Goodnight, Beautiful: A Novel (40 page)

Y
ou’ll back me up, won’t you, Nova, when I call the police and say I’ve hit an intruder with a wok and he’s out cold on the kitchen floor?”

Mal is pressed up against the worktop beside the stove, a pan has been removed from the heat but what looks and smells like porridge is in it, and two pieces of browned toast sit up in the toaster just behind him. Cordy is standing in front of him brandishing in one hand my heavyweight wok and it is aimed at Mal’s head, while four-year-old Randle is holding a little silver milk pan in both hands like a bat, aimed directly at Mal’s left kneecap.

Mal looks surprisingly calm, or maybe it’s resignation to the knowledge that he could expect nothing less from Cordy. He’s probably been waiting for this day since the day he finished with me. Out of everyone, he knew Cordy would always be the one who would react most violently to him breaking up our family.

His body is leaning as far out of reach as possible, though—resigned he may be, but not overly eager to get a dual panning.

A commotion, raised voices, had drawn me out of bed and I’d come downstairs to find this scene. Four-year-old Ria is standing in the doorway beside me, hopping from one foot to the other in glee, the ribbons at the ends of her twin black
pigtails bouncing in delight as she jiggles. I can see why this is fun. A small part of me is laughing inside because this is what Cordy would like to have done to all her ex-boyfriends, all my ex-boyfriends and all of Mal’s ex-girlfriends—and probably her Jack a few times, too, if she could have got away with it. Better out than in is her way of expressing herself. I respect it a lot. She and Amy are similar in that respect—they rarely experience an emotion they don’t immediately expose to the outside world. It must be liberating to be that wanton with your feelings. I talk too much, they emote too much.

“Why are you trying to hurt Malvolio?” I ask Cordy, conversationally.

“Why?” she asks in incredulity. “
Why?
Are you serious?” She doesn’t take her eyes off her quarry, not for a moment.

“Yes, I’m serious, why?”

Mal’s gaze flitters between Cordy’s weapon of choice and me, probably trying to work out if I’ll let her hit him.

“I come here to make you breakfast before we all go to the hospital and there he is, large as life, making himself breakfast as though it’s his house.”

“I was making Nova—” Mal begins.

“
Who said you could speak?
” she shrieks at him, while jerking the wok dangerously higher.

Mal raises his hands in surrender and leans his long, muscular body even further back.

“I don’t even know how he dares show his face around here,” Cordy says, as though Mal is in another room. The emotion she is feeling the most of is betrayal. She has always idolized him because he has always taken care of her. Put her on a pedestal, treated her as though she is indeed his little sister, his little princess. She’s always been able to rely on him and now she’s
wondering if she can. Now she thinks he is someone she doesn’t really know.

“I asked him here,” I say, leaning against the doorframe and folding my arms across my chest.

“
Why would you do that?
”

“Because it’s my house and I can invite whoever I want here.”

“After he got you to have his baby and then left you?” she asks.

Mal’s jaw clenches at this, his features tighten, his body tenses. I forgot that as far as he knows, everyone is only just recovering from the knowledge that he is Leo’s father. He doesn’t know that his wife told his mother everything. And Aunt Mer has told everyone else. Now everyone knows something about him that he’d rather they didn’t. And they’ll probably be asking him why, as well. Like me, they won’t settle for the excuse he trotted out, either.

“It doesn’t matter,” I say to Cordy. It does matter. It matters a lot. I would love to believe it didn’t, that there are bigger issues that negate all that.… There are, but they don’t erase the rest of it, they don’t stop what he did still being the cause of a painful breach that has never healed. But, just as I had to show people how to react when I told them I was a twenty-nine-year-old knocked-up teenager without the father on the scene, I had to show others how to treat Mal.

Back then, I said I was really happy, it was what I wanted, I preferred to do it without the father because he and I would never have worked out and wasn’t it great news? So they all knew that was how to react: with joy, elation and happiness. I was happy, so they had to be as well.

With this, I have to act as though I have set aside my hurt, because the most important issue could become everyone else’s
anger at him and that will hijack what this is all about. Which I cannot allow to happen.

“How can it not matter?” Cordy asks, uncertain suddenly if I should be getting whacked around the head to have some sense knocked into me.

“Mal is Leo’s father. I want Leo to know that at a time like this everyone who cares about him—his father included—came to see him. No one forced Mal to come here, he wanted to come. So, in the grand scheme of things, what Mal did does not matter. The fact he is here now, when Leo needs him, does. If I can put it all aside, I think you should be able to as well.”

“I’m not a pushover like you,” Cordy says, although she has clearly understood what I have been saying, because the lines of her slim body have softened, the line between the wok and Mal’s head not as direct and inevitable any longer.

“No, you’re not. But you are wonderful and you are sensible and I know you’re the best person to go to the hospital and explain to Mum, Dad and Aunt Mer that Mal is here, and why they shouldn’t smack him on sight either.”

“And what will you be doing?”

“Getting Mal out of here before Keith arrives home to get ready for work, and finding somewhere for him to stay.”

Cordy still hasn’t lowered her wok.

“It’s OK, Cordy, truly, I’ve forgiven him. Which means you can, too.”

“I suppose so,” she says to me. “And you—” she says, swinging the wok under Mal’s nose suddenly, using it as a pointer.

Randle thinks the hitting has started and swings the milk pan with all his considerable four-year-old strength and connects with Mal’s knee with a loud, crunchy crack.

Ria jumps beside me; Randle drops the pan and immediately
bursts into tears; Cordy is shocked and frozen for a second, then she moves to comfort her wailing son, dropping and denting my wok in the process. Mal crumples and falls to the ground, clutching his knee and gritting his teeth to stop himself howling in agony. Ria runs to her mother, not wanting to miss out on the cuddles being dished out. All three of them ignore Mal.

My family is insane
, I decide. It comes to something when I, the person who hasn’t slept more than a few hours for the better part of a month, who has been living on the edge of a mental and emotional breakdown for weeks, am probably the sanest person in this room.

“You haven’t really forgiven me, have you?” Mal asks as we head for the café later.

“Not for one second,” I reply without hesitation.

A
my, this is Mal,” I say. “One of my old friends. Mal, this is Amy, my business associate.” I don’t call her an employee, because her friendliness, sunshine soul and hardworking nature are all reasons why Starstruck is such a success. And she isn’t simply an employee. She is an amazing friend who has gone above and beyond the call of duty in the past few weeks. She has opened up on time, closed on time, served customers, cleared tables, pandered to the usually ridiculous requests of the psychics, sometimes done readings herself, cashed up, locked up, visited our suppliers. All without a word of complaint. She also visits Leo whenever she can.

“Shakespeare!” Amy exclaims, her eyes running all over Mal’s face, as though she wants to use her fingers to forage into his skin, looking for something. “You’re Shakespeare!” She grins. Excitedly, she claps her hands, secures a lock of hair behind her ear and turns to me. “He’s Shakespeare! I wasn’t going crazy all those years ago. I didn’t get it wrong.” She waves her finger excitedly at him (if she were Leo, I would be telling her not to point). “He’s your connection to Shakespeare.”

Mal eyes her up suspiciously, wondering if the tall woman with the waist-length hair, pierced tongue and tattooed belly button is a little bit crazy.

“When Amy and I first met, she thought I was an actress,” I explain.

“Oh,” Mal says.

“She’s psychic,” I elaborate.

“Right,” he says, nodding sagely, as though I have just said, “She’s a bit slow.”

“No, she is, actually,” I reassure him. “One of the best I’ve ever met.”

Amy’s eyes widen, and an even broader grin splits her face. She also blushes furiously. I’ve never said that to her. Mal looks like Keith does whenever I bring up this subject—as though he’s wondering if some sort of psychiatric help will make me stop this nonsense.

“When she met me, she thought I was an actress because she could see me surrounded by stars. She didn’t know my name at this point.” I trawl through my memory to recall it accurately. “She said I had a very strong connection to Shakespeare. And when I said most people did because we learned it at school, she said that both Leo and I had a very strong connection to Shakespeare. And then she said it was something to do with twelve or the twelfth. And then she said I had a connection to the Old Vic. Or was it a person called Old Vic?”

I know that last bit will get to Mal. Most of his dad’s workmates called him Old Vic. Mal’s face pales and he looks over Amy again, now unsure of her and her abilities.

“Amy only reads for people if she gets something from them. If she doesn’t have a connection with them when they sit down in front of her, she won’t charge them or read for them,” I say. “That’s why I respect her. That’s why I only allow people that scrupulous to work here.”

“But you’re Shakespeare!” she exclaims, clapping her hands again. “I love that I’ve finally met you.” Even when Amy is sixty, I’m sure she will still delight like this in the world. “Every now
and again, I’d wonder what that connection was. Especially as it’s so strong with Leo. Hey, was Old Vic your dad?”

Mal draws himself in tight, and he becomes cold and closed off, his face a hard expressionless mask. Clearly his policy of not talking about his father is still in place. His eyes, now as flinty as unwieldy diamonds, drill into Amy.

“Amy, I was wondering if you would do me the hugest favor?” I say, to deflect this conversation for now and not allow them to alienate themselves from each other before they have valid, quantifiable reasons to dislike each other.

Her head moves toward me, but her eyes are firmly fixed on Mal. Eventually she brings her brown, whirlpool-like eyes toward me, too, but I can tell they are dying to return to him. “Hmmm?” she asks.

“Mal’s just arrived and we haven’t had time to arrange a hotel or B&B for him yet. My house is not the place for him, so I was wondering if he could stay at your place for a couple of days? Just until we can find a hotel.”

I expect her to say yes; she is that kind of person, that’s why I asked her. Instead, she swings her head back to Mal and stares at him for a long, silent, tense moment before she returns her gaze to me. Her long fingers curl around my bicep. “Can we have a quick word, over there?” She indicates the door that leads to the back of the café, and before I can answer she is dragging me away.

Mal’s thoughts are unreadable as he pulls out a chair and sits down.

“That’s Leo’s dad, right?” she asks.

I nod.

“And he broke your heart, right?”

I nod again.

“So what’s he doing here? Why does he need somewhere to stay?”

I haven’t told her. In all that’s been happening, I haven’t told her what the doctor said. Everyone else was there and she was here, as always, holding the fort for me, saving me from financial ruin, and she still doesn’t know.

Amy has seen Leo nearly every day for all of his life. The only person he has seen more frequently than her is me. The pair of them are great friends and he loves it when she talks to him in Japanese and attempts to play PlayStation with him. This isn’t the sort of news she should hear from me. Someone more detached, more objective, should tell her. Even though I hated him for what he said, the doctor telling everyone in my family at the same time what he thought saved me from having to do it. Saved me from having to go through the worst-case scenario with a person who loves Leo.

“You’d better sit down,” I say to her.

“Just tell me,” she says, aware that if Mal is here it isn’t going to be good news.

In halting, jumbled, mumbled words, I tell her what the doctor said. I try to repeat it without saying what I said in between. As I speak, I watch her, waiting for the moment when she will do what Mum and Cordy did and burst into tears. Or what Dad did and move to another part of the room. Or what Keith did and reach for me. Or even what Aunt Mer and I did and become incredibly still.

Amy surprises me: she nods slowly when I stop speaking, then she faints clean away.

I lock up the café without bothering to cash up—I just put the takings from the early-morning rush in the safe. I have more
pressing matters. Mal is taking care of Amy so that I can go to the hospital. I haven’t seen Leo since I dropped in on my way back from London last night. That’s a long time away from him. Mal said he’d drive her home, even though she lives very close—just the other side of Poets Corner—make sure she is safely in bed and will stay with her until Trudy gets back.

She was virtually catatonic and I envied her. I have—at various points in the last few weeks—wanted to do that. To simply check out of reality and sit quietly, safe and removed by a protective force field my mind has erected. Sadly, I did not, do not, have that luxury.

My current life is like a machine: it has many parts, all of which need tending or it will break down. The area in most dire need of service, of love and attention, at the moment is my marriage. Keith is not talking to me. He has stopped speaking to me unless absolutely necessary since Aunt Mer revealed to everyone everything about the surrogacy. But I cannot focus on him—tending to Amy, getting Mal to come here, actually getting to the hospital are the parts of the machine that get cleaned and oiled first.