Chapter 20 #2
‘All right,’ I said, turning to Ross. ‘In the house.’
Even Tilly had gone quiet. She had put her thumb in her mouth and her hand had found Brass where he’d been thrust inside her coat for safety. She’d felt my new acquiescence, and it had spread to her too.
We trooped into the cottage, through the half-stuck front door, down the hallway of missing tiles and into Isobel’s room at the back, where the streak marked by water getting in was more noticeable than ever.
I was reassuring myself that Ross and Isobel were here, that even David wouldn’t try anything dramatic with other people here, however much my mother might be under his influence.
He couldn’t dispose of all of us, could he?
He might have been able to make me disappear to gain full custody of his daughter, but he couldn’t vanish two other people, one of whom was about to make a TV show.
No. This wasn’t about a quick snatch of Tilly and away.
My heart steadied a little from its erratic samba.
This was about something else. A showdown, a final demand.
If he took Tilly now I had witnesses and Ross – Ross would help me, wouldn’t he?
I looked over at Ross, who was chewing his thumbnail and looking out of his depth, staring at the floor to avoid catching David’s eye.
No. I’d rejected his help so far and I didn’t need it now.
I would do what I’d done before and get Tilly and me out of this myself.
Isobel was standing near the window, the injured bird cradled in her arms. ‘Is it all right?’ I asked, completely ignoring everything else that was going on.
‘I hit it with my car and we couldn’t just leave him.
’ I wasn’t afraid of the bird, I noted with a dispassionate part of my mind.
It couldn’t fly up at me, therefore it wasn’t scary any more – that was interesting.
I must only be afraid of the unpredictability of birds, of their flapping and the likelihood of their getting in my face.
My brain clearly wanted to dwell on anything apart from what was happening here.
Isobel looked up at me, then back to the shiny feathers and panting beak.
One gentle hand rearranged the trailing wing, tucking it back into place.
Then she glanced at me again, put the bird very carefully onto the sofa, where it sat complacently as though this had been its objective all along, and wrote on her notepad.
Things will heal. Any damage can be repaired with a little attention. There is no cause to be afraid.
Then she looked over my shoulder at David and my mother standing together near the wall, and back to my face again, then nodded. It seemed as though the words were meant to apply to my situation as well as the bird.
‘Good,’ I said weakly, but very definitely only meaning the bird.
‘Tilly,’ David said at last, and Tilly stirred, turning to look at him. ‘She’s so big now.’ This was uttered almost wonderingly.
‘Well, they don’t tend to shrink much.’ I was pleased with my withering tone. If I could muster sarcasm then I could fight back. I could do this. ‘Odd, that.’
‘But she’s…’ His eyes were fixed on his daughter. ‘So grown up. Not a baby any more.’
‘She’s two, David.’ Still sarky. ‘I wouldn’t buy her driving lessons just yet.’
‘No… no, it’s just… Tilly. Matilda.’ He was almost disbelieving now.
Tilly looked at him and then at me. ‘Man, Mummy,’ she said.
‘I’m your daddy,’ David breathed.
‘Man.’
Tilly had never really had cause to say the word Daddy with intent and it was clearly not coming naturally to her. I was slightly smug about that.
‘We do have to talk, though,’ my mother said, perching herself on the edge of one of the companion chairs that sat complacently at the side of the room. ‘It really is important, Libby.’
‘I’m not going back,’ I said quickly, and David gave a small laugh.
‘That is not really an option now, is it, Libby? All bridges are burned and you well and truly scorched the earth behind you.’
I didn’t understand any of that and I wasn’t sure that I liked the slightly bitter tone of his acknowledgement.
‘How about…’ Ross broke in now, rubbing his hand over his head, leaving his hair leaning all over at crazy angles, ‘we start somewhere and work our way through? I mean, if you didn’t come to fetch Libby, why are you here?’
‘I want to see my daughter.’ David’s voice was tight. ‘And, by the way, who the hell are you?’
‘I’m Ross Ventriss,’ Ross said, which didn’t really answer the question.
‘The architect?’ David gave him his full attention now and Ross stopped, looking astonished. I felt my heart drop in a sickening bungee jump of realisation. David was an expert. He knew how to get people on his side and now he’d got Ross.
‘You’ve heard of me?’
‘You did a house design for a friend of mine, Wilson James?’
Both men looked taken aback now, like a pair of explorers meeting on an undiscovered continent. All I could think was, Great, I’m on my own here.
‘Oh, the house build down in Epping, I remember.’ Then, with a flash of a look at me, Ross added, ‘Very demanding client. Took ages for him to be happy with the staircase. Bit of a diva.’
My heart-bungee slackened and began a small upward swoop. Ross clearly wasn’t as easily entranced as David might have hoped. That little glance told me he’d understood how I would feel too. That was… I wasn’t sure what it was, but it made me feel a little bit steadier.
‘Come and sit down, it can’t be easy standing with Tilly in your arms all the time.
’ My mother pushed a chair forward, invitingly.
‘And you can put her down. David and I need to talk to you and the conversation isn’t necessarily one you would like her to overhear.
I remember you as a toddler and you’d repeat the most embarrassing things at the most inopportune moments. ’
Realising that she was right, that my arm was aching with supporting the weight of Tilly and Brass, and that I couldn’t keep standing there like a lighthouse beaming antagonism around the room, I let Tilly slither to the floor, whereupon she yelled, ‘Balls!’ and headed off to the table where she’d left the silver tray and the bag of diamonds.
‘Balls?’ David looked disconcerted now.
‘A toy.’ I wasn’t about to give him more details. ‘Now, can we make this quick? I have to get Tilly back for her lunch.’
Tilly would quite happily never have eaten again if the food wasn’t yellow, biscuits or ice cream, but they didn’t know that and they didn’t need to know.
My mother and David exchanged a long look.
Finally he made a sort of shrug. ‘I think this is over to you, Juliet. I’ve been rehearsing this for so long that I think I’ve run out of ways to put it.
’ His gaze went back to Tilly who had sprawled onto the floor again, encouraged by Isobel, and was plonking diamonds onto silver like a really random jewellery manufacturer.
Mum frowned. So far she’d mostly looked happy and relieved to see me but now she started to pluck at her collar, twisting and adjusting it and I knew from my years of growing up that this meant she was unsettled and distressed. ‘It was all my fault,’ she said faintly.
‘No,’ David interrupted. ‘No. We both agreed. And we had no way of knowing what would happen.’ He couldn’t take his eyes off his daughter, who had happily tipped the beads out and was rolling them back and forth on the tray with the top of Brass’s head.
Isobel was watching her with occasional glances thrown my way.
She was wary, which was good. If this all went pear-shaped, at least she could say I knew something was wrong.
Or, at least, she couldn’t say it but she could write it to anyone who cared enough to investigate.
I was trying to keep my eyes on Tilly too, but couldn’t help looking at David and my mother sitting side by side on those rotting chairs, like partners in crime. What the hell was going on here?
‘Why did you leave?’ Mum asked, almost plaintively. ‘Let’s start with that. Why did you leave David and take Tilly?’
I stared at her, genuinely agog. I couldn’t work out whether she was showing signs of dementia, being unable to remember my desperate last phone call.
Surely, surely my sobbing down the phone, almost incoherent with terror and fear, hadn’t been forgotten?
If Tilly had ever behaved like that to me – well, I would have been there in a flash. But my mother hadn’t.
‘David was a danger to me and Tilly,’ I said, trying to keep my voice level and not let that dread back in. ‘He was watching me. He was feeding me tablets to make me sleep so he could take Tilly. He wanted to get rid of me so he could have her by himself.’
I’d said those words so many times to myself or to others that they now sounded slightly overused: more like the plot of a psychological thriller than a real-life event.
‘I really wasn’t, you know,’ David said, still watching his daughter play.
‘You would say that though, wouldn’t you!
’ I snapped. ‘You’re hardly going to admit it all now!
I remember, you know, David. I remember you constantly asking me where I’d been, I remember you giving me those tablets and then me waking up to find you holding Tilly and telling her that you were going to look after her forever! ’
‘Libby.’ Mum reached out and put a hand on my arm. ‘Please.’
‘Well he did.’ I subsided into a sulk. Ross and Isobel were watching the three of us as though we were acting a play, turning their heads as we spoke. Everything suddenly felt unreal, as though I really were on stage, speaking scripted words.
‘I should have told you,’ Mum said. ‘David and I talked. He asked the doctors and their advice was not to say anything, just in case. Libby, do you remember asking me why you were an only child? You’d have been about ten, I suppose, and your best friend had, I think, four brothers?’
Chloe. That had been her name. I’d forgotten about her.