Page 100 of Love and Loathing

“I bet.”

He chuckled, pressing a kiss to her temple. She shifted to sit upright again, always uncomfortable being in one position for too long. But sitting up let her meet his eyes. Darkest brown. But the sunlight revealed the gold.

“We should probably unpack first before we try to get the baby out,” she said.

“Now you’ve said that, she will definitely come the minute we get to the first box.”

“Probably. At least the garden is perfect, though. Our garden, I mean, at the new house.”

She had visions of lying on the grass, baby at her side on a blanket, watching the planes cross the blue sky. They were probably unrealistic dreams. The baby would be crying. She’d be crying. She’d never get a moment to look at the sky. But still. It was a pleasant dream to have, especially sitting here, surrounded by the drone of bees, white butterflies skipping briskly between the vegetable patches, the sound of London traffic made distant by the hot air and the smell of green things.

The house was a little two-bed terrace, just under a mile away from Aubrey’s parents’ house. Which was good, Evie kept reminding herself, because they were very enthusiastic grandparents and would be very useful. Priya was lovely. An angel. Had already been invaluable with her knowledge on all manner of baby-related things. But Evie was still getting used to having parental interest in her life. She wasn’t used to the curiosity, the questions, the advice.

“Don’t worry about the unpacking,” Aubrey said now. “It’ll all get done. My contract ends on Wednesday. I’ll be there. I’ll have time to do it all. You won’t have to do a thing.”

“Which means the baby will definitely come on Monday.”

Aubrey laughed. “Probably. In which case, I’ll quit on Monday.”

Evie smiled. It had been perfect, the short contract he’d been offered soon after her father’s statement went public. The fact it finished on almost her exact due date had seemed like a sign. And three months after it ended, he would be starting work at Roscoe’s new company—part-time.

“Don’t you mind?” she had asked when he told her what he’d agreed with her brother. “Won’t it be hard to build up your career working part-time?”

“I already told you, I’m not that career-driven. The job provides everything we need to live on. I want to see the baby. I want to be in our daughter’s life. I want to be inyourlife. I can’t do that if I’m working like I used to, seven ‘til nine—or more, every day of the week, often weekends, too. And besides, this means you get to do whatyouwant.”

Studying, he meant. He’d found her reading a pile of prospectuses for courses ranging from urban planning to environmental law, and after some initial good-natured horror at the realisation that she might become yet another lawyer in his life, he’d got extremely enthusiastic about the idea. She wasn’t entirely sure what it would lead to, but the idea of being involved right in the heart of things, as he had once suggested—helping create the policies that decided how green spaces were made and kept—that was the plan she had.

“It was Asha’s doing,” she had explained to Aubrey. “At her birthday party, when she was brow-beating your dad into getting her a new phone, reeling off all these statistics.Knowledge is power,she told him. Obviously it’s not the first time I’d heardthe expression, but to see it in practise, the way she dismantled his every objection one by one—”

“Raised in a house of lawyers,” Aubrey had said. “It’s in the blood.”

“I realised how powerful it could be. That sort of systematic use of logic and argument—backed up by knowledge of the law—combined with the passion to argue the case…”

“Oh my God,” Aubrey had said, covering his eyes with a groan. “You’ll be terrifying.”

Evie had laughed. “Exactly!” Then, lightly, trying not to show how worried she was over something so ridiculous: “If Liv hasn’t put you off lawyers entirely.”

He had smiled ruefully. “Liv put me off Liv.” She was gone anyway, Aubrey had heard it via his brother. Gone back to New York. Aubrey seemed sure she would never come near him again.

So Evie would try to study on the days Aubrey wasn’t at work. It might be impossible. The baby might leave her too exhausted. But the baby would grow. Evie would adapt. And she had her whole life. She was twenty-five now. There was time to do it all—to grow up, with Aubrey at her side, a constant rock, as he always had been, even when she was battering herself against him in the early days. A moth to a flame.

If that flame was loving… If that flame cupped you in warm hands and held you safe… If that flame never went out but grew brighter every day, loved you more and more every day, steady and unquenchable and everlasting… With a man like that, Evie felt she could do anything. A scrappy, impossible tree, roots held deep by the cliff face it clung to, together facing the storm…

“You’re drifting off,” his voice came now, a low rumble that mingled with the bees and the sweet, dry grass.

“Am not,” she mumbled, head once more on his shoulder.

He laughed quietly, stroking her hair. “I’d let you sleep, my love, but we have a new house to get to. I’ll make the bed when we get there. You can sleep all afternoon while I hunt for the kettle.”

She smiled, rousing herself, knowing that the moment they got there she would be full of energy again, wouldn’t rest until the place was the perfect nest for the three of them. Aubrey stood, pulling on her hand and helping her to her feet. They set off hand in hand for the gateway to the city beyond.

“It just occurred to me,” she asked, as they crossed the space where a silver car had once parked on the mud. “EP. The name of the company you created when you bought this place. Why EP? What does it mean?”

Aubrey laughed. “EP? Evie’s Pigeons, of course.”

She looked at him, half-laughing. “My pigeons?”

“That pathetic little story. Ten-year-old Evie standing crying in Trafalgar square. Tears on your little white face. Heart-breaking, Evie,” he admonished her, laughing. “How could I stand it? It’s what I saw, every time I thought of this place. That same white face, those same tears, you standing here looking through the metal bars at the wasteland I’d made of it and hating every breath I’d ever taken. Evie’s bloody pigeons. Haunting my dreams.”

She laughed, and he put his arm around her shoulders as they reached the street, squeezing her against his side.

“Well, I’m glad I haunted you,” she said, smiling. “Because look what it’s become.”

“A dream from a nightmare,” Aubrey said wryly. “Actually, your brother once said something similar to me.”

“Roscoe?”

“That perfect things can come from imperfect beginnings.” He stopped to look at her. “And I think he was right, don’t you?”