couldn’t really afford more than a small carton of juice for Tilly, if I didn’t have anything, and if she was cheated of her chocolate then I’d be bearing the brunt for the rest of the day.
‘I’ll get this,’ he said, to my relief.
‘I hope you’re not spending the drugs money in advance,’ I said, just as a waitress came over to take our order. Judging by the bored way she stood, this wasn’t the most outlandish statement she’d heard this morning. Or, chances were, the most illegal.
‘No, I’ll wait until we get to our private island before I start flashing the cash,’ he replied, equally seriously.
The waitress handed Tilly a little colouring book and a set of pencil crayons with a look of sympathy.
Clearly, her look said, this poor child was being raised by two people with questionable morals.
And the poor little soul had been put in unsuitable shoes on a wet day.
Perhaps she should ring social services now.
Ross ordered us two coffees and a hot chocolate for Tilly, who was beside herself with anticipation. ‘And a muffin,’ Ross added. ‘Three muffins. Please.’
‘Blueberry, lemon, banana or high fibre?’ the waitress asked, still looking bored.
‘Er. Blueberry,’ Ross said. Now I was the one who was beside herself with anticipation. Proper coffee and a muffin? How long had it been?
‘So, I take it you and Tilly’s dad don’t live together?’ Ross helped Tilly get the crayons out of the packet so she could start scribbling over the farm animals in the little book in unlikely colours.
‘No.’ Then, feeling I’d been a bit short, and he was buying coffee, ‘we split up when Tilly was really tiny.’
‘Badly?’
I didn’t want to do this in front of Tilly.
She was crayoning a cow ferociously in green, but I knew that her toddler brain would be listening, absorbing, soaking up anything I might say about her father to regurgitate back at me.
Or, even worse, at someone else. I tried to indicate with my eyes that this wasn’t a subject for a coffee meeting. ‘Quite.’
‘How do you reckon you are going to get Isobel out of Elm Cottage?’ He changed the subject so smoothly that I felt almost insulted.
Perhaps he didn’t care why or how I’d split up with David; after all, it wasn’t anything to do with him, and neither was I.
We were employer and employee. Maybe he was just trying to find something to say, something to keep conversation going.
‘I’ll appeal to her better nature,’ I said, and then snorted. ‘She can’t really want to live there. She says she’s got gas lamps and there’s a water tap outside, but there’s no heating and winter is coming, so I suspect she’ll leave of her own accord, quite quickly.’
Ross nodded, then the coffee and muffins arrived and I was occupied with trying to stop Tilly from throwing everything down her front. By the time we’d all finished, Ross was clearly ready to leave.
‘So, you’re going there tomorrow?’ he asked, chewing the side of a nail.
‘Only for a reconnaissance mission.’ I wrestled Tilly back into the buggy. ‘And to find Tilly’s boots. If there is so much as one wing feather in the place then I’m just going to stand outside the front door and yell.’
‘Five thousand pounds, though,’ Ross said. ‘If you can do it.’
I began the walk back to our flat through a fog that was beginning to streak its way along, marking the course of the river in a ghostly form as it rose above the water.
Five thousand pounds. Of course I could do it.
For five thousand pounds I’d bodily carry Isobel Isherwood out of the house.
As long as she didn’t have any birds with her.