‘Hey, watch your mouth.’
‘Sorry.’
‘I think we both need some sleep, we’ll deal with this in the morning.’
‘What’s going on with Paul? What’s he even doing here?’
Now it was her turn to feel uncomfortable. ‘He’s here to see me, says he made a mistake.’
‘He’s got a nerve.’
‘Yeah.’ She asked, ‘Would you mind if I had dinner with him tomorrow night?’
‘I think I’ll be able to cope without you for the evening.’ He seemed glad the topic of conversation had shifted from him. ‘But don’t let him talk you into anything, like getting back with him, not if it’s not what you want.’ When she smiled he said, ‘I’m still wide awake, I might call Mum and say thank you for the decoration.’
‘That sounds like a good idea.’
He left her to it and she tugged the band from her hair before shaking it out. She sat by the window in the lounge, the sounds of the city carrying on around them. From here there was a view of the street, the brownstones opposite much like the one they were in now. Fire escape routes zigzagged up some of the frontages like an elaborate game of snakes and ladders, shouting came from below but soon passed. She wondered whether Nathan had managed to calm down yet, whether he was sorry for bursting in like that, whether Scarlett had told him the truth over at the Inglenook Inn.
She used the time alone to reflect on everything that had gone on in the last couple of days, everything from the near-kiss with Nathan, to Paul’s arrival, Kyle and Nathan’s latest run-in and now Connie’s letter. She thought life was complicated before they left for this holiday but somehow it still was, just in different ways.
‘Did you have a good talk with your mum?’ she asked when Kyle eventually emerged. ‘You were on the phone a while.’
‘She never usually chats that long.’
‘She never was as talkative as me.’ She beckoned him to come and sit with her. ‘Her school reports would urge her to participate more in class, mine only said Must Stop Chatting.’
‘She asked if I’d send her a photo of the decoration hung on the tree.’ He’d taken the fireman ornament with him, maybe he’d held it as they talked, not wanting to let go of that piece of him and his dad. Now, he went over to the tree and hooked it onto a branch at the front, wiggling the white light behind it around so it was illuminated rather than shielded. He stood back and took the picture, his fingers nimbly operating his phone to send it across the miles to his mum.
‘Did you talk about your dad?’
‘A bit. She didn’t say much, she only apologised for not talking to me more.’
‘It’s a start.’
‘I guess. But it’s as though she wants to forget him when I want to remember.’
‘She probably wants to forget the pain of losing him, which isn’t the same.’
‘She was a bit weird on the phone.’
‘But you were talking for ages.’
‘That’s the weird thing. I kind of got the feeling something’s up, she was gearing up to tell me something. Do you think she’s going to suggest I move out? Stand on my own two feet? She threatened it before. She said either I get my act together or I could find somewhere else to live.’
‘In the heat of the moment we often say things that we don’t mean.’ Amelia had heard Connie talking about it a few times, wondering whether tough love was the way to go, but so far she hadn’t followed through.
‘She told me one of the good things about being here is I can’t hang out with my friends.’
‘The bad influences?’ she asked.
‘That’s Mum’s official name for them,’ he clarified.
‘Why do you hang out with them?’
He shrugged, then his shoulders slumped back to the same hopeless position. ‘They’re not all bad. We have a bit of a laugh. But when they do stupid things I know it’s not good to be around them, I just don’t seem able to break the habit. Only one of them has a job you know, the others sponge off their parents, one is on the dole and boasts about living off the state. It’s easy to think I won’t end up the same as the rest of them, but I worry all the time.’
‘Then don’t let it happen.’
