CHAPTER 11
Her AirPods secured in place, Poppy spoke to the voice inside them as she pushed the pram through her front gate. ‘He started talking about having kids with his fiancée and I almost died. I mean, what was I supposed to say?’
‘Shit, Pops,’ replied Dani. ‘That’s full-on. I can’t believe he was there. Like, after all these years, he just appears.’
‘It was only a matter of time, I guess. This town is so small.’
‘How did he look?’ asked her friend.
‘Good,’ Poppy admitted regretfully. He’d looked really good.
‘Hmmm. This is inconvenient.’
‘Tell me about it.’
Through Poppy, Dani and Henry had become firm friends during their university years, sharing a similar enthusiasm for a meat pie after 2 am. When Poppy had lost Henry as a friend, Dani had too. Another thing to feel guilty about.
‘What were you wearing?’ asked Dani.
‘Nothing terrible. A pair of denim shorts and a gingham shirt.’
‘Ha! Look at you, Daisy Duke, getting all country on me! Since when do you wear gingham?’
‘Since now, you loser. Gingham is actually very fashionable at the moment. Have you not looked at any shops lately?’
‘Um, no. As if I browse shops anymore. My sleepy newborn days are long gone, my dear. I can’t even browse the nappy aisle. I need to be in and out. First thing I see, that’s what I get. I see nappies for boys, Nella is getting nappies for boys. I see a non-hideous shirt that will fit, that’s the shirt I’m getting. Honestly, Pops, you have all this to look forward to.’
Poppy rounded the corner onto the golf course track and suddenly felt a ballistic missile explode between her temples. ‘Dan, while I’d love to continue this chat about my descent into momcore, I have to go.’
‘What’s with the angry voice?’
‘I’ll explain later.’
James was waiting by the oak tree with Eileen barking and straining against her leash. ‘I do this walk most mornings,’ he said stonily. He brandished a sleek cardboard bag with thick ribbon handles towards her. ‘Here.’
Poppy grudgingly slowed the pram and snatched the bag. She peered inside. ‘Is this like hush money?’
Inside was a pristine white sweatshirt. Poppy glanced at the designer label. He’d guessed her size correctly.
‘Take it back.’
‘No.’
‘Take it,’ she repeated. She would never spend that much money on a top, especially in this phase of life, where every morning was a high-stakes game of cup-size bingo. She also didn’t need to be any more indebted to this guy—he’d already delivered her baby.
James shook his head once. ‘No.’
He was like a hostile battleship: all steel and muscle and latent missiles beneath the surface.
‘Fine.’ Poppy shoved the bag into the base of the pram. Maeve stuck her hands out to catch the dog’s thumping tail. ‘But don’t think we’re doing this again. You have to walk ahead of us. Maeve should be looking at the trees and nature and stuff. She needs to learn there is more to life than dogs.’
A muscle ticked in his jaw. ‘So we walk separately and put up with the screaming and the barking, despite having an obvious solution?’
‘Yes.’
James’s lips pressed into a thin line but he began pulling Eileen away.
Maeve—who was clearly too astute for her own good—noticed the ploy first. ‘Waaaah!’ she cried as the kelpie drifted ahead.
‘Keep going!’ Poppy commanded. ‘They’ll get over it.’
James strode ahead as the barking continued and Maeve’s screams reached fever pitch. Poppy glanced at her daughter who was now screaming so hard she was turning a shade of beetroot. Character building . There were only three and a half kilometres to go, after which Maeve would be hopefully cured of her canine fixation. They would get through this.
Suddenly there was a choking sound from the pram. Poppy slammed on the brakes, instantly prepared to administer the Heimlich manoeuvre.
Hic! Maeve giggled, and suddenly James and Eileen were beside them again.
‘I thought I heard her choking,’ he said.
Poppy narrowed her eyes at her Machiavellian daughter. ‘I think she screamed so hard she gave herself the hiccups.’
‘Right,’ said James. ‘And you want us to leave again?’
The tiny smile in his eyes was like napalm to her bones. Her chaos was a joke to him, and now she was being forced to choose between walking with him or having her daughter choke and die. With a furious huff, she moved the pram fractionally to the right. Eileen skipped straight into the space and wagged her tail. Maeve made a gesture that looked suspiciously like an air punch.
Poppy marched ahead, her eyes fixed on anything but the figure beside her. The undulating path was lined with poplars and evergreens. Birds tweeted, butterflies flew, a lone rabbit gambolled across the green, and with every metre they strode the silence intensified like steam whistling in a kettle. Were they really going to pretend James hadn’t just bought her a one-hundred-and-fifty-dollar top? Were they really going to pretend it was normal to walk around a golf course with someone you despised? The pine trees creaked in the breeze until Poppy couldn’t take it any longer.
‘What is wrong with you?’ she exploded. ‘Why can’t you be a normal person and speak ? You’re making this horrible!’
James raised an eyebrow. ‘No I’m not.’
‘Yes you are!’
‘You’re being dramatic.’
‘I’m allowed to be dramatic!’ She was almost yelling but the douchebag hath brought the fury and the lady doth give no fucks. ‘I’m a single mum with no clue what I’m doing. My life is already at diabolical levels of crap without your attitude getting in my grill!’
James looked at her sideways. To her satisfaction, he looked vaguely startled. ‘I’m just walking,’ he muttered.
‘Yeah, well …’ Poppy’s eyes blazed at the pavement. She couldn’t look at him. It was the tension in the jaw and the confidence of his stride. It was how arrogant his shoulders looked under that vest. It was him . He was too much. They walked a few more paces in a deafening thunderstorm of silence.
‘Okay,’ James conceded gruffly.
‘Okay what?’
‘Okay, I get this is not ideal for you.’
Poppy’s eyes jerked to his. Something unreadable flashed across his face and his grip tightened on the leash.
‘Good,’ she said abruptly, equal parts confused and mollified.
They continued on. After a few minutes of awkward silence, he cleared his throat. ‘Read any good books lately?’
Poppy glared at him. ‘Are you quoting Mark Darcy?’
‘Um … not intentionally?’
‘Then why the hell are you asking about books?’
‘I’m trying to make conversation.’
Poppy huffed. ‘Then be a normal person and comment on the shit weather.’ She added in an undertone, ‘You really are a robot.’
‘What was that?’
‘Nothing!’
The corner of James’s mouth twitched. ‘I actually heard you. I wanted to see if you had the guts to say it to my face.’
‘Fine!’ She swivelled to look him dead in the eyes. His irises were dark as coal and she could tell he was laughing at her. This was all a game to him. ‘You. Are. A robot. An annoying one.’
‘What makes you say that?’ he asked.
‘For starters,’ Poppy said, gripping the pram with an unnecessary force, ‘you have zero social skills, which indicates a distinct lack of emotional intelligence. Second, you are unable to deal with any display of human emotion, which indicates a clear lack of empathy. And finally, your taste levels are clearly subhuman, as evidenced by the fact you named your dog Eileen.’
James shrugged. ‘I thought it would be funny. Like the song. “Come On Eil—”’
‘I got it,’ Poppy bristled.
The soles of her sneakers were going to wear thin with all this stomping. Trust him to like bad music . Bad music which was actually excellent music but most people were too embarrassed to admit it. He probably only liked it in an ironic way; he’d probably never had a genuine emotion in his life. And now he was asking about books when he should know new mums never had time to read, apart from that one book she’d read in those early weeks which had turned out to be surprisingly addictive and she’d had no-one to discuss it with since her mum only read Country Style and Dani hadn’t read a book since first-year uni.
Poppy gritted her teeth. ‘If you must know, I just read the one about the girl with the dragons and it was brilliant and— don’t look at me like that, it was really good—and now I’m not talking anymore.’
She marched down the footpath, resolutely ignoring the flicker of a smile she could see growing in her periphery.
By the time they’d finished the walk, Poppy estimated she’d spent thirty per cent of the time devising ways to publicly embarrass him, thirty per cent praying Maeve’s nappy held up, and the other forty per cent trying not to breathe too loudly in case he used it against her in some way.
‘Bye,’ James grunted when their paths diverged.
‘Nrrrhmph,’ Poppy replied to the footpath. She still hadn’t worked out how to engineer a public shaming, so communicating via gorilla sound effects would have to suffice. It was all he deserved.