I couldn’t tell Luke that. Luke wouldn’t understand that last night was like stepping into a memory, stepping back into an old Kamryn suit that I’d never been given the chance to grow out of. The events surrounding Adele’s confession had wrenched me out of a life and personality that I’d liked. Loved, even. Everything I felt for Nate last night had been about that. Had been about a time when I was with a man I adored absolutely, when I knew what it was like to be unequivocally desired and cared for by someone. It was also about being with someone who reminded me of a time when my best friend was alive and my Tiga was unmarked by abuse and bereavement. Wanting Nate last night had nothing to do with longing for another man at Luke’s expense; it was about wanting another me at this me’s expense, wanting another time and being willing to sacrifice this time to get it.
Luke wouldn’t understand that. I wouldn’t if he tried to tell me the same thing about his ex-fiancée, Nicole. I’d see it as betrayal no matter how honest he was being. And anyway, I wasn’t going to see Nate again—I was going to send him the papers and that would be it. So it didn’t matter what I’d felt last night, now was the important thing.
chapter 33
Rat-a-tat-tat!
I glanced at the front door to my flat, wondering who was knocking. Luke, who was out with Tegan, had a key, and Betsy, my office partner, never visited me at home anymore for fear of encountering Tegan—small children were not her thing. And there ended the list of people who would drop by without calling first.
I slipped on the thick security chain I’d had fitted since my flat became Tegan’s home too, cautiously opened the door and peeked out.
Nate.
I hadn’t heard from him nor seen him in the week since our dinner, I’d simply told myself I’d send him the papers another day. Another day hadn’t dawned yet. I slammed the door and with trembling hands undid the security chain, then opened the door again. “What are you doing here?” I asked, the shaking of my hands also present in my voice.
“I wanted to see you.”
“You can’t just turn up unannounced like this.”
“I can because I have,” he replied.
“How did you know where I live?”
“I heard when you gave the taxi driver your address.” He tapped his temple. “Mind like a steel trap.”
“What do you want?” Hostility and fear tainted my voice. This was not going to end well. Luke was gagging for a reason to kick seven types of hell out of Nate. And Nate, the jealous man I’d dated for six years, would probably welcome the chance to batter the man I was sleeping with.
“Like I said, to see you. And to see Tegan.”
My body contracted in terror. “What? Why?”
“She’s…Look, do we have to do this on the doorstep?”
“No, no.” I stepped aside to let him in and indicated straight ahead to the living room/kitchen.
Nate, dressed in blue jeans and a black polo sweater, didn’t sit, he surveyed my living area, taking in the bookcase, the cream sofa that had been scuffed a multitude of colors over the past few months, the big red beanbag that lived beside the television, the red rug that ended where the small dining table sat, marking the kitchen area from the living space. He looked on, to white kitchen cabinets, topped with wood-effect worktops, which were covered in breakfast and lunch things that I was going to be washing up the second I could peel my tired body off the sofa.
“Where is she?” Nate shortened the distance between us so I had to look up his six-foot-two frame to his face.
“She’s…Luke’s taken her to the park to feed the ducks or rather she’s taken Luke—she decided last night that the ducks were going to starve without her intervention, and wouldn’t stop going on about it until we agreed to take her, after her karate class. Luke volunteered to get out of the washing up.”
My ex-fiancé’s face twisted with resentment. “Take her out a lot, does he?” he snarled. I’d never heard that low, accusing vicious tone to his voice, it scared me slightly. “Quite the family man, isn’t he?”
“Nate, stop it, please.” I touched his arm. “This isn’t you.”
His whole body relaxed with a deep exhalation. “No, no it’s not, is it?” He shook his head. “I’m all over the place right now, most of the time I don’t know what I’m doing or feeling.” He moved back from me, parked himself on the sofa. I sat beside him.
“What are you doing here?” I asked again.
“I wasn’t lying, I want to see Tegan.”
The panic rose again. “But why?”
“No matter how she came about, she’s my daughter. I have to accept responsibility for her.”
Oh, no. No. I might not have wanted her initially but that didn’t mean I could live without her now. She was my only link to Adele. I promised to take care of her, adopt her. And I loved her, needed her. What if Nate fell in love with her and wanted her too?
“Why? You don’t want kids. Are you going to try and get custody of her?”
Nate drew away in horror, his features stricken. “God, no!”
“So why do you want to see her?”
“Kamryn, she’s my daughter.”
“But you don’t want kids.”
“That’s a moot point, isn’t it? I’ve got a child and I have to deal with it.”
“If you don’t want custody of her, why do you want to see her?”
“What sort of person would I be if I didn’t even try to get to know her before I gave her up?”
“You don’t understand, they won’t let me adopt her if you’re still around. That could be seen as you being capable of looking after her, which would mean I won’t be allowed to properly adopt her.”
His eyes studied me for a few seconds. “Were you expecting me to sign away my parental rights, then walk away like it was nothing?”
When he put it like that, what I asked of him sounded callous—something he wasn’t. “No, course not…I don’t know.”
“Kam…Ryn, we haven’t even started to talk about what happened between us, I’m not going away until we have.”
That thought filled me with terror. He was a stranger; he’d become a stranger the day I found out what he’d done. He wasn’t Nate, my rock, he was a man capable of betrayal. And while I didn’t know why he’d done it, I suspected I knew. My suspicions haunted me, night and day, they plagued me just like not letting Adele say all she wanted to before she died haunted me. They were part of those grooves of guilt and loss in my mind. I didn’t want those thoughts confirmed. Didn’t want any of those grooves to become a permanent fixture of my personality.
“This isn’t about us, this is about Tegan,” I said. “I need to give her the stability that her mother would have given her and to do that I need to be able to adopt her.”
“And you haven’t thought about the possibility of us getting back together and bringing up Tegan as her parents? Us being a family?”
Terror punched the air out of my body in one vicious blow and I turned away from Nate, clutching my stomach.
“Kam?”
“Don’t take her away from me,” I begged. “She’s all I’ve got left. Please don’t take her away.”
His arms slipped around me. “Why would I take her away?” he asked. “I was only saying that if we gave it another go we could be a family.”
“But you won’t sign unless I say yes,” I replied.
“I never said that. And I didn’t mean for it to sound like I was putting pressure on you. I wouldn’t…Not ever. I just want us to talk properly. The other night wasn’t proper talking, was it? We need to sort things out.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to.”
“We can’t leave things like they are.” Nate ran his fingers through my hair, pouring comfort into my veins with every stroke. He knew that would calm me, would sometimes send me to sleep. My two favorite things were having my hair stroked and my neck kissed. Nate knew that, Luke didn’t. “I want to make things right between us. And, unexpe
cted as it is, I need to accept this new responsibility…How are you doing for money? Because I should start paying for her.”
This wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I needed him to be uninterested because they wouldn’t let me adopt her if he was on the scene. This was what Nate was like, though: honest and noble. A good guy.
“I could manage about two hundred and fifty pounds a month. Is that all right?”
I crumpled again. That money would be a godsend. Even though Luke tried to help out, I resisted his attempts to pay for Tegan—she was my responsibility, not his, and I didn’t want to rely on something that could be taken away at some point. I wasn’t living in cloud-cuckoo-land; Luke and I might not be forever.
Nate slid off the sofa, knelt in front of me, engulfed me in a hug. “Is that enough? Maybe if I give you a lump sum from my savings, then the two hundred and fifty would go a bit further. About three thousand? Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask for it back—it comes with no ties. It’s forever, no matter what happens between us. I’ll set up an account for her that you look after until she’s eighteen and I’ll see if I can give more as she gets older. Well, actually, I have to pay more as she gets older, there’s no two ways about it, is there?”
“Nate, I…thank you.”
He lifted my head and gazed into my eyes, used his thumbs to wipe away my tears. “Ryn…” he began but was silenced by the sound of the key in the lock. We both instinctively jumped up, faced the door. I quickly wiped tears from my eyes.
“We’re back!” Tegan chorused as she and Luke bustled through the door and into the living room. Tegan, swaddled in her red winter coat, her furry black hat on her head, a black fleece scarf at her throat and furry black mittens on her hands, paused in the doorway when she saw a tall white man standing beside me. Luke, who was two steps behind her, stopped short too.
“Did you have a nice time?” I asked, sniffing away the rest of my tears.
“Yes.” Tegan grinned, her inquisitive blue eyes darted from me to Nate. “Who’s that?” she asked when the suspense became too much for her.
“This is Nate. Remember I told you he was an old friend of mine?”
“You had a pretty dress,” she said to Nate.
Nate frowned comically. “No, I’ve seen some lovely dresses in my time but I’ve never worn one. Promise.”
Tegan laughed although she took a step back and pushed herself against Luke’s leg, needing his reassuring, familiar presence. “Not you!” she giggled. “Mummy Ryn. She had a pretty dress cos she was going to be married.” She raised her mittened hand and pointed. “To you.”
Shock stumbled into the room; staggering and reeling into each adult, rendering us mute. The fact that Nate and I had been engaged was a subject none of us would have raised if not for Tegan saying this.
“That’s right,” I said, recovering first. “I didn’t know you remembered that.”
Tegan grinned. “I did.” She looked up at Luke, seeking his praise. He grinned at her then dropped to his knees and reached for her feet. “You’re a clever girl,” Luke said as he unstrapped her trainers and slipped them off.
When he stood, Luke glared questioningly at me. “Luke, this is Nate. Nate, this is my boyfriend, Luke.” Nate came around from the sofa and reached out his hand. Luke begrudgingly shook it.
“Pleased to meet you,” Nate said.
“Yeah,” Luke replied. I knew that expression and tone of voice well—from the moment we met.
“Are you Mummy Ryn’s boyfriend?” Tegan asked, in case she hadn’t unsettled us enough already.
“A long time ago I was,” Nate replied. “But I’m not anymore, Luke is now.”
Tegan seemed pleased with that; she scrunched up her nose and mouth and nodded her head in agreement. Luke looked like he might punch Nate just for the hell of it.
“We fed the ducks, didn’t we, Luke?” Tegan said.
“We surely did,” Luke said.
Nate’s face softened and he focused completely on Tegan, a soppy smile taking over his face. “Oh, wow,” Nate said. “What color were they?”
“Duck color.” Tegan giggled.
“Oh, were they bright yellow?”
“No!” Tegan squealed.
“Well, that’s the color the duck in my bath is.”
Where had Nate’s ability to talk to a child come from? He used to run a mile when asked to stay with Tegan while I went to the bathroom if we were babysitting.
“There wasn’t that many. They were brown. And green and purple with yellow around the neck. Luke said they fly away for winter.”
“Right, I’d better go,” Luke said.
Nate glanced away from Tegan, made uneasy eye contact with Luke for a moment, then he swung to me. “I’d better get off. Got a work thing tonight.” He leaned over, pressed his warm lips against my cheek. My heart quickened at the touch of him. “Bye,” he said to me. “Luke.” He held out his hand and Luke shook it. “And, Tegan,” he bent to Tegan height, “it was a pleasure meeting you again. I’ll see you soon, OK?” He held out his hand and she shook it, the joy at being treated like a grown-up showed on her face.
Luke gritted his teeth, a heartbeat away from smacking Nate as he came toward the door. I held my breath, scared he’d follow through with the venomous look in his eye, but then he stepped aside. Nate’s leaving was marked with a click of the lock as the door shut behind him.
“He was nice,” Tegan said, coming into the room and jumping on the sofa. She was still in her coat, scarf, hat and mittens. “But not as nice as Luke.” She tugged off a mitten, picked up the remote and flicked channels on the television, uninterested in this world now the excitement of a visitor was over.
Luke’s eyes flicked from me to the corridor, accompanied by a small jerk of his head. I followed him to my bedroom and he shut the door behind me.
“I don’t like him being here,” Luke hissed.
“I didn’t ask him to come, he came of his own accord.”
“Did he?”
“No, Luke, I waited until you went out for an unspecified amount of time to ask him around here for sex.”
“I don’t like him being here,” he repeated.
“It’s my flat.”
“Did he try it on with you?”
“At last, you get to the point. No, he didn’t and even if he did—which he didn’t—nothing would have happened. I’m with you.”
“What did he want?”
“To see Tegan.”
Luke quailed. “He wants her?” He sounded as panicked as I felt.
“I don’t know. That’s why I was crying when you came in. You did notice that, didn’t you? We weren’t all lovey-dovey, I was terrified because he wants to take responsibility for her and that could mean all sorts of trouble for my adoption application.”
“Shit.” Luke sat on the bed.
“I’ve never seen him like that with a child, not even Tegan. But I’ve never seen him with his daughter before. I’m scared, Luke.” I sat beside him and he put his arms around me. “I’m scared that he’s going to fall in love with her and then he’s going to want her and I’ll lose her and I’ll let Adele down.” I pushed the palm of my hand against my forehead. “I’m scared, Luke.”
“It’ll be all right,” he said without conviction. “I promise, everything’s going to be all right.”
He didn’t understand, I wasn’t only scared about losing Tegan, I was scared about Nate. Seeing him with Tegan, how he’d made an effort with her, had made me wonder if we could make it work as a family—Nate, Tegan and I. I was scared because, for the first time, I was having doubts about Luke’s place in our lives.
chapter 34
The after-work crowd, people who stumbled out of offices, shops, train stations, other places of employment and into the nearest bar, was something I used to be a part of. Betsy, Ruby, me, and a few other people from Angeles would often head to a bar near the store and drink our hard-earned wages. Since I’d inherited Tegan, the circ
le of friends whom I saw outside of work had been whittled away to…Luke.
I pushed my way through the huddle of bodies standing in the trendy bar Paragon, in central Leeds. Some of the people I sidled past still had their winter coats on, most stood protectively over their bags, and everyone had some kind of drink in their hands. I’d forgotten how packed these places got, how the air hummed with conversation and the atmosphere was tinted blue by smoke. I searched through the gaps in the bodies for Nate. We were having a quick drink because he was meeting friends in Leeds that evening. I spotted him, sitting at a table in a corner, staring into a half-drunk pint, a glass of white wine for me opposite him. It took me back to the times we used to meet after work. He’d get there first, buy me a drink and then I would show up, buy Adele a drink, and then she, who finished work last, would arrive.
I’d barely swallowed the first mouthful of the first glass of wine I’d had in ages when Nate asked, “Are you going to tell Tegan I’m her father?”
His question reminded me why I liked being around Luke. Luke was normality. There were no big swooping loops of emotion with Luke. Normality didn’t carry a kick of excitement, but when your life was a constant plunging spiral of emotion, where one minute you were in a side-clutching fit of laughter and the next you were digging your fingernails into your palms to stop yourself from sobbing, there was a lot to be said for normality. Ordinariness was a sought-after commodity. One that Nate and I didn’t trade in anymore. With us, it was something big and dramatic, like this.
“I don’t know,” I replied. I set down my glass on the table, traced the grain of the knotted wood with my finger. “Tegan’s a smart girl, she’s knows you’re hanging around for a reason.” Twice Nate had dropped round to our place since his unexpected visit last Saturday—first of all to give me the details of the bank account he’d set up for Tegan. He’d deposited three thousand pounds in it as promised. Two nights later he’d brought round the cash card that came with the account. Tegan had been cautious around him, stared at him with guarded eyes as she asked him tentative questions about his job, warily answered his inquiries about school. Luke hadn’t been happy about Nate’s visits, but he hadn’t complained because he was desperate for Nate to sign himself out of our lives.