‘Let’s run a race, Maddy...fast as we can to the canal... One, two, three... Go!’
He’d once asked his mother why she’d married his father. She’d told him that things had been different in the beginning. She’d said she didn’t know what had triggered the drinking, but that when his father had started turning up to lectures drunk she’d known it wouldn’t be long before he lost his job at the university. When it happened, she said, he’d been angry, angry all the time, lashing out more and more. Afterwards he’d be full of remorse, begging for forgiveness. For the sake of the man he’d been, she’d held on, hoping that things would change. They didn’t. The irony, she’d told Theo, was that his father had always sworn that he would never be like his own father, Theo’s grandfather, who’d also been a violent drunk.
This was his legacy: a chain of violence and misery. Even his heroic brother, Bram, had succumbed and there were moments when he was sure that he could feel the darkness of generations creeping through his own veins. It was why he spent his life boxing at shadows, keeping himself on the ropes, not letting what was inside him see the light of day. It was a matter of self-control.
Madelon was always teasing him about being so buttoned up and that worried him too. Was his intensity overbearing?
Eline had once told him that he was good, kind and noble, but on the day she’d left she’d looked at him scornfully. ‘You want to control everything, Theo. It’s boring as hell.’
He pushed through double doors into another empty room—a family room for a man with no family. Was he boring as hell? Was he too controlling? He pictured Mia’s face on the barge. When he’d tried to extract that promise, she hadn’t looked intimidated. She’d looked...surprised. Bemused. And then she’d looked him squarely in the eye and refused.
For a moment he’d wanted to open himself up to her—tell her more about his father, the way he’d been, what he’d done to the family—but he’d stopped himself. He was ashamed of his background and he wasn’t ready to reveal that shame to Mia, even though he felt safe with her, even though kindness and empathy shone through her eyes like starlight. When she’d told him about why she’d chosen Cleuso, his heart had melted. It had taken every ounce of willpower he possessed not to pull her into his arms and kiss her. He’d kissed her cheek instead, so full of emotion, so disorientated that he’d left without asking her for her phone number.
And now he was pacing from room to room, veins throbbing with restless energy. Since Eline, he’d been tight as a clam, but something about Mia made him want to unseal himself. But he was scared too. Opening was hard for him, even by degrees, even to someone who seemed as sweet and trustworthy as Mia. Eline had turned against him, broken his heart just when he’d needed an ally. People changed: his father, Eline, Bram... How could you see a person’s true colours when the kaleidoscope was always turning?
At the door, the way Mia had looked at him, that uncertainty in her eyes mingled with gentleness, openness... If he’d tilted her chin, touched her lips with his, would she have pulled away or kissed him back? Just the thought of it made him dizzy. She was lovely. He wanted to see her again, wanted to know her better. He’d have to take it slowly, scope things out, but he couldn’t do anything without her phone number. Asking Ash for it would be too weird...
He pressed his hands to the crown of his head, spun around slowly. She lived close by. If he was to drop in unannounced, would she think he was stalking her? He tipped his head back and stared at a jagged crack in the ceiling. He needed to go for a run. Running was his thing. He always felt better afterwards, clearer in his mind. He’d think about Mia later.
Mia jingled her bell three times then braked gently, waiting for the tourists to realise that they’d strayed onto the cycle path. They suddenly broke stride, jigged a little dance of shock then scurried to the side. She smiled, waved and pedalled on. Lotte wouldn’t have slowed down; she’d have sped up, scowled her way past. But then Lotte was a native, impatient with tourists, especially the drunken men and the stag-nighters who gawped at the girls in the red-light district; and the flocks of raucous hen-weekenders cavorting around the streets in their cheap pink sashes, brides to be; bridesmaids; mothers. The city had become a magnet for the wrong type of tourists. That was what Lotte said.
She rang her bell again, smiling at more scuttling tourists. She wasn’t as jaded as Lotte. The city still excited her. It was a vibrant place, a magnet for artists, makers, creators and innovators... Like Theo! Her heart jolted. It happened every time she thought about him which was getting to be a little inconvenient. She cycled slowly, scanning the canal railing clad in bicycles of all shapes and sizes for a gap where she could park hers.
Up ahead, a man was unchaining his bike, lifting his little boy into the seat positioned over the front fork. Whole families could fit onto a single bike if it had the right attachments, like the bicycle in the children’s book her dad used to read to her when she was little. The story was about an inventive woman who kept adding gizmos to her bike to make it better. She’d loved that book, the way her dad had used to do the woman’s high, squeaky voice, his gold-rimmed reading glasses glowing in the light pooling from the bedside lamp... At least that was what she remembered. Ash said that their dad’s spectacles had been silver, not gold. They used to argue about things like that, trying
