Stop staring, I told Patrick silently.
Finally, he caught my eye and looked away. He looked furious.
I fed Will another piece, and then some bread when I saw him glance at it. I had, I realized in that moment, become so attuned to Will’s needs that I barely needed to look at him to work out what he wanted. Patrick, opposite, ate with his head down, cutting the smoked salmon into small pieces and spearing them with his fork. He left his bread.
‘So, Patrick,’ Will said, perhaps sensing my discomfort. ‘Louisa tells me you’re a personal trainer. What does that involve?’
I so wished he hadn’t asked. Patrick launched into his sales spiel, all about personal motivation and how a fit body made for a healthy mind. Then he segued into his training schedule for the Xtreme Viking – the temperatures of the North Sea, the body fat ratios needed for marathon running, his best times in each discipline. I normally tuned out at this point, but all I could think of now, with Will beside me, was how inappropriate it was. Why couldn’t he have just said something vague and left it at that?
‘In fact, when Lou said you were coming, I thought I’d take a look at my books and see if there was any physio I could recommend.’
I choked on my champagne. ‘It’s quite specialist, Patrick. I’m not sure you’d really be the person.’
‘I can do specialist. I do sports injuries. I have medical training.’
‘This is not a sprained ankle, Pat. Really.’
‘There’s a man I worked with a couple of years ago had a client who was paraplegic. He’s almost fully recovered now, he says. Does triathlons and everything.’
‘Fancy,’ said my mother.
‘He pointed me to this new research in Canada that says muscles can be trained to remember former activity. If you get them working enough, every day, it’s like a brain synapse – it can come back. I bet you if we hooked you up with a really good regime, you could see a difference in your muscle memory. After all, Lou tells me you were quite the action man before.’
‘Patrick,’ I said loudly. ‘You know nothing about it.’
‘I was just trying to –’
‘Well don’t. Really.’
The table fell silent. Dad coughed, and excused himself for it. Granddad peered around the table in wary silence.
Mum made as if to offer everyone more bread, and then seemed to change her mind.
When Patrick spoke again, there was a faint air of martyrdom in his tone. ‘It’s just research that I thought might be helpful. But I’ll say no more about it.’
Will looked up and smiled, his face blank, polite. ‘I’ll certainly bear it in mind.’
I got up to clear the plates, wanting to escape the table. But Mum scolded me, telling me to sit down.
‘You’re the birthday girl,’ she said – as if she ever let anyone else do anything, anyway. ‘Bernard. Why don’t you go and get the chicken?’
‘Ha-ha. Let’s hope it’s stopped flapping around now, eh?’ Dad smiled, his teeth bared in a kind of grimace.
The rest of the meal passed off without incident. My parents, I could see, were completely charmed by Will. Patrick, less so. He and Will barely exchanged another word. Somewhere around the point where Mum served up the roast potatoes – Dad doing his usual thing of trying to steal extras – I stopped worrying. Dad was asking Will all sorts, about his life before, even about the accident, and he seemed comfortable enough to answer him directly. In fact, I learnt a fair bit that he’d never told me. His job, for example, sounded pretty important, even if he played it down. He bought and sold companies and made sure he turned a profit while doing so. It took Dad a few attempts to prise out of him that his idea of profit ran into six or seven figures. I found myself staring at Will, trying to reconcile the man I knew with this ruthless City suit that he now described. Dad told him about the company that was about to take over the furniture factory, and when he said the name Will nodded almost apologetically, and said that yes, he knew of them. Yes, he would probably have gone for it too. The way he said it didn’t sound promising for Dad’s job.
Mum just cooed at Will, and made a huge fuss of him. I realized, watching her smile, that at some stage during the meal he had just become a smart young man at her table. No wonder Patrick was pissed off.
‘Birthday cake?’ Granddad said, as she began to clear the dishes.
It was so distinct, so surprising, that Dad and I stared at each other in shock. The whole table went quiet.
‘No,’ I walked around the table and kissed him. ‘No, Granddad. Sorry. But it is chocolate mousse. You like that.’
He nodded in approval. My mother was beaming. I don’t think any of us could have had a better present.
The mousse arrived on the table, and with it a large, square present, about the size of a telephone directory, wrapped in tissue.
‘Presents, is it?’ Patrick said. ‘Here. Here’s mine.’ He smiled at me as he placed it in the middle of the table.
I raised a smile back. This was no time to argue, after all.
‘Go on,’ said Dad. ‘Open it.’
I opened theirs first, peeling the paper carefully away so that I didn’t tear it. It was a photograph album, and on every page there was a picture from a year in my life. Me as a baby; me and Treena as solemn, chubby-faced girls; me on my first day at secondary school, all hairclips and oversized skirt. More recently, there was a picture of me and Patrick, the one where I was actually telling him to piss off. And me, dressed in a grey skirt, my first day in my new job. In between the pages were pictures of our family by Thomas, letters that Mum had kept from school trips, my childish handwriting telling of days on the beach, lost ice creams and thieving gulls. I flicked through, and only hesitated briefly when I saw the girl with the long, dark flicked-back hair. I turned the page.
‘Can I see?’ Will said.
‘It’s not been … the best year,’ Mum told him, as I flicked through the pages in front of him. ‘I mean, we’re fine and everything. But, you know, things being what they are. And then Granddad saw something on the daytime telly about making your own presents, and I thought that was something that would … you know … really mean something.’
‘It does, Mum.’ My eyes had filled with tears. ‘I love it. Thank you.’
‘Granddad picked out some of the pictures,’ she said.
‘It’s beautiful,’ said Will.
‘I love it,’ I said again.
The look of utter relief she and Dad exchanged was the saddest thing I have ever seen.
‘Mine next.’ Patrick pushed the little box across the table. I opened it slowly, feeling vaguely panicked for a moment that it might be an engagement ring. I wasn’t ready. I had barely got my head around having my own bedroom. I opened the little box, and there, against the dark-blue velvet, was a thin gold chain with a little star pendant. It was sweet, delicate, and not remotely me. I didn’t wear that kind of jewellery, never had.
I let my eyes rest on it while I worked out what to say. ‘It’s lovely,’ I said, as he leant across the table and fastened it around my neck.
‘Glad you like it,’ Patrick said, and kissed me on the mouth. I swear he’d never kissed me like that in front of my parents before.
Will watched me, his face impassive.
‘Well, I think we should eat pudding now,’ Dad said. ‘Before it gets too hot.’ He laughed out loud at his own joke. The champagne had boosted his spirits immeasurably.
‘There’s something in my bag for you too,’ Will said, quietly. ‘The one on the back of my chair. It’s in orange wrapping.’
I pulled the present from Will’s backpack.
My mother paused, the serving spoon in her hand. ‘You got Lou a present, Will? That’s ever so kind of you. Isn’t that kind of him, Bernard?’
‘It certainly is.’
The wrapping paper had brightly coloured Chinese kimonos on it. I didn’t have to look at it to know I would save it. Perhaps even create something to wear based on it. I removed the ribbon, putting it to one side for later. I opened the paper, and then the tissue paper within it, and there, staring at me was a strangely familiar black and yellow stripe.
I pulled the fabric from the parcel, and in my hands were two pairs of black and yellow tights. Adult-sized, opaque, in a wool so soft that they almost slid through my fingers.
‘I don’t believe it,’ I said. I had started to laugh – a joyous, unexpected thing. ‘Oh my God! Where did you get these?’
‘I had them made. You’ll be happy to know I instructed the woman via my brand-new voice recognition software.’
‘Tights?’ Dad and Patrick said in unison.
‘Only the best pair of tights ever.’
My mother peered at them. ‘You know, Louisa, I’m pretty sure you had a pair just like that when you were very little.’
Will and I exchanged a look.
I couldn’t stop beaming. ‘I want to put them on now,’ I said.
‘Jesus Christ, she’ll look like Max Wall in a beehive,’ my father said, shaking his head.
‘Ah Bernard, it’s her birthday. Sure, she can wear what she wants.’
I ran outside and pulled on a pair in the hallway. I pointed a toe, admiring the silliness of them. I don’t think a present had ever made me so happy in my life.
I walked back in. Will let out a small cheer. Granddad banged his hands on the table. Mum and Dad burst out laughing. Patrick just stared.
‘I can’t even begin to tell you how much I love these,’ I said. ‘Thank you. Thank you.’ I reached out a hand and touched the back of his shoulder. ‘Really.’
‘There’s a card in there too,’ he said. ‘Open it some other time.’
My parents made a huge fuss of Will when he left.
Dad, who was drunk, kept thanking him for employing me, and made him promise to come back. ‘If I lose my job, maybe I’ll come over and watch the footie with you one day,’ he said.
‘I’d like that,’ said Will, even though I’d never seen him watch a football match.
My mum pressed some leftover mousse on him, wrapping it in a Tupperware container, ‘Seeing as you liked it so much.’
What a gentleman, they would say, for a good hour after he had gone. A real gentleman.
Patrick came out to the hallway, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, as if perhaps to stop the urge to shake Will’s own. That was my more generous conclusion.
‘Good to meet you, Patrick,’ Will said. ‘And thank you for the … advice.’
‘Oh, just trying to help my girlfriend get the best out of her job,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’ There was a definite emphasis on the word my.
‘Well, you’re a lucky man,’ Will said, as Nathan began to steer him out. ‘She certainly gives a good bed bath.’ He said it so quickly that the door was closed before Patrick even realized what he had said.
‘You never told me you were giving him bed baths.’
We had gone back to Patrick’s house, a new-build flat on the edge of town. It had been marketed as ‘loft living’, even though it overlooked the retail park, and was no more than three floors high.
‘What does that mean – you wash his dick?’
‘I don’t wash his dick.’ I picked up the cleanser that was one of the few things I was allowed to keep at Patrick’s place, and began to clean off my make-up with sweeping strokes.
‘He just said you did.’
‘He’s teasing you. And after you going on and on about how he used to be an action man, I don’t blame him.’
‘So what is it you do for him? You’ve obviously not been giving me the full story.’