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27
CERYS
Liam tapshis fingers against his coffee cup as I brush Ella’s hair ready for school. I’m half-irritated he’s around and doing nothing, and half-excited he stayed a second night. Ella wriggles, complaining the brush hurts her scalp, but I know the real reason—she doesn’t like her hair tied into a ponytail.
“Stop fussing, you’ve a week left at school and then you wear your hair however you like.” Images of a scarecrow-haired Ella running around in her princess costumes for six weeks come to mind.
“School holidays,” says Liam with a smile. “Bet you can’t wait.”
“Me or her?”
“Both.”
I wrap a hair band around Ella’s thick, brown hair. “I guess.”
“Jordan is going on holiday to Greece,” Ella informs Liam.
“Really? Where are you going?” he asks her.
“We might go camping for a few days,” I say, releasing Ella.
“Camping?”
“You know, in a field, in the rain probably. Overseas holidays are out of my price range.”
Liam places his empty cup on the table. “Come back to LA with me.”
I almost drop the brush. “What?”
“For the school holidays, come to LA. I’m working but not every day.” He glances at Ella. “We could go to Disneyland.”
At that moment, I’m prepared to smack him across the head. Hard. “Liam!”
Ella jumps up and starts hopping around the room shrieking about Disneyland. I stand. “You do not tell a child something like that out of the blue! Not if the trip may not happen.”
“Why not? Ella can visit Disneyland if her mum isn’t too boring to come to the States with me. Come on, Cerys, why not?”
I can’t think of an excuse and have to admit that a small part of me secretly feels like dancing around the room too. “I don’t know.”
“A hot rock star offers you a luxury holiday to LA and you have to decide if you want to?” He laughs.
I rub my head. “I’ll need to organise passports and I’d buy some new things for Ella and—”
Liam grabs my hand and squeezes. “Cerys. Let go of your practicality for five minutes. When I’m away from you all I want is to be back with you again, so this makes perfect sense. When I’ve finished the session work in LA, I’ll come back to England and stay around. This is the answer until then. You don’t need to be on your own, and I want you with me.”
For a week, maybe two, I could avoid the Liam sized hole in my life when he’s away. How could I deny my daughter a trip to Disneyland? Or myself a trip into the fantasy world of celebrity?
* * *
A weekand a half later I arrive in LA with Ella, dressed in her yellow Princess Belle costume. Luckily, she didn’t behave like a princess on our First Class flight, even though the cabin crew treated her like one. I’ve never travelled further than the European mainland, so this will be a test of my comfort levels.
When I told Phoebe about Liam’s offer, she couldn’t understand why I didn’t say ‘yes’ on the spot, and I tried to explain how nervous I am about putting myself in someone else’s hands again. She told me I needed my head examined, to stop being ridiculous, and to enjoy myself. Then Phoebe whispered that if I didn’t want to go, she would and don’t tell her husband. At that point, I realised how stupid I was behaving.
Craig’s renewed interest in Ella continues and, after a frosty meeting, we come to an arrangement. The agreement for him to see Ella every other weekend remains loose because he randomly appears on days he ‘feels like’ seeing her.
Single motherhood is hard, but my new life opened my eyes to everything wrong in the old one. I’m not a hundred percent free of Craig’s control because I need financial support for Ella, but I intend to find a job as soon as Ella starts to attend school full time. We don’t need Craig, and I definitely don’t need him toying with Ella’s feelings the way he once did with mine.
Craig knows I’ve taken Ella on holiday, but not where or who with.
