Chapter Eleven Lee
Chapter Eleven
Lee
The next morning I wake up late in Nico’s bed, tangled in sheets that smell like him.
It’s so easy to imagine him here, sprawled across the mattress, to imagine waking up beside him, his arm around my waist, my mouth pressed against his neck, his hand tangling in my hair, my fingers trailing down his chest…
My brain pulls the emergency brake and I sit up, pushing the sheets off me like they’re on fire.
That is quite enough of that.
I have a long, hot shower, resting my forehead against the tiles as the water pours over me, and tell myself that it’s time to get a grip, that I need to do what I came here to do: discuss legally ending my marriage and then get back to my life.
Nico has made it clear that he doesn’t want to talk about whatever is going on with him, and I will respect that. I can be calm and clear-headed. All business.
But when I leave my bedroom I find Phoebe and Nico in the kitchen, bickering.
‘Everyone knows the first pancake has to go in the bin,’ Nico grumbles, his voice still rough with sleep. ‘You need to get into the zone.’
A worn grey T-shirt hugs his torso. He’s wearing a pair of pyjama bottoms and his feet are bare; his hair sticks up at the back in dark curls and whorls. His face is unshaven, shadowed with stubble.
He looks delicious.
Which is more than can be said for whatever he’s cooking.
‘This pancake needs to be buried in the backyard.’ Phoebe’s nose wrinkles as she pokes at the plate. She is wearing a long, fluffy black hoodie, and the hood, which is pulled up, has cat’s ears on top of it. ‘Why is it green in between the black bits?’
‘I put spinach in the batter,’ Nico says defensively. ‘I found the recipe online. Apparently you can’t taste it and I’m trying to get some vitamins into you.’
‘Do donuts have vitamins?’ Phoebe asks.
That’s when Nico spots me and he smiles. He has a smudge of flour on his cheek. My heart rolls over in my chest.
‘Morning,’ he says.
‘Lee, my dad is trying to poison us.’ Phoebe slumps, the picture of desolation, against the kitchen counter. ‘Do you know how to make pancakes?’
‘No, I’m afraid I don’t.’ I approach the kitchen, which is heavily splattered in green batter that I’ll admit looks troublingly like nuclear waste, but I sense that Nico needs a parenting win. ‘But I think spinach pancakes sound delicious.’
I am rewarded when Nico beams. ‘Right? And the woman I follow on TikTok says that the flax seed totally covers the taste.’
I try not to blanch while Phoebe looks accusingly at me and mouths the words flax seed like a dark curse.
‘Great,’ I say weakly.
‘Do you always dress so fancy?’ Phoebe asks then, giving me a once over.
I glance down at my cream-coloured shift dress, and then uncertainly towards Nico, who swats at his daughter with his spatula, sending more drops of green batter flying. Thankfully I am outside the line of fire.
‘You look lovely, Daisy,’ he says and his eyes run over my dress and down my legs, where they seem to linger for a moment. He swallows and turns back to the stove. ‘Phoebe’s just not used to seeing clothes without creases in them.’
‘Oh,’ I mull this over. ‘I brought a travel steamer with me. You can borrow it if you like?’
Phoebe snorts as Nico huffs out a deep chuckle so I’ll take that as a no. Joke’s on them because a good travel steamer is the key to creating a perfectly formed capsule wardrobe that accounts for all the variable weather that October brings.
We sit around the table and I try really hard to eat the disgusting grey-green abominations Nico serves up, while Phoebe makes loud retching sounds and drops them on the floor for Taco.
The dog takes one sniff and lets out a distressed howl before running off to the other side of the room, cowering with his tail tucked between his legs.
‘Okay,’ Nico says, ‘that feels a touch overdramatic. I’ve seen that dog literally eat rocks.’
‘Rocks would taste better than this.’ Phoebe takes a deep gulp of orange juice, swilling it around her mouth.
‘Daisy?’ Nico looks at me hopefully.
‘It’s a really… unique flavour.’
Nico’s head sinks into his hands.
It’s a perfect, sunny Saturday, and light filters through the big picture window in front of us. Tall trees fill the view and I think how lovely it must be, watching the seasons change. Right now it’s a bonfire of red and gold.
In the light of day, I can see that the back door opens onto a small deck and fenced yard cut into the trees.
I sip the coffee Nico made – delicious and spinach free – and can’t help thinking how nice this is.
A family breakfast. I’ve never had that before.
Even as a kid, the closest I got was mornings with Gran, but it was rare she’d take the time to sit and eat breakfast with me.
It reminds me of walking around the neighbourhood where I grew up.
In the winter, when people put the lights on in their front windows, I’d peek into those cosy domestic scenes and imagine that I lived inside them.
Long tables full of noisy relatives, lines of stockings hung over the fireplace at Christmas, people curled up on the sofa together, lit by the glow from the TV.
Simple things that filled me with longing.
For a moment – with the sunshine and the pancakes and the pyjamas – I can almost pretend that I belong, here in this house, here in this family.
‘Why do you call Lee “Daisy”?’ Phoebe asks her dad, interrupting my daydreams.
Nico is lifting his coffee cup to his lips and he hesitates. ‘It’s been so long I don’t even remember,’ he says, but his eyes meet mine and I know that he does remember, he just doesn’t know if I want to talk about it.
‘It was the very first time I met your dad,’ I say, picking up the bottle of maple syrup and drowning my pancakes in it, hoping it might cover the awful taste.
‘I was five and he was twelve and he’d just moved into the house next door to ours.
My mum and dad were having a… disagreement,’ I continue diplomatically.
My parents’ volatile relationship was not easy to live with and this particular ‘disagreement’ featured a soundtrack of screaming, crying and smashing porcelain as my mum threw an entire set of Wedgwood china at my dad’s head.
I wish I could say it had been out of the ordinary, but the truth is it was pretty much a weekly occurrence.
‘I was by myself, hiding out in the back garden, waiting for them to… finish. And then this boy suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Like magic.’ I smile.
Nico takes up the story. ‘I found a gap in the fence. And there was this little girl sitting in the middle of the lawn by herself.’ He looks at me and a frown passes over his face at the memory.
‘He sat on the grass with me and showed me how to make a daisy chain,’ I cut in, taking a sip of my coffee.
‘He made me a crown.’ I don’t say that I still have it, pressed between the pages of an old book, faded and fragile.
A reminder of that boy with the wide smile and the kind eyes who had spoken gently, and made me laugh until the shouting inside stopped and the world got quiet again.
‘Then he disappeared, back into his own garden and I didn’t see him again for almost a week. I thought I’d made him up, like an imaginary friend.’
Nico chuckles. ‘You never told me that.’
I nod. ‘Oh, yeah. I had a few of them back then. You fitted in great.’
‘I’ve never had an imaginary friend,’ Phoebe looks put out.
‘Probably because you have plenty of real ones,’ I say lightly. ‘I bet you and Maya have been best friends for a long time.’
‘Since I was a baby,’ Phoebe agrees.
‘There you go then. I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up, so I suppose I invented them.’ It’s only as I say it aloud that I realise quite how pathetic that sounds.
‘Why didn’t you have a lot of friends?’ Phoebe asks, and the question is blunt and careless, as if it’s not something that needs exploring delicately over several years with a qualified therapist.
‘I was shy,’ I shrug. ‘Quiet. I found people difficult… still do sometimes. And then I skipped a year of school so I didn’t really fit in.’
‘I forgot about that,’ Nico says, and he’s frowning again. ‘You were really little when that happened, right? How did that work? Did you go to secondary school early? University?’
I nod. ‘I started uni when I’d just turned seventeen.’ The academic bit had been easy enough but the rest of it was pretty miserable. I don’t like to think about it.
‘So you’re really smart then?’ Phoebe asks.
‘She’s brilliant.’ Nico’s voice is firm. He throws his arm around the back of my chair, and I can feel the warmth of his skin through my dress.
‘I don’t know about brilliant, but above average. Anyway, it turned out that I hadn’t made Nico up after all, because my big brother Jack brought him home with him a few days later. Your dad looked at me, and said “Hi, Daisy girl”.’
‘And eventually “Daisy girl” became just Daisy,’ Nico finishes. The frown has softened and a smile crinkles the corner of his eyes. His arm has stayed where it was, not quite touching me, but still there.
His gaze tangles with mine for a moment, and suddenly it’s all there between us, the years we’ve known each other. The years I’ve loved him.
‘So that’s the story,’ I say briskly, taking a bite of my pancakes and instantly regretting it. The maple syrup has not helped. I choke and take another desperate slug of coffee.
‘Enough!’ Nico snatches the plate away from me. ‘I can’t take it anymore. I’ll admit the pancakes aren’t great, if you two stop grimacing. Let’s go into town and get something. We can give Lee the guided tour.’
Something like relief flickers through me. Now is clearly not the right time to bring up divorce. It’ll have to wait until later.
‘I’d love that.’