Kitty French - Knight and Day

It wasn't just injured pride at having been taken in. It cut deeper than that. Lucien had lowered his guard because he’d thought they were friends, and his life had felt richer because of it. He thumped his hand down on the steering wheel, furious with Dylan, and also with himself.

He’d let Dylan into their lives, and it was down to him to kick him out again.

Today he was going to lose not only his club manager, but also someone he’d come to think of as a kindred spirit and true friend.

It had not been an easy night aboard the Love Tug.

Dylan didn’t even know how to hold a baby, let alone feed one or change its nappy. Suzie had left him with two drums of formula milk powder, a packet of nappies, four sleep suits, a half used pack of wipes, an open shaker of baby powder… and the baby. Surely the baby needed more than this to stay alive?

Feed him every few hours, she’d said. On what? How much? How often? He had no clue, and his head was all kinds of screwed up. He couldn’t think about Kara, because every thought of her hit him like a blow to the stomach and rendered him even more incapable of caring for the tiny human being now sharing the Love Tug. A tiny human being with massive lung capacity, if the amount of screaming he’d done during the night was anything to go by.

Out of frustration, he’d considered emailing his mother at around three am, desperate to know how to make the baby stop the head-splitting noise. But then he’d thought it through, and he’d known she’d put herself on the first flight out, even though she had a pathological fear of flying, and he’d feel like a complete shit when she got here and saw him living on a freak show boat with a wild-haired baby, outcast and jobless to boot. So he’d picked the baby up instead, and one whiff had told him exactly why he was howling like a banshee.

The amount of crap one small baby could produce had been a revelation that Dylan could really have done without in the small hours of the morning, when his life had just crashed down around his ears. As it was, the baby was plastered, all up his back, down his legs… it was a full stripdown situation. Dylan heaved his way through the process of peeling the baby’s clothes off and wiping him down, finally resorting to dunking him in the tiny kitchen sink, where he screamed even louder throughout his unceremonious bath.

Was it normal for babies to turn purple when they were mad? He’d finally quieted when Dylan wrapped him in the biggest towel he could find and held him against his shoulder while he tried to mix formula from the instructions on the side of the tin. He’d taken him up on deck and settled into one of the low-slung deck-chairs to feed him as the sun came up over the horizon, heralding the start of a brand new day.

His first day as a father, and his first day without Kara. He closed his eyes a few seconds after his son did, equally exhausted and infinitely more terrified.

Lucien stalked across the beach at Vadella, still deserted aside from a couple of early dog walkers and a yoga class in session on the sand outside a cafe. He jogged past the impressive boats moored in the bay, all the way to the smallest boat moored at the very end. Although he knew where Dylan was staying, he hadn’t visited. And like most visitors, he’d never seen anything like it before. Lucien lifted his sunglasses to peer more closely at the Love Tug as he drew level, then dropped them again hastily, assaulted by the carnival of clashing colours that hit his eyeballs. Trying to put aside his newly formed personal opinion on Dylan’s choice of abode, he stepped on board and peered inside through the open sliding door. A can of formula milk sat on the counter, and the kitchen looked and smelled as if a bomb of baby powder had been detonated in there. The presence of a pushchair in the small space confirmed it. There was a baby on board.

“I’m up here.”

Dylan’s voice came from the roof deck, low and resigned.

Lucien backed out of the junked kitchen and stepped up onto the roof deck. He surveyed the scene in silence. Dylan’s tired, haggard face, and the tiny infant swaddled in a towel in his arms.

“Seems the rumours are true then,” he said eventually. “Should I say congratulations? Offer you a cigar?” He enjoyed the flare of anguish that his words ignited in Dylan’s exhausted eyes. “Where’s your wife? Still in bed after your fucking reunion?”

“Ex-wife,” Dylan said, monotone. “We aren’t married any more.” He looked up at Lucien, the sun’s glare hurting his eyes. “Sit down, please man.”

“I’ll stand.”

Dylan shook his head, resigned. He couldn’t blame him.

“She’s gone, for what it’s worth. My ex-wife. She came, dumped a kid on me I didn’t know existed, and then she left again with my fuckwit of a brother in tow as her escort.”

Lucien stared at him for a long time, and then dropped into the seat opposite Dylan’s.

“Spectacular fuck up.”

“I know that.”

“I should lay you out cold for what you’ve done to Kara.”

“I wouldn’t hit you back.”

Lucien looked out over the mirror-still water, his mind on the broken girl back at the villa. She was the closest thing he had to a sister.

“That’s the thing about Kara. She’s bold, and people can mistake that for tough.”

“I didn’t mistake it.”

“No. But you went ahead and hurt her anyway, which is worse,” Lucien said. “And the most fucked up thing is that if you’d just had the balls to tell her the whole unvarnished truth, she’d probably have loved you anyway.”

Dylan closed his eyes and sighed wearily as he leaned his head back against the wooden back of the chair, but Lucien knew that every word was going in. He went on, relentless, “She has a heart as big as anyone I know, and you’ve broken it by lying to her.”

Dylan scrubbed his hand over his eyes.

“How is she?” he said, so quietly that Lucien almost missed it.

“Do you really need me to fucking answer that?”

Dylan didn’t. He knew exactly how hurt Kara was, because he’d hurt himself exactly the same. He wanted Lucien to understand that, but the words wouldn’t put themselves together properly in his sleep-deprived mind.

“It seemed so goddamn simple when I came here,” he said. “I just wanted to live an uncomplicated life. Everything back home was fucked up.”

“Trouble has a way of following trouble,” Lucien said.

Dylan huffed. “Doesn’t it just.”

The baby stirred against his bare chest, and he fell silent for a second. “I should never have married Suzie. It was a stupid, drunken mistake that we both regretted the morning after. We didn’t love each other. Hell, a lot of the time we didn’t even like each other.” He looked over at Lucien’s unreadable face. “She threw her lot in with the wrong crowd, skipped town months ago with the guy who took my club in recompense for Justin’s debts.” He paused. “I missed the club for a while.”

Lucien was listening without comment, and Dylan was grateful. Now he’d started talking, he didn’t want to stop till the end. He wanted it all out, now.

“So when I got off the plane here and someone asked me my name, I lied.” He shook his head. “Dylan fucking Day. You have no idea how much easier it was to sleep at night.” The baby wriggled again, and laid his small, soft palm flat against Dylan’s chest, his fingers so tiny they were almost translucent. “And however crazy and fucked up it sounds, in here,” Dylan touched his fingers against his heart, “In here, I feel like Dylan Day. I didn’t lie to hide the truth. I lied because I couldn’t stand to be Matthew McKenzie any longer. The world I grew up in wasn’t like this, Lucien.”