He tipped his head down slightly towards me, almost resting his forehead against mine. ‘You made up the No-Man Mandate. If you don’t want to kiss me, that’s fine, I won’t ask again. But it’s your rules, Ollie. You can break them if you want.’
I shook my head, fumbling for the right words. Honestly, I felt terrified about how badly I wanted to kiss this man. And how much I wanted that to lead to a thousand more kisses, and starlit dances, and days and nights spent together so I never had to make this kind of impossible decision alone again.
And that in itself was enough reason to say what I had to say next. Even if it did feel as though I’d punched myself in the heart.
‘I don’t want…’ I had to stop and clear my throat. ‘I’m sorry.’
Then I turned and ran into the house as fast as I could.
But if I thought that was the equivalent to smashing my internal organs with a meat mallet, it was nothing to what happened next.
29
When Leanne came home three days later, End Cottage was rife with mixed feelings. Both Joan and I were of course delighted that Leanne was well enough to be discharged. No child should have to face the ongoing trauma of visiting their only parent in hospital for a single day longer than is necessary. Seeing a tinge of pink override Leanne’s sallow complexion along with the hint of steel back in her eyes was wonderful. However, she was still pitifully weak.
There was no way that Leanne would be able to take care of herself, let alone a child. We didn’t speculate whether this was for now, or forever. Dealing with each day was more than enough to be going on with. The hospital were clear that they were only letting Leanne go home because her parents were ready and willing to provide whatever support was required.
Leanne had a two-bedroom cottage riddled with mould and broken appliances.
Her parents had a three-bedroom house with a hot tub.
The solution was obvious.
Joan also pointed out, several times, that it had a tiny back garden with no forest waiting to be explored, and, more importantly, no dog.
‘I don’t care about decorating a new bedroom or going to some fancy school!’ she cried, face buried in Nesbit’s neck after the hospital visit when Leanne had announced her decision to move. ‘When I’m in my bedroom, it’s dark and I’m asleep – I can’t even see what colour the walls are.’
‘I’m not sure what your mum would think about you choosing a dog over her,’ I said, stroking her hair.
‘It’s not only that.’ She straightened up, expression full of bewilderment. ‘It’ll be like when we go to the hospital, with people everywhere and concrete and zebra crossings and too much noise. Only all of the time, everywhere I go, and even thinking about it gives me a headache.’
I nodded my understanding. When I’d driven into Nottingham for a meeting a couple of weeks ago, it had transformed into an alien planet, so much hurrying about and so little space. My senses felt suffocated.
‘Everyone will think I’m weird.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true.’
‘I will be weird! I’ll be like a wild rabbit forced to live in a tiny cage with 118,000 domesticated rabbits who think it’s all normal and fine and don’t understand why I can’t even breathe properly squashed into that smelly, polluted, ugly cage.’
‘We can ask Nana and Grandad to take you out into the countryside as much as possible. There’s probably a bus so you can go by yourself.’
I tried to restrain from adding platitudes about how she’d get used to it, and soon learn to love having shops and places to eat and all the other benefits of a small city on her doorstep. That she’d enjoy living in a lovely house, where everything worked, and she could see her grandparents every day. I didn’t even mention that one advantage of a big, new school would be that there were enough ‘weird’ kids there to find some who appreciated your differences, and she might have more friends to hang about with.
I didn’t say a single word about being a ‘normal’ teenager.
Joan, like all of us, was one hundred per cent her own person.
Unlike most of us, she knew who that was and she was completely happy with it.
Plus, how can you console a child having to leave her dog behind?
I would have let her take him, as much as it would have killed me to lose Joan and Nesbit in one go, but Peter was highly allergic to animal fur, and more than ten seconds in an enclosed space with Nesbit resulted in startlingly violent sneezes.
‘I’ll talk to your mum about how often you can come and visit, and I promise I’ll bring Nesbit to see you.’