Page 26 of All Our Missing Pieces

Orla sighed, as if she was releasing all her anger. ‘Beatrice. This is silly. Hear me out for a moment. I’ve never done this before. I’m trying my best to make this house a home for you all and to try and keep things working smoothly and fairly but I’m making it up as I go along. Sometimes things won’t go right and I have to address them. But try and work with me, not against me. That’s all I ask.’

‘Ask away,’ Beatrice snapped. ‘But there’s no need for you to lecture me like I’m a child. I pay to live here. You’re my landlady, not my mother. And I’m late for work, so goodbye. Good chat.’

Orla didn’t say anything more. Beatrice watched as she turned and went back into the kitchen, and heard the scrape of Orla’s chair on the flagstones as she sat down.

Maybe she’s going to cry, Beatrice thought triumphantly, slinging her purse over her shoulder and stepping out of the front door.

But as soon as the fresh morning air hit her face, she regretted everything she had said. She’d behaved like a spoiled brat – a little madam, as her mom used to call her on the rare occasions when she received a telling-off.

She’d come here searching for something – someone. She’d even, fleetingly, thought she might have found it in Orla. But the words hung between them now, impossible to take back.

You’re not my mother.

The truth of what she’d lost – might never find – settled heavily on her as she composed her apologetic text to Frances.

NINETEEN

Orla was wrong – Luke didn’t take me to Pizza Express. I suppose I should have known already that Luke wasn’t a bog-standard date sort of person – but then, logically, it only took one not-bog-standard date for me to find out.

It didn’t start exactly conventionally, either, because it began with him knocking on my bedroom door at seven on that Friday evening, as we’d arranged. Dating someone I lived with already felt strange, but not in a bad way. There were so many things about each other that were already familiar: he’d seen me first thing in the morning, my hair a mess and my eyes bleary with sleep. I’d seen him swearing, tears of pain leaping involuntarily to his eyes, when he hit his thumb with a hammer.

I’d seen him in his underwear, emerging from the bathroom rubbing his hair with a towel. He’d seen me emerging from the bathroom only wearing a towel. I’d liked what I’d seen and I hoped he did too.

Now here it was: the appointed night, the new dress – even better this evening than it had looked in the shop, thanks to Orla’s pins and stitches – the knock on my door.

Shyly, I opened it.

‘Hi,’ Luke said. ‘You look lovely.’

‘So do you.’ I smiled.

He was wearing jeans, not new but not the battered, paint-splattered ones he wore to work, and a grey T-shirt so new it still bore the fold marks from the shop. I could smell his aftershave – the lavender and mint scent I recognised from that night in the pub.

‘Shall we go?’ he asked.

‘I’m ready. Are you going to tell me where we’re going? Or shall we just walk and decide?’

‘I thought’ – his smile wavered and become almost shy – ‘I wondered if you like spicy food?’

‘Love it,’ I confirmed.

‘Then we’ll go for a curry.’

I followed him downstairs, the soles of my wedge sandals loud on the bare wood. It was almost the shortest night of the year, and still bright and sunny, the daylight highlighting the new paint on the first-floor doorframes and the glossy, newly sanded floorboards, as well as the imperfections of the house: the stain on the ceiling where the damp had soaked through from above, the haze of dust motes hanging in the air, the cavernous, cluttered rooms on the ground floor, untouched as yet.

He opened the front door and we stepped out into the warm evening, turning to walk the familiar route around the square.

‘What’ll she do when it’s finished?’ Luke wondered, glancing back at the house. ‘Sell it?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’ I remembered what Orla had told me about her grandmother. ‘I think she feels kind of responsible for it – attached to it. I suppose she’ll live in it, and paint, like she said she wanted to.’

‘And rent out rooms for a hell of a lot more than she can charge in a building site.’

The idea jolted me. Although I’d only been living at Damask Square for a short time, it felt like longer. It felt like home. I didn’t want to live anywhere else and – almost more – I didn’t want anyone to live there except me, Luke and Orla. And Beatrice, of course. Maybe.

‘What are you thinking?’ Luke asked. ‘You’ve gone all – gloomy? Pensive, anyway.’

‘I was thinking about having to move.’ I sighed. ‘When it’s finished.’