Chapter 36
‘What did you do to your hair?’ Geoff asks.
‘I’ve had it cut,’ Celia replies. What does he think? That the sighting of his naked arse caused it to shrink back into her head? She takes the seat opposite him in the rather functional, no-frills cafe.
‘Hmm. It’s very short.’
‘It is, yes.’ She turns when the girl comes over, and asks for an Americano. Geoff has a coffee already and a half-eaten plain croissant sits on a plate. Whoo, buying cafe food, Celia muses.
It was his choice to meet here. She’d never noticed the place before and right now they are the only customers.
She catches him assessing her new look; the feathery crop that shows off what the hairdresser described as her ‘lovely neck.’ In all of her forty-three years no one has never mentioned Celia’s neck before.
It reminded her that she has one. That, and a silhouette too! Whatever next?
‘So,’ Geoff says, fingers laced together, ‘how have you been?’
‘Oh, you know.’ Celia observes him coldly, telling herself to stay calm, to be neutral, to not rise to him. ‘Fine, really,’ she adds. ‘Getting on with things.’
‘That’s good.’ He sips his coffee, making the familiar slurping noise that’s always made her wince. ‘How’s Logan?’
‘Staying at Mum’s at the moment.’
‘What?’ His brows shoot up. They’re different, Celia notices now. Tidier and perhaps a little darker? Has he had them laminated ? He’s definitely done something to them.
‘We had a silly tiff,’ she says, not wanting to go into it now. ‘I think he just needs a bit of space?—’
‘Must’ve been desperate to go there.’
‘She is his gran,’ she reminds him.
‘Yes, I know, but…’ We know what your mum’s like , his expression says, and the surge of loyalty that rises up in her takes Celia by surprise.
‘They’re getting along fine,’ she says firmly. In fact she’d been relieved, when she’d spoken to her mum, to hear how well they were rubbing along together. Celia suspected she was enjoying having someone around the place.
Now she stirs her coffee unnecessarily and looks at Geoff. All the anger she’s been harbouring, all those fantasies about him choking to death on a pastry product – a cheesy bake, the crusty edge of a pie – have dissipated. She doesn’t feel any of that now.
She feels nothing, she realises. However, she does want to know the bare facts, in order to piece things together and figure out whereabouts she scores on the idiot-ometer. ‘So how long have you been seeing her?’ she asks. ‘Just out of interest.’
Geoff reddens, and she pictures him as the nineteen-year-old boy who’d shown up to take her out that first time.
The petrol station carnations. The fluffy upper lip and troublesome complexion.
How her heart had leapt then, that he’d wanted to see her so much, he’d summoned the courage to come round.
She can just about picture him further back, too: the quiet boy in the too-small blazer whom she had barely noticed.
Until that time, when Amanda had been given the role of Rizzo in the school production of Grease , and she’d caught him staring longingly at her from the front row of the audience.
Of course he’d fancied Amanda all along – but then everyone did.
‘A while,’ he replies, looking down at the croissant. ‘I suppose about a year or so.’ His gaze rises to meet hers. ‘I’m sorry, Celia. I’m not proud of it – I have to tell you that. It just sort of… happened.’
She nods, letting this information form a sort of skin over the surface of her emotions.
About a year. Wow. So he was seeing her as far back as last summer, when Logan was home, doing his summer job at PPP.
Over Christmas, too, when her mum had come over as usual and Celia had tried to trick her with alcohol-free wine: ‘What is this stuff?’ As if she’d served her water from the drains.
Celia is on the verge of winding up this conversation already.
Of saying, Well, that’s that then. We’ve met on neutral ground and I’ll quickly have this coffee – actually, no, I think I’ll leave it and go home, even though it cost ￡3.
50! But Geoff leans towards her, forearms on the table.
‘I really am sorry, Celia. I’m sorry I’ve put you through this. ’
She clears her throat. ‘Can I ask you something, Geoff?’
He nods.
‘Is there… a reason why it happened?’
‘Well,’ he starts, ‘I suppose there is, really.’
‘And what’s that?’
He chews on his bottom lip. ‘You’ve always had your own thing, haven’t you? For years now, it’s totally dominated your time…’
‘What are you talking about?’ she exclaims.
‘Your plants,’ he announces. ‘You were always so busy .’
‘That’s not true!’
‘Yes it is,’ he says firmly. ‘You were either wiping down leaves or repotting something, or making up some kind of horrible oil?—’
‘It’s not horrible oil. It’s leaf oil.’
‘Or there were people coming round, your customers, in and out the whole time?—’
‘There weren’t, Geoff! There aren’t. You can’t say that.
You know I’ve always tried to keep them out of the flat.
’ This is true, at least when Geoff’s been at home.
She’s tried to shield him from her customers – or actually, she realises, shield them from him .
That’s why she came up with the idea of the doorstep diagnosis.
More often than not she can figure out precisely what’s wrong there and then. Geoff barely saw anyone at all.
‘I’m just saying,’ he says with exaggerated patience that makes her want to crack her coffee cup over his head, ‘that for a lot of our time together I’ve felt like I’ve been at the bottom of the pile.’
She stares at him. ‘What pile?’
‘ Our pile! The pile of me and you and Logan. That’s what it’s been like for me, Celia. With your shop job and the flat being turned into a jungle?—’
‘But I keep it all in one room!’ Well, not quite, but she tries…
‘And right from the start,’ he goes on, ‘Logan was always your priority.’
She gasps at this. ‘At the start, Geoff – he was a baby .’
‘A toddler?—’
‘Less than one year old! He wasn’t even walking. Not even toddling . What was I supposed to do? Stick him in a cupboard?’
‘The way you’ve pandered to him…’ Geoff shakes his head, as if the time has come to assess her parenting and find it lacking.
Sudden tears sting Celia’s eyes. ‘Pandered to him? I don’t know what you mean! I just wanted to do what was best for him. I honestly don’t know what else I was supposed to do.’
Geoff posts the remaining piece of croissant into his mouth and chews it gamely as if it were a tough cut of meat. Has he always eaten like this? She is aware of bile rising, and something simmering unpleasantly in her stomach, heightened by a faint smell of bleach in this otherwise deserted cafe.
‘I just want to be honest,’ he goes on. ‘It’s felt like you haven’t had a lot of time for me, especially this last year or so.’
Celia is genuinely bewildered. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Well, what about when my dad died?’
‘What?’ she exclaims. ‘I’m sorry, I thought I was supportive through all that. I was there for you, wasn’t I?—’
‘All those weeks when he was in hospital?’
‘I went with you!’ she cries. ‘Every visit, I was there…’
‘Yes, upsetting him,’ he snaps. ‘Very helpful.’
‘Upsetting him?’
‘Saying that women aren’t a minority?—’
Celia splutters. ‘Well, they’re not, Geoff. Women are not a minority. That’s just a fact.’
‘Yes, but did you have to say that? Jump on your feminist high horse and finish him off?—’
‘You’re saying I killed your dad?’
He fiddles with his coffee cup. ‘Not exactly, but?—’
‘And what d’you mean, my feminist high horse?
’ She is a feminist at heart, of course she is, in that she believes wholeheartedly that women are equal to men.
But she’s hardly acted like one, has she?
She hasn’t exactly spearheaded the movement by allowing Geoff to control whatever they did and didn’t do, what kind of shower gel they used, and God forbid she bought anything other than the cheapest rancid-tasting orange juice!
‘Just what I said,’ he mutters.
Celia looks at him dispassionately. The tears that were threatening to spill over have miraculously evaporated, or been sucked back into her eye sockets or wherever it is they go.
To think she was so worried about the practicalities; the colossal task of untangling lives that have been tightly bound together.
She can liberate an African fig, gently separating its compressed roots – and although this is somewhat trickier, she knows she can handle it.
‘What are you doing?’ Geoff stares up at her.
‘I’m going.’ Having jumped up from her seat she delves into her old, worn tote bag, rummaging among her purchases from the health food shop, and pulls out her purse. ‘Here.’ She slaps down a ten-pound note. ‘Don’t want you to be out of pocket.’
She turns and marches away, between vacant tables, aware of the woman behind the counter staring at her in surprise. ‘It’s not that much!’ Geoff calls after her.
At the door now she glances back briefly. ‘Keep the change,’ she says.