Lily felt her eyes fill, first with tears of guilt and worry, then with anger. Had her husband just called her crazy and suggested she didn’t love her son, or him? Could he literally not see things from her perspective? All those promises; years of dreams, shattered.
She’d spoken to Ty yesterday evening and he’d seemed fairly upbeat. He’d finally sorted his accommodation for uni and had opened a student bank account. If anything, not having his mum constantly looking over his shoulder would be a chance for him to stand on his own two feet – he was, after all, an adult now. She’d told him she missed him, and he’d said ‘you too’ but it had sounded simply affectionate rather than desperate. Meaning Ben had just used their son as a pawn in his guilt-inducing game.
Then she looked at the time of the message. One o’clock in the morning. It wasn’t like Ben to stay up late and she felt a sudden pang for everything she was putting him through. Perhaps he hadn’t been thinking straight, she told herself.
She decided to try to put it out of her mind and called Chloé, who confirmed that she still had one room available that she and Emily could share. Lily wondered what it might be like sharing a bed with her oldest friend. The last time they’d done it was aged twelve at a sleepover, when Emily had been all kicking legs and sleep-talking, had stolen the duvet and woken her up at 3 a.m. because she thought she might have seen a spider.
Hopefully, at least some of her behaviour had been caused by teenage hormones and too many midnight snacks. If not, she was jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.
After several coffees and the dry end of a French loaf, she called Frédérique.
‘Oui ’ello?’
‘Frédérique? It’s Lily.’
‘Ah, Madame Buttercup! Comment ?a va?’
‘Oui, ?a va bien merci, et vous?’
‘Tutoie-moi.’
‘Sorry, what?’
‘Tutoie-moi, we are friends, no? You can say tu, not vous.’
‘Oh.’ For god’s sake, was this really the moment for a grammar lesson? ‘OK, well, in that case tu as un problème.’
‘I do?’
‘Oui, dans le grenier… il y a beaucoup des… des…’
‘I think,’ Frédérique said, with a touch of amusement, ‘it is per’aps better if we speak English for now, yes?’
‘Fine,’ she said, starting to feel cross. ‘There’s a bunch of rat things in the roof.’
‘Rat fings?’
‘Yes, le rat… but not a rat, something like a rat. With a bushy tail.’
‘Ah, a soft tail – like un écureuil? A squirrel?’
‘Yes, just like a squirrel.’
‘Ah, c’est un loir! But they are cute, yes?’
‘Yes, but, Frédérique, they are not cute at three in the morning when I am trying to sleep.’
There was a brief silence. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Then I will come and bring some poison for them. They will not be noisy when they are dead, uh?’
‘Poison! Oh, no! Can’t you just, well, sort of take them away?’
Frédérique laughed. ‘Well, it is possible, yes. But it take a long time. You trap them, you take them away, they come back. Or you drive them to a ten kilometre of distance and maybe they don’t come back, eh.’
‘OK, can you do that?’
There was a brief silence. ‘You want me to take the loirs for a trip in the countryside?’
‘Would you?’
He was silent again for a moment. Then, ‘Madame, I will try.’
‘Thank you.’
‘But if it was just me, I would prefer some poison on an apple, and the problème it is no more, eh?’
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I just can’t…’
‘I understand. It is done. Please do not worry.’
‘Thank you.’
She ended the call, then dialled Ben’s number, but hanging up before the call connected, anxiety suddenly flooding through her. Instead, she went to her messenger service and recorded a voice note: ‘Ben, I got your message. And I miss you too – of course! But you know this is something I just have to do. And you know, I do wish you would… oh, never mind.’
Please come, she wanted to add.
She knew it was a bit pathetic to use the ‘leave a voice note’ option rather than speak to Ben properly. But she was too tired to have another argument, to talk around in circles again. And if she was honest, on zero sleep, in a considerable amount of pain and with the memory of a rodent flying past her head, she might have ended up bursting into tears if she’d heard his voice.