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Over the next few weeks, we develop a new system to encourage Finn to do his rehab—Juliette marks off the number of stars on a chart corresponding to the effort she feels that Finn has put in, and he’s then allowed to play with Zelda at the end of his rehab for five minutes per star. It works like a dream. Every week, Juliette fills in all five stars, and I secretly (after consultation with his mother) add one more star for luck, so he has half an hour every session to play.
He comes to my office, and he sits on the floor and plays with the pup, trying to teach Zelda to sit, stay, lie down, and roll over. When Missie turns up, she comes into my office and I make her a cup of coffee, and we sit and chat and watch Finn until five o’clock, when she finally tells him it’s time to go.
In the beginning, we talk mainly about Finn’s rehab. I go into detail about how THOR works, and she asks lots of questions about how we came up with the idea, and how it integrates with the gaming software. We also talk about Finn’s progress, and I explain the different muscles of the back, hips, and legs, and how Juliette is increasing the mobility and strength of each muscle with different exercises.
Missie is nervous about being alone with me, I can tell, so I wait for her to move the conversation on. It happens slowly, as September leads into October. She gradually relaxes in my presence, and she starts telling me about her day. I hear about the kids in her class, the lessons she’s done, and funny stories about what the kids have gotten up to.
Eventually, she feeds me little personal nuggets of information amongst the general stuff. I discover that her mum’s called Sandra and her dad’s name was Martin. She secretly likes that he gave her the name Mistletoe, even though she tells everyone she doesn’t.
She talks about her art, and for the first time I see a passion bloom inside her that hasn’t been there before. She’s converted a spare room in her home into a studio, and she spends a lot of her spare time there, working mainly with watercolors, mainly painting pictures of the sea, because she loves tackling waves and the movement of water. She’s never traveled, but she says she’d love to visit some of the larger galleries in Europe: the National Gallery, the Louvre, the Van Gogh Museum, the Uffizi.
But she never talks about her past, and she never mentions her husband.
I do notice, though, that she’s stopped wearing her wedding ring.
One day, because my curiosity gets the better of me, when she’s talking about Finn going to high school next year, I comment, “You must have been very young when you had him.”
“Seventeen,” she says, giving me an ‘I can’t believe I did that’ look. She glances at Finn, makes sure he’s absorbed in the puppy, then mouths to me: “I got pregnant by mistake,” and pulls an ‘eek’ face.
“Bet your parents were pleased,” I say, thinking about how mine would have reacted if either of my sisters had fallen pregnant at seventeen.
“Yeah, they weren’t too happy. My dad took Lee down to the shed and said, ‘I hope you’re going to do the right thing.’ It was practically Victorian. I’m just surprised he didn’t actually point the shotgun at him.”
“He did, though? Do the right thing, I mean.”
“Yeah. I have some lovely wedding photos with a bump.”
“Good that he stepped up, though.”
“Probably would have been better if he hadn’t.” She looks away, out of the window.
I think about what Finn told me, that his father sometimes got physical with Missie. I study her profile—her fine features, the beautiful curve of her Cupid’s bow, her pale skin with the attractive flush to her cheeks—and wonder how on earth a man could ever raise his hand to her. I want to go prehistoric on his arse, but the guy’s gone now. I just hope there’s a God, because he deserves to have to answer to someone for his crimes.
“We’d better get going,” she says to Finn.
He looks up from the puppy and glances from me to her. “You haven’t asked him yet.”
She looks embarrassed. “Uh… no…”
“Go on,” he prompts.
“Spit it out,” I say, amused.
Her lips curve up. “We’re having a careers day at school next Thursday. Lots of different people are coming in to talk to the kids about their jobs.”
“We wondered if you’d come,” Finn says eagerly. “You can talk to everyone about working with computers. All my friends want to meet you.”
Missie blushes at the fact that he’s obviously told his mates about me. “Sorry,” she mumbles. “I’m sure you’re far too busy.”
I bring up my calendar. I have a meeting I can’t miss at two p.m., but I can shuffle everything else around. “I could make the morning, if that’s any good?”
Her eyes widen. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
Amusement lights her features. She obviously didn’t expect me to say yes. “You’d come into the school and talk to a whole classroom of kids?”
“Sure.”
