“So… if she’s not his kid daughter… then she’s an adult now, right?”
I nod. “Yeah, I guess so. Probably moved away.”
“So… if she’s grown up… why is her room still like some kiddie shrine? I mean, where’s all her teenage shit? Surely she’d have like Backstreet Boys posters up, or some other crap like that. Maybe some makeup… some grown-up kid shit…”
“Maybe she liked it that way… the way it was…” My answer is lame, and it’s because I don’t have one. Because I haven’t even thought about it.
Haven’t thought about the fact Jane’s room is still like she’s five or six years old, even though she doesn’t live there anymore, hasn’t lived there for a long time.
“Maybe she lived with her mother…” I ponder aloud. “Maybe she didn’t live in there… not all the time…”
“Still,” Kelly Anne says. “She’d still have some grown-up shit, Laine. I mean, who wants a fairy castle when they’re at high school?”
Me, I think, but I daren’t say it.
“I’ll ask him,” I tell her. “About Jane. I’m sure maybe there’s another room she had or something. Or maybe she didn’t live there…”
Kelly Anne pulls a spooky face, waggles her fingers like a ghost. “Or maybe she didn’t exist… oooooooh… maybe he’s like the guy from Psycho and you’ll find his dead mother in his cellar…”
That thought really does make me laugh. “You’re an idiot,” I tell her. “You really have been watching too much CSI.”
I brush past her to make my way to class, and she follows, shrugs at me. “Tell me that when you realise he’s some freaky pervert and you’re running barefoot to my house as he chases you with his imaginary daughter’s dildo or something.”
“You’re gross,” I tell her, but I’m grinning.
“No,” she says. “You’re gross. I’m not the dirty little bitch with a creepy daddy fetish.”
I laugh at her words but I’m not really sure what she means. I mean, she doesn’t know Nick. Doesn’t know how he saved me, how he cares for me. Doesn’t know how safe I feel when I’m with him.
“He’d make a really good daddy,” I say.
She rolls her eyes at me. “Tell him that while he takes your V card, Laine. That’ll really get him off. Dirty old pervert.”
I don’t reply. I can’t reply. In my mind, I’m sitting on his lap, my arms around his neck as he…
“Laine?”
I snap back to reality, and the heat in my face betrays me.
“I’m worried about you,” she says.
But I’m not worried at all.
Chapter Nine
Nick
“Morning, Mr Lynch.”
A sea of the same old Monday morning greetings. I smile my usual smile, ask after people’s weekends, and their kids, and their Saturday nights at the karaoke. I make my way through to my office with my usual take-out coffee and check my emails just like any other regular work morning. But it’s different this morning. I feel so different this morning.
Jane stares out at me from the same old picture from the corner of my desk, grinning in the arms of her mother as they stare up at the camera. Stare at me. I touch the frame, a regular ritual, only this time my heart doesn’t pang in quite the same way.
It’s the loneliness. Or more specifically the lack of it.
A beautiful sense of relief washes over me as I discard my regular work routine and call my secretary through.
Penny looks great this morning. A new blouse, I think. She smiles and scribbles down notes without even a hint of surprise as I instruct her to call in a cleaning team to Laine’s property. I tell her they need to be able to handle hazardous waste, complete a thorough job from top to bottom. Decorators, I tell her. We’ll need decorators when they’re done.
Neutral colours. Maybe some fresh curtains to match. Yes, curtains to match.
New flooring, too. The place will need new flooring.
And a locksmith, to be safe.
I know I’m still lying to myself. Still maintaining the illusion that I’ll ever want to see Laine move back into that place. It’s a pretence that irks me, even the thought, but the girl needs to know she’s in good hands, strong hands, hands that can save her from any of life’s unfortunate situations.
And there’s her mother to think about. If you can call the woman a mother in anything other than the biological context.
Anything else? Penny asks, and her smile catches my eye as her pen hovers so eagerly above her notepad. I notice the simple little pendant around her neck, sparking in the light. I notice the perfect pastel pink of her new blouse and the subtlety of her makeup.
“Yes,” I say. “I’d like you to choose me some jewellery. As a gift for someone. Something tasteful.” I pause. “Something you’d like, Penny. Something really special. I trust your judgement.”
The compliment lights up her eyes.
“Sure thing, Mr Lynch,” she says. “Do you have a budget in mind?”
I shake my head. “Something you’d choose for yourself, Penny. Budget is secondary.”
She nods, dithers on the spot a little. I can tell she’s plucking up the courage to pry, and I don’t give her any cues, just stare at her with a professional smile on my face.
“Is she, um…” she finally begins.
“Is she..?”
“A friend?” she asks. “A relative?”
“Both,” I tell her. “She’s someone special.”
She nods. “How old?” she asks, then checks herself. “So I know what style to go for, I mean.”
“Eighteen. Just.”
She looks at me as I say just, and I know she’s wondering.
She doesn’t ask any more questions, but I can say with certainty that my extra-curricular business will be the talk of the photocopier this morning.
That would usually bother me, but not today.
There isn’t one single thing that will bother me today.
I call up my office calendar and mark myself as unavailable from four p.m. from this afternoon.
Sweet little Laine needs to get home safely from college.
And after all, it’s a universal truth. A truth that everyone who is luckily enough to know it is blessed by.
A truth that I’m blessed with for the first time in years.
Family comes first.
In the meantime it’s business as usual.
I ask Penny to bring in my nine a.m. client.
Laine
Nick calls me at lunch. It feels so strange to hear him on the phone. His voice is warm and deep, but there’s a curtness to it. Work Nick.
I imagine him there, partner in some swanky accountancy firm. Solid handshakes and rich clients. I wonder if he has a secretary. I wonder if he has a big team of people hanging onto every word he says. He is the boss after all. Or one of them, at least.
Nick seems like a boss. He’d make a good boss.
Just like he’d make a good daddy.
And a good lover.
I get those crazy flutters again, butterflies in my tummy as I tell him I’m having a nice day, and my sandwiches were lovely. Ham and cheese. Posh ham, really thick cut. Not the watery stuff I buy for myself. I tell him my classes went well. That I’ve been working hard.
He sounds so pleased, and it makes me smile. When I hang up I’m grinning so hard I barely notice Kelly Anne gawping at me.