‘On your next breath in, sweep your arms up over your head and then, as you breathe out, sweep your arms down as you fold over and plant your hands on the floor in front of you.’
I felt a sharp pull somewhere between my shoulder blades but I didn’t dare stand back up to stretch it out.
‘Breathing in, send your left leg back in a lunge and then, on your next outward breath, send your right leg back to meet it in plank.’
‘Mum?’
‘Adam?’
‘I think I’m broken.’
‘Breathing in, pull your hips up and back and drive your heels down into the floor in downward-facing dog,’ she replied. I looked up between my elbows to see her pacing around the living room, barefoot, concentrating hard on her script. ‘Don’t worry if your heels don’t touch the floor, concentrate on the exchange of energy between you and the ground. Feel it channelling up through your hands and feet as you push them away from each other, creating length down your spine and space in your hips.’
‘No really.’ I collapsed onto the floor, hugging my arms around each other, stretching out whatever I had tweaked. ‘I’m broken.’
‘Oh dear.’ She dropped her piece of paper on the settee and knelt down beside my rubber mat. ‘What hurts?’
‘I’m fine,’ I said, rolling upright. ‘You were very good though, I was really into it before I fell over.’
‘Adam, five breaths into your first sun salutation and you’re lying crippled on the floor.’ She pressed her thumbs into my back and dug them in. ‘Does that help?’
‘It hurts – if that helps?’ I replied, pulling away. Before she started training as a yoga teacher, she had qualified as a massage therapist, but as her number one test subject, I had to admit, she wasn’t that good at it. She’d done much better when she learned how to speak Russian. And strip a car engine. And play the flute. She didn’t get so far with becoming a tattoo artist but that could have been my fault. I had to draw the human-guinea-pig line somewhere. There weren’t many things left on this earth that my mum hadn’t given her best shot and I’d always admired her for it. Liv asked her why she wanted to try so many different hobbies once and she looked so shocked, as though everyone juggled motorcycle lessons with cheese-making class and figure skating.
‘All this time I’ve put into getting my teaching qualification and honestly, I’m starting to think yoga isn’t for me.’ She hopped up to her feet, turned off the supposedly calming CD and flung the curtains open, flooding the room with mid-morning sunlight. ‘I’m not certain I’m getting anything out of it.’
‘Anything else in mind?’ I asked, following her into the kitchen and helping myself to a biscuit out the barrel.
‘I read about this CrossFit thing that’s opening in Newark,’ she said. ‘I quite like the look of that. It seems more active than yoga, more involved. The yoga community round here isn’t that inspiring, to tell you the truth – it’s not like it was in India.’
I crunched on the biscuit and immediately regretted it. I didn’t know what was in it, but I knew what wasn’t and that was flavour of any kind. I’d have given my right nut for a Twix.
‘I bet,’ I replied, opening the bin and letting the dry crumbs of the world’s most disappointing biscuit fall out of my mouth. ‘But CrossFit is intense, Mum. Loads of weightlifting and hard-core cardio. Do you really think it’s a good idea?’
‘Maybe not for your dad,’ she gave me the lifted eyebrow that suggested I should not challenge her further, ‘but I’m fit as a fiddle. Fitter than you, I bet.’
‘I reckon you are,’ I laughed. She stirred a spoonful of pale green powder into a glass of water and handed it to me. I downed it as quickly as I could, trying not to smell or taste whatever mank she’d added. ‘I’ve been slacking since I got back from Mexico. We should start running again.’
‘Are you still running with Liv?’ she asked, sipping her own green slime happily. ‘I’m sure she’ll be keen to get wedding dress ready. That’s what all the magazines say, anyway.’
‘Hmm,’ I replied. ‘Something like that.’
Down at the bottom of the garden, Dad gave me a wave from one of his flowerbeds. Rocking his overall, his hat and gloves, he brandished his trowel with pride. While Mum went back and forth on her hobbies Dad was forever faithful to his one true love: the garden. Growing up, we’d moved around a lot. My dad had been a medical officer in the RAF but when he was injured in a car crash he took early retirement and moved up here, to be closer to my mum’s parents. Over the last twelve years he had developed quite the green thumb, and while I wasn’t much of a garden man myself, I had to admit, he’d done an amazing job. There wasn’t a plant he couldn’t bring to life and he had even taken on the task of landscaping Chris’s garden when he bought the old rectory at the other end of the village. I wondered idly if Chris was angry about leaving London now that Cass wanted to stop working. He’d moved up here so she wouldn’t have to change jobs – the schools in London weren’t safe, he had said – and now here he was, stuck with a two-hour commute from his office and a great big country house in a village he’d never been that keen on, even when we came to visit as kids.
‘You can’t tell your mother something like this and then expect her to wait patiently without any questions,’ Mum said while Dad went back to work. ‘What’s the plan? Are you going to ask her? Chris says you’ve already got a ring.’
‘I was going to give her Nannan’s ring,’ I choked, running another glass of water. ‘If that’s all right.’
‘It’s more than all right,’ she replied, a small sad smile lighting up her face, even though her eyes still filled up at any mention of her mother. It had already been seven years but we’d been close, the three of us. ‘Nannan would have loved Liv.’
‘Yeah, I don’t know.’ I sipped my clean water slowly. ‘Not about her loving Liv, I’m sure she would have. More about, well, the whole thing.’
Mum finished her green potion with a gasp and ran the glass under the tap until it was clean. She hated the dishwasher, said it wasted energy. Hence why Dad waited for her to go out to whatever class she was in before he ran it and pretended he’d done the washing up.
‘What whole thing?’ she asked. ‘Proposing? I wouldn’t worry too much about it, all you’ve got to do is ask the question, love.’
‘Not the proposing, the whole thing,’ I mumbled into my chest. ‘The whole getting married thing.’
My mum was a small woman but that didn’t make her any less terrifying and the Krav Maga class and shooting lessons I knew she had under her belt were absolutely nothing compared with the look on her face.
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ she demanded, hands on her hips. ‘Are you having cold feet, Adam Floyd?’
‘Might be,’ I said. I was close to the door. She was smaller and faster but I was much bigger than she was and, worst-case scenario, I could always push her over. ‘Don’t know.’
‘I wonder what went wrong with the two of you, sometimes,’ she said, picking up a tea towel and whipping it across the backs of my legs. ‘Your brother did exactly the same thing, you realize?’
I did not realize.
‘Chris had cold feet? Before proposing to Cassie?’
‘Oh yes, he came round here, all het up, crying and talking about how he thought he’d made a mistake buying the ring,’ she nodded. ‘How he didn’t know if he could do it and what if he wasn’t good enough for her. It was all very dramatic.’
This was entirely brand-new information. I couldn’t imagine Chris thinking he wasn’t good enough for anyone. He once said he’d pass on Kate Upton because she didn’t seem like she’d have a lot to offer in the conversation department.
‘I don’t think there’s a single man who doesn’t go through this,’ she said, picking bits of carpet off her leggings. ‘At least, not one who was serious about making the commitment in the first place. In a way, I think it’s a good thing. It means you’re really thinking about what you’re taking on.’
‘What else did Chris say?’ I asked. I just couldn’t picture it. My big brother, insecure and crying to his mum? What I wouldn’t give to go back in time and watch through the window.
‘It doesn’t matter what Chris said, it matters what you’re going to do.’ She had an end-of-conversation look in her eye and I knew not to push it. ‘Have you said anything to Olivia?’
Hmm. Given the look on her delicate, pointed face, I didn’t want to get myself into any more trouble than I really had to, but even now, after all my years of practice, I found it so hard to keep things from my mum. I was going to have to tell her the truth.
‘We’re having a break from each other at the moment – she wanted a break,’ I said. There. I’d pulled off the plaster and underneath it was only the small scab of a lie. Liv had asked for a break. After I had. But still, semantics … ‘So I haven’t talked to her this week.’
‘You broke up?’ Mum looked destroyed. She grabbed the kitchen top with one hand and pressed the other against her chest as though she was worried it might cave in. I watched closely from my position near the door, edging closer to my getaway and grabbing an apple out of the fruit bowl just in case I needed a missile. ‘Oh, Adam, no. That’s awful. You’re kidding me? What happened?’
‘We haven’t broken up.’ I don’t think, I added in my head. ‘It was after her dad’s party – she said she needed some time to work out what she’s doing.’
‘Well, I can’t blame the poor girl for that.’ She recovered herself slightly, still keeping a firm grip on the kitchen top, just in case. ‘I can’t say she looked terribly happy about having all that responsibility dropped on her.’
Assured that I was at least somewhat safe, I took a bite out of my Granny Smith-slash-projectile.
‘But she loves being a vet,’ I said, confused. ‘Why would that freak her out?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Adam. Maybe because her dad just changed her entire life without asking her? It was clear from the look on her face she didn’t have a clue what was going on,’ she suggested. ‘And whether she wants to be a vet forever or not, imagine how hard it must be to have someone make a decision like that for you, without asking.’
Well, when she put it like that …
‘I imagine it’s not unlike deciding to spend the rest of your life with another person,’ she went on. ‘It’s a good thing and you’re happy about it, but it’s scary, isn’t it? It’s a forever thing, and we human beings aren’t very good at processing forever things, are we?’
I chomped on my apple and shook my head slowly.
‘No?’
‘No,’ she confirmed. ‘And something big like this happens, people tend to go one of two ways. Either they try to keep hold of everything they can in their life or they try to change it all. It’s about control, Adam. She’s probably trying to find some control in it all. Just like you.’
My mum always had a way of making things make sense. This wasn’t all about me. I’d always been a big fan of running away, that was how I controlled things. By turning my back, moving as fast as I could and never staying in one place too long. I’d gone backpacking for a year after my A levels and then snuck in another two years after I finished my law degree before Dad convinced me to take the BPTC to become a barrister. Both times I was avoiding the fact that I’d chosen a career I didn’t really want because people had told me I’d be good at it. It was only when I started working on carpentry projects in my spare time that I realized I didn’t have to keep running, that I could actually work towards something I cared about instead.
What if Liv had only gone to vet school because her dad expected her to? What if she didn’t really want to be a vet at all? She’d never said anything, but then, I’d never asked. I bowed my head, feeling so stupid. I should have realized all this myself. I shouldn’t need my mum to explain how my girlfriend was feeling.
‘All you can do is be there for her. Don’t try to fix anything or tell her what to do, just listen to her,’ Mum said, reaching up on her bare tiptoes to pull a red and black tartan tin out of the top cupboard. She opened it up and revealed three packets of contraband shortbread biscuits. ‘Take one of these and don’t tell your father,’ she instructed. ‘Nothing sorts your head out like a cup of tea and a biscuit.’
I did as I was told and took one of the packets before she could squirrel them away again behind tubs of flour and gravy browning.
‘Have a think, let her take the time she needs.’ Mum came over to give me a hug, the top of her grey curly head only just coming halfway up my chest, then held out her hand for my apple core. ‘But don’t give up on her, Adam. She’s a good girl and she loves you. I’ve never seen you as happy with anyone else, you’re made for each other.’
‘You’re right,’ I said, looking down at the biscuits and felt a wave of shame wash over my cheeks. ‘She does make me happy.’
‘Then work it out.’ She dropped the apple core in the bin and waved at Dad down the garden. ‘Will you stay for lunch?’
‘Can’t. I’ve got to go, I’m meeting a client later and I need to sort some stuff out.’ A gorgeous, six-foot-tall brunette client, I added to myself, feeling guilty about the thoughts I’d had about Jane when Liv was struggling through so much on her own. I pecked Mum on the cheek and waved the biscuits in the air. ‘Tell Dad I’ll see him later.’
‘Always on the go,’ she said, following me out the door in bare feet and stopping before she reached the concrete. ‘Will we see you before the christening?’
The christening. Gus’s christening. The christening where Liv and I were supposed to be godparents.
‘Shit, it’s this Sunday, isn’t it?’ I hit myself in the forehead with the shortbread and made a face. They were so much harder than I’d expected.
‘It is, and language,’ Mum reprimanded as Dad started a slow and steady walk down the garden without his stick. ‘Now for Christ’s sake get gone before he comes in and sees those bloody biscuits.’
‘Language!’ I shouted back, jogging out towards the car. ‘I’ll talk to you before Sunday, promise.’
‘And talk to Liv,’ she replied. ‘Please.’
‘I will,’ I promised. But first things first, I thought, opening up the Land Rover and chucking the shortbread in the back seat. I had to go, I was meeting a client.
‘Afternoon, slacker.’
Jane knocked on the door of the workshop, only to find me leaning back in my battered old armchair, legs up on the workbench, engaged in a particularly aggressive game of Injustice on my phone, looking as cool as I could manage. It could have been worse; she could have turned up ten minutes earlier and found me wearing a pair of pink Marigolds and scrubbing the shit out of the bathroom. I had no idea how it got so dirty, I was hardly even in there and every time I was, it felt like I was there to clean something. How could a room designed to clean people get so filthy, so quickly?
‘Hi.’ I turned off the game without even bothering to check my score. This was intense. ‘How are you?’
‘Good,’ she nodded, loitering around the doorway. ‘Some tit tried to cut me up when I was turning off the A1 but apart from that, I’m fine.’
‘Should I hunt him down and kill him?’ I asked.
‘Only if it’s not too much trouble,’ she replied with her widest smile. ‘I’ll get my Uzi out the boot and we’ll be off, yeah?’
‘Sorted,’ I nodded, hands in my pockets, shoulders scrunched up around my ears. I wasn’t sure of the etiquette.
Ultimately, I was working for her and usually I met my clients with a polite handshake, possibly a half hug if we knew each other and we were being dead modern but this was new ground. We were definitely flirting – but was it sexless work flirting or one-too-many-drinks-and-oops-that’s-my-penis flirting? Jane wasn’t dressed like a woman who was trying to get lucky, although I imagined she didn’t have to try terribly hard. She was wearing the same skintight jeans and leather as she’d worn on Tuesday, teamed with a plain blue T-shirt and black ankle boots. Nothing overtly ‘come and get it’ about that.
‘So where’s my bar?’ she asked, searching the workshop. ‘Is it not done yet?’
‘Not quite.’ I straightened the collar of my shirt. Red and black checked, clean, ironed, but not too try hard. ‘There’s just the cutting and the sanding and the planing and the building. And you know, that’s usually easier to do once the timber has arrived.’
‘I see.’
Maybe her hair looked a bit shinier than it had on Tuesday and perhaps her eyes looked a bit darker, as though she was wearing make-up. But that could have been the light, I wasn’t sure. ‘How about a tour of the workshop, then?’
‘It’s a short tour,’ I said, surveying my kingdom. ‘Workbench, tools, vice, mini fridge, Danger Mouse DVDs, lathe.’
‘It’s nice,’ she nodded appreciatively. ‘I like it. What’s that?’
‘Plane,’ I replied, picking up my smallest bench lathe and turning it around in my hands. ‘It’s for smoothing out surfaces.’
‘And what’s that?’ she pointed to the tool bench by the wall.
‘Another plane,’ I said, giving it a trusty tap. ‘This has a higher pitch than the other, we call it York Pitch.’
‘Why?’ Jane asked, picking up a chisel and knocking the handle back and forth against the palm of her hand. ‘Is it from York or did a man called York invent it?’
‘I don’t actually know,’ I admitted. ‘But I’ll be using it on your bar. The higher angle is better for cherry wood.’
‘Why?’ she walked over, her heels tapping against the concrete floor and crouching down until she was eyelevel with the plane.
‘It just is,’ I said. ‘I studied this for a year in college and three years as an apprentice and I don’t think I ever asked as many questions as you just have.’
‘I’m curious,’ she replied, looking up at me from her crouched position, wide-eyed and full-lipped and, oh Jesus Christ, teaspoon teaspoon teaspoon teaspoon. ‘I like to learn about new things. What if I ever wanted to build my own bar?’
‘Is that likely?’ I asked, wandering around to the back of the armchair and leaning against it casually. I hadn’t had this much trouble with inopportune semis since the sixth form. ‘Was commissioning me to design something for you part of an elaborate plan to run me out of business?’
‘Damn it,’ she bounced back up to her feet, all smiles and easy laughter. ‘You got me.’
The radio was on a low crackle somewhere in a dark corner of the workshop and I searched my one-track mind for something else to say. This wasn’t me, I was good at people, I always had a comeback. It was one of the reasons everyone was so convinced I’d make a great barrister, I could talk the hind legs off a donkey and then convince him he didn’t really need the front legs if he thought about it. Jane just stood there, in the middle of my dusty, dirty workshop, as though there was nowhere else in the world she’d rather be.
‘How come you’re all the way up here?’ I asked as my brain disengaged from my trousers for long enough to form a sentence. ‘You said you were going to be up this way, didn’t you?’
‘Oh, right, I did,’ she said. Her mouth hung half open for just a split second, as though her body was ready to speak before her mind had decided what it wanted to say. ‘I was visiting a friend.’
‘A friend?’
Was she lying? Had she made up a reason to see me again?
‘A friend,’ she nodded, placing the zip pull of her leather jacket into my table vice and turning the handle until it was caught tight. ‘Sorry, not terribly exciting.’
‘I’m not sure I believe you,’ I said, recovering myself as my semi subsided.
Jane looked up sharply, her olive cheeks flushing pink. ‘Is that right?’
She yanked her sleeve upwards but it was caught too tightly in the vice. Certain my crotch was in no way compromised, I crossed the room towards her to free her jacket.
‘Yeah, I think you’re lying,’ I said, spinning the handle towards me, just twelve inches or so between us. My breathing was shallow. Her breathing was shallow. She smelled of something deep and spicy warm. She definitely hadn’t been wearing perfume on Tuesday, this was definitely a new thing. ‘You’re not just trying to take over my business are you? You’re an international assassin. You might as well confess now, I’ve got your number, Jane.’
‘If that is my real name,’ she said, a bubble of tense laughter bursting out of her as she gave my chest a half-hearted slap. The second she touched me I knew I wanted to kiss her and I was almost certain she wanted it too. I’d been out of the game for a while, it was true, but this was not my first hot-girl rodeo. Her hand didn’t move and I knew she could feel how fast my heart was pounding. It really was working overtime to get all that blood away from my head and my feet and concentrate it in one particular area it currently considered much more important. Neither of us flinched. I could feel her breath on my throat and hear the rustle of her jacket and that tiny freckle on her left cheek dared me to walk away.
‘Cup of tea?’
Walk away I did.
My voice was too loud and too high and I felt my ankle roll underneath my foot as I took a big step back, falling directly into my armchair, arms and legs akimbo.
‘I was thinking something stronger,’ Jane said, shaking out her hair and wrapping her arms around herself. ‘Have you got any wine?’
From my incredibly elegant position in the chair, I noticed that she was gripping the workbench even more tightly than the vice. Jesus H. Christ on a pushbike, what had I got myself into?
‘Let’s go to the pub,’ I suggested, righting myself and making a new plan. Get Jane away from my house, away from any surface that could be considered suitable for boning and out in public where there were lots and lots of other people. ‘They’ve got wine. Amazing wine. First round’s on me.’
‘Sounds good,’ she said, eyeing me with a heavy gaze for one moment before turning on her heel and walking out into the garden.
Normal service had resumed.
I followed her out of the workshop, closed the double stable doors, and clicked the padlock shut, leaving whatever had just happened far behind.
The Bell was not a good pub; there was no way around that. It was old, tired and generally populated with men so old there was a local urban legend that one regular had died sitting at the bar and no one had moved him for two days. That said, it was still a better option than the Kingfisher, a pub primarily famous for diarrhoea-inducing warm lager and the constant threat of schoolyard violence. In the interest of not being forcibly dekegged before waking up to find I’d shit the bed, I directed Jane to our local. Swirls of dust danced in the air as I opened the heavy door, letting in unwelcome clean air and afternoon sunlight, and followed her towards a small, round table in the corner.
‘Nice spot,’ she said, settling herself on an unstable stool before switching to the bench built into the wall. ‘Retro.’
‘I thought it would be good inspiration for you,’ I replied, patting myself down for my wallet. ‘Just in case you’re not totally wedded to the summer camp concept and wanted to go for something a bit more late-seventies, Middle England, bag of shite.’
‘It’s tempting,’ she acknowledged. ‘I’m not sure Jim would go for it though. Maybe you and me should buy this place out and make sure no one ever changes a single thing.’
‘No one ever will,’ I assured her. ‘Glass of wine? White or red?’
‘Is it going to be drinkable?’ she asked, squinting behind the bar. ‘Or would I be better with something else?’
‘It’s not going to be great,’ I admitted, exchanging nods with someone Liv had gone to school with but whose name I couldn’t remember for the life of me. He immediately clocked Jane, looking her up and down and raising both eyebrows. ‘I’d go with a beer if you’re not sure.’
‘I know this is a bit shit for a career barmaid,’ Jane said, scooping her hair over one shoulder, away from the sticky table. ‘But I really hate beer. I’m more of a cocktail girl. I know, it’s terrible.’
‘I’m shocked and appalled,’ I replied. ‘If I can’t get them to make a mojito, glass of white?’
She nodded and pulled her black leather handbag onto her lap, shaking up the contents as I walked to the bar and rooting around inside. ‘Sounds good,’ she said. ‘Thanks, Adam.’
Every time she said my name. Teaspoons.
‘Afternoon.’
I must have been in the Bell at least two hundred times in the last six years and this man had been behind the bar every single time. Short, stocky and with the most impressive red bush of a beard I had ever seen, he gave me a nod and reached for a pint pot.
‘Afternoon,’ I replied, snapping back to the job at hand. ‘Pint of the Fuller’s and a white wine, please.’
‘Large or a small?’ he asked, pulling the pint. ‘For the wine?’
‘Umm,’ I glanced over my shoulder to see Jane applying lip balm from a small round pot and smacking her full lips together. ‘Large.’
‘New friend? Haven’t seen her around here before.’
‘Client,’ I replied, quickly before he could think anything else. ‘She’s a client.’
‘If you say so.’
He smiled to himself as I handed him a ten-pound note and watched the head on my drink settle. The idea of me bringing another woman to the Bell on a date was so ridiculous even Liv would have laughed. If I did have someone else on the go, this was the last place I’d bring her. The Bell was the last place I would take my worst enemy if there were a better option in walking distance.
‘Thanks, mate.’ I pocketed the handful of shrapnel he held out to me without counting it and picked up the drinks. Jane accepted her wine with caution and took a sip.
‘Cheers,’ I said, holding up my pint.
‘Oh, god, yeah.’ She clinked her glass against mine quickly. ‘Sorry, cheers. My curiosity got the better of me.’
‘Hate when that happens,’ I said with a gulp. ‘How is it?’
‘I’m probably not going to put it on our wine list,’ she replied, slipping her arms out of her leather jacket. Her T-shirt slouched off one shoulder, showing off a slender collarbone and a spaghetti-thin black bra strap. How was that possibly holding up her boobs? Even now, the engineering of bras astounded me.
‘How are you getting on with everything? With the bar?’ I asked. It felt weird to be in the Bell without Liv. I doused the ache in the pit of my stomach with cold beer and offered Jane an interested smile. ‘There must be so much to do.’
‘So much,’ she agreed. ‘We’ve got all the paperwork in order and we’re talking to the different suppliers now, but that should all be settled soon. Then we’ve got to find staff, get all the menus printed, decorate. The design is pretty much the only other thing we’ve got sorted.’
‘I’ve heard you’ve got a really good man on that,’ I said with a nod. ‘Best in the business.’
She smiled and rolled her eyes. ‘I’ve heard he’s all right. Hasn’t got very good taste in wine though, he’s lost a few points for that.’
‘Doesn’t seem to be slowing you down,’ I pointed out, tipping back my pint. ‘I can’t keep up.’
‘The faster I drink it, the better it tastes,’ she replied. ‘I’ve drunk nicer paint stripper.’
We both stretched our legs out under the table at the same time and snatched them back as our shins clashed.
‘I’m going to run to the ladies.’ She placed her half-empty wine glass on a warped cardboard beer mat and stood up quickly. ‘I’ll be back.’
She walked around the horseshoe and every man in the place looked up. There were only half a dozen old boys, as well as Liv’s friend, but not a single one of them could keep their eyes off her until she disappeared into the ladies and they all turned to look at me. The ache in my stomach that missed Liv told me to look away and ignore them, but the peacock that had always enjoyed the company of a good-looking woman fought harder and I found myself pulling my shoulders back and stretching out my arms. Everyone looked away and a smile found its way onto my face before the niggling fear that, somehow, this might get back to Liv came back to slap me in the face.
Not that I was doing anything wrong.
Not that I was the one who wanted this break in the first place.
‘It’s one quick polite drink and then home,’ I said quietly, checking my watch. We’d be done inside an hour. ‘She’s a client, I don’t want to be rude, that’s all.’
I picked up my pint and sighed. Sometimes I worried that me and Chris weren’t that different after all.