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‘Saves washing up.’
‘It’ll melt.’
‘No, it won’t. I guarantee that in ten minutes it will all be gone.’ She might not have been able to manage much of her dinner, but ice-cream...now, that she could happily eat, however fraught her emotions. ‘If you want a bowl, help yourself.’
Rolling his eyes, he got himself a bowl, sat down and methodically scooped some ice-cream into it.
‘Is that all you’re having?’ she asked with incredulity. He’d only put two scoops into his bowl.
He quelled her with a look. ‘It’s hardly a healthy food.’
‘It’s ice-cream. It’s not supposed to be healthy. It’s supposed to be comforting.’
‘I’ll be sure to tell my arteries that.’
They ate in silence but, unlike over dinner, this silence didn’t have an uncomfortable edge to it. Probably because no one could be uncomfortable whilst eating divine vanilla ice-cream. The sweetness was soothing.
While they ate, Pascha checked his phone.
‘Did you manage to get hold of your lawyer?’ she asked.
‘Just. The battery died after a couple of minutes.’ He gave it a shake, as if hoping it would miraculously charge itself.
‘You do realise you’re torturing yourself by checking it?’ she said.
He pursed his lips. ‘It’s pointless, I know. I just find it incredibly frustrating.’
‘Have some more ice-cream.’
‘Will that help?’ he asked mockingly.
‘Nope. But it will make the frustration taste a bit sweeter.’ To make her point, she put a delicious spoonful into her mouth.
His lips twitched.
She grinned to see him scoop a little more into his bowl, but only a little. ‘Have you always been a control freak?’
His eyes narrowed a touch. ‘I like to control the environment in which I live,’ he answered slowly.
‘We all do that to an extent,’ she agreed. ‘But you seem to be quite extreme about it.’
He put his spoon down. ‘I had leukaemia as a child,’ he said simply.
Startled, Emily felt her eyes widen.
He’d had leukaemia...?
‘Being so close to death so young...’ He raised a shoulder. ‘It shapes you. It shaped me.’
‘I don’t know what to say,’ she said starkly. ‘Are you okay now? I mean...’
‘I know what you mean and, yes, I am in good health.’ He hadn’t escaped unscathed, though, Pascha reflected with a trace of bitterness. Five years of chemotherapy and all the other associated treatments had given him a future but had also come with one particular cost, a cost that no amount of money could ever fix.
‘But I do not take my good health for granted. I freely admit I like to take control of my life, but when you have spent five of your formative years with no control over your body or your treatment, and no control over how it affects those you love...’ He shook his head and scraped out the last of the ice-cream in his bowl. ‘Now I am in control. Just me. To use business jargon, I will not outsource it.’
Emily had stopped eating, her spoon held in mid-air. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She shook her head, a dazed expression on her face. ‘That must have been awful for you. Terrifying. And your poor parents. It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it? It’s hard enough watching your parents suffer but when it comes to your own child...’ Her words tailed off and she seemed to give herself a mental shake, sticking her spoon back into the tub.
‘Yes, it was hard for them,’ he agreed, his voice dropping, his mind wandering back to a time when his mother had seemingly aged overnight. One minute she’d been a young mother with an easy laugh, the next a middle-aged woman with lines on her face.
The memories had the power to lance his guts.
His mind drifted back to those—literally—dark days, when they’d been so poor his parents could only afford to heat his bedroom. That had been when Marat’s disdain for his younger, adopted brother had turned ugly. How clearly he recalled Marat whispering to him when their parents had been out of earshot, ‘Why don’t you just die and save us all this trouble, Cuckoo?’ Pascha might have been only seven years old but he’d known his brother meant it.
‘Cuckoo’: Marat’s secret nickname for him.
He looked down at his empty bowl.
To hell with it.
He could allow himself one night of sweetness.
He stuck his spoon into the tub and ate straight from it.
Something flickered in Emily’s eyes as she did the same, their spoons clashing as they dived into the tub a second time.
The flickering darkened and swirled, their eyes locked.
