“Daddy Nick, making you sandwiches and buying you dresses. Very cute.”
Daddy Nick. The thought has me burning up, and my heart keeps pounding and my mouth is all dry.
I barely register the fact she’s still talking.
“So, where do you sleep? In his room? Please tell me it’s not in his room…”
I shake my head. “In his daughter’s room.” I focus on a safer topic, tell her about Jane’s lovely things, and the writing on her wall, and how great it feels there.
Kelly Anne doesn’t look impressed, at all. Her eyes screw up and she looks at me like I’m some kind of crazy.
“You’re staying in his kid daughter’s room? With pink curtains and a mad hatter tea set?”
I shake my head. “It’s not his kid daughter’s room now. She’s all grown up. She doesn’t live there anymore.”
Kelly tips her head to the side, and she’s thinking. It makes me feel uneasy, and I’m glad class is starting soon.
“So… if she’s not his kid daughter… then she’s an adult now, right?”
I nod. “Yeah, I guess so. Probably moved away.”
“So… if she’s grown up… why is her room still like some kiddie shrine? I mean, where’s all her teenage shit? Surely she’d have like Backstreet Boys posters up, or some other crap like that. Maybe some makeup… some grown-up kid shit…”
“Maybe she liked it that way… the way it was…” My answer is lame, and it’s because I don’t have one. Because I haven’t even thought about it.
Haven’t thought about the fact Jane’s room is still like she’s five or six years old, even though she doesn’t live there anymore, hasn’t lived there for a long time.
“Maybe she lived with her mother…” I ponder aloud. “Maybe she didn’t live in there… not all the time…”
“Still,” Kelly Anne says. “She’d still have some grown-up shit, Laine. I mean, who wants a fairy castle when they’re at high school?”
Me, I think, but I daren’t say it.
“I’ll ask him,” I tell her. “About Jane. I’m sure maybe there’s another room she had or something. Or maybe she didn’t live there…”
Kelly Anne pulls a spooky face, waggles her fingers like a ghost. “Or maybe she didn’t exist… oooooooh… maybe he’s like the guy from Psycho and you’ll find his dead mother in his cellar…”
That thought really does make me laugh. “You’re an idiot,” I tell her. “You really have been watching too much CSI.”
I brush past her to make my way to class, and she follows, shrugs at me. “Tell me that when you realise he’s some freaky pervert and you’re running barefoot to my house as he chases you with his imaginary daughter’s dildo or something.”
“You’re gross,” I tell her, but I’m grinning.
“No,” she says. “You’re gross. I’m not the dirty little bitch with a creepy daddy fetish.”
I laugh at her words but I’m not really sure what she means. I mean, she doesn’t know Nick. Doesn’t know how he saved me, how he cares for me. Doesn’t know how safe I feel when I’m with him.
“He’d make a really good daddy,” I say.
She rolls her eyes at me. “Tell him that while he takes your V card, Laine. That’ll really get him off. Dirty old pervert.”
I don’t reply. I can’t reply. In my mind, I’m sitting on his lap, my arms around his neck as he…
“Laine?”
I snap back to reality, and the heat in my face betrays me.
“I’m worried about you,” she says.
But I’m not worried at all.Chapter NineNick“Morning, Mr Lynch.”
A sea of the same old Monday morning greetings. I smile my usual smile, ask after people’s weekends, and their kids, and their Saturday nights at the karaoke. I make my way through to my office with my usual take-out coffee and check my emails just like any other regular work morning. But it’s different this morning. I feel so different this morning.
Jane stares out at me from the same old picture from the corner of my desk, grinning in the arms of her mother as they stare up at the camera. Stare at me. I touch the frame, a regular ritual, only this time my heart doesn’t pang in quite the same way.
It’s the loneliness. Or more specifically the lack of it.
A beautiful sense of relief washes over me as I discard my regular work routine and call my secretary through.
Penny looks great this morning. A new blouse, I think. She smiles and scribbles down notes without even a hint of surprise as I instruct her to call in a cleaning team to Laine’s property. I tell her they need to be able to handle hazardous waste, complete a thorough job from top to bottom. Decorators, I tell her. We’ll need decorators when they’re done.
Neutral colours. Maybe some fresh curtains to match. Yes, curtains to match.
New flooring, too. The place will need new flooring.