Lexi
Lexi
It’s early evening, the low light before sundown. We’re out on the deck, watching for boats, but really just watching the water. You can lose hours to the sea. It shimmers and fractures—I can’t find names for all its shades of blue. Sometimes it seems closer to purple, or gold, or green, and sometimes I can imagine it’s the skin of a living beast, breathing underneath us, muscles sliding beneath the surface as it braces to pounce.
Right now it’s so serene out there, and I don’t know how to feel about it. That still water is keeping us trapped in this particular patch of nowhere, coordinates unknown. But it’s also keeping us steady. Still water means we’re still alive.
I can’t quite believe that another whole day has slid away out here. Zeke is resting on a deck chair beside me, but I do feel encouraged by the progress he’s made today: he’s now able to move around without feeling like he’ll faint, and that aura of sickness that clung to him, the sallowness, it seems to have eased in a way I can’t quite define. He just looks more himself again.
“Want to play a game?” he says, eyes still closed.
Our makeshift bandage—a strip cut out of one of the T-shirts in my luggage—forms a discreet lump beneath his top; I keep glancing at it.
“We’ve already ascertained I’m crap at charades,” I say. Though actually I blame Zeke for being unable to guess that I was clearly taming a horse, not having a seizure, which would have been a very insensitive choice of charade.
“Not charades. Would you rather,” he says.
I raise my eyebrows. I’ve only ever played this as a drinking game, and we’re not really in a position to be wasting fluids. I think about the wine we cracked open two days ago and wince.
“Would you rather be lost at sea on a houseboat with your one-night stand or …”
I snort.
“Or,” Zeke continues, “go back to secondary school?”
“Ooh,” I say, turning to face him and leaning on the railing. “Interesting.”
Secondary school would have been awful if it hadn’t been for Penny. She was my lifeline: she was prettier than me, skinnier than me, and boys liked her, which meant she had power. The one time the boys in my year tried to nick my lunch box— Hey, pub girl, what have you got in there, pork rinds? Salted peanuts? —she told them if they didn’t back off then she’d tell everyone how small their peanuts were, and the whole school had talked about the showdown for weeks. A Year 7 with a pink unicorn rucksack scaring off four Year 9s—that was my Penny.
“Secondary school,” I say. “Worse outfits but less likely to die. You?”
Zeke smiles slightly, eyes still closed. His curls are frizzing and greasy at the roots; the unkempt hair sweetens him a bit. He looks very young, lying there on the deck chair, and I feel a twist of discomfort at that, though it shouldn’t matter now. All sex acts have been strictly forbidden, after all.
“I’d rather be here than there,” he says.
“Seriously?”
“If you’re the stupid kid, school isn’t fun.”
I frown. “There’s no way you were a ‘stupid kid.’?”
He smiles, but it doesn’t touch his dimples.
“Trust me. There’re two things I’m good at in life, and you don’t get graded on either of them at school.”
“Cooking,” I guess, because I know that’s one thing he’s confident about—since he’s not strong enough to stand and cook himself yet, he’s been directing me from the sofa, but between us we have managed to make some genuinely delicious meals out of my random, overemotional Tesco shop.
“Yep.”
“And…”
He cracks one eye open and looks at me.
“What?” I say.
“Huh,” he says, sitting up slightly to give me a wry look. “I kind of hoped you’d remember.”
“Oh. Oh.” I swallow. “Well, yes, you were very good at that. But come on, what are you, a Stepford wife? You can do more than cook and have sex.”
His face goes blank. I pull back slightly, surprised at the suddenness of his reaction—I’d been joking, obviously, but it’s clear from his face that I’ve hurt him.
“Sorry, I just meant—you really talk yourself down,” I say.
I hadn’t registered it until now, actually. He’s the sort of good-looking that tends to come hand in hand with self-assurance, and he’d been so confident getting me to bed. I just hadn’t imagined he could have low self-esteem.
“Would you rather be a mermaid or a centaur?” he asks. A firm change of subject.
“Are you seriously asking me that? What good is a hoof right now? I’d be thrilled with a fish tail.” I’ve never liked my legs anyway.
“Right,” he says, a smile forming as his shoulders relax slightly. “You go, then.”
I mull it over. I’ve felt myself slowing down a bit in the last day or so—when you’re forced into inaction, you have to lean in eventually or you’ll go mad. Or maybe it’s Zeke, his steadiness, his thoughtfulness. He never rushes—it might be rubbing off on me.
“Would you rather eat a rat or eat a donkey?”
“Rat,” he says, without hesitation. “Donkeys look so sad all the time. I don’t want to give them something else to worry about.”
“Mae loves donkeys, so it’s rat for me, too,” I say, glancing over my shoulder at the horizon. It’s become a habit to check the full 360 degrees, even when there’s two of us.
“Mae’s your friend’s child? The one you help look after?”
I nod, already wishing I hadn’t said her name out loud. I miss her so much I could break with it. Her absence is raw and gaping, a hole in the very core of me, and the only way to cope is to force my mind away from her however I can.
“Tell me about her,” Zeke says softly.
I look back at him, heart hitching in my chest.
“No,” I say, swallowing. “No, I don’t want to talk about her.”
His eyebrows rise a fraction, but there’s nothing judgmental in his face.
“I hear you, I just…We have nothing but time, and I get the impression you’re missing her a lot? I think…it might help you to tell me about her.”
I look back out at the water. Zeke has no idea what Mae is to me. Telling him means showing him one of the deepest, most significant parts of myself. For a moment I resolve not to do it, but then I glance at him, and he’s so familiar to me now—soft eyes, the ghost of a dimple—that it feels a little strange he doesn’t already know. He’s seen me sobbing and drunk and covered in his blood. What’s the use in hiding myself from him now?
“I’d be missing her even if I weren’t here,” I say. “I don’t live with her anymore.”
“But you did?”
“For her whole life. Until this week.”
He stands carefully and joins me, leaning on the railing. I’m not sure how much of this is for companionship and how much of it is because he needs something to take his weight.
“She’s four,” I say. “Loves books, elves and gymnastics.” I grit my teeth tightly against the wave of pain that comes with the image of her in her leotard and shorts, hair plaited close to her scalp by Penny, who’s always been better at hairstyling than I am.
“She’s not just your friend’s kid, is she?” Zeke says softly. “She’s yours, too. You’ve raised her.”
All of a sudden, that sets me off. I don’t have time to hold back the tears—they’re already running down my cheeks, so I just let myself cry.
“Yeah,” I say through the tears. “I have raised her. I’m just a family friend, really. That’s all I’ll be now. But I was more than that. I gave her half her bottles at night, and I changed a thousand nappies, and she’s—she is mine, in a way, even though I know she’s Penny’s.”
“You said the other day her dad’s a bit of a…”
I sniff, jaw tightening. “Scumbag? Yeah. The sort of man who knocks a woman up and then wants nothing to do with the baby.”
“I’m sorry. That’s…Every kid deserves better than that.”
I glance at him. I know his relationship with his own father is complicated. I wonder about asking, and then I remember the diaries. This isn’t a conversation I should be starting unless I’m willing to confess that I know more than I should.
“So what happened?” Zeke asks. “Why did you leave?”
I swallow. I don’t want to talk about this, either, but Zeke’s right: I think about it all the time, and without the option of messaging Penny to make up again, I’ve got nothing to do but stew over it. It might feel good to talk it out.
“Penny’s got this boyfriend. He’s fine. Ryan. Whatever. They’re getting serious, and Mae does like Ryan, and I’m sure he’s…fine…”
I wipe my cheeks. Ryan probably is fine. But Penny has had so many bad experiences, and every time she dates an arsehole it has an impact on Mae. And Ryan will never be me. He doesn’t know the Cheerios song I sing for her every morning. He doesn’t know instinctively when Penny needs a break; he doesn’t know how stressed she gets when there’s too much on her plate.
“They wanted you to move out?” Zeke guesses. “So he can move in?”
I nod. “Penny did this whole thing about how it was for me. How I basically gave up half my twenties to look after her and Mae, and she wants me to get a life of my own. But really she just wants the place to herself with Ryan. She wants me gone.”
“Really?” Zeke says after a moment. “Are you sure?”
I step aside, moving away from him, suddenly irritated. “You wouldn’t get it.”
“OK,” he says, voice gentle. “I guess I just think if I was Penny, I’d feel a lot of guilt about how much you’d given up for me. Maybe she’s trying to give you something back.”
“By kicking me out?”
“By offering to take some of that…” He searches for the word. “Some of that responsibility away. Maybe she doesn’t know you want to stay.”
I stare at him. “Are you serious?”
“Well, have you ever told her?”
I widen my eyes. “She knows,” I say, though a current of fear has just passed through me at the question.
I’m not totally sure when I last told Penny how much it means to me to be such a big part of Mae’s life. And sometimes I do wish that I could have something that’s mine—a job I like, a boyfriend, time off that actually feels like a holiday. But I only have those thoughts very quietly, usually when I’m worn out or tired, and I feel guilty for them every time.
Because I’m so grateful for Mae. I would give up a million things for her. If Zeke said, Would you rather stay single forever and be part of Mae’s life, or have your own place and a boyfriend and lose her , I wouldn’t hesitate: I’d choose Mae. She’s brought so much to my life. She is my life, really, or she used to be.
“She’ll be so glad to see you when we get home,” Zeke says softly.
I drop my head, tears returning. “Oh, God,” I say.
He touches my back, just lightly, like he’s testing whether I want to move away again. I stay put, and he presses tighter, as if he’s holding me steady. He’s right: it was a huge relief to speak about her out loud. She’s burned in my chest like a secret every minute out here, and in some small way, sharing that with Zeke has changed the way it feels to miss her.
“I’m so glad I know now,” he says. “And I can’t imagine how much harder this must be when you know you have your little girl waiting for you.”
“Please,” I say on a sob. “I can’t bear to think about it like that.”
His hand grips the fabric of my T-shirt for a moment, then loosens, as though he’s remembering himself.
“We will get you home to her.” His voice is as soft as ever, but there’s steel in it, too. “OK? We will get you home.”
“You can’t say that,” I choke out.
“OK,” he says, after a moment. “Then I’ll say…there’s nothing I won’t do to get you back to Mae.”
The sunshine weighs hot on my shoulders. I press my forehead against my hands and close my eyes. It’s hard to feel lucky out here, but hearing Zeke say that—for a moment, he makes it easy.