Chapter Thirty-Nine Lee
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Lee
It has been over twenty-four hours since I went nuclear on the man who’s deciding his entire fate, and Nico’s being surprisingly relaxed about it.
Admittedly, the multiple orgasms probably had a calming effect, but even after we dragged ourselves out of bed and Magda returned with Phoebe, he remained unnaturally cheerful.
I cannot believe I blew up like that. I never lose my temper. Prior to yesterday afternoon I didn’t even know I had a temper to lose. I still feel a bit sick and shaky whenever I think about it. As the poster child for avoiding conflict, this marks a significant shift in my sense of self.
I also can’t believe I jeopardised the future of two people I care about so much. There has to be a way to fix it. Perhaps if I find Charles and apologise…
‘What is this movie, again?’ Phoebe asks, carrying an enormous bowl of popcorn to the coffee table in front of the sofa.
‘It’s called Bringing Up Baby. It’s Lee’s favourite.’ Nico is in the kitchen, pouring multiple bags of American candy into different bowls.
Today Nico took one look at me and declared it a ‘stay-inside-and-talk-to-no-one’ day before popping out to get ice cream and snacks for us.
As a result, there’s a genuinely deadly amount of sugar in this house and Phoebe is delighted.
No wonder the town manages to sustain the business of four separate dentists.
We’ve already watched a film, three episodes of a show where a couple are renovating a French chateau, and spent an hour lounging around reading our books.
It’s the strangest turn of events, but spending time with Phoebe and Nico is as restorative and soothing to me as spending time alone.
I haven’t had that with anyone but Gran before.
‘I’ve never heard of it,’ Phoebe muses, dragging a pile of blankets out from her bedroom. ‘Did you say it’s black and white?’ She sounds suspicious.
‘I really think you’ll love it,’ I promise, hoping that I’m right. ‘I was about your age the first time I watched it.’
‘With your gran?’ Phoebe asks. Unfortunately, Phoebe is very interested in my grandmother, this mystical figure of fun, and so she brings her up quite often.
‘That’s right,’ I agree, because of course it is. All my best memories are with Gran.
‘Well, I guess if Gran likes it then I’ll try,’ Phoebe sighs heroically.
‘Oh good.’ My dry tone is lost on her and Nico shoots me a sympathetic look.
He grabs the final bowls of sweets and brings them over, the table practically groaning under their weight, and the three of us arrange ourselves on the sofa – me at one end, Nico at the other, Phoebe in the middle, and Taco pours himself into a tiny gap between Phoebe and me.
Phoebe arranges the blankets over us and, once she’s satisfied, Nico hits play.
I glance over at the two of them. They’re both glued to the film, wearing matching expressions of enjoyment, and I vow that I’ll make everything right before I leave. It’s the least I can do.
The film plays and I get drawn into the familiar story of Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant hunting for their tame leopard while being ridiculously funny and extremely gorgeous.
Every time Phoebe giggles, little starbursts go off in my chest. She leans against me, a small, warm weight.
Six more days. Not only six more days with Nico, but six more days of this, of all of us together.
‘That was excellent,’ Phoebe says, when the credits roll. ‘Even if it was in black and white. I can’t wait to show Maya, she’s going to love it.’
‘You can watch it with her next week,’ Nico says. ‘You’re spending the day at hers on Sunday, don’t forget.’
Sunday is when my flight home is booked, and Nico’s gaze meets mine. For the first time since Charles left, anxiety tightens around his eyes. Perhaps it’s finally sinking in how little time we have to fix everything.
I can do it, I tell myself. I can make everything better. All I need to do is track down Charles and apologise for my outburst. I wonder if it’s too soon to send his assistant a third email. I barely included any exclamation marks in the last one.
‘Maybe I should have a pet leopard,’ Phoebe wonders. ‘He could be friends with Taco.’
‘Trust me, leopards don’t make good pets outside Hollywood,’ Nico says, stretching and getting to his feet to clear away the empty bowls. (Phoebe demolished everything in sight with the horrifying, if impressive, efficiency of a swarm of locusts.)
‘And your dad would know,’ I say, an idea occurring to me. Maybe there’s something else I can help to fix before I go. ‘You took photos of them in the wild, right?’ I turn to look at Nico over my shoulder. ‘Where was that?’
‘Yeah,’ he says shortly. ‘Botswana.’
‘You did?’ Phoebe asks. ‘He never talks about that stuff,’ she tells me.
I grab my phone and pull up the pictures with a few taps on the National Geographic website. In one of them a leopard stares directly into the lens, as it prowls through the scrub towards the camera. I turn the screen to Phoebe and she huddles over it.
‘Woah!’ Her voice holds an awed note. ‘You took these, Dad? You got this close to them?’
‘Not as close as the picture makes it look.’ Nico comes to stand behind the sofa, looking at the image over my shoulder. His voice is stiff, but Phoebe doesn’t seem to notice. ‘I was on top of a jeep about fifty feet back.’
‘That is so cool.’ Phoebe is still looking through the photos.
‘My favourite was the whales in New Zealand,’ I say, taking the phone back and clicking through to the pictures that I have saved. There’s one that Nico took of an enormous southern right whale, suspended in the endless blue water; next to it a diver swims, like a tiny doll.
Phoebe’s eyes widen. ‘You went in the water with them?’
‘Your dad does all sorts of cool stuff,’ I say. ‘One time he rappelled down a glacier in Iceland. There’s probably not a mountain range he hasn’t climbed all over. And he swam with sharks in Australia.’ I shudder. ‘I have to admit I don’t love those photographs.’
‘Show me!’ Phoebe demands. She reaches over the back of the sofa and grabs Nico’s arm. ‘Dad! Show me the sharks!’
Nico sends an unreadable look my way, and I can only hope I haven’t massively overstepped. Either way, he’s defenceless in the face of Phoebe’s enthusiasm.
‘I’ll grab my laptop,’ he says finally. ‘Hang on.’
While Nico and Phoebe huddle over his computer and he clicks through, showing her different images, telling her about his travels, I try to melt into the background.
I pull up some work on my own computer and sit at the kitchen table with a glass of wine, letting their chatter wash over me as I work, losing myself in the numbers. I have plenty to catch up on.
At some point, Nico presses a hand to the back of my neck before he throws together a vegetable stir fry and I watch Phoebe eat it with a feeling of relief.
Nico’s no longer the only one worried about getting vegetables into this child.
Yesterday I ordered a giant tub of children’s vitamin gummies online that apparently taste like Skittles.
‘If you could take pictures of one animal, which would it be?’ Phoebe asks, slurping noodles into her mouth.
‘Snow leopards,’ Nico says instantly. ‘But it’s basically impossible. They’re extremely endangered. No one sees them in person, they’re like ghosts, but they’ve caught them on camera traps so we know they’re there.’
‘Where did they see them?’
‘A couple of places. Kyrgyzstan would probably be best.’
‘Kyrgyzstan,’ Phoebe rolls the word around in her mouth. ‘Have you been there?’
‘Once.’ Nico digs a fork into his own bowl of noodles.
‘I did a story about the rangers working up in the Tian Shan mountains.’ He pulls up a folder full of photos, of impossible snowy conditions and staggering peaks; of people, wrapped up in winter gear, crossing streams on horseback.
It’s all so beautiful it punches the air right out of your chest.
‘Maybe one day you could take me,’ Phoebe says, her eyes still glued to the screen. ‘I would love to have adventures like this.’
Nico’s gaze meets mine over the top of her head. ‘Sure, one day, Bee.’
‘I should have a camera. You could show me how to take pictures, couldn’t you?’
Nico darts me a look. His throat bobs. ‘Yeah. I could show you.’
‘And you’ve done lots of travelling, too, right, Lee?’ Phoebe turns to me.
‘I have, but accountants don’t have as many adventures as photojournalists.’
Nico snorts. ‘Right,’ he says, and I remember how stunned he looked by Charles’s comments yesterday. I often get this reaction when people find out about my work, but honestly, I don’t know why they’re all so surprised. I’m a forensic accountant. I never said my job was boring.
When I pointed this out to Nico last night he scoffed, ‘Okay, Ethan Hunt. Just let me know next time you’re bringing a terrorist organisation to its knees so I can put the kettle on.’
‘Mostly I work in different offices,’ I say now.
‘And where would you go?’ Phoebe asks. ‘If you could go anywhere?’
I think about it. ‘I’ve never seen the Northern Lights. I’d love to go somewhere snowy and quiet and see them. Norway or Iceland maybe.’
‘I’ve never been anywhere but here,’ Phoebe says. ‘Well, and Boston. And New York once.’
‘You’ve got lots of time,’ I point out.
‘I guess.’ Phoebe pushes her glasses up her nose. ‘Still,’ she sounds wistful, ‘it would be nice.’
‘Maybe we should sort out your passport,’ Nico muses. ‘Uncle Jack suggested we could all take a trip to England next summer.’
Phoebe’s entire face lights up. ‘England! Really? We could see Lee and Gran!’
There’s a fist around my heart and it’s squeezing tighter and tighter.
‘All right, Phoebe,’ Nico cuts in. ‘I think that’s enough excitement for one day. Why don’t you get ready for bed?’
‘Okay,’ Phoebe agrees. ‘But I want Lee to come with me tonight. We can read my book together. She wants to know what happens to the mermaid, don’t you, Lee?’ She turns to me, her eyes enormous behind her glasses.
Nico slides a glance at me.
‘Of course,’ I reply.
Getting Phoebe ready for bed is quite the ordeal.
She’s not a baby, I have to understand. She doesn’t need someone to put her to bed, she doesn’t want to be read to, but she does like reading with someone.
Especially if that someone commits to doing silly voices.
She’ll even graciously concede to a small amount of snuggling, only for my benefit of course, and as we read we lie back against all her many, many stuffed toys, my arm around her shoulders.
She smells like clean laundry and strawberry toothpaste. Taco curls up in his position at the foot of the bed, heaving the occasional happy sigh.
We read until Phoebe starts to drift off, and I extract myself as gracefully as possible from the mountain of stuffies, ready to turn off the light.
‘Hey, Lee,’ Phoebe murmurs sleepily.
‘Yes?’
‘Do you think it’s funny that my dad calls me Bee and he calls you Daisy? We’re like a set.’
I freeze, my finger on the switch on her bedside lamp. ‘Yes,’ I croak, ‘I suppose we are.’
She snuggles down into her pillow, the window between awake and asleep snapping shut in an instant.
She looks so small and defenceless all of a sudden.
I can see the baby in her, the younger version of who she is now.
Her lashes fan against her round cheeks.
There are freckles on the bridge of her nose.
My heart does something catastrophic inside my chest. The bottom drops out of my world.
When I glance up I find Nico leaning in the doorway, looking at us. His arms are crossed over his chest, his jaw is granite hard, his expression flat.
My heart is pounding, as we stare at each other. I feel like I’ve been caught out, doing something wrong.
Nico peels himself away from the door and hooks his thumb over his shoulder gesturing towards the living room. ‘I think you and I need to have a talk,’ he says, his voice low.
I swallow, and nod.
Then I turn off the light and follow him.