Chapter 30
Everything has a natural lifespan.
Celia tried everything she could, darling.
D’you know, I was thinking we might get another goldfish?
As Celia beckons him back inside, Enzo is already rehearsing how he’ll break the news to Mathilde.
‘I just wondered if we could have a quick chat.’ Celia smiles briefly.
‘Yes, of course…’ Here we go , he thinks with a sinking heart.
Enzo follows her along the hallway and into a neat but rather sparsely furnished living room. Compared to the plant room it feels rather sterile; it’s hard to believe that they are part of the same flat. A small, delicate ivy on the bookshelf appears to be the only plant life in here.
Celia motions for him to sit on the pale grey sofa and perches on a high-backed wooden chair. ‘I’m just finding it hard to get to the bottom of it,’ she starts.
‘You mean… the trouble with Spike?’
She nods. ‘I’ve been reading up on it and I feel like I’m not getting any further forward.’ A pause, as if right now she’s still trying to figure it out. ‘D’you know if anything happened? Something to his environment that might have shocked him?’
Enzo frowns, shaking his head. ‘Um… no. Not that I know of.’
Celia lets out a sigh, pushing her light brown hair away from her face.
When they’d arrived this morning, Enzo had thought she looked a little tired.
He’d surmised that she’d probably been out last night – a Saturday night – maybe with the women he’d met on his last visit; the cake baker and the excitable shopper (away from the classroom he’s terrible with names).
Now, though, he wonders if something has upset her today.
‘Erm, I just want you to know there’s no pressure,’ he starts. ‘I mean, I’m sure it’s not your top priority anyway. But even so, if you really can’t help, then that’s totally fine?—’
‘Oh, no, I didn’t say that!’ She appears quite taken aback by the suggestion.
‘I just meant…’ Enzo stops, wondering how to put it now – because somehow this whole cactus situation seems to have spiralled out of all proportion.
He should have come clean, the day Mathilde came home from Scarborough, instead of involving Saska, and then Celia, who clearly has a lot on her plate right now.
‘Celia,’ he starts, ‘would you like me just to take him away?’
‘Absolutely not,’ she exclaims. ‘I just need time, that’s all. I’m sorry,’ she adds distractedly. ‘It’s just been a bit of a morning…’
He studies her pale, delicately boned face, deciding that what she actually needs is for him to get out of her hair and leave her in peace. But somehow he finds himself asking, ‘Are you okay? I’m sorry, I seem to make a habit of showing up at exactly the wrong time…’
‘Oh, it’s not you,’ Celia says quickly, shaking her head. ‘It’s something else. Logan, my son. We had a bit of an – erm – a thing this morning, that’s all. You know how it is.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Enzo says, although he doesn’t know how it is. Not really. He and Mathilde fall out rarely and when they do, it’s usually over a silly thing and it blows over quickly. ‘Sorry to hear that,’ he adds. ‘I hope it wasn’t anything serious.’
‘Well, he thinks it was,’ she says with some force. ‘He stormed out. I don’t know where he’s gone.’
Enzo shifts forward on the sofa, picturing the tall, gangly young man he’d met briefly. Polite and mild-mannered, he’d thought. Shy with newcomers and possibly only hanging out in the kitchen because there was cake. ‘That must be worrying for you,’ he suggests.
Celia nods. ‘It is.’
‘You’ve tried to contact him, obviously.’
‘Yes, lots of times. He won’t reply to my texts.’
Now Enzo isn’t sure what to do. At school he is pretty adept at helping to unravel the kids’ problems and offer support, but this is different.
He hardly knows Celia but he does know that she is a kind and thoughtful person, from the way she was with Mathilde last Sunday.
The way she allowed them into her world like that; he could tell she is used to it being her private space, the way everything is set out meticulously.
Yet she seemed in no hurry for them to leave, and that touched him. Now he wants to help.
‘D’you think he’s gone out for a walk?’ he asks.
‘Just to clear his head?’ Enzo does that himself at school sometimes – just a speedy march around the block following a period with his challenging first years.
There’s this craze happening right now and he’ll be sincerely glad when it’s over.
The kids are leaning back in their chairs, balancing precariously on the back legs until tipping point happens (this resulted in Toby Watson being rushed to A&E with a cracked head).
‘I’m not sure,’ Celia says. ‘He doesn’t really do this, you know? Storm out, I mean. He’s not like that. But we had a fight…’
‘A fight?’ Enzo frowns. ‘You mean an actual fight?’
‘Yes, I suppose it was.’ Her gaze meets his and he sees with alarm that her green eyes are glossy with tears.
‘Oh God. I am sorry.’
She nods gravely. ‘I assaulted him.’
‘You assaulted him?’ Enzo stares at her. He cannot imagine Celia assaulting an ant.
‘Yeah,’ she murmurs. ‘I just lost it. I’ve never hit him or anything like that,’ she adds quickly. ‘I can’t remember the last time I even shouted at him. But I just… I just turned into this monster?—’
‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ Enzo says firmly.
‘I did!’ she insists. ‘I threw something at his head.’
Enzo looks around the featureless room as he tries to process what she’s telling him. ‘What did you throw?’
‘A pink wafer.’
‘A what ?’
‘You know, those biscuits?’
Enzo frowns, shaking his head. He has lived in Scotland for a very long time – fifteen years now – but no, he doesn’t know.
Now and again the kids at school mention something everyone’s intimately familiar with, like some kind of snack they all grew up on, and tease him for not having heard of it.
He speaks English so fluently he even thinks in English – but maybe he’ll never fully belong.
‘Those pink wafers,’ she reiterates. ‘You know, the long rectangular ones?’
Now he pictures the shards of broken biscuit scattered over Celia’s kitchen table. ‘Uh… yeah. But I can’t imagine that hurt him,’ he ventures.
‘No, but it was the whole thing,’ Celia starts, and then it all comes out in a rush: how she and her husband have just broken up.
How he’s left her for someone – at least she thinks he has, there’s been no discussion about anything – and how Logan knew about his affair, yet hadn’t told her.
How he’d been keeping this terrible secret buried inside him for months.
Enzo wants to hug her, but of course he doesn’t because that would be all wrong.
Instead he just listens as confusing details tumble out, about something floating in the loo, and the thing being fished out and pieced back together?—
‘Celia.’ Enzo gets up and touches her arm briefly. ‘This all sounds terrible. Really, a horrible ordeal for you and I’m sure it wasn’t much fun for Logan either. But we all do things we regret when we’re upset.’
He steps back and pushes his hands into his jeans pockets, not sure what else he should do.
Celia gets up from her chair, looking around distractedly, as if shocked that she’s told him all of this.
Regrets it, even. He’s not sure. To Enzo, the wellbeing of a cactus no longer seems of any importance of all. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says, turning away.
‘Please don’t be,’ Enzo says. ‘You have nothing to be sorry for. Honestly.’
‘I mean, blurting all that out at you. I don’t know what I was thinking…’
‘Really, it’s fine,’ he says truthfully.
She looks at him now and he’s struck by how honoured he feels, that she’s been able to talk to him. And he doesn’t want her to regret that, or to feel embarrassed or bad about it in any way. ‘It’s good to talk,’ he says, realising how feeble that sounds.
‘It is.’ She nods and then adds, ‘Would you have done something like that?’
‘Thrown a biscuit at someone? At my child?’
‘Not at Mathilde, no,’ she exclaims. ‘I mean at a fully-grown twenty-four-year-old man, if you were very upset?’
Enzo considers this. ‘I guess it depends on what had happened. But if I’d really lost it… then yes. Maybe a light biscuit.’
A glimmer of amusement flickers between them. ‘Not a Wagon Wheel, then?’
‘A Wagon Wheel?’ Now he’s confused. He doesn’t recall his pupils mentioning these.
‘It’s a large, comparatively hefty chocolate biscuit.’
‘Ah.’ He smiles.
‘I’m sure you think I’m crazy,’ Celia adds.
‘Of course I don’t,’ he says genuinely. Quite the contrary , he thinks.
All of this has been happening to her – whatever it was with the floating thing – yet she’s been carrying on, doing her thing, tending her plants.
Meanwhile he’s been blithely showing up at her flat, expecting her to perform a miracle on a dying cactus that his parents never cared for much anyway.
When Mathilde unpacked Spike from her pyjama case, he was fuzzy with dust.
‘Things’ll get better,’ he adds. ‘I’m sure of it.’
‘I hope so.’ She frowns. ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t even offered you a cup of tea…’
‘Or a biscuit,’ he says lightly.
She chuckles. ‘That could be dangerous.’ They look at each other and, although it’s not at all awkward, Enzo wonders if he should leave now.
‘So, um,’ he starts, ‘I’m sure you have plenty to get on with?—’
‘Actually, I think I need to get out of here,’ she announces.
He looks at her, confused. ‘You mean… move house?’
‘Oh no. Nothing quite as dramatic as that. Not yet, anyway. No, I just meant a walk.’
Now she seems more like the Celia who’d shown Mathilde how to massage the roots of a plant. Brighter and warmer and, he suspects, more like the woman she really is.
‘Well, I was planning to go for a run,’ he starts.
‘Oh, you go for your run! Sorry I’ve kept you by rambling on?—’
‘You haven’t rambled. Not at all. And if you’d like some company on your walk…’ He hesitates, wondering if he’s overstepped it somehow. ‘Then any reason not to run is good enough for me.’