Page 4

O kay, this was weird. Suddenly, I was no longer alone in my dwelling of sorrows, hiding out from what had once been my life.

I couldn’t remember a time when I’d actually set foot down here before everything had imploded.

This used to be our nanny flat, inhabited by a succession of young women who had dedicated their lives to caring for my offspring while Veronica and I built our careers.

It had only been Constance at first, but once Marmaduke was born, the nanny had left and been replaced, time and time again.

Two children were a handful, apparently, and…

well. I’d seen the light; I decided to take on less work and spend more time with the two little whirlwinds who ruled the house.

“Veronica hated it,” I said to the man. Stewart.

Now I was talking, I couldn’t control it.

I blamed him because he’d started sorting the recycling into bin liners and then asked if he could take them all upstairs and out to the bins—something I had failed to do for weeks.

I dreaded seeing the state of upstairs so I simply remained glued to my seat while Stewart quietly removed the offending rubbish.

I could smell it now, a stink that had become as familiar as this chair where I sat when I got sick and tired of my bed.

Well, technically the nanny’s bed. Caroline, Firenza, Jorja…

So many names running through my brain. Celeste had been the last one, leaving a mere two months into her placement, after Marmaduke had thrown a particularly bad tantrum.

I didn’t blame him because I was his dad and I was never there.

I would have thrown a tantrum too, had it been me.

My dad had been around most of my life, working in his study, admittedly, but always available for a chat, while my mother pottered around the house—an idyllic picture painted by my brain.

How much of it was wishful thinking, or had I really grown up like that ?

I was still talking, apparently, and another cup of tea had appeared in front of me. I wouldn’t sleep tonight, but I had stopped caring.

“You need to stick to decaf,” he said, sitting himself back down on the chair opposite. “So, you cut down your hours and took on caring for your children in a more hands-on role?”

It sounded like a question when it was just a statement of fact. I had.

“She hated that I was letting my career slip. Her whole life revolved around her next case, each one bigger and better, more risk, more money, each client more prestigious than the last. She’s a divorce lawyer, Veronica.

Handled the Princess of Devon’s split from Omar Thakur.

That was her launch into high profile cases, and she never looked back.

I, on the other hand, went into planning law and took on smaller cases.

Kept to business hours and picked up the kids from school every day.

Never late, never missed an after-school class, cooked them homemade meals and put them to bed.

It didn’t mean a thing once Veronica had her mind made up to leave me and take the kids away. ”

“I’m sorry,” he said .

I shrugged. “It’s just what it is now. I fought. I fought for my kids, and it got me nowhere but here.”

“I can’t imagine what you’re going through.”

“Nobody can.”

“I only met my son when he was thirteen,” he said, his voice full of something I recognised.

Pain. Regret perhaps. “Didn’t know he existed before then.

Changed my life completely because I wasn’t in any state to become a father.

I understand because I fought too. Changed things around and got my house in order.

Made him a bedroom and went to court. The day I picked him up was the most terrifying day of my life. But that’s a story for another day.”

I liked that he smiled. Good memories did that to you.

“My oldest, Constance, was fourteen last time I saw her. Her fifteenth birthday was coming up, and she was telling me what gifts she wanted. She’s smart as anything—has her mother’s brain. She manipulates me with a wink and a smile, and I don’t even see it coming.”

He laughed gently. “She sounds amazing. I hope I get to meet her one day.”

I went quiet, my body reacting like he’d stabbed me with a knife. “I never got to give her those gifts. They’re still upstairs somewhere. I bought her exactly what she asked for, but I suppose they’re out of fashion now. Things for a young girl when she’s now almost a woman.”

“You will see her again. You’re her father.”

That’s what people said, thinking they knew how these things worked. That wasn’t the reality.

“The children are in Miami. I had regular visitation for a while, jetted back and forth once a month. But I overstepped the mark with my wife, being one hour late returning the kids. It was only the one occasion. We got stuck in traffic, no fault, rhyme or reason. Visitation became supervised one-hour slots after that.”

“I hope you went to court.”

Such juvenile ideas. Idealistic visions of fairness and justice.

I just shook my head. I didn’t want to get into all of this.

“You didn’t go to court?” He sounded agitated. I understood that feeling. The anger had once paralysed me and made me careless.

“I fought. And I still travelled to Miami to try to see my children. In the end, she took out an injunction forbidding me to go near them. No contact whatsoever. Veronica had remarried by then, to a judge.”

My voice was barely a whisper, having to admit that. It hurt. I had dealt with this for so long, and still I couldn’t swallow the ginormous lump forming in my throat.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Not your fault. It’s just the way things are now.

Which is why I’m here in this house that I really need to sell because I can’t afford it, and I can’t work because I messed up my company, and I now owe money on child support because I have completely depleted my savings and everything else too, and maybe if I started working again, took on some small projects, I could save up enough to afford to…

I don’t know. Get the ball rolling. I just…

This house—this was my children’s home. Their rooms are still upstairs, and their things, and I just… ”

“Hope,” he said quietly. “Hope is the last thing we give up. I see your thinking. I understand. I probably understand more than you know.”

“I have hope. I will always have hope. That’s why I sit here, day after day, crying instead of doing anything else.

Because that hope is futile. It will never happen.

My children will grow up, and perhaps one day they will seek contact.

How will they find me if I’m not right here where they left me? ”

“There’s social media. Legal ways of enabling contact with an adult child.”

“I know.” I did. I was just stuck in this mindset. “They only remember me here, when they were children and we laughed and things were simple.”

He didn’t respond. I didn’t blame him. My rantings were often too much, even for my doctor and that therapist.

I wondered where my phone was. It had rung earlier.

What did it matter?

He left after a while of me sitting there in silence. He was still talking, but I failed to listen. I rocked gently, a quirk my body had seemed to acquire, my eyes glazing over to the mess around me.

I was better than this. But I still sat here. Frozen in time.

Hope. Perhaps I’d lost that as well.

I awoke sometime the next day, rudely shaken awake by the patio doors opening and Stewart once again entering my home.

Uninvited. Unasked .

I sat up in bed, trying to get my mouth to comply and say something, but he just smiled at me and carefully unbuttoned the cuffs on his shirt.

Another shirt and tie. Like the deranged grandfather he obviously was.

I’d apparently said that out loud, which made him smile.

“I always dress like this. It’s a comfort thing. I think as long as I can get out of bed and dress nicely, there will be some good that can come from it. Even today, when I intend to give this place a thorough clean.”

“I didn’t ask for that.”

“I know you didn’t. But tell me this.” He handed me a cup of tea—I hadn’t even registered he’d brought it in with him—and dragged a chair over to the bottom of the bed.

He sat, sipped his own tea, and then set the cup on the floor and went back to folding up his sleeve, almost all the way to his elbow.

He paused to admire his handiwork, then did the other one.

He had hairy arms, muscular, strong, and a standard watch, nothing fancy. It wasn’t a model I recognised. I’d once owned a collection of fine timepieces: gifts from Veronica. I’d sold them off, one by one, to pay for the things that had all been a waste of time. And money .

“You can either live like this until it consumes you. Fine. Your choice. Or you can let your lonely, bored neighbour, who has nothing else to do but feed the two ungrateful felines upstairs twice a day, give this place a good scrub. Give me something to do here. I will clean up, sort out that sad excuse for a fridge and batch-cook you something to eat. I can actually cook now, did a course and everything. Small silver linings of getting made redundant. You suddenly have time.”

“Time.” I chuckled. “Time is all I have. I don’t know what to do with it.”

“Exactly,” he said almost triumphantly. “So today, we’re going to clean up, go get some groceries and make a nice stew to last us the rest of the week. How does that sound?”

“And you are doing this why, exactly?”

“Because I can. And because I have been watching you pace up and down the garden in that filthy dressing gown for weeks. I’ve had enough. So yes, I am interfering, because I can. Because there is something we can do here, and it certainly isn’t more crying.”

“I can cry if I want to,” slipped out of my mouth before I strangely burst out laughing. Mostly because he was laughing, and it was…weird. Laughing was an uncomfortable thing to do. I hadn’t done it in a long time.