A Part of Me (16 page)

‘For sure. He said anyone could break something, but it took a lot more for a person to make something. I guess it stayed with me. He taught me a lot about mechanics, that kind of thing. Arthur used to let me hang out in his workshop, mess around tinkering with stuff while he fixed things up for folks. Let Carter hang around too, which was good, kept us both out of trouble. Art said he’d know I hadn’t been in trouble, so long as any new cuts and bruises I came home with were on my legs and elbows.’ I watched Rohan bite at his lower lip, shaking his head nostalgically.

I found myself smiling with him.

‘So I guess you know what works then, if you ever have boys of your own.’

‘Boys?’ he blurted. ‘As in sons? Like I told you before, parenting’s a serious job, not for someone like me.’

‘Everyone probably thinks that, though, don’t they? Until they are one?’ But there was nothing uncertain about him. It was funny how the world worked. Here we were, two people in a suburban kitchen, me desperate to be a parent, and him desperate not to. It didn’t seem fair, somehow, to either of us. Rohan might make someone a fine husband one day, but she would have to be nothing like me. ‘So does Carter bike like you do? I haven’t seen him doing the same kind of crazy moves you and Max go for.’

Rohan’s shoulders relaxed again. ‘Carter was never really that into getting beat up. You have to take a beating if you’re going to give extreme sports a fair go. Cart’s more of a physical pacifist than an adrenalin junky, like the rest of us.’ He smiled, folding his arms again.

‘Carter said that Max is a podiatrist – he’s kidding, right?’ I frowned.

‘No, not kidding. Maxi’s a foot man.’ His smile broadened. ‘I know, he still looks like he’s only just started shaving, but I met Max when I was having my rehabilitation. A lot of the guys have
proper
jobs. But they all free up their time for the bikes. You’ve just gotta be careful what you’re doing. Injury can mess up your income if you’re expected to clock on somewhere fit as a fiddle on a
Monday morning. Ask Billy how much fun a broken wrist is when you work in a garage.’

‘So what about you?’ I blurted.

‘Me? I was lucky, I guess. My sponsors made sure I was insured up to the hilt, so they paid out big when I had my accident.’

‘Sponsors? So, you were a professional BMX rider?’ I asked, pretending I hadn’t seen the trophies.

‘Don’t get too excited, I wasn’t that good.’ He laughed, knocking his prosthetic. ‘But they paid up, so I don’t have to worry about mortgages, and all that mundane stuff. Got a few fancy prosthetics out of them, too. One for running, one for bathing …’

‘Do you miss it?’ I asked, certain that someone like him must pine for the arena he’d left behind.

‘Yes, and no. I was thirty-one when I last competed, I’d been doing it since I was in my late teens. It was high-octane; some might have thought I was living the dream, I guess. I even had a few supporters who’d follow my progress, y’know? But, I wasn’t really breaking through my own expectations, I knew that. I was just starting to think about pursuing other avenues, maybe go back to making stuff, being useful with my hands. I’d already told myself that Munich was going to be my last competitive event when I blew myself out of the running anyway.’

‘What happened?’

‘I’m not sure. Just landed wrong. It didn’t even hurt at first … at
first
. I knew I’d seriously messed up when I saw
the bottom of my own trainer. Up here.’ he said, lifting his hand to his stomach. I felt mine flop as if I’d just gone over a humpback bridge at speed. ‘The whole leg just bent the wrong way. They managed to salvage my knee.’

‘Do you really want to talk about this?’ I asked, feeling myself turning green.

‘I don’t mind either way. It’s my old life. It’s in the past now, probably best left there,’ he said, letting go of a deep cavernous breath.

I wondered how we might take the conversation somewhere else. ‘What’s a tag?’ I asked, curious.

The question caught him off guard. ‘A tag, as in the kids, the other night?’

I nodded.

‘It’s like a calling card, every graffiti artist has their own unique mark. That’s how I knew it was them who’d been hanging around the ramps too. Their tags need work.’ He laughed, shaking his head. ‘But they’ll get better.’

Rohan hadn’t been anything but calm with the kid the other night, at least for the time I was there with them. James would have gone berserk, dragging the boy straight to the nearest detention centre. ‘Doesn’t that bother you? That there’s a gang of kids defacing your property?’

‘It bothered me that they got in the house, especially as you were in there at the time, but I don’t think that’s going to happen again. As for the ramps, they’re kids. Lads on bikes. They’re gonna be interested. The way I see
it, if they’re messing around on my ramps when no one’s looking, they’re not off somewhere else doing something really stupid.’

‘Like decorating someone’s lounge?’ I asked.

‘Or worse.’ He shrugged, serious now. ‘I used to be those kids. Me and Cart, both. We were doing stuff more stupid than that. You know when a kid is really bad news, but the ones that are just being rascals, they just need something to do mostly. And a few ground rules.’

‘My mum says the same thing,’ I said, looking for tinfoil to wrap the pie in. ‘She’s trying to secure the Earleswicke community centre for the local
rascals
to have some place to hang out. Them and the flower-arranging posse.’

‘The flower-arranging posse? Oh yeah, they definitely need to be kept out of trouble.’ He grinned. Rohan had this almost trigger-like quality. When he smiled, he threw everything into it, and inevitably it pulled the same back from me. We held sight of each other for a few seconds across my mum’s battered old kitchen table. ‘I should be getting going,’ he said, lifting his jacket. ‘Let you get back to putting your claws up.’ He smiled again.

I followed him through the kitchen, out across the hallway, and opened the front door for him. ‘Thanks for the pie,’ I offered.

‘Yeah, go easy on that.’ He grinned. ‘You might do irreparable damage to your tastebuds.’ He slipped his arm through the visor of his helmet and reached forward with
the other. I watched his hand go for mine. I wasn’t sure why I did it, but I held my hand out for his. Rohan reached past my fingers to the tissue hanging from my jumper sleeve.

‘Ooh, that’s er …’

‘What? Infected with your lurgy? I’m sure I’ll survive.’ He pulled the tissue free then reached up with the tissue and started to come slowly at me, his hand moving steadily towards my forehead. I followed it until my eyes were too crossed, and Rohan dabbed at me gently with the tissue. ‘I’ve been meaning to get that for you,’ he said, passing me the Kleenex.

‘Thanks?’ I said inanely, taking it from him.

He slipped his head into his helmet. ‘I’ll see you when you’re better.’ He smiled.

I smiled back, but his eyes were more startling when framed by the shape of his helmet. There was still a smile in them when he turned and walked away down my mother’s driveway.

As soon as I shut the door after him, I felt fluey again. I leant back against the door, and examined the tissue he’d given me. I opened it out and realised why he hadn’t bothered over his milk moustache. I’d spent the entirety of our time together with a Maryland chocolate chip stuck to my face.

‘A
DAMNED E-PETITION
! Do they think the likes of Hilda Egginton or Flora Merriweather sit surfing the ruddy net of an evening? Half the people in that meeting thought the internet was something they’d take pond-dipping!’ My mother’s voice had been steadily climbing since she’d returned from the evening’s council meeting.

Phil grinned at me from the other sofa. ‘I hope I’m still as spunky when I get to Viv’s age,’ she mused, popping into her mouth another of the grapes she’d supposedly brought for me.

We listened to the heated conversation Mum was having on the kitchen phone. ‘One
thousand
names before they’ll even consider it! It’s a damned stitch-up, Sue, that’s what this is! A bureaucratic stitch-up.’

Phil’s eyes widened as if further impressed by my mother’s fieriness. Her fringe was always less severe after she’d been for a workout, a lingering glow beneath her porcelain skin only an hour-long spinning class could
muster. ‘What’s she so het up about?’ she asked, scooping up another grape.

I wasn’t sure exactly. Mum had burst back into the house ten minutes after Phil had arrived, ranting her way straight for the phone. ‘I think the council have given them a few hoops to jump through in their quest to rescue the community centre.’

Phil had already lost interest, inspecting the quality of her last manicure. ‘Are you taking tomorrow off, hon? Do you need me to cover again? Honestly, I don’t mind if you need another day.’ She smiled innocently.

Mum huffed her way into the lounge and dropped like a sack of potatoes into the sofa beside me.

‘Everything okay, Mum?’ I asked, moving my pile of tissues.

‘Not bloody really. That useless self-important prig of a councillor, he’s underestimated the Earleswicke community, the pompous bugger. He thinks we can’t get a thousand people to show an interest in the well-being of our community – well, he’s wrong! And I for one will laugh my backside off when we get
more
than one thousand names and he has to …’ she searched the air in frustration, ‘suck it up!’

‘Suck it up, Viv? Did you pick that up in the playground?’ Phil teased. ‘A thousand names for what, anyway?’

‘A thousand names of people who don’t want to see the community centre closed,’ Mum droned, as if this
should be
the
most pressing issue in Phil’s universe too. Phil wasn’t even from Earleswicke. ‘But they can’t just be good old-fashioned pen and ink jobbies, oh no. They have to be inputted on the bloody council website.’

‘Is that a lot?’ Phil asked drily. ‘Doesn’t sound that many to me.’ Maybe not when it came to saving somewhere like Rufus’s, or the city gym, but this was a tired old community hall we were talking about. The majority of its services catered for the under-threes and over-sixty-fives, probably not the biggest users of online petitioning systems.

I didn’t like to state the obvious but… ‘More than a thousand people, Ma? To say that they want to keep the community centre? Isn’t that like ten times the amount of people who actually use it each week?’

Mum huffed into her chest. ‘That’s not the point. It’s community spirit, Amy. You’ll see. We’ll get those names. Blow them, we’ll get more than a thousand.’ Braveheart was making a comeback.

Phil shifted, repositioning her legs beneath her. She looked even more cat-like snuggled on Mum’s red tartan throw. ‘And then what? If you get the names? What’s their end of the bargain?’

‘Then they’ll have to reconsider the future of the centre. Because that’s what that pompous idiot has said publicly they’ll do!’

‘If you get over a thousand names?’

‘Exactly,’ Mum said tartly, sucking her teeth.

The head of Earleswicke parish council was a well-fed hog of a man – I’d had the misfortune of being eyed over by him at a previous community event Viv had dragged me to. For him to state publicly that he’d do anything for those thousand signatures quite clearly suggested what we all already knew. That there wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance of securing anywhere near that number.

‘Well, we’ll sign it, won’t we, Phil? And we can get everyone at the office, that’s another twenty-five, thirty.’

I smiled encouragingly.

Mum pushed her glasses back into the mass of curls bunching above her head against the sofa. ‘We’ll get them. Just you watch. Anyway, they didn’t say anything about who could and couldn’t sign the bloody thing. Sue made a very good point and has suggested we all phone around family and friends for their names, too. You know how big Granny Sylvia’s Catholic side is.’

‘Mum, they’re not even in England.’

‘It’s an e-petition, Amy. Geography is no boundary. Names are names.’

‘I could ask Hotbuns Bywater for his signature, for you. If I can get him to stand still long enough the next time I see him,’ Phil offered, fiddling with one particular nail of interest. ‘So do you want me to cover tomorrow, Ame?’

‘Hotbuns Bywater? Is that a name you can register on an e-petition?’ Mum asked.

‘Viv. Let me tell you, that’s the name his mother should’ve registered on the man’s birth certificate. I don’t
think I’ve ever slept with a disabled guy but I would definitely let him walk me through it.’

Viv sighed. ‘If you aren’t sure about that, Philippa, you’ve probably been with too many men.’

‘He’s good enough to eat, Viv.’ She grinned, unperturbed by my mother’s tone. ‘Solid upper body, bronzed skin, perfect smile.
Great
hair—’

‘He’s not disabled,’ I interrupted. And then couldn’t think of anything else to add to that.

Phil stretched two lithe Lycra-clad legs out in front of her. ‘Of course he is, Ame, he’s only got one leg!’

Mum was all ears, putting her glasses back on her nose as if that would help her hear more clearly.

‘Yes, Phil, I know that. But
disabled
, it’s hardly a label that suits him.’

‘Oh, don’t start up one of those dreary political-correctness debates, Amy. We’ve all got labels.’

‘She’s right, sweetheart, we do. We give them out, too. I see it every day at school. Spoilt, Bully, Bossy, Nits. And that’s just the lunch staff.’ She smiled.

‘Oh great,’ I groaned quietly, ‘so what’s mine? Failure? Unemployed? Doomed to spinsterhood with strong likelihood of eventual consumption by cats?’

‘Actually, sweetheart, I think that one’s already taken,’ Mum said drily.

Phil stifled a smile. ‘Don’t be dramatic, Ame. Yours would be …
Transitional
. Mine, on the other hand, would be—’

‘That’s cheating!’ I interrupted. ‘You can’t choose your own label.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’ve labelled Rohan as disabled, and I don’t think he’d choose it for himself. So why should you get to?’

‘Oh,
Rohan
is it now? When did he stop being
That Joker, Bywater
?’ Phil asked, watching me. Phil had a laser-like stare that could out glare Superman. I could feel it quite clearly even as she carried on yapping for Mum’s benefit. ‘They got off on the wrong foot, didn’t you, Ame? No pun intended.’ I ignored her, and the tingling in my cheeks. ‘Despite his utter gorgeousness, I think he might be a decent bloke, you know. He was going somewhere at lunchtime today with a
homemade pie
of all things. I couldn’t believe it! On a mercy dash to a friend, I think. I’ve gotta say, it didn’t look the prettiest, and I don’t usually go for the goody-goodies, but if the man can cook …’

A voice in my head was already chanting,
Change the subject, CHANGE THE SUBJECT!

‘What’s the definition you go by at school, Mum?’ I asked, trying to make some general point rather than defending Rohan specifically.

Mum was staring vacantly across the room towards the hearth, plotting Councillor Hog’s usurpation, no doubt. ‘Definition of what? Disabled? Well, you’re disabled if you’re unable to do something the way an able-bodied person can.’

I shrugged, content in my reasoning. ‘There you go, Phil. That’s
definitely
not R … Bywater.’

Phil batted me away. ‘Abled, disabled, whatever. Maybe he’ll convince me tomorrow, or at least let me take a closer look.’ She grinned salaciously.

‘Actually, I think I’m going in tomorrow. I left my laptop there on Friday night, so I’ll go straight there in the morning. Mum, is there any chance I could borrow your car tomorrow, please? I’ll drop you off first?’

‘I thought you were ill?’

‘I am. But I’m hardly dying.’ Actually, I’d felt quite perky this afternoon.

‘No, Amy. I’m sorry but you can’t. I need my car tomorrow, I have to go to another school in the afternoon. Didn’t James say that you could borrow his this week? As he’s working from home.’

Phil looked at me disapprovingly. ‘You’ve spoken to James? I thought you were having a time-out from him.’

‘A
time-out
?’ my mother blurted, ‘Philippa, it’s been nearly a month; they need to sort themselves out, one way or the other!’ Mum settled back into the seat, stretching her legs across the pouffe, filling an otherwise silent lounge with the creaking of leather. Phil munched thoughtfully on another grape.

Mum had been nervy since I’d told her about the call from Anna. ‘I am sorting myself out, Mum. I’m just not rushing into anything. Since when was that a bad approach?’ I really did not want to get into this but Mum
had already jolted around in her seat to face me, her cheeks flushed with sudden frustration.

‘Since it risks losing you the one thing you want more than anything, Amy! For goodness’ sake, you’ve got to get yourself sorted out! You do realise what a fine line you’re treading here, don’t you?’ I could see far too much of the whites of Mum’s eyes. It had been years since I’d experienced a telling-off in front of a friend, and never before had one been administered with more disorientating vigour.

Phil began unfurling herself from her seat like a mayfly from its cocoon. ‘I’m just going to go and put the kettle on,’ she said gingerly, heading for the door. I watched her float out of the lounge, aware that Mum was only watching me.

‘What was
that
?’ I asked, trying not to feel ambushed.

‘Amy. You have a week to get you and James back to a point where you can sit through a conversation with your social worker without her pulling the plug on the whole thing! Everything that you’ve worked so hard for! And you don’t seem to be moving any further forward!’ Not-so-funnily enough, those had been my thoughts too when I’d called James this afternoon to tell him about Anna. ‘What do you want, sweetheart? If James isn’t it. What are we aiming for here?’

I felt cornered, harangued. But above all, I felt cheated. ‘I want a normal life, Mum!’ I hissed under my breath, my mother’s emotional ascent sweeping me along with it. ‘I
want the man in my life to love me enough not to bang one of the office girls just because he can! Or maybe just to have what everyone else seems to get awarded for a quick bloody fumble on a Saturday night!’

The unfairness was suddenly crushing again.

‘And you’re entitled to want those things, Amy!’ Mum said, commandeering my knee. ‘But do you want them with
James
? Because like it or not – and I know the timing is awful – you
need
to decide whether you’re going back to him or not. Before you don’t have that choice!’

I slumped back into the soft corduroy of the sofa and tried not to let the amassing sense of injustice turn to frustrated tears. ‘I want … I wa—’ I suddenly wasn’t sure what I wanted, at least not all of it. Then the tears were there, lining up like a battalion of horses ready to trample me down.

‘Don’t cry, sweetheart.’

‘I’m not crying,’ I blubbed, clumsily rubbing either side of my nose.

I just wanted to be a family. A chaotic, noisy, wonderful family where there was love and laughter and tears like anyone else’s. And I wanted James to want it too – wanted him to love me enough as I was, to be faithful to me, to love me the way I knew he did once. Maybe I hadn’t given him enough attention. Maybe I’d been too desperate to be a mother, but I couldn’t help how much I wanted that. To raise a child of my own, to plant a seed of some small part of myself and watch it grow inside them forever and
always. A little person, a part of me, who would be better off for having me as their mum and who I would cherish every day in return. I wanted it so much, my bones ached.

The tears that had begun flowing steadily were suddenly slowed again by a thick swelling panic in my throat. It had been hard enough going through it all with someone else, first with our own, and then with the adoption. I couldn’t imagine ever doing it alone. A giddying breathlessness kicked in, the thought of it all falling apart like burnt paper, and the stark question that would remain afterwards: how could I have let it?

Mum’s expression was pained, as though she’d been watching a terrible picture show play out across my face. I tried to galvanise myself.

‘I know I have to sort it out with James, Mum. I just didn’t want to have to go back there so soon.’ I snivelled. ‘I don’t want him to think he can treat me that way,’ I went on, trying to steady my erratic judders of breath.

‘I know, sweetheart. I know,’ Mum said, pulling me into her warm embrace. ‘But you can work on that, sweetheart, and you will, I know you will. You just can’t work on it from
here.’
A few more breaths and I’d almost got my breathing under control, Mum’s mass of curls muffling any trailing snivels.

Phil, always intuitive, called through from the kitchen. ‘Half-time mouth-swill. Is it safe to come back in there before round two?’ Mum wiped my face tenderly and kissed me on the cheek.

‘It’s safe, bring the biscuits in with you, Phil,’ she instructed. I took a deep steadying breath, and hoped Phil wouldn’t give me too much stick about the decision that seemed to have just been reached here. Between the things I hadn’t said, and those my mother hadn’t had to.

Phil padded quietly into the lounge with the tea tray and placed it on the little wooden side table.

‘You’ve forgotten the biscuits,’ Mum said, jumping up from the sofa. Phil took mum’s seat and watched her leave before fixing warm hazel eyes on me.