At first, I’m thinking we’ll head down to the beach, but I can tell from Tom’s face that he’s nervous. It’s a lovely day in the school holidays, so the place is packed with kids and dogs and picnics. I know Rick Grimes loves people, but he might go all killer on the pooches. And I’ve seen first-hand what damage certain dogs – i.e. Laura’s black Labrador Midgebo – can do to unsuspecting picnics. It’s not pretty.
Instead, I suggest we go back to the cottage, where Rick can adore Bella and we can all relax. It’s not an especially long walk, about fifteen minutes, but it is very pretty. Part of it is across the coastal pathway, the sea shimmering beneath us like a blue-green bed sheet, and the rest is through Frank’s farm. The fields are lush and green, some planted with crops, others hosting big herds of black-and-white mooing cows.
We actually bump into Frank and Cal on the way, but they’re doing something important with a tractor, so we don’t stop for long. Just long enough for Tom to break the ice and tick two more people off his Budbury hit list, and for Frank to tell me casually that he ‘lent my mother a pair of skivvies’ this morning. Best not to think about that one too hard.
It’s a lovely stroll, the sun warming my skin, the birdsong lifting my spirits, and the exercise helping to work off all that cake. I clamp down on a teeny, tiny part of me that feels guilty about this – about abandoning my mum and recklessly running off into the distance with a strange man and a dog that looks like a teddy bear.
I clamp down on it because I know I don’t have anything to feel guilty about. She’s happy enough, and I am a human being too. I exist, even though it sometimes doesn’t feel like there’s enough of me to go around. Besides, she’d be horrified at the thought of me seeing her like that – like a burden.
Rick starts to get excited as soon as we reach the pathway that leads up to the cottage, and I tell Tom to let him off the lead. I see Bella peeking through the window watching us approach, but by the time we make it inside, she’s curled up on her dog bed. Rick gallops over and starts nuzzling her, his fat tail thumping on the parquet.
‘Shall we sit in the garden?’ I ask, as Tom wanders around the kitchen staring at random things. Pictures on the walls, Mum’s collection of weird CDs, the potted plants in the windowsill, the big-print calendar. He runs his fingers casually over the scarred wooden surface of the table, as though he’s never encountered such a thing before, a look of fascination on his face.
‘Willow calling Tom,’ I say, in a static-radio voice. ‘Willow calling Tom, over! Do you copy, over?’
He looks up, surprised, and grins.
‘Sorry!’ he replies, snatching his fingers away. ‘You caught me fondling wood this time. It’s lovely in here. Exactly like I’d imagine a slightly bonkers family home to be. I was just imagining little Willow, growing up here, surrounded by all this stuff, and all those brothers and sisters.’
I pull a face and reply: ‘It smells better now. Teenaged boys are stink-pits. And it wasn’t perfect, but yeah – it was my place. I’ve never lived anywhere else, apart from a brief and failed stint at going away to college … Anyway. Garden?’
He nods, and I grab a jug of fresh orange juice from the fridge. I think we’ve probably both had enough coffee and cake for one day. I open the kitchen window, and dock my phone on the speakers – on the very rare occasions when I’m here without my mother, it’s nice to listen to music that I enjoy, rather than her bohemian mama sound machine.
I press play, and turn the volume up so it will carry out into the garden. I feel good immediately. It’s one of those songs that just makes me smile.
‘Girls Aloud?’ he says, raising his eyebrows at me. ‘Really? Thought you’d be more of an indie girl …’
‘Girls Aloud,’ I say, carrying our glasses and juice outside, ‘are one of the most under-rated pop acts of all time. I mean, just listen. It’s brilliant, isn’t it?’
‘Sound of the Underground’ is booming away, and I can’t help but bop along as I go. I mean, I think you’d have to be technically dead to not bop along to ‘Sound of the Underground’, and even then, there might be a little toe-tapping to that surfing bit.
I put the drinks down on the table, and let myself have a few moments of sheer, uninhibited dance-related joy. I shimmy vigorously around Wurzel, and jump across the rows of carrots in the vegetable patch, and clap my hands, and stamp my Docs until I’m all puffed out. It’s like I’m possessed by a dance demon – I literally can’t stop until the song does. Damn those girls and their fiendishly catchy tunes.
I flop down on the bench next to Tom, blowing hair out of my eyes and grinning, my slightly wobbly legs spread out in front of me.
‘Phew!’ I wipe my forehead with the back of my hand. ‘I feel better for that. You should’ve joined in.’
Tom is looking at me with amazement. Huh. Weird. It’s almost as though he’s never seen a giant woman with neon pink hair getting jiggy with a scarecrow before. He must have led a sheltered life.
‘I’m not quite that far along on my journey to loosening up,’ he says, shaking his head and smiling. ‘And besides, I didn’t want to ruin the moment. It was like a comedy version of that scene in Flashdance – you know, where she leaps around with a welding torch?’
‘Oh yes. I know the one. Always thought that looked really dangerous. I like a good dance, what can I say? Anyway … have you seen Wurzel?’
The scarecrow is dressed up as a superhero as well, with a bath towel hanging off his scrawny stick shoulders, a cardboard eye mask, and yes, a pair of Frank’s old-man knickers. All becomes clear.
‘I have. He looks cool. So – I’m guessing you grew up in a world where the phrase “dance like nobody’s watching” was a way of life?’
‘I suppose. There were so many of us, you couldn’t do anything without somebody watching. It’s just the way our lives were – communal, whether we liked it or not. I’m guessing your childhood was a bit … different?’
I sip my juice, and cast a quick glance at him. This corner of the garden is in shade, but the rest is still bathed in sunlight. If you look really quickly from one bit to the other, it makes your eyes go weird and gives you a bit of a head rush. Take your thrills where you find them, boys and girls.
He shifts a bit next to me, and I feel his leg brush against mine. Not that he’s noticed – he seems pretty lost in thought.
‘You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,’ I add, nudging him. ‘This is a low-pressure environment, I promise. We can just listen to Girls Aloud if you like. Maybe slip in some Sugababes after.’
‘No, it’s okay, I don’t mind. I’m just … not used to talking about it, I suppose. Well. My childhood was definitely very different than yours, even when my parents were alive. They were both really successful people – Dad worked for an aviation company as an engineer, Mum was a lawyer. I was an only child, and everything was very proper. They were busy, and away a lot, and they made sure I had the best of everything. But what I didn’t have was a lot of fun – I struggled to connect with other kids even then, I was just too used to being with adults and life being a serious affair.
‘When they died … everything fell to pieces. I missed them desperately, and I suppose it made me even more isolated. There were a few other family members around, but they’d never been close. An uncle I’d never met who had no interest in taking on an adolescent boy. An aunt who I quite liked but who had four kids of her own and didn’t think she could cope with another. Grandparents who were way too busy.
‘So in the end, I came to Briarwood because, not to lay it on too thick, nobody else wanted me. That simple.’
Wow. He tells this story quietly and calmly, barely displaying any emotion at all – which is lucky, because I’m feeling enough bucket-loads of the stuff for both of us. My childhood was chaotic and not without its complications, but I never, ever felt like nobody wanted me. My mother was always loving, my siblings loved me enough to torment me every day, and I was always surrounded by mess and noise and energy.
I imagine Tom as a child, living first with parents who didn’t sound like a barrel-load of laughs and then in that dark little room at Briarwood, and it breaks my heart. It explains so much about him: his awkwardness around people, his preference for solitude, even the fact that he’s so neat and tidy. He’s basically never properly been a kid.
I think I’m still feeling a bit tired and emotional from my public display of crying in the café earlier, and don’t want to plummet back into that particular black hole. This is his story, not mine, and I have no right to hijack his pain.
I lay one hand on his thigh, and give his leg a squeeze. He’s staring off at Wurzel, eyes screwed up against the glare of the sun. I know how hard it probably is for him to talk about these things, and feel privileged that he’s shared it with me.
‘Well, sometimes people are just stupid,’ I say, leaning into him. ‘And it does help me understand why you’re so fond of the House on the Hill. Now you’ll bring it back to life.’
And maybe, I think silently, bring himself back to life with it. I vow that I will do my very best to help with that. I’ll have him sliding down banisters and dancing to inappropriately cheerful pop music and splashing in that fountain and maybe even daring to leave a cup unwashed on the drainer.
He nods, and places his hand over mine, and we sit quietly for a few moments. It doesn’t feel uncomfortable, this silence, but after a while, I start to wonder if the whole hand-holding, thigh-touching thing might be sending out mixed messages.
As soon as the thought crosses my mind, I tell myself off. It’s an arrogant leap on my part to think that he’d even look at me that way. He could have seventeen gorgeous girlfriends back in London. Or be married. Or be gay. I really have no idea – and I’m sure I’m reading too much into it all. Basically because he’s the first man I’ve met who’s made me feel even a teensy bit interested for years.
‘What about your life now?’ I say, getting up and pouring out some more orange juice as a way to extricate myself from the touchy-feely stuff. ‘Do you have … people? Friends? Girlfriends? Dog walking buddies? Online game partners? Clients, at least?’
He accepts his topped-up juice with a nod of thanks, and I deliberately take the chair opposite him instead of next to him. Little Miss Boundaries – that’s me.
‘Clients … well, the joy of being a mad inventor, once you reach a certain level at least, is that you get to lock yourself away in your attic and create without the need to talk to many people. I do have online game partners and people I chat with – but they’re all called things like CheezWizz99 and Gandalf the Magenta. Girlfriends … not really, no.’
I raise my eyebrows, and smile. This sounds intriguing, and he looks a bit embarrassed and uncomfortable.
‘What does “not really” mean?’ I ask, not letting him off the hook.
‘It means … well. I know a few women. The building where I live, it’s not exactly your normal tower block. It’s more a really expensive dockside development that also has a swimming pool and a gym.’
‘Ah yes. I’ve heard that you city slickers are keen on such things. So that’s how you manage to stay all … buff … without doing Iron Man contests or rowing along the Thames? No insult intended – but you are in good nick for a bloke who claims to spend his whole life locked in a darkened room tinkering with a soldering iron.’
He glances down at his own body – long, strong, packing out that Star Wars T-shirt very nicely thank you – and makes a fake surprised face. As though in his own head, he’s just a weedy little geek boy, and he has no idea how this physique happened at all.
‘I suppose. I like the gym. I like exercise. I like doing things where you can set goals, and count reps, and push yourself …’
‘I bet you have some magic techno gadget that allows you to track it all as well, don’t you? Something brilliant you invented all by yourself?’
‘Well, it’s called a FitBit, Willow – and sadly I didn’t invent it. But yeah. I have one of those. And this gym … it’s the social hub for the building, you know? It’s mainly young professional types, people working in London from other countries, quite a high turnover. And that’s where—’
‘You meet all the hot women who find your winning combination of eccentric charm and killer biceps completely irresistible?’
He grins, and looks so irresistible that I understand why.
‘Kind of. It doesn’t happen that often. And even if they do like the look of the killer biceps, the eccentric charm soon wears off after a couple of nights. Funnily enough, most women don’t actually enjoy lying in bed planning out how to defend the block against the zombie apocalypse …’
‘What? They don’t know what they’re missing! But … well. I don’t know what to say really. Would “I’m glad you’re getting some” be appropriate?’
‘Totally appropriate. What about you?’
I realise as he asks this – inevitably, I suppose – that we are veering dangerously into that territory that men and women sometimes venture into when they’re interested in each other. The human being version of dogs sniffing each other’s bits, trying to find out if there’s another mate on the scene. The little dance we do before we try and stick our tongues down someone’s throat in a nightclub. Not that I’ve ever done such a thing, of course.
‘Lord, no,’ I respond quickly, wanting to nip it in the bud. ‘I don’t have time for anything like that. When I was younger, yes – there were some romantic moments that usually involved insane amounts of Scrumpy and committing arrest-worthy acts on the beach. But not now. All of that’s behind me.’
‘Behind you? And you’re what … not even thirty?’
‘Technically, I’m not. But my years are a bit like dog years, you know? For every one I spend on the planet physically, I think I age by seven. I’m not complaining about it – everyone has their shit to deal with – but there just isn’t the time or space for anything but coping with work, life, and …’
‘Your mum,’ he supplies, quietly.
‘Yes. My mum. But don’t start feeling sorry for me – she’s worth it. And a lot of the time it’s not that bad at all. I know it’s going to get worse, and the unpredictability is a major bummer, but we get by. Long term, all I get told is that nobody really knows what will happen next … but for as long as I can, I’m going to be here for her, and keep her life as steady and stable and enjoyable as I can. Whatever happens, she’s still my mum. She’s worth missing out on disastrous first dates and Tinder for. And I’m lucky, I have a lot of really great friends.’
‘I noticed that. You are lucky. But you know what you mentioned earlier, about your brothers and sister? What about them? Can’t they help out? Not that I’d suggest you’re missing much with Tinder or whatever, but wouldn’t life be easier if you had your family around?’
Girls Aloud have moved on to ‘Something Kinda Ooooh’, which is one of their silliest and finest songs. It is totally inappropriate as a background to this conversation, and I wish I was singing about their toot-toots instead.
‘It’s complicated,’ I reply, kicking my boots against each other as I talk.
‘I have an IQ of a hundred and forty-eight. I can cope.’
‘Ha! Show off … and it’s not complicated like a quadratic equation. It’s complicated like … okay, we have different dads, for a start. Angel, Van and Auburn have one father, I have another. They, along with my mum and their dad, all lived together in a commune in Cornwall. Yeah, exactly – a commune! I suspect there were a lot of lentils. Anyway, their dad died, when Angel was only quite small, like four or something. Then mum got pregnant with me, and as soon as that happened, they all left.’
‘Who was your dad, then?’
‘I have no idea,’ I reply, honestly. ‘I’m not altogether sure she knows either. Reading between the lines, relationships weren’t exactly traditional there, and according to what she’s said since and what she’s written in her memory book, she went through a bit of a tough time after their dad died. Maybe she was looking for consolation, and ended up with a baby. For many years, for some reason, I convinced myself that my dad was Kevin Bacon …’
‘That would be weird. But cool.’
‘I know, right? I think I’d watched Tremors one too many times … but anyhow. Once I was born, she moved the whole family here. From what I can piece together, the kids didn’t want to leave the commune – it’s where they’d always lived, and suddenly they lost the one bit of continuity they had. Maybe that’s why I was just never as close to them as they were to each other. I always wondered if perhaps they blamed me for making everything change.’
‘You don’t really think that, do you? You weren’t even born!’
‘I know. But families are weird. Feelings are sometimes pretty messed up things, aren’t they? Not exactly logical – especially in this house, where logic was among the least prized of traits. Then as they grew up, I think Mum ended up being a victim of her own success. She always encouraged us all to be free-spirited, follow our hearts, find our own path in life … and she was genuinely thrilled when they all started doing that. Except Angel – she was always a bit broken-hearted about that name change thing.’
Tom nods, turning it all over in his mind. For a man raised in solitude it must all sound ridiculously complex.
‘So they followed their own paths – all the way off into the sunset – and you stayed here. Do they know? About the Alzheimer’s, I mean?’
‘Angel does. He’s only in Aberdeen, so I did tell him. He visited once, but … well, he couldn’t hack it. She was having an especially bad day, and it was all too much for him. He was never very robust, our Angel. Too celestial for his own good. And the others? Well I genuinely don’t know where they are, and neither does he. We get occasional postcards, or a nose flute through the post, but neither of them seems to have stayed in one place for that long. I couldn’t tell them even if I wanted to.’
‘That’s not very convincing, Willow. Not in this day and age, and with names like theirs …’ he replies, gently. Damn him and his superpowers.
‘I know,’ I say lamely. ‘I’ve not tried very hard. I suppose I got my hopes up that Angel might come back and play big brother, and when he ran away as fast as his Volvo could take him, it was horrible. I was so disappointed, so I decided not to put myself in that position again. You know – a position where I’m … vulnerable.’
‘Hey,’ he says, smiling, and reaching out to take my fingers from my mouth. I didn’t even notice, but I was apparently chewing my fingernails. Darn it – there goes that expensive Shellac manicure I never had. ‘I get that. I’ve spent my whole life preferring to be on my own rather than risk being vulnerable. It’s not a crime. And you’re strong, you’re doing a brilliant job. I admire you, and everything you’re doing – but maybe it’s time? As you say, things are unpredictable, but they’re only going to head in one direction.’
I stare at my kneecaps, which I suddenly find fascinating. He’s entirely possibly correct. And deep down, I understand that they have a right to know. Mum might have pushed them off on their journeys to self-enlightenment, and they might choose to stay on the road. But is it really up to me to make that decision for them?
I don’t reply, and he doesn’t push the issue. I think we’ve both had enough soul-searching for one day – or possibly for a whole lifetime.
‘Come on,’ says Tom, standing up. He grabs hold of both my hands, and pulls me to my feet. ‘It’s “Love Machine”. I bloody love this one … let’s dance like nobody’s watching …’