Page 37 of Silver Lining (London Love #6)

“Good for you.” He laughed. “No more tennis for you then. I think I may have a jealous streak. At least not with that guy. New coach, and—”

“Stewart, I was really bad at tennis. Trust me. Useless. Barely hit the ball, but I still did the lessons because it made me feel…I don’t know. Alive? It made me feel something. I understand that now.”

“See? We’re both figuring this out.”

“Perhaps we are. ”

“And in the end, does it matter?”

“Not really,” I admitted. Then I kissed him back.

Two hours later, I had both boys asleep, Constance in her room, and had stumbled into the upstairs bathroom, not knowing what I was doing.

I had no clothes left up here, everything having migrated to the flat downstairs, and there was not even a towel on the rack.

Bare. Empty.

Fresh start. It weirdly felt like it, the familiar tiles around me, the way the jets spurted out of the showerhead, hitting the wall in heavy waves.

Clean. Getting all the day’s anxieties washed off me so I could sleep. Stupid words rumbled through my head, mantras that were supposed to calm me. It had never worked in the past, but now, strangely, it did .

Day one. And it had been…okay. We’d all made it. I hadn’t lied about that, despite the still-heavy lump sat in my stomach.

Three weeks. There was no way I was giving my children back. And I had no solutions. No answers. No control here, despite the lock on my front door.

I didn’t have sheets on the bed either, but that was the least of my troubles, I discovered when I found Stewart placing a pile of sheets on the mattress, still with an apron around his waist.

“You look like you’re my butler.” I smiled, speaking quietly so as not to wake up my youngest son, who was flat on his back in the cot, one leg sticking out through the bars. He definitely needed a bigger bed.

Stewart shook out the sheet. “And you’re naked and wet.”

“No towels.”

He motioned to the hallway, where the light was still on in the walk-in closet.

“These looked bigger, so I assumed they were for this bed,” he said, tugging at the corner of the fitted sheet .

“Yes,” I said. “Wrong ones. These are too small. This bed is a super king.”

“Fancy.” He smiled as I went back in the closet, found something that looked vaguely familiar, and passed it to him like he really was my butler.

Stupid. But he smiled, and I disappeared downstairs to find…

Pants.

My home. Everything clean and tidy, the cushions on the sofa plumped up. A child’s shoe discarded by the kitchen worktop. A small reminder of where I’d been, and where I was now.

Light years apart, it seemed, when in reality it had barely been… I shook my head, stumbled downstairs, and clothed myself, detouring by Constance’s door on the way back upstairs. A careful knock.

“You all right?” I asked softly, pushing the door slightly open.

“Yeah?” She looked up from her phone, sat on her bed. Pinks. A shelf full of books. A stuffed toy on her lap.

“Just wanted to say good night. Thanks for today. ”

“Dad.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s nice to be home. Really. But today was chaotic. Is this what it’s like here now? All these kids and people lounging around?”

“Is it a bad thing?” Perhaps it was. Maybe I’d done this all wrong. Oh God, I had, hadn’t I?

“Calm down,” she said, like she could read my thoughts. “It was really cool. I mean, Mommy has all these staff, and they barely speak to us. Jean is chill. And I like Reuben.”

“He’s a nice young man.”

She made a noise, rolled her eyes again.

“He’s, like, semi-famous. Weird. Like, I see his pictures online, and there’s this blog that has a couple-goals column, and him and The Dieter are on there all the time, and then suddenly he’s sat on our sofa in a shirt that has holes in it. I mean?”

Now I made a noise. I had no idea what to say to that.

“If The Dieter turns up on our sofa, I might faint.”

“You won’t.” I had to smile. She wouldn’t. And neither would I, despite barely having said a word to him. I wasn’t going to share the little incident of our first brief encounter. Nor the fact that—

“Is Stewart staying the night then? ”

Busted.

“Is that okay?”

“Dad, it’s okay to have a boyfriend. He’s pretty decent, and nothing like Brandon. Brandon’s a creep.”

“Okay.”

“And you need to ring school and get the fees paid. I filled in all the paperwork, but you need to speak to them. I can start on Monday, but I need a uniform.”

“We can fix that,” I promised, hoping I could. Things suddenly seemed…possible. Maybe anything was. “School will be good.”

“Marmie should go back too. He used to love school here.”

“I will sort that all out, Constance. It’s only day one.”

“Yeah,” she said calmly. “But I just want things to go back to normal. I want to feel normal again.”

“Darling, I want that too. I want all this to be our normal. But it will be slightly different. We’ve all…changed.”

“And no more stupid stunts.”

“Stunts? ”

“Jumping off balconies.”

I’d been standing there like the fool I was. Now I sat on the edge of her bed and pulled my daughter into my arms, shushing her as she sobbed against my shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” I tried to whisper, but those words would never be enough. I had lost so much. Made too many mistakes. Stupid ones. Selfish, ridiculous, stupid things.

“Don’t do it again.”

“I won’t,” I promised. “I’ll always be here. Whatever happens, I will be here for you.”

She let me go, trying to wipe her eyes with her sleeve, smiling, a little embarrassed perhaps. I smiled too. Because she was here, and so was I.

“We start anew, right now. We’re family, and we’ll make this work. And we both need other people in our lives to make everything better. I’ve got Stewart, and I—”

“I get it,” she said, shuffling on her bed. “And it’s fine, Dad. It is.”

“And if you want the downstairs?”

She laughed in my face. “You’re too easy. I was just messing, but yeah? Maybe. That might…actually work. It needs painting, though, and I need new furniture. It looks like shit down there.”

Seriously? Yes. Maybe. But I still grabbed her face and kissed her forehead.

“Luckily, you’re cute, so I’ll forgive you for that little insult.”

“Luckily, you’re my dad, so I’ll let you get away with your awful interior design skills.”

“Bah,” I huffed, and she smiled.

“Go away. I have things to do.”

“You should sleep.”

“I’m jet-lagged as anything, and I’ll probably be up until morning. If you wake me up before midday, I’ll throw you off the balcony myself.”

“Constance,” I warned, but at the same time, I smiled. “We don’t have a balcony.”

“I have a fine window right here.” She stared at me. “It’s a solid threat.”

We’d be fine. I was fine. She was…strangely too. And life?

Life would just keep going. And we’d make it work. Whatever happened .

“Go to bed,” I said sternly.

She threw a teddy at me.

We were all fine. Just the way it was supposed to be.