Five(49)

“Got my life shoved in a drawer?” he says, meaning to diffuse her panic but making it worse.

“No, I’ve got it, it’s here, somewhere, somewhere,” she mutters to herself. He moves to the stove. She seems not to hear the high, higher, highest whistle of the ket—

“Got it!” she proclaims, loudly, clutching the contract to her chest, turning to face Liam in the sudden silence. He’s holding the boiled kettle and turns off the burner. Fire and water, he thinks. Which one is she. Which one was she.

“Emma, I don’t think—” Liam says, placing the kettle down, taking a step toward her.

“See, I found it!” she says, yelping though she doesn’t mean to, holding the pages up. “Just have a seat, I’ll make your tea,” she almost sings the words, breezily, heightening the poshness of her accent like a shield. Although that doesn’t affect Liam the way it does most people, it just makes him double down.

“Have a look at these, I think you’ll find that everything is as agreed,” she says, putting the papers in front of him, slightly crumpled, looking a bit worse for wear but still intact, like her. He sees the smallest drop of blood on the top right-hand corner of the cover page. He knows that his signing of this contract is her only way out. She has to get him to sign it or she won’t be paid. And if she isn’t paid, she can’t send the boy off to the “special school” and out of her life. Liam knows all of this, but he has other plans.

“I’ll be back in two ticks, just going to change,” she trills, and she turns to leave, one step, two steps. She stops. She can’t move.

He takes a sip of tea, holding the cup with one hand. She turns around and sees the fabric of her silk satin train strangled in his other hand, tethering her to him.

“Sorry, love, but I can’t seem to get a word in edgeways with you. I’m not signing this. And Danny doesn’t mean to do this, I know he doesn’t, and anyway, I have an offer for ’im,” he says, keeping his hold on her satin leash, taking another sip of tea.

“Please, let me go,” she says, calmly, quietly.

“Why’s he doing this?” he asks, his voice tightening as he wraps the silk satin tighter around his wrist.

“Please,” she says, trying to still the tremble in her voice, trying to pull away from him without damaging the dress, because she has to return this dress, it cost ?2,300, she needs that money.

“I loved ’im my whole life, Em, this can’t be how it ends,” Liam says, pulling her to him by the crumpled satin in his hand, spinning her round to face him. “Can it?” he says, in a whisper, quietly, his breath, her oxygen.

“I, I…” she stutters, trailing off, wanting to lean into him, to disappear in him. But she gave in to that once. And once was enough.

“How’d this happen?” he says, breathing the words into her ear, touching the bandage on her eyebrow. She feels the weight of his hand on her wound after he pulls it away, like a handprint in wet sand.

She doesn’t answer.

“Your eyes,” he says, unable to name the color of her irises. He doesn’t know the word for the crystal of spider webs holding drops of water after rain.

“Let me go,” she says, heartbeat thumping in her ears. “Please.”

“If you needed money for the boy, Em, you just had to ask,” he says, his eyes locked on hers, never breaking his gaze. “Tell me what you need.”

She stands frozen.

“Make Danny change his mind. Tell ’im I have something big happening, global level, he can come in on it with me. Tell ’im to forget all this petty shit about his boyfriend and his hurt feelings. The meeting’s tomorrow. It’s two young kids, real brains, a once-in-a-generation idea, they’ve got it, it’s going to be massive, worldwide. Make ’im go with me, I’ll take care of you, Emma. I’ll take care of Gideon.”

He slides his arms along the back of her waist, pulls her in, pulls her hips into his, whispers, into the back of her neck, “Will you let me take care of you?”

Emma closes her eyes tightly. Yes.

He wants to fix this, this madhouse, this madwoman. What she needs is a man around here. It’s sad really, that she has to learn it this way, the hard way, the hardest way. He’s met the boy a few times, introduced as Mummy’s friend during the brief reignition of their affair when he had some trouble with Elizabeth the Second, which was his name for his third wife, Beth, the second Elizabeth he’d married. Of course he went back to Beth. “No hard feelings?” he said to Emma, Gideon hiding behind her legs. “Of course not,” she said, and didn’t mean it.

He dropped in the Christmas Gideon was four, after he did all the usual stuff with his two youngest. The boys got given a Nintendo Switch, but they cast it aside, more interested in the Xbox they also got that morning, which they also cast aside for the miniature Range Rovers they could drive around the garden. He rewrapped the Nintendo and left it on the doorstep, For Gideon, From Santa, with a little winking smiley face to let Emma know it was him. “Who’s Jason and Marcus?” Gideon asked, looking at the crumpled gift tag stuck to the back of the box. Liam didn’t know Gideon could read. That’s when she asked him to stop, to stick to their agreement. It hurt more than it helped. Hurt her.

But now and then he’d still intercept them on the way to school, pretending to be walking in the opposite direction, his way of keeping tabs, of letting her know he was watching. “All right, little man?” he’d say, and smile, seeing the gap between Gideon’s two front teeth and feeling his heart break. “I think you dropped this, love,” he’d say, and give Emma a hundred-pound note, or a gift card for games on the Nintendo. She didn’t accept the gift card. “He threw it against the wall. In a rage. Thanks, though. Now leave us alone.”