Chapter Eighteen

mistake number one: Going to Elizabeth’s meeting. I shouldn’t have

done it. It was the same as not going into school with our younger friends and I should have had the sense to realize that Luke’s school is the equiva-lent of Elizabeth’s workplace. I could have kicked myself. Actually I did, but Luke thought it looked so funny that he started doing it to himself and now both his shins are bruised. So I stopped.

After I left the meeting I walked back to Sam’s house to see Luke. I sat on the grass in the back garden, keeping an eye on them wrestling, hoping it wouldn’t end in tears and also doing my favorite mental sport. Thinking.

It was constructive thinking too because I realized a few things. One of the things I learned was that I went to the meeting that morning because my gut instincts were telling me to. I couldn’t figure out how my being there would possibly help Elizabeth, but I had to go with my gut feeling and I just presumed she wouldn’t see me. My meeting her the previous night had

been so dream-like and unexpected that I started the day feeling as if it were all in my imagination. And yes, I am aware of the irony there.

I was so happy she saw me. When I saw her swinging on that garden

bench looking so lost, I knew that if she was ever going to see me, that was going to be the time. I felt it in the air. I knew she needed to see me and I had prepared myself for the fact that one day she would, but I hadn’t prepared myself for the shiver that ran up my spine when our eyes first locked 141

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together. It was odd because I’d been looking at Elizabeth for the past four days and I was used to her face, knew it inside out, could see it clearly even when I shut my eyes, knew that there was a tiny mole on her left temple, that one cheekbone was slightly higher than the other, that her bottom lip was larger than her top, that she had fine baby hair at the edge of her hair-line. I knew it so well, but isn’t it strange how different people can look when you actually look them in the eyes? They suddenly appear to be

someone else. If you ask me, it’s true what they say about eyes being the windows to your soul.

I had never felt that way before, but I put it down to not having been in the position before. I had never had a friendship with someone of Elizabeth’s age and I supposed it was nerves. It was all a new experience for me but one I was immediately willing to take on.

There are two things that I am rarely. The first is confused and the second is worried, but while I waited in Sam’s back garden on that sunny day, I was worried. And that confused me and because I was confused, that worried me even more. I was hoping I hadn’t caused trouble for her at work, but later that evening, as the sun and I were playing hide-and-seek, I soon found out.

The sun was trying to hide behind Sam’s house, covering me in a blan-

ket of shadow. I was moving around the garden, trying to sit in the very last patches of sunny areas before the light disappeared completely. Sam’s mom was having a bath after doing a dance workout video in her back room that looked out onto the garden, which had been hugely entertaining, so when the doorbell rang, Sam answered it. He was under strict instructions not to answer to anyone except Elizabeth.

“Hello, Sam,” I heard her say, stepping into the hall. “Is your dad

here?”

“No,” Sam replied, “he’s at work. Me and Luke are playing in the

garden.”

I heard footsteps coming down the hall, the sound of heels on wood,

and then an angry voice as she stepped out into the garden. “Oh, he’s at work is he?” Elizabeth said, standing at the top of the garden with her hands on her hips, looking down at me.

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“Yeah, he is,” Sam said, confused, and ran off to play with Luke.

There was something so endearing about the sight of Elizabeth looking

so bossy that it made me smile.

“Is something funny, Ivan?”

“Lots of things are,” I replied, sitting down on the only part of the grass that still had sun on it. I guess I won the hide-and-seek game. “People getting splashed by puddles by passing cars, being tickled right here”—I gestured to my side—“Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy in the second Beverly Hills Cop, an—”

“What are you talking about?” She frowned, moving closer.

“Things that are funny.”

“What are you doing?” She stepped closer.

“Trying to remember how to make a daisy chain. Opal’s looked nice.”

I looked up at her. “Opal’s my boss and she had them in her hair,” I explained. “The grass is dry, if you want to sit down.” I continued pulling daisies from the ground.

It took Elizabeth a moment to settle herself on the grass. She looked

uncomfortable and made faces as though she were sitting on pins. After

brushing invisible dirt off her trousers and attempting to sit on her hands so her bum wouldn’t get grass stains, she resumed glaring at me.

“Is something the matter, Elizabeth? I sense that there is.”

“How acutely aware of you.”

“Thank you. It’s part of my job, but nice of you to compliment me.” I

also sensed her sarcasm.

“I’ve a bone to pick with you, Ivan.”

“A funny one, I hope.” I threaded one stalk through the other.

“There’s another thing that’s funny, funny bones. They hurt, but they also make you laugh. Like lots of things in life, I suppose, or even life itself. Life is like a funny bone. Hmmm.”

She looked at me in confusion. “Ivan, I’ve come to give you a piece of

my mind. I spoke to Benjamin today after you left and he told me you were a partner in the company. He also accused me of something else, but I

won’t even get into that,” she fumed.

“You’ve come to give me a piece of your mind,” I repeated, looking at

her. “You know that phrase is really beautiful. The mind is the most powerful 144

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thing in the body, you know, whatever the mind believes, the body can

achieve. So to give someone a piece of it . . . well, thank you, Elizabeth.

Funny how people are always intent on giving it to the people they dislike when it really should be for the ones they love. There’s another funny thing.

But a piece of your mind . . . what a gift that would be.” I looped the last stalk and formed a chain. “I’ll give you a daisy chain in return for a piece of your mind.” I slid the bracelet onto her arm.

She sat on the grass. Didn’t move, didn’t say anything, just looked at

her daisy chain. Then she smiled and when she spoke her voice was soft.

“Has anyone ever been mad at you for more than five minutes?”

I looked at my watch. “Yes. You, from ten o’clock this morning until

now.”

She laughed. “Why didn’t you tell me that you worked with Vincent

Taylor?”

“Because I don’t.”

She frowned. “But Benjamin said that you did.”

“Who’s Benjamin?”

“The project manager. He said you were a silent partner.”

I smiled. “I suppose I am. He was being ironic, Elizabeth. I’ve nothing to do with the company. I’m so silent that I don’t say anything at all.”

“Well, that’s one side of you I’ve never met.” She smiled. “So you’re

not actively involved with this project?”

“My work is with people, Elizabeth, not buildings.”

“Well then, what on earth was Benjamin talking about?” Elizabeth was

confused. She sighed. “He’s an odd one, that Benjamin West.” But she

wasn’t letting me get away with not answering her question. “What business were you talking to Vincent about? What have children got to do with the hotel?”

“You’re very nosy.” I laughed. “Vincent Taylor and I weren’t talking

about any business.” I smiled. “Anyway, that’s a good question, what do you think children should have to do with the hotel?”

“Absolutely nothing.” Elizabeth laughed, and then stopped abruptly,

afraid she had offended me. “You think the hotel should be child-friendly.”

“Don’t you think everything and every one should be child-friendly?”

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“I can think of a few exceptions,” Elizabeth said smartly, looking out

to Luke.

I knew she was thinking of Saoirse and her father, possibly even her-

self.

“I’ll talk to Vincent tomorrow about a playroom/play area kind of

thing. . . .” She trailed off. “I’ve never designed a children’s room before.

What the hell do children want?”

“It will come easily to you, Elizabeth. You were a child once, what did you want?”

Her brown eyes darkened and she looked away. “It’s different now.

Children don’t want what I wanted then. Times have changed.”

“Not that much, they haven’t. Children always want the same things,

because they all need the same basic things.”

“Like what?”

“Well, why don’t you tell me what you wanted and I’ll let you know if

they’re the same things?”

Elizabeth laughed lightly. “Do you always play games, Ivan?”

“Always.” I smiled. “Tell me.”

She studied my eyes, battling with herself about whether to speak or not, and after a few moments, she spoke. “When I was a child, my mother and I would sit down at the kitchen table every Saturday night with our crayons and fancy paper and we’d write out a full plan of what we were going to do the next day.” Her eyes shone with the fondness of remembering. “Every Saturday night I got so excited about how we were going to spend the next day, I’d pin the schedule up on the wall of my bedroom and force myself to go to sleep so that morning would come.” Her smile faded and she snapped out of her trance. “But you can’t incorporate those things into a playroom; children want PlayStations and X-Boxes and that kind of thing.”

“Why don’t you tell me what kinds of things were on the schedule?”

She looked away into the distance. “They were a collection of hope-

lessly impossible dreams. My mother promised me we would lie on our

backs in the field at night, catch as many falling stars as we could, and then make all the wishes our hearts desired. We talked about lying in great big baths filled up to our chins with cherry blossoms, tasting the sun showers, 146

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twirling around in the village sprinklers that watered the grass in the summer, having a moonlit dinner on the beach, and then doing the soft-shoe shuffle in the sand.” Elizabeth laughed at the memory. “It’s all so silly, really, when I say it aloud, but that’s the way she was. She was playful and adventurous, wild and carefree, if not a bit eccentric. She always wanted to think of new things to see, taste, and discover.”

“All those things must have been so much fun,” I said, in awe of her

mother. Tasting sun showers beat a toilet-roll telescope any day.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Elizabeth looked away and swallowed hard. “We

never actually did any of them.”

“But I bet you did them all a million times in your head,” I said.

“Well, there was one thing we did together. Just after she had Saoirse, she brought me out to the field, lay down a blanket, and set down a picnic basket. We ate freshly baked brown bread, still piping hot from the oven, with homemade strawberry jam.” Elizabeth closed her eyes and breathed

in. “I can still remember the smell and the taste.” She shook her head in wonder. “She chose to have the picnic in our cow field, so there we were in the middle of the field, having a picnic surrounded by curious cows.”

We both laughed.

“But that’s when she told me she was going away. She was too big a per-

son for this small town. It’s not what she said, but I know it must have been how she felt.” Elizabeth’s voice trembled and she stopped talking. She

watched Luke and Sam chasing each other around the garden, but didn’t

see them; listened to their childish squeals of joy, but didn’t hear them. She shut it all out.

“Anyway”—her voice became serious again and she cleared her throat—

“that’s irrelevant. It’s got nothing to do with the hotel; I don’t even know why I brought it up.”

She was embarrassed. I bet Elizabeth had never said all that aloud, ever in her life, and so I let the long silence sit between us as she worked it all out in her head.

“Do you and Fiona have a good relationship?” she asked, still not looking me in the eye after what she had told me.

“Fiona?”

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“Yes, the woman you’re not married to.” She smiled for the first time

and seemed to settle.

“Fiona doesn’t talk to me,” I replied, confused as to why she still

thought I was Sam’s dad. I would have to have a chat with Luke about that one. I wasn’t comfortable with this case of mistaken identity.

“Did things end badly between you both?”

“They never began to be able to end,” I answered honestly.

“I know that feeling.” She rolled her eyes and laughed. “At least one

good thing came out of it though.” She looked away and watched Sam and

Luke playing. She had been referring to Sam, but I got the feeling she was looking at Luke and I was pleased at that.

Before we left Sam’s house, Elizabeth turned to me. “Ivan, I’ve never

spoken to anyone about what I said before.” She swallowed. “Ever. I don’t know what made me blurt it out.”

I smiled. “Thank you for giving me a very big piece of your mind. I think that deserves another daisy chain.” I held out another bracelet I’d made.

Mistake number two: When sliding it onto her wrist, I felt myself give

her a little piece of my heart.

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 390