Chapter Twenty-Four Nico
Chapter Twenty-Four
Nico
It’s after midnight by the time everyone leaves and Lee and I are clearing up the takeout containers and empty wine bottles.
‘That was fun,’ she says, sounding surprised.
‘It was. It’s nice that Tara came out here to surprise you.’ I watch as her smile widens, as she shakes her head like she can’t believe someone would show up for her like that.
For the last few days I have kept my word and done nothing except be an excellent friend to her. Instead of avoiding her, I’ve insisted on us spending time together so that she’ll know precisely how fine I am with everything.
The reality is that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that kiss, which despite its innocence has taken over the top spot as one of the most erotic moments of my life.
At night while I toss and turn uncomfortably on the awful sofa, and Lee sleeps on the other side of the wall, I think about her face and her voice and her soft, laughing mouth until I fall asleep and dream about her.
I want to ask her more about this man she was seeing in London. Was it this Adrian guy who’s still texting her? Is it over or are they still seeing each other? Does she want him the way that I want her?
I’m a mess. But Lee doesn’t need to know that. I told Luke I wasn’t going to make the situation more complicated and I meant it. Still, maybe there’s a casual way I can ask her about her love life. Friends do that, right?
‘Do you—’ I start, but our quiet conversation is interrupted by a heart-stopping scream.
‘Shit!’ I exclaim, already running for Phoebe’s room.
I open the door, turning on the light as Phoebe struggles up, her eyes wide, her face wet. Taco whines at her side, trying to lick the tears from her cheeks.
‘It’s just a bad dream, Bee,’ I say quietly, moving to the side of her bed to hug her. She nestles against me, and I can feel her heart hammering, her small shoulders shaking. ‘Just a dream, it’s okay. You’re okay.’
‘It was too dark,’ she murmurs, her face pressed to my chest. ‘I couldn’t get out and there was a monster. He was coming to get me.’
I hold her tighter, Taco curls up against her side. ‘Nothing’s coming to get you. I’m here and everything’s okay.’ I feel her relax into my arms. ‘Do you want to play the game?’
She sniffles. ‘What letter shall we do?’
‘How about D?’ I ask. It’s a technique I read about, for kids who have nightmares – getting her back in the room by naming five things beginning with a certain letter.
‘Um, dog,’ she says, ‘Dad, drawers, door.’ She looks around, more of the tension leaving her. ‘Daisy,’ she finishes.
I look up and see that Lee is standing in the doorway watching us anxiously. Catching my gaze, her eyes widen and she mouths an apology before slipping away.
I turn my attention back to Phoebe. ‘Good job. Now, why don’t you lie down and we’ll read for a bit?’
‘You won’t leave?’ she asks, snuggling back against her pillow. ‘Not until I’m asleep?’
‘I won’t leave. I promise.’
It doesn’t take long. It surprised me, at first, how quickly she’d fall back to sleep after a nightmare, but I stay for an extra couple of minutes to make sure she’s fully out before I pull the door shut behind me.
Lee is sitting at the clean dining table, staring at a glass of water. When she sees me she jumps up.
‘Is Phoebe okay?’ she asks, gripping the back of her chair.
I nod. ‘Nightmare. It’s been a while since she had one. I was sort of hoping we’d left them behind.’
‘She has them a lot?’
I nod again, my jaw tight. ‘Used to. They started after Tom died. Apparently it’s common for kids dealing with grief, but they’re hard on her.’
‘Hard on you, too.’ Lee tilts her head, her expression sympathetic.
I exhale a shaky laugh. ‘I don’t know how to protect her from her own brain. If you know how to beat up monsters in people’s dreams then I’m all ears. Mostly I feel useless.’
‘I used to have nightmares,’ Lee says carefully, not meeting my eye. ‘When I was a kid. I wish my dad had come running.’
I’m struck by the same hot flare of anger that I experience whenever Lee talks about her parents. I hate thinking of her being so alone.
‘It doesn’t feel like enough,’ I say, and I’m not just talking about Phoebe. I wish I could do more for Lee. I wish I could go back in time and stop anything or anyone from hurting her.
Lee, however, is frowning. ‘You keep saying that, that it’s not enough, that you don’t do enough, but I’ve been here, living with both of you and I don’t know how you could do more.
’ She reaches out and squeezes my arm. ‘It’s obvious to everyone that you’re a good dad, you’re being too hard on yourself. ’
I shake my head. ‘That’s the thing… it’s not enough to be a good dad.
Phoebe didn’t even know her mother and then eighteen months ago she lost Tom, the only father figure she’d ever had.
It’s too much. If I’d known that she existed I’d have been here but I wasn’t, and I can never make that right for her.
She’s a child, and all she knows is that I wasn’t there.
’ There’s a pain in my chest like a knife, and I can see an echo of it in Lee’s eyes.
‘I swore to myself I’d never, never abandon my kid like my dad with me.
I missed so much stuff, Lee,’ I say, the words soft like a secret, the kind I can’t say out loud to anyone else because I know Magda carries so much guilt over this too, because I know that she was doing the best she could but that it hurts anyway.
‘Her first smile, her first steps, her first word. I think about those moments and how there’s no getting them back, and it kills me. ’
‘Of course it does. That’s grief.’ Lee comes to slip her arms around my waist. She presses her body to mine, rests her cheek against my chest, holding me tight.
For someone who isn’t much of a hugger, she’s excellent at it.
I band my own arm around her back, pulling her close like I want to, deciding not to question the comfort I get from her touch.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she murmurs. ‘You deserved to have all those things. It’s okay to be sad about it.’
We stand locked in each other’s arms as the clock on the kitchen wall ticks gently, as the seconds stretch out. I know I should let go, but I don’t want to.
‘Do you like working at the inn?’ she asks.
‘What?’ I pull back, thrown by the question.
‘You’ve done an amazing job there, it looks beautiful, but do you enjoy it?’
‘Sure. It’s hard work but it’s satisfying. I like feeling useful.’
‘Yeah,’ she points her finger at me, ‘that. You know, when I used to ask you about your job you would light up. You couldn’t wait to tell me about what you’d been doing, what you’d seen. You didn’t go anywhere without your camera. Not since you were fourteen, Nico!’
‘What do you want me to say?’ My chest feels tight.
‘I want you to tell me why you’ve stopped taking photographs.’
‘You know why. I have to be here. I can’t drop everything and disappear for weeks to take photos on the other side of the world.’
‘But is that really the only option?’
‘Why are we talking about this? I don’t…’ I trail off, try to organise my thoughts. ‘I don’t know how to do it,’ I say finally.
‘To do what?’
‘I don’t know how to do the job I love without it being all that I am.
Before, I took the assignments I liked, I went where the whim took me, in search of something…
beautiful or moving or wild. I’ve never had any other ties or responsibilities before, and so my work was my life. But now my life is… something else.’
And that’s the problem. I don’t really understand what the something else is, but how do I explain that to Lee?
How can you have a clear picture of the future when you’ve spent a year with your head down just putting one foot in front of the other?
The only thing I know for sure is that I need to be here for Phoebe.
Photography has always been such an all-consuming presence in my life that it never left room for much else, but my daughter deserves one hundred per cent of me and I have no idea how to keep a hold on any part of my old life without bringing my new one crashing down.
‘I get that,’ Lee says slowly. ‘I understand why you want to be the perfect parent, but surely it doesn’t mean pretending such an important part of your life doesn’t exist?’
‘It feels easier to pretend that it doesn’t exist than to try and live with only a piece of it.’
Lee’s expression softens. ‘Nico,’ she breathes, and I’m temporarily distracted from whatever she’s about to say by that – the shape of my name on her lips.
Her eyes are so pretty, I notice, such a deep blue, fringed with long, dark lashes.
Am I drunk? I only had a few glasses of wine but suddenly I feel drunk.
‘I know that you have this idea of yourself… that your dad made you feel…’ she hesitates, as if sorting through the words.
‘I need you to know that you’re not some… reckless wastrel.’
‘Wow, Daisy!’ I can’t help but smile at that. ‘Don’t think anyone has used wastrel in a sentence for quite a few decades.’
She squeezes my arms as if she wants to give me a shake.
‘Shut up and listen! You have this deep-held belief that you’re unreliable or careless, because that’s what he told you over and over again, but it’s not true.
You said it yourself: you could travel where you wanted because you weren’t beholden to anyone. ’
‘Beholden,’ I murmur, but she ignores me, all lit up with something and, whatever it is, my heart is beating harder.
‘But as soon as you found out about Phoebe, you were here. No questions asked. You changed your entire life for her. That’s not what a careless person does. You don’t need to change who you are. You don’t need to give up the thing you love like some sort of penance.’
Fuck. There’s a real tender part of my soul that she’s reaching right into here.
I’m startled by an intimacy between us that I’ve never really acknowledged before, that Lee knows me this way, that she understands what’s bothering me without any need to explain myself.
I guess this is what almost thirty years in each other’s lives looks like.
‘Being a parent is the ultimate responsibility,’ I say, and my voice is rough.
‘And I’ve never done responsibility before.
My dad loved to remind me of that at any opportunity.
Even from beyond the fucking grave with this whole inheritance nightmare.
I can’t be the person I was a year ago. I don’t know how to trust myself with that, to trust myself with Phoebe.
She’s precious and I’m so scared I’m going to fuck it up. ’
Lee smiles. ‘I think that’s standard for any parent. But if it helps, I know you won’t fuck it up.’
‘You do?’
‘If Jack or Gran were in trouble, they’d call you, Nico. Your mum, too. You’re not irresponsible. You’ve always taken care of people, it’s a huge part of who you are. Who sat in the grass making daisy chains with me? Who was right there in the hospital with Gran last year? You.’
She’s looking at me with this earnest expression and I swear my chest is aching.
‘And you?’ I ask, suddenly needing to know the answer. ‘If you were in trouble. Would you call me?’
Her lashes lower so I can’t see the look in her eyes. She lets go of my arms and takes a step back, the movement careful.
‘You’ve always been my safe place, Nico,’ she says softly. ‘So… yes, even though I probably shouldn’t. I’d call you.’
‘I’m glad about that,’ I murmur, and I give in to the urge to brush the loose wave of golden hair away from her face, to tuck it tenderly behind her ear. ‘I’d want you to.’
There’s a beat of silence while we look at each other, and something sweet and vulnerable dances in her eyes, then Lee looks away.
‘Anyway, I think that’s enough excitement for one night,’ she says.
I can almost see her reeling all her emotions back in until her smooth mask is in place. ‘I’m going to head to bed.’
‘Sure.’ I try to keep my voice even. ‘Sleep well.’
She makes it to her bedroom door before she turns back. ‘Nico…’ she pauses, fixes me with those blue eyes, her expression serious. ‘I really do think there’s a way you can be Phoebe’s dad, and still be you. Just think about it. Please.’