Chapter Two #2
“I’m fine.” Her voice didn’t sound normal.
Marley would now know for sure that something was wrong, so she offered to go and retrieve Benjamin and hastily pushed through the crowd in search of her nephew.
She sighed as she did so, already anticipating a confrontation with her big brother.
Marley was not the type of man who’d shy away from a frank conversation if he thought there was animosity brewing.
In the early days of his relationship with Autumn, he’d argued with their younger brother on a number of occasions.
He’d challenged Pip to confide in him the darkest criticisms of his mind so that he could either apologise or explain.
He’d braced himself against the foulest of insults.
Pip had accused Marley of not really loving Bowie.
How could he declare he loved his brother when he’d slept with his girlfriend — and conceived Benjamin, it turned out.
It didn’t matter that Bowie had been engineering Autumn and Marley falling for one another in preparation for his death, Marley should have resisted.
As far as Pip was concerned, Bowie was a better man than Marley, and Pip wished Marley had died instead.
This feedback had temporarily torn their family apart.
Autumn and Marley had taken Benjamin and moved out of the family home and into a cottage in the local village, where they had lived ever since.
Emma was devastated. Maddie was angry Pip hadn’t considered their mother in his rantings and had, in turn, fallen out with Bluebell when she defended their younger brother.
Bluebell didn’t wish Marley dead, but neither did she think she could ever forgive him. None of it had been helpful.
Maddie thought their focus should not be on the past, but on the future.
Benjamin was all that mattered now. Loving him, protecting him, taking care of the people around him so that they could love and protect him.
She realised, with a start, that was part of the problem.
She was vehemently against Marley pushing Autumn into letting Benjamin perform aged five, and she wasn’t sure she could trust herself in the heat of the moment not to call Marley an ignorant fool.
Things had changed, sure, but not enough.
Benjamin would never be safe if he was out of sight of the people who loved him.
* * *
Maddie found Benjamin playing with some of his friends and coaxed him away by promising she’d ask his parents if he could stay with her at ‘the big house’ tonight.
She knew Autumn and Marley would likely say no, but it was the only way she could get him to comply.
She swept him into her arms and they set about looking for their family, who were loitering by the front door.
“Ready, baby?” Autumn asked, pushing Benjamin’s hair out of his eyes.
Benjamin let his head drop heavily on Maddie’s shoulder, nodding sleepily.
He was clearly exhausted and all thoughts of the big house were apparently forgotten.
Maddie carried him to the car and fastened him into his car seat, tucking him under an old blanket of Bowie’s he’d been sleeping with since he was a baby.
He smiled gratefully at her in a way that was oddly mature.
Benjamin did this sometimes and whenever he did, Bowie’s face would swim across her mind unbidden.
She’d always put it down to him looking like Marley and therefore also looking like Bowie, but it caught her off guard every single time he did it.
She did not let her mind wander any further than that.
She was a spiritual person, but even she drew the line at suggesting her dead brother had reincarnated as the love child of his girlfriend and twin brother.
“Love you, Aunty Maddie,” he said, right on cue.
“I love you, too.” Maddie kissed his head.
She bid Autumn and Marley goodbye before clambering ungracefully into the back of Ben’s and Emma’s 4x4, trying desperately to keep her mind off the enormity of the recovery retreat project, the pig, Bowie, and her own concerns about Benjamin embarking on a career in showbiz at five years old.
She was unsuccessful. By the time they pulled up to the house, she already knew she had a sleepless night to look forward to.
They were halfway up the steps to the front porch when James Byron stepped out of the shadows, his eyes dark and sallow, his curly hair stuck up everywhere as if he’d been electrocuted.
In the dim light, he looked like something out of a horror movie.
Maddie felt undeniably self-satisfied. He wasn’t so perfect after all.
She bet he looked like crap first thing in the morning, just like everyone else.
“Hello there,” he said. Maddie and Ben shouted the same expletive.
Emma shrieked. James grimaced sheepishly.
“I’m sorry. I’ve spent hours mulling over how to not cause you all to shit yourselves, and I’d decided on waiting on the steps, but then I sat on your lovely wicker porch couch and snuggled up under those blankets you keep in the basket by the front door.
I was so comfortable I must have fallen asleep. ”
Emma was clutching her chest. “Jesus Christ, you nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“So sorry.” He shook his head, no doubt at himself.
“What are you doing here, lad?” Ben asked, pushing the front door open. James and her father had not yet met, but Maddie had spent so much of that afternoon ranting to Ben about his audacity that he likely felt like they already had.
“I came to speak to Maddie,” he said.
Maddie frowned, her mind whirring. “Me?”
James nodded curtly. His hands were clasped behind his back like he was some sort of old English gentleman. He was after something, she could tell. Maddie sighed, folding her arms across her chest.
“Would you like a cup of tea, James?” Emma asked.
He looked as if he was about to nod, but Maddie spoke before he could move. “He won’t be here long enough to finish it.”
James widened his eyes at Emma. She shook her head knowingly, her mouth slightly upturned at the corners — and followed Ben inside.
She held the door open for them to follow, but Maddie stood her ground until her mother gave in and shut the door, leaving them standing outside in the light cast from the porch.
They stared at each other for a moment, perfectly still, with their shoulders pitched up high near their ears to protect them from the icy air.
James blinked, then squinted, then narrowed his eyes.
“Are you pulling faces at me?” Maddie asked.
James shook his head. “No, I’m trying to keep my face alive.”
“What do you want, James?”
“I need to reconsider the job thing,” he said.
“Absolutely not.”
“I promise you, I’ll be no bother.”
“No,” Maddie said, curtly. James dropped his shoulders dramatically and stared, exasperated, at the sky.
In spite of her annoyance, Maddie had to stop herself from laughing.
She loved theatrical people and James was clearly one of them.
Animated and dramatic in his movements and words, she was sure he’d be a blast to be around if circumstances were different, but she couldn’t overlook the animosity between them, the way he had judged her home and her family, his self-confidence and how arrogant it made him.
She also didn’t like the fact he was a farm worker who had come to her house hunting a defenceless pig.
Maddie, like her entire family, had been vegan since birth.
Her moral stance on eating animals had only strengthened over time.
He interrupted her reverie. “Is this because of the pig?” he asked.
“No, it’s your hair,” Maddie snapped. “Of course it’s because of the pig!
” She thought about mentioning how he’d made her feel like she should be ashamed of her home — the only place Maddie felt like she could truly be herself and the only place in the world she wanted to be — but she couldn’t be bothered to get into an argument about it.
It was easier to put this all down to the piglet.
“I was just doing my job,” he hissed the words at the sky, holding his hands up in what was either an expression of submission or a declaration of innocence. Maddie wasn’t sure which.
“There is absolutely no excuse for working there,” she said.
“How easy for you to say.” He stared pointedly around the huge grounds. “How many millions has your dad got in the bank?”
Maddie clenched her teeth. She wanted to tell him she knew how lucky she was — in fact, she had spent a long time feeling guilty about it and that was part of the reason she was opening the recovery retreat — but she caught herself just in time.
She reminded herself she did not need to explain herself to James, a man she did not like. “There must be other jobs.”
“There aren’t,” he said. “Not close by, anyway.”
“Then go further afield.”
“I can’t. I have a rescue dog who hates being without me for too long. I need to be able to pop in and see her every now and then or she’ll lose her shit.”
Despite herself, Maddie softened. She loved dogs.
She’d wanted one for a long time, but the timing had never been right.
She suspected James had sensed the shift in her mood, because he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone to show her his lock screen — a picture of a scruffy looking, mismatched sort of dog.
“I found her on a beach in Morocco. Her name is Stevie Licks.”
Maddie felt her mouth twitch before she could stop it. James continued to hold the phone up with all the pride of a father showing off his kid. Stevie Licks was white and sandy coloured, with sad brown eyes and gremlin-like ears.