A Part of Me (14 page)

‘Looks like she’s been waiting for you to come home,’ Carter said, nodding towards my waving mother. She was
standing in the open doorway, delighted that Carter was giving her a little wave back.

‘Thanks for the lift, Carter. You’d better get going or those pizzas will be cold,’ I said, climbing out of his van. Mum was already hoisting a bin bag full of rubbish this way.

‘Hi, sweetheart!’ she said, waddling over and lifting the lid of the wheelie bin. The bag was too heavy for her, she couldn’t swing it in.

‘I’ve got that,’ Carter called from the cab behind me. He nipped out of the campervan and rounded the front, whipping the bag from Mum’s hands. One swing, and it was in.

Mum looked on approvingly.

‘All that yoga’s paying off, Carter.’ I smiled.

‘Yoga?’ Mum squeaked. ‘Ah, yes! You’re the fellow off the balcony, aren’t you? I knew I recognised those arms.’ I watched curiously as my mother beamed at Carter, somehow managing to hold my eyebrows steady. Beside me, Carter had regressed into a bashful teenage boy. Still, I held onto the eyebrows. ‘Do you teach?’ she asked hopefully. Carter gave a crooked smile.

‘You can’t teach yoga, Mrs …’

‘Alwood,’ Mum cooed. ‘But please, call me Vivian.’

‘You can’t teach yoga, Vivian, you can only instruct,’ he said, opening his arms out flamboyantly. Mum nodded, as if some wisdom that had just flown completely over my head had crashed straight into hers, kamikaze-blackbird style.

‘And, do you …
instruct?
’ she asked, practically elbowing me out of the way to go toe to toe with Carter.

‘Not yet,’ he said, scratching his head, ‘but never say never, right?’

Carter gave my mother a cheeky smile. It felt like cold pond sludge being tipped down my shirt.

‘Right,’ Mum mimicked. ‘Well, I think you could be just the man I’ve been looking for.’ Carter, oblivious to what it was my mum was even considering, looked pleased as punch with himself.

I wondered why there had never been a Brownie badge for eyebrow control.

I
T WAS FUNNY
how dreading running into a person suddenly helped time to fly right by, not that Rohan, or Carter for that matter, had ventured far from their task all morning. Even from the sundeck of the master bedroom, I could see that the overgrown greenery around the boathouse had all been cleared, and a new skirt of cream paint daubed along the nearside of the building.

My eyes readjusted, falling to the tiny flecks of summer life drifting in the sun-drenched air between the balcony and the millpond, each diffusing the sunlight with the trickery of their wings.

This balcony was possibly the prettiest place I’d ever taken a lunch break, pretty enough that I’d braved the height and hadn’t hidden myself away inside all morning while Rohan painted the boathouse out there. He’d held his hand aloft when he saw me arrive earlier, but it was early afternoon and still no words had passed between us. I considered going down there, just to prove to myself that I wasn’t being a wimp avoiding him. So far, I hadn’t made it.

My phone rudely interrupted the last few minutes of my lunch, buzzing around on the deck next to my feet. I peered down at the screen: Bananarama in their Venus get-up. Originally, Phil’s caller id picture had been a lioness, but she’d argued that a man-eater wasn’t a man-eater without lippy and great hair.

‘Hey,’ I said, rising from my deckchair, which had appeared on the balcony overnight.

‘I thought you were in the studio today?’ Phil questioned.

‘I thought I’d work here, instead. Fewer distractions,’ I said, watching another run of weatherboard receive its new paint. There was a stiffness to Rohan’s movements today, subtle, but it was there.

‘You’re probably right; it’s been a bit
turbulent
around the office this morning.’

‘Why, what do you mean?’

‘Look, I’m not trying to rock the boat or anything, Ame, but …’

‘But what?’

‘James and Sadie were having a
really
heated debate earlier. I walked into the Ladies’ and—’

‘They were in the toilets?’ My neck instantly bristled.

I stopped walking my way across Rohan’s bedroom to the dying echoes of my heels resonating around the space.

‘Yeah,’ Phil said quietly. ‘I didn’t hear much, James sounded really annoyed until I walked in. He said something about drawing a line under it, and everyone moving
on? Or maybe something about Sadie moving on? As in, getting another job?’

‘Did you hear him say anything else?’ I asked apprehensively.

‘Yeah. He told her that she was on her own, Ame. And he sounded serious about that.’

I let out the breath I’d been holding. Out in the hallway, the noises of somebody coming through the back doors floated up the mill’s open hallway.

‘I have to go, Phil.’

‘You want me to do any digging?’ she asked. ‘Dana loves to spill when she thinks she knows something.’

‘No, that’s okay.’ Reconnaissance wasn’t going to change anything.

‘How about we go for a few drinks tonight? It’s been ages,’ she piped up enthusiastically.

‘I can’t. Mum’s having another WI meeting at the house. To dodge it, I’ve told her I have to work late. She’ll sulk if I go out on the lash.’

Phil groaned. ‘Okay, but I’m starting to wonder if you’re not going to end up ditching me for the happy-clapper brigade. We need a girly night, soon, okay?’

‘Okay, Phil.’

I said my goodbyes and began walking out across the vast landscape of Rohan’s bedroom. Across the landing, the vista of the River Earle welcomed me back into my makeshift office. I slumped into my chair, propped my
elbows on the desktop and settled my head briefly in my hands.

Please find somewhere else to work, Sadie
.

‘Not
still
beating yourself up about yesterday, are ya?’ Carter smiled, ambling into the room. He had his toolbelt on again, a new stash of liquorice poking from the top of his pouch. There were flecks of whitish paint spattered in his hair and all across his Joan Baez T-shirt. ‘Like I said, don’t worry about Ro, he’s good. He’s had a twenty-four-hour dose of ankle-elevation and frozen peas.’

Carter traipsed over to the boxes stacked against the far wall of the bedroom.

‘Glad he’s feeling better,’ I said absently, trying not to look for an excuse to head straight for Cyan’s loos right now. James had said Sadie was on her own. That was good.

‘He’s getting there. Shouldn’t be on that ankle, though. I know it’s hurting him,’ he said, lifting the lids off a few of the boxes.

My thoughts ferried back over to Rohan. ‘So why is he on it, then, Carter? If he should be resting?’

Carter lifted something bulky from one of the boxes and began turning it over in his hands. ‘For the same reason Ro does anything he probably shouldn’t – to prove a point.’

‘Prove a point to who?’

Carter gave the object in his hand a last appraising look. ‘Himself, usually,’ he mused. I watched as he replaced the lump of wood and started rifling through another box.

‘So what brings you up here, Carter. Did you need something?’

‘Oh, yeah!’ he exclaimed, remembering. ‘There’s a bearded dude downstairs. Here about the carpentry work.’

‘Thanks, Carter,’ I huffed, grabbing my phone on my way up from the desk. ‘Good job I asked!’

I’d just trudged back out of the bedroom when Carter called after me. ‘Yo, Amy?’

I stalled on the landing and peeped back around the open doorway. ‘Yep?’

Carter was still hanging over the box he’d been rummaging in.

‘There probably is another reason Ro’s doing his Universal Soldier impression today,’ he said, half of his sandy curls flopping over his face.

‘Yeah?’ I asked, already preoccupied with the gentleman waiting downstairs.

‘I think he could be trying to make
you
feel better. Y’ know, in case you were feeling bad or somethin’?’

J
OHN
H
ARPER HAD
a friendly face framed with a round greying beard, his rural look completed by a waxed flat cap. He was a stocky-looking chap, a man who had clearly spent his life lugging heavy things around with his own bare, gnarly hands. Rohan had been polite and friendly as we’d run through the quote John had put together for us for the carpentry work. He’d offered John the contract immediately, he said because not only was John local, with hands that spoke of their willingness to work, but also because he reminded Rohan of Grizzly Adams.

I’d left Rohan taking his new friend on an hour-long tour of the mill, the boathouse and its surrounding views. The last time I’d glanced outside, Mr Harper had been gesticulating at the battered old rowing boat lying overgrown and abandoned beside the pond.

Since Rohan and Carter had finished the first blotchy coat on the boathouse, the mill seemed to slip into a late-afternoon nap. Rohan had spent the rest of his time inside the boathouse and, dare I say it, taking it easy. The man who never stopped had finally slowed down.
Between his abstinence from the ramps and Carter’s mercy run for more bags of frozen veg, it was safe to say that the ankle was not right.

I didn’t know if it was guilt that had driven me intermittently back to the balcony, or maybe just the spectacle of seeing Rohan sitting still in the chair beneath the boathouse window, but I’d found myself periodically checking on him. Despite this, I hadn’t noticed the vast expanse of sky get so dark until the glare from my laptop screen started to strain my eyes. Fortunately, I’d been organised, and Bryan, the other switchboard operator at Earleswicke Taxis, had already booked me in for a nine-fifteen pick-up.

My head had begun thumping thanks to an afternoon of over-thinking all the possible motives behind several calls I’d received from Sadie. She’d left voicemails after some of them. I’d deleted them all without listening, and then spent all afternoon obsessing about what she might have said. It had not been a productive day.

The only small mercy was that I’d evaded an evening of
jazzing up
recreational programmes for Earleswicke community centre at Mum’s. Between her and James, the mill was turning out to be quite the handy refuge.

I saved the documents on my laptop screen and lay back in my chair, stretching the ache from my shoulders. I had twenty-five minutes to kill before going home. My legs appreciated a stretch-out too. The kitten heels had been kicked off hours ago, so I padded barefoot
over to the window overlooking the river. In the distance, the faint glow of Earleswicke lay like a dying flame against the smothering darkness of the countryside at night. I checked I’d closed the window properly, then my eyes fell to the cardboard boxes beside me. A couple were still open where Carter had ferreted in them. I ran tired fingers over the nearest box and silently lifted the flap.

The lump of wood was heavy in my hands but I could see now that its design was deliberate. It was an ornament, of sorts, with a small metal plaque at its base, just big enough to catch the light of my dying laptop.

I read the inscription at its centre.

BMX Vert – 2nd Place

Gravity Force International – Vancouver 2009

There used to be a shelf full of the trophies in Guy’s old room, but none of them had looked much like this one. I looked back at the doorway. There was no one here now, no sound but the drone of my laptop shutting down and the whispering of my conscience, reminding me that it wasn’t polite to go through other people’s belongings. I reached to replace the trophy in its box, but the lid lay open, inviting me to peek inside. In the dimness of the room, I could make out at least one more award, this one was more obvious though, cog-like and metal, another inscription at its base.

Gravity Force International – Munich 2010

BMX Park

3rd Place

Beneath it, I made out several more trophies in various forms. My conscience forgot the whispering and cleared its throat. These weren’t my things to pry in. I rested the wooden trophy on its metal predecessor and closed the box. I didn’t think they were Carter’s. He was more adventurous with his yoga than I’d seen him be on the bikes, but something in the back of my mind hoped that they didn’t belong to Rohan.

I knew zilch about sports, but I’d heard of Gravity Force. James had flicked the G-Force games on the TV once. Quietly, I’d found myself mesmerised by what the human body could achieve with fearlessness and balance. James had sat through an entire hour’s coverage berating the organisers for qualifying a sport
born out of dossing around on public property
. Stamina was the real test of any cycling, he’d said, not acrobatics. It was the Tour de France or nothing.

But even James was a sucker for a trophy. I could imagine Sunday football league. I’d be the one freezing and sodden in the pitch sidelines, but James would be the one at presentation night when junior brought the hardware home.

I left the bedroom and walked barefoot out onto the landing, wondering what James would make of Rohan
Bywater and his unorthodox friends. I couldn’t have met a man more different to James if I’d tried. Rohan’s bedroom was in a state of dim twilight. I moved carefully across the floor to the balcony doors I’d left ajar earlier. Rohan probably thought I’d gone home hours ago. From outside, the mill would have looked deserted.

I glanced through the crack in the balcony doors to the glow of the boathouse window. Rohan had been sitting at the workbench the last time I’d looked, but I couldn’t see him there now.

Downstairs, someone was trying the back doors. I didn’t know why they didn’t just trust me to lock up myself. With Carter out for the night, I knew it was Rohan. Another shuffling noise and I thought I’d probably better call out to him, before he took me for a cat burglar – or worse, set the alarms with me still inside. I turned to pull to the balcony doors first and just caught movement in the little window of the boathouse.

Rohan sat back down at his workbench.

A second bout of muffled movement coming from the empty kitchen made the hairs on the back of my neck stand. I froze.

There was more than one person down there.

Stay calm, it could be Carter
, but there’d been no sign of his spluttering campervan.

I held my breath and patted myself down for my phone, already aware that I’d left it sitting next to the laptop. Quiet and steady, I crept back out into the hall, keeping
back from the galleried landing. It was a strange sensation, to have your heart beat so hard you weren’t sure whether you were feeling it or hearing it. Without sound, I made it back into the office and quickly flipped open my phone. Downstairs, there was whispering. Not the kind that’s controlled for true secrecy, but the kind that’s infected with mischief. Two INCORRECT PASSCODEs and a steadying breath and finally I unlocked my phone screen. Downstairs, there was quiet laughter, and high playful voices. Youthful, or girlish … not men, at least.

I swallowed. I could call the police, but what if they struggled with the bloody postcode too? I hit the green phone icon and a list of recent calls flashed up. Earleswicke taxis was at the top of the list, followed by several nameless numbers. All tradesmen. All of absolutely no use to me now. I had less than twenty minutes before the taxi arrived, maybe I could just … sit tight?

A tinny sound, like a stack of hairspray cans rattled across the floor downstairs. I scrolled further through the calls list for more possibilities.

Mum
. No. Absolutely not. Viv would freak out, and what could she do anyway?

Phil
. Ferocious, yes, but miles away.

Hotbuns Bywater
.

Phil had sent me his contact. She’d assigned a picture to it too, but I’d figured out how to get rid. My thumb hovered over his name, then a hissing sound from downstairs stole my attention. The sweet chemical smell of
aerosol wafted up over the gallery, already filtering into the bedroom. They were kids. Just kids. But kids could be sodding scary. I couldn’t call Rohan up here, not on his own.

I sank my finger onto Carter’s name a few spaces below Rohan’s. I’d saved his number after he’d insisted on me taking it down for Phil. To my utter relief, Carter answered almost immediately.

‘Hello?’

‘Carter!’ I whispered. ‘It’s Amy!’

‘Hello?’ Carter repeated.

‘Carter? Can you hear me?’ I said urgently.

‘Oh, hi!’ Carter called, happily. ‘How’s it goin’?’

‘Carter, listen, I think someone’s broken in to the mill. They’re downstairs now and—’

‘Sorry, amigo, but you just fell for one ancient chestnut. Leave a message.’

The long beep of Carter’s answer machine kicked in.

Damn it, Carter!
I hit the
end call
button, realising I was out of options. Quickly, I dialled again.

*

Eight minutes was a long time hiding beneath a trestle table, but credit to local services they sent two police cars in exceptionally quick time, despite the postcode issue. As soon as I saw the ceiling of the hallway light up in flashing emergency blue, there was a frantic scrambling of bodies downstairs. I didn’t think they were quick enough,
though. I heard one police car completely round the mill, cutting off the route from the back yard over to the public footpath along the river. The second car remained out front, by Rohan’s van.

I climbed out from beneath the table and flipped the bedroom lights on. Somebody in heavy boots and padded clothing was already bustling up the stairs. A female police officer with a short red ponytail and a fringe over her eyes stuck her head around the bedroom door.

‘Everyone all right?’ she asked, stepping into the room.

‘That was quick,’ I said, voice thick with relief.

‘Are you all right?’ she said, looking me over.

‘Yeah, I’m fine. I don’t think they knew I was up here.’

‘Well, you did the right thing staying out of sight. Even kids can up the stakes when they’re cornered.’

‘I thought it might just be kids, messing around, but I didn’t really know what to do about them, so …’

‘They were more than messing, I’m afraid, miss. We’ve got one of them downstairs. The other lad hightailed it over the hill, unfortunately. I’m afraid they’ve caused some damage to your property.’

She led me onto the gallery. The lounge below was lit now, the artistic talent of the uninvited visitors daubed across the pale canvas of new plaster.

‘They did all this?’ I gasped. ‘In less than ten minutes?’

‘Resourceful when they want to be, aren’t they? Luckily you’re in the process of decorating.’

It was hard not to look at the bright initials dominating
the lounge wall as I was led into the kitchen. Two more officers stood beside a young boy, swamped by his oversized hoody. He peered up at me briefly through long scruffy layers of auburn hair. He looked as defiant as he did frightened.

He still had the same pudginess to his face that little Samuel did, it probably hadn’t been that long since he was pushing Tic Tacs up his nose too. I was trying to figure out why a kid of ten or so wasn’t tucked up at home at this time when the WPC turned gravely to me. ‘As you can see, there’s been significant criminal damage. We’re going to take him in, get hold of his parents—’

‘Actually, this isn’t my home,’ I interrupted.

‘No, it’s mine,’ a stern voice behind me said. Rohan walked in through the kitchen doors. The severity of his piercing eyes made it difficult to look directly at them. He pushed storm-grey sweater sleeves back over his forearms, planting his hands at his waist while the redhead cleared her throat.

‘Mr …?’

‘Bywater,’ Rohan said firmly. Eyes fixed on the young lad.

‘Mr Bywater, we’ve just responded to an emergency call—’

‘Made by who?’ The question surprised me and the WPC.

I cleared my throat. ‘I called them. I was working upstairs when they broke in.’

Rohan looked the full weight of those eyes at me. Actually,
this
was like somebody pouring cold pond scum down my back.

‘And how long were you up here, alone with them?’ he asked.

Everyone looked at me for the answer. ‘Not that long,’ I said in a small voice, not sure why I felt like I was being told off. There had been a hardness to the edge of his words.

‘Why didn’t you call me? I could’ve been up here in seconds.’

I shifted uneasily. ‘I … I didn’t—’

‘She did the right thing, Mr Bywater,’ the redhead said, detaching a notebook from her padded jacket. ‘You have a disabled man at the property, is that correct?’ she asked, flipping through her notes.

Rohan’s glare came sharply back from the boy to the police woman. I watched him stiffen, as if the WPC’s words had some medusa-like quality to them. She waited patiently for his answer as I began to break out in a cold sweat. I probably looked guiltier than the kid. I suspected I might actually be in more trouble than he was, too.

‘Disabled?’ Rohan asked sternly. I expected him to look an accusation at me, but he didn’t. He didn’t look anywhere near me. ‘I guess that would be me,’ he said, a sudden calmness in his voice. ‘And as you can see, I’m perfectly well.’

The WPC looked uncertainly at me. I was beginning to wish I’d never called them, particularly as I could have probably tackled the intruders myself, scared them off with my debilitating gift of offending people. It was probably my most well-developed muscle.

The officer frowned a little, then scribbled something down.

Rohan looked directly at the boy, petite hands cuffed in front of his NO FEAR hoodie. Rohan’s features were calm, but serious. ‘So, you’ve been tagging my house?’ he said, fixing hard eyes on the boy’s face. If the kid understood him, he wasn’t letting on, choosing instead to glare at the floor. ‘I can smell it, my man, you’ve been spraying something. I hope it’s good,’ Rohan said, moving towards the lounge. He disappeared into the hallway, the house falling into silence again for a few moments before he called back through.