“Mum?”
“Yeah, girls’ trip. I used to know your mum back in uni days, you know. She’s a cool chick.”
“Are you sure?” Lanie asked cautiously, clearly not quite believing this was a real offer.
“Of course, hun,” Naomi said softly, drawing a small smile from Lanie that really lit up her face.
“I can go can’t I, Dad?”
Toby cleared his throat and blinked a couple of times before forcing a smile.
“We can check with your mum.”
“Maggie will be on board, believe me,” said Naomi with the confidence of a woman whomaywell have already spoken to Maggie.
“Right, I…” Toby looked a little flummoxed but overall just massively relieved that his daughter was smiling. “That sounds wonderful, Lanie-Loo. And maybe when we get home we can have a chat about some stuff?”
Lanie looked back at her hands. “Maybe,” she muttered, and Toby let out a relieved breath.
On the way out I overheard Toby mutter to Naomi about how they were overdue a little chat as well and I smiled.
* * *
When Harry stayedwith me the next weekend, Max and Mia, their daughter Sophie, and Yaz and Heath had all come over to mine for dinner. Luckily, they’d eased back from giving Harry the third degree, and he had managed to relax a bit more. He was still slightly tense around them, but I sensed it took Harry a long time to trust new people. Naturally shy and having been burned at an early age, he was an extremely wary person. The only person he interacted with freely was Sophie. The two-year-old was truly scrummy, of course, but I didn’t realise how much of a natural Harry was with kids. Sophie was climbing all over him in no time, drooling on his expensive shirt. Harry explained about his many nieces and nephews and of course all the time he’d spent with Toby’s daughter, Lanie. I felt a pang of yearning listening about his large extended family.
Yaz had taken me to one side after the meal to ask how I was. She seemed cautiously happy for Harry and me, but I could tell she was worried. She’d kept her secret about my panic attacks for which I was glad. Heath had his own demons from our childhood – I didn’t want to be adding any fuel to that fire. He’d protected me as a child, and I protected him now. That was just the way it was. I told Yaz I was fine and that the panic attacks weren’t a problem (mostly true). She was appeased for the moment, but unhappy that I hadn’t talked to Harry about any of it.
“I don’t need him thinking I’m a basket case this early on,” I told her through a smile, which Yaz didn’t return.
“Don’t call yourself that,” she snapped. “You and Heath are remarkably stable considering everything you both went through. Listen, V, if things are getting serious with this guy, then he deserves to know.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s alwaysfinewith you, V, until it’s really not. Just consider it, love. Okay?”
I agreed to get her off my back, but there was no way I was telling Harry that sometimes I couldn’t breathe. That I still had flashbacks and nightmares decades later. That there was a reason I never allowed the temperature of my house to drop below twenty degrees. That I felt uneasy when my fridge and freezer weren’t fully stocked.
I’d been avoiding Yaz’s calls since then and I knew that was because she had a point, which I wasn’t ready to consider. I was going to let myself have this slice of happiness without anything else creeping in to ruin it. For now.
But, as I was about to find out, the past doesn’t always stay in the past.
Chapter17
I didn’t need anybody
Verity
“Max, why don’t you let me take it from here?”
“I’ve got it under control, V,” Max said in his shouty voice, which suggested he was very far from having things under control. Max using his shouty voice around anyone we wanted to work with, but most especially our contractors, was not good. Given the set of his jaw and the wild gesturing I’d seen him make to the team before I rushed over to intervene, he did not have anything about this situation under control. I needed to manoeuvre him away from the men on whom we absolutely relied on not to walk off site and leave us in the shit.
“I’m sure you do, Max,” I said smoothly, smiling at him and then at the irate hard-hat-wearing man next to him, “but the surveyors have got some queries about staircase positioning, and I think that as you led on that element then maybe…”
“Fuck,” Max bit off. “I told them that those bloody stairs had to stay where they were. I’m getting sick of every bastard here not being able to follow basic design.” With that he stormed off in search of the surveyors. He would not find the surveyors as they were not on site today. What he would find was his wife who would be fully prepared to calm him down with a thermos of tea.
“So, Max can be a little… tooMax.”
“A grumpy git you mean?” one of the contractors said.
