“Oh?” She picked up their plates. Roscoe followed her through to the kitchen.
“Get out of dodge?” she teased, putting the plates in the dishwasher, Roscoe helping.
“Exactly. Yeah. Breathe some air that isn’t Blackton-fucking-Gold.”
“Do it,” she encouraged. “Book some days off. I can rearrange your diary. If there’s anyone who needs a holiday, it’s you.”
And maybe she could do with a break from him. Get her head and her heart back in line.
He shook his head slightly. “I can’t take any time off. I’ll go this weekend. Saturday to Sunday. And I’ll have to bring my laptop. But come with me. I could continue your education—show you what life’s like in a real stately home.”
Gowithhim? A weekend away with Roscoe Blackton?
It was a terrifyingly stupid idea.
So of course she said yes.
THIRTY-SIX
Maybe it was nosurprise that when Roscoe had fled the office white-faced and shaking on Wednesday evening his mind had fled further—to distant gardens and pure, broad skies.
He’d had another panic attack in the lift down from the exec floor, his father’s words in his mind and all the walls closing in until he couldn’t breathe, was crushed under water. He’d stumbled from the lift and into the toilets on the ground floor where he’d retched into the toilet—truly unable to breathe and terrified as his stomach forced its contents out and his breath failed to come back in.
It had been a bad one.
When the storming blackness in his mind allowed for any real thought, he had imagined Poppy there, her hand on his back, her voice in his ear. She’d told him it would be alright, and he had staggered to his feet, washed his face and hands at the sink and stood there just breathing, breathing, until he began to trust that he could—that the air was there, wouldn’t be stolen away.
He’d walked out of the building, nodded and smiled at the security guard on night duty, not meeting his eyes, and kept walking—walking down to the river, walking without knowing where he was going, just needing some time, some space to recover.
He should probably take the pills. He had no issue with taking the pills. Didn’t see them as good or bad or as failure or as magic. They were a tool and they worked, more or less. But every time he’d been close to walking into a pharmacy since his doctor’s appointment, some little stubborn streak stopped him. It wasn’t hisfaultthat he felt like this. He didn’tneedto feel like this. If he could only do the job he wanted, and if he could do it without the weight of his father’s expectations on his shoulders, then maybe it wouldn’t feel like the air was being stolen from his lungs, it wouldn’t feel like he was being forced into a box, a tight black space with no windows, no light… And, yes, maybe he would always be anxious and work too hard because his brain never shut up and he was a slave to all thewhat-ifs… And maybe it would always get the better of him and he would end up always needing the medication after all, but he wanted it to be hischoice. He wanted to try life his way first.
You’re a Blackton of BlacktonGold.
He shuddered away from the thought as he walked the path by the river’s edge. There were fewer tourists here than there would be further down the river, but there were still plenty about, come to see St Paul’s cathedral, come to see London’s Square Mile. The City of London. Its ancient heart from whence all else had expanded, the ancient, narrow lanes now clotted with gleaming skyscrapers.
Some kids posed for a photo with a much older woman—their grandmother, he assumed. And it made him think of Mabel, of her old flat, now his, of the night Poppy had spent there and how at home she had seemed. Imagine waking every morning there,Poppy in his t-shirt in the kitchen, coffee brewing, and sipping it while lounging on the worn, old sofa. Imagine her legs on his lap while they read books or watched TV. Shopping for groceries and bringing them back. Brunch eaten off ancient plates, Poppy slicing her food with the edge of some silver heirloom fork and teasing him mercilessly, blue eyes bright, and her red hair turning dark under the spray of his shower while he kissed the sarcasm from her mouth, spiky melting to sweet…
It was a dream that felt like a holiday, that cleared some of the sticky, awful tension from his mind. He kept walking, and his mind unfurled further, saw the sky and the dusk and the gulls flying dark against the purple. He took a deep breath that shuddered on the way out, and another.
Get away for a bit. Go somewhere bright and fresh and green. Take a steadying breath of that other kind of life before work on Monday and re-shouldering that burden, knuckling down to the duty his father relentlessly bestowed upon him, no way out, no backsies,non reverti nunc…Maybe that really was the Blackton family motto.
He was overdue a visit to Mabel anyway. He normally tried to go every few months, but work and his brother’s issues had left him no free weekends recently. But he would go this weekend, wander through the fields, and it didn’t seem strange that he imagined Poppy there at his side, her hand in his. He couldn’t imagine it any other way. Of course she would be there. He didn’t want to go if she wasn’t.
It didn’t seem strange at all. So he didn’t question it. Just said, when he came back to the flat, finally recovered enough to act like himself again, “Come with me.”
And Poppy said yes.
Roscoe drove them. He never got a chance to drive his car. And he loved his car. But not as much as he loved the sight of Poppy Fields in it.
She climbed into the passenger seat with the wide-eyed caution of someone entering an alien spaceship. For a while, she seemed too scared to touch anything. But eventually, by the time they’d worked their way through the London traffic, she was relaxed enough to play with the controls for her window. He glanced over, sorry for a moment that he didn’t have a soft-top just so he could see how the sun and wind looked on her hair. But given he needed to concentrate on driving, that was probably for the best.
“Roscoe,” she said quietly, seriously.
His heart pinged with worry. “Yes?”
“This is a very fancy car.”
He laughed in relief. “I suppose so.”
