composure.
She shouldn’t have asked him. She’d promised, but she had to be sure. She didn’t want to believe him so incapable of feeling…
She blew her nose, tucked a wayward strand of hair back into her scarf. Regarded her reflection in the glass. ‘Serves you right, my girl,’ she said, then laid her hand against her waist. ‘Be thankful for what you’ve got.’
And with that she changed into sensible shoes and rejoined Tom McFarlane at the foot of the stairs. Neither of them spoke but she was intensely conscious of him at her side, then at her back as she led the way up the last flight of narrow stairs to the attics.
Why on earth had he waited?
It wasn’t as if he didn’t know the way…
She reached for the light switch but he was a fraction faster and, as their hands connected, her mind was filled with the image of long fingers holding his pen, ticking off invoice after invoice, on that endless afternoon. The memory of their strength as he’d lifted her down from the van, the way they’d felt against her skin.
Demanding, tormenting, sensitive…
‘I’ve got it,’ he said pointedly and she yanked her hand back as if stung.
The tension between them was drawn so tight that she half expected the bulb to blow as he switched it on, but only the dust burned as, throwing a dim glow over the abandoned detritus of generations of Duchamp lives, it began to heat up.
‘Good grief!’ she said, more as a distraction than a genuine exclamation of surprise as she glanced around. ‘What a mess!’
‘I thought that was the general rule with attics? That they were a dumping ground?’
‘Well, yes, but it helps if it’s an ordered dumping ground.’ Which it had been, mostly, and she’d hoped to be able to go straight to her grandmother’s chest, grab the dress and run.
No matter what he’d said, or what she’d promised, she knew that spending any time up here picking over family history with Tom McFarlane would only underline the painful truth that he did not want to be part of it.
She’d asked him outright and he couldn’t have made it plainer that he didn’t want to know. Fine. Her only concern had been that he should know that he was about to become a father so that he could make a choice.
Well, he’d made it.
The last thing she wanted in her little girl’s life was a father who didn’t care about her. Better to stick with the myth of the sperm ‘donor’. At least that way she would know she was totally wanted by her mother. Could believe that she had been planned. A joy.
That was real enough.
All she wanted to do now was get this
He was not good for her peace of mind under any circumstances and up here, alone, under the eaves with the belongings of generations of her family, the feeling was oddly intensified because, whether he wanted to be or not, he
‘The trunks used to be lined up around the room so that you could get at them,’ she explained, doing her best to keep this businesslike. ‘Tidily.’
Looking around, it was obvious that things had been moved about in the recent past. Long enough ago for dust to have covered the clean spaces, but months rather than years.
‘I imagine any number of surveyors have moved them over the years so that they could check out the fabric of the roof,’ Tom said.
That it was an eminently reasonable suggestion did not make her feel any better.
‘Yours being the latest, no doubt,’ she snapped. ‘Well, they should have jolly well put them back where they found them.’
‘Maybe this
‘Well…good,’ she replied, lifting the lid of the trunk nearest to her, as if satisfied. Then reeled back.
‘Good grief, what’s that smell?’
‘Camphor,’ she said, flapping at the air to disperse the fumes, but only succeeding in stirring up the dust and making things worse. ‘To keep away the moths,’ she said, choking from the combination, ‘which would otherwise have feasted…’ she gasped for air ‘…on all this fine wool suiting.’
‘And not just the moths. That smell would keep away anybody who ever thought about wearing them,’ he assured her. Then, with concern, ‘Are you all right? Is this okay? It won’t affect the…’
The word didn’t make it out of his mouth.
‘Baby,’ she snapped, still coughing. ‘It’s not a dirty word.’
‘No. I’m sorry.’
‘So you said.’ If he’d been any stiffer he’d have cracked in two, she thought. ‘But I’m not, so that’s okay, isn’t it?’
He closed the trunk. ‘I’m happy for you,’ he said, turning away to open a second trunk.
That was it? She thought the camphor had made her gasp but his carelessness left her mouthing the air like a fish out of water.
Could he really be so…indifferent?
‘This is better,’ he said as, with a complete lack of concern, he held out an old tinplate truck for her to see. The kind of toy that might have belonged to one of the youths in the photograph and was now worth a considerable amount of money. Then he picked up a teddy bear, dressed as a clown, which was worth a great deal more. He offered it to her. ‘You’d have been better to have left your clothes behind and taken this.’
‘Chance would have been a fine thing,’ she said, taking it from him, feeling for the button in the ear.
Even the vintage wedding dress had been part of the estate according to the emotionless men who’d moved in to make an inventory of contents, watching her like hawks to make sure she didn’t pack anything more valuable than her underwear. They’d actually taken apart the framed photograph of her mother before she’d packed it, just to be sure that nothing valuable was secreted behind the picture.
She hadn’t argued with them. She’d been beyond making a scene, couldn’t even be bothered to put the photograph back in the frame, but had abandoned that along with the rest of her life.
What did a picture frame matter? Or an old wedding dress, for that matter, when her groom had put the ceremony on hold until everything had been ‘sorted out’. As if it ever could be.
What on earth was she doing up here looking for it now? This wasn’t moving on. This was just wallowing in the past. Something you did when you had no future. She was carrying her future in her womb. His future too.
‘It’s definitely a Steiff,’ she said, handing it back to him. ‘And, because it’s been shut away, the colours haven’t faded, which will increase the value. I’d advise you to be very careful before you toss any of this stuff into a skip. Who knows, on a good day at auction, you might even recoup the cost of your wedding. Wouldn’t that be ironic?’ she pushed, desperate for a reaction of any kind.
The only indication that he’d heard was the slightest tightening of his jaw as he turned away from her.
‘Is this what you’re looking for?’ he asked after opening another trunk to reveal more clothes, this time layered in tissue. Then, ‘No camphor?’ He glanced across at her. ‘Don’t moths attack women’s clothes?’
Sylvie sighed and let it go, looking across at the chest Tom had opened. ‘That’s a sandalwood chest,’ she said, wriggling between a couple of battered trunks to squeeze into the tiny space beside him without touching him. ‘Natural moth proofing.’
Her attempt at avoidance was brought to naught by the fact that her centre of gravity had shifted and, despite the sensible shoes, she wobbled against him. In an instant his hand was around what had once been her waist and he was holding her safe. Just as he had once before.
For a moment their gazes seemed to lock, all breathing to cease, and it was that moment in the garage all over again.
‘Okay?’ he asked softly; his eyes in the dim light seemed to be dulled with anguish. It was just her imagination, she told herself. Or the dust…
She forced herself to turn away, look at the trunk, the dress, lying in its layers of snowy tissue.
‘Oh…’ Then, ‘Yes…’
And the dust-or something-caught in her throat as she lifted her hand first to her lips, then out to touch the
