Chapter 7 Harley
Harley
Show Kindness to Children
Harley’s finished unpacking his meagre belongings. He’s still technically in recovery and supposed to balance activity with rest, but feels restless and caged in. TV and books hold no appeal, and he’s not found anything worth occupying his time.
Growling under his breath, he paces his masculine, sparse apartment. The little voice dared to call his home drab, even though it has elegant period fittings.
Maybe she is referring to its occupant, who matches the pale grey of the wallpaper.
He groans. No one can possibly understand how he feels.
Tennis has been his life, and daily passion, since the age of seven.
During Year 2 of primary school, a month after his dad abandoned them, his mum took him to a practise session.
Held at a nearby youth club, it was a cheap activity subsidised by the council, and a way to distract him and channel some of his relentless energy, which she found wearing.
From the first moment his fingers gripped that racket, he’d fallen into a deep obsession with the game.
As a child, he loved the challenge, rules and physical activity.
As he grew into an adult, it was the precision, strength, speed and athleticism required.
Playing made him feel powerful, and invincible.
Concentrating on achieving the best serve or thwacking the ball at an opponent, he was fully absorbed.
Forgetting any fears, worries, or doubts.
Just him on the court against the other player, racket in hand and focused on the yellow ball, timing the backhand to gain the advantage and running around to lob it back across the net.
Now that’s all gone, and he feels… bereaved.
He’s drinking too much, and the hangovers make him irritable.
Alcohol was never a problem before he lost everything.
He’d been fit and healthy, with a tightly controlled diet.
His water intake had been high, especially during intense play, and alcoholic drinks were only for special occasions and never the night before a match.
The risk wasn’t worth it. Being the best on court was the only acceptable outcome.
Towards the end, he’d become addicted to winning.
Because of his dedication, discipline and drive, he’d risen fast in the ATP’s singles rankings and thanks to his good looks had picked up numerous sponsors.
Accumulating everything he’d ever dreamt of after growing up in a damp council flat with his half-Scottish mother.
Wealth, fame, fancy cars, a luxury home, exotic holidays, designer clothes and watches, a younger wife.
It made him proud, how far he’d come, but on the day she dropped dead of a heart attack in her mid-forties, just shy of his twenty-fifth birthday, his mother accused him of being showy and arrogant, and forgetting where he came from.
Shrugging them off as the words of a bitter woman, he wonders if she was right.
His mood plummets further at the memory. Plucking his phone from his pocket, he scrolls through countless news feeds, scanning the headlines with his breath held. He expels it. Still nothing. They don’t know where he is. Thank Christ.
He thinks of the random noticeboard message from earlier. Show kindness to children. What a load of nonsense. As if anyone would run around being unkind to them. Whoever wrote it must be scraping the barrel today.
Striding to his front door, he picks up the black tool bag provided for the job.
There’s a list of tasks he’ll start on. It’s funny, he didn’t think there’d be much to do given the manor conversion was only completed a month ago, but somehow the list grows every day: missing lightbulbs, fences to paint, reoccurring loose wires.
If he didn’t know better, he’d think someone was creating extra work to stop him brooding over his situation since waking up groggy and pain-laced in a hospital bed.
The feeling of being haunted, of carrying a passenger who didn’t ask permission to board.
Perhaps he’s like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, besieged by ghosts intent on showing him the error of his ways, hoping to redeem him.
Groaning, he shakes his head. He must be losing it, if this is the kind of stuff it’s dreaming up.
Later, he’s walking along the first-floor corridor which links the east and west wings, when Kirsten and Rosalie turn the corner. His mood hasn’t improved, so crossing paths with the sunniest people in the place is just his luck.
‘Hi, there.’ The redhead halts, frowning in concern. ‘You okay?’
Harley has the uneasy feeling she recognises him beneath the overgrown beard, unruly hair and baseball cap. ‘Yeah,’ he evades, ‘you know.’
‘That good, huh?’ Her expression turns amused, eyes twinkling.
They’re a gleaming blue, like the sky on a midsummer’s day. Clear, deep and beautiful. He has no idea where the whimsical idea comes from. She’s not his type. He prefers tall, gazelle-like women, not short curvy ones with freckles and heart-shaped faces.
He realises he’s staring as a blush climbs her throat. It’s fascinating.
Thankfully, her daughter interrupts. ‘Scuse me, are you called Harley ‘cos of the motorbike? One time I visited my grandad, he was watching a TV programme about them.’
‘Yeah,’ he blinks, relieved to move on, ‘my dad always wanted a Harley Davidson.’
‘Cool!’ The little girl grins, revealing several missing teeth.
I hope the tooth fairy has visited nearly springs out of his mouth, but he bites it back. Stop that. He orders the voice.
Rosalie’s waiting for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t know what to say.
Before, he’d not spent much time around kids, never wanting any of his own and with no friends close enough to ask him to be godfather.
Nowadays, he feels like the sodding Pied-Piper, everywhere he goes.
Shops, petrol stations, his own bloody home…
children want to talk to him. He has no idea why, or how to respond.
‘So, did he get one?’ Kirsten prompts, raising fair eyebrows.
‘Get one what?’ A child? He’s lost track of the conversation.
She squints in puzzlement, ‘Did your dad ever get a Harley Davidson?’
‘Don’t know.’ He shifts on his feet. ‘Didn’t see him for ten years after he left, and then it was in a wooden box at his funeral when I was seventeen.’ He’s not sure why he’s telling her this. He hardly knows her. She has one of those faces though, warm and understanding.
Wincing, she casts a quick look at Rosalie. ‘Right. Sorry to hear that. Erm, Rosie, we’d better get going. Cakes to bake.’
‘Oh, Mu-mmy,’ the little girl groans, ‘not again.’ She peers into Harley’s unzipped tool bag. ‘Can I help Mr Harley instead, please?’
Kirsten opens her mouth, but Harley jumps in, the question breaking him out in a cold sweat. ‘No. I’m not some glorified babysitter.’
The little girl’s face drops, eyes rounding and brimming with tears.
Kirsten shoots him a murderous look before digging around in her pocket. Passing her daughter a strawberry lollipop, she points towards one of the windows. ‘Can you count how many trees there are in the back garden, near the river at the bottom of the slope?’
‘Okay.’ Without looking at Harley, Rosie trudges away, shoulders rounded.
Kirsten spins around. ‘I don’t know what your problem is,’ she hisses, ‘but don’t talk to her like that. In future, just say you’re done for the day.’
‘Lie, you mean?’
‘No, be diplomatic. Don’t break her heart with unkindness or make her feel less than she is.’
‘You’re being dramatic. I’m a stranger. How would not tagging along with me upset her?’
‘For some weird reason, she likes you. After the meeting, she told me even though you look sad and have a beard, you have a good heart.’ Visibly trying to calm down, she adds, ‘Look, she spent years being rejected by her father, so when another man rejects her, it’s upsetting.’
The mention of a useless father stings, reminding him of his own. ‘How was I supposed to know? Besides, that’s not my fault, or responsibility.’
‘It’s your responsibility to treat her like a human being!
’ When Rosie whirls around looking worried, Kirsten lowers her voice.
‘Or have you forgotten how to do that, Mr Hot Shot Tennis Star? No matter how far you’ve fallen, are you still so far above the rest of us you’re incapable of common decency?
What happened to you should’ve been humbling, but clearly, I was wrong. ’
Spinning around, she goes to her daughter, forcing a level tone. ‘Come on, we’ve got stuff to do.’ Clasping her hand, she speeds them away.
Along the corridor, a painting on the wall gives a slight tremble as Harley gulps, cheekbones reddening at Kirsten’s departing smash shot.
‘Fuck.’ She knows who he is, and is pissed off.
Will she tell people? Does he need to leave before the braying bloodhounds turn up?
Will they, or is he old news now? Christ, he doesn’t think he can go through it all again and survive.
The humiliation, the sense everyone was talking about him, the lack of privacy and scathing judgements, even though part of him knew he deserved people’s condemnation.
But he didn’t do anything wrong just now, did he? He was simply honest about not wanting to supervise a child. Besides, everyone has an agenda and is after something. It doesn’t pay to get involved. It’s not worth it.
Except kids, the quiet, calm voice in his head murmurs, they don’t have agendas, only emotions they wear on their sleeves.
She just wanted to spend time with you. There’s a little kick in his chest, as if the imposter organ is protesting his treatment of Rosie.
Rubbing his breastbone, where a vertical scar carves a line that’ll mark him forever, he shakes his head.
‘Stop being so ridiculous.’ He’s not sure whether he’s talking to the voice, or himself.
What he does know is with every passing day, it speaks more often, and is getting harder to ignore.
He thinks again of the noticeboard message.
Show kindness to children. Rosie was hurt and disappointed, and her mother was furious.
What happened to you should’ve been humbling.
She doesn’t know what happened to him, none of them do.
If he were to tell someone about his experiences since the surgery, they’d probably say it’s PTSD from the trauma and to find a therapist. But it might be worse than that, and honestly, he’s not brave enough to find out.
He’s recovering from a major health scare and doesn’t need a new one adding to the list.
Maybe it’s karma, like the song the little voice keeps singing to taunt him. He knows it’s by Taylor Swift because it came up on a Spotify playlist the other day and he recognised the tune.
Karma. The cosmos rebalancing the scales by gifting either good luck or bad, depending on your actions.
Feeling suddenly exhausted, he steadies himself with a palm against the wall. There’s a surge of warmth which spreads through his hand and creeps up his forearm. There must be a hot water pipe, or something.
He sighs. Before losing everything, he hadn’t cared whether his serial cheating hurt his wife, nor whether his reckless selfishness impacted his agent or sponsors, or the woman he’d pursued and then dropped once he’d tired of her, leading to unimaginable consequences.
After his heart failed due to an undiagnosed congenital condition, there’d been no remorse for swearing at the doctors and nurses after they’d brought him back from the brink of death.
Then, in the weeks following surgery, lost in a fog of shock, anger, resentment and pain, he’d felt little pity or compassion for the family of the person who’d given so generously to him. That grief was theirs to bear alone.
God, he’d been so ungrateful.
Yes. The little voice agrees. But you can do better.
Replaying his fight with Kirsten, and with the warmth from the wall somehow soothing him, he realises he acted badly.
‘Oh, fuck.’ She was within her rights to be angry.
He behaved like an arrogant twat with no regard for Rosie’s feelings.
A horrible sick feeling flips his stomach over.
So, this is guilt. A burning itch which makes you want to climb out of your skin and walk away. It’s utterly shit.
At last, the little voice remarks, sounding satisfied.
That night, after wrestling with his new-found conscience all afternoon, he creeps along the silent hallways. Crouching, he slides the smallest, flattest spanner he owns beneath a door, taped to a note he’s rewritten four times.
Dear Rosie, I’m sorry. What I said was mean. Meet me by the apple tree tomorrow morning at ten. I’ll show you how to mow the back lawn, and you can help rake the grass. Maybe your mum can bring a cake along. From Harley (like the motorbike)
He hopes they’ll accept his apology and invitation. For some reason, he doesn’t want Kirsten’s expression to be full of loathing when she thinks of him.
Walking back to his flat, there’s an extra beat in his chest, as if in approval, and a lightness floods his body.
Show kindness to children. It feels good doing something for someone else.
Maybe he can do more than bare minimum on the cottages too.
The doctors said to pace himself, but surely there’s no harm in trying.
He has to stop being a selfish bastard at some point, right?
Right, the little voice replies, and the cottages – great idea.
The commentary doesn’t irritate him as much as it normally does, and he falls asleep quicker than usual, dreaming of a young woman with black hair and piercing blue eyes.
When he wakes in the morning unable to recall the details, he nonetheless feels like he’s seen a friend.
The emotion fades as he showers, makes coffee and gets dressed, and by the time he leaves his flat to meet Rosie and Kirsten, he has forgotten. Almost.
As he slams the door behind him, the pale grey wallpaper in his lounge and bedroom darkens by several shades, appearing warmer.