Page 14 of Brighter Together

Not with half the café around us.

When he leaned closer and told me not to embarrass him, I said no again.

He stayed another ten minutes, perhaps fifteen. His words blurred together while I watched his hands resting on the table and tried not to think about what those hands might have done if we’d been alone.

When he finally left, I stayed another three hours until the café closed.

People came and went around me before I eventually walked to the window and checked the street. Then I checked again.

I took the long way back to my flat and looked over my shoulder so often my neck ached by the time I reached home. For several days afterwards, every knock at the door froze me in place.

But the silence lasted long enough for my shoulders to stop tightening every time I heard footsteps outside my flat and for me to start sleeping through the night again.

A month later, Tommy sent out the tender for Greenview’s extension.

Lee called that evening while I was making dinner. I nearly let it ring out, but habit won. Or maybe it was fear.

He didn’t ask how I was.

He asked about the tender.

By the time I put the phone down, my dinner had burnt to the bottom of the pan and I was standing in the kitchen with one hand pressed against the worktop.

He wanted plans.

Not generic ones. Plans Tommy would love.

I said no.

Dad called the next day. Lee tried again that evening, then Dad, then Lee.

Each conversation left me a little more tired and a little less certain. The firm was struggling, they’d lost work after I left, Dad was under pressure and Lee had apparently taken on more than he could manage.

Somehow every road led back to me.

They only wanted one proposal.

One favour, and they’d leave me alone.

I can still see the glow of my laptop in the dark bedroom as I sat on the edge of the mattress with the design software open. My finger hovered over the mouse while every sensible part of me told me to close it.

Then another message from Lee lit up my phone.

Do this for the family and we’ll leave you alone.

A few minutes later, I opened a blank drawing.

The email on my computer swims back into focus.

I blink a few times and straighten in my chair. The muted sounds from downstairs filter up through the hotel, and somewhere along the corridor somebody laughs.

Greenview carries on around me exactly as it did before Lee’s name appeared on my phone.

I drag the email back to the top and make myself read it properly. There are rooming lists to check, the bank email Tommy needs to answer and a department meeting this afternoon. My life here has become full of ordinary things that have nothing to do with Dad, Lee or the Grange firm, and concentrating on them slowly eases the knot in my stomach.

The phone stays face down.

I leave it there.