Anouska Knight - A Part of Me

‘Er, Mr Bywater … sorry, come in … take a seat,’ I stuttered.

‘Should I grab some shin pads first?’ he asked, jabbing a thumb at the open doorway. An angry bruise leached purplish-red across his right elbow. I felt my cheeks flush a similar colour. Phil slipped back out of the boardroom leaving me to fend for myself.

‘About that, Mr Bywater.’ He was smiling. Amused lips, putting me off my already pathetic attempt to redeem myself.

‘Call me Rohan.’

‘What you just saw, regrettably, was er … not the norm , Mr Bywater, I can assure you …’ A white peep of teeth slowed me again.

‘Call me Rohan.’

‘Er …’ I nodded to expedite myself back to my point. ‘It’s no excuse … and I won’t bore you with the finer details, but …’

Rohan Bywater moved around the table to look at the stack of photos I’d neatly ordered in front of me. I waited for him to gather them up and take his business elsewhere. Adrian was going to go berserk.

‘Have you had a chance to look through these yet?’

‘Er, just a quick look,’ I bumbled. ‘To try to get a feel for the scale of the project.’

‘If you want to do that, you’ll need to come and see it for yourself.’ His skin was the colour of the many contractors I’d worked with – bronzed from daily exposure to the elements. He looked serious now, I wasn’t sure I didn’t prefer the smiling. I felt the back of my earring give under my fingers.

‘So, how does this all work?’ he asked, leaning back against the table’s edge.

My brain found a foothold. ‘Well, we can arrange a site meeting, take a look at the spaces involved. You already have plans and ellies drawn up—’

‘Ellies?’

‘Sorry, elevations . We’ll measure up and check them, talk through your requirements, put a fee proposal together for you.’ He was listening intently. ‘If you’re happy with the quote, we’ll get a contract of works drawn up for you to sign and then we can get down to the bones of your project.’

‘Get down to the bones of it?’

He folded his arms in front of his chest. It was an impressive bruise he had.

‘Starting with a meeting so that we can formulate an in-depth design brief together.’

‘Together? As in …?’

‘As in, yourself and a representative of Cyan’s interiors team.’

‘Uhuh,’ he said, lolling his head again. ‘And do all the representatives of Cyan’s interiors team wear red heels? I’m just asking because, hey, I like a challenge, but I’ve seen first-hand how you get down to the bones of things around here … as in directly through your friend’s trouser leg.’ He wore an expression of nonchalance now. He found my discomfort amusing. I found his amusement … annoying.

A knock at the door and Hannah provided a welcome distraction. ‘Sorry to interrupt. Can I get anyone any coffees? Teas?’

‘Er …’ I turned back to face Rohan Bywater.

‘No thanks. I have to get going. I’ll call the office to arrange a site visit then, Miss Alwood?’ He pushed himself off the table and stood before me. ‘I’ll leave these with you?’ He nodded at the papers he’d brought.

‘Um, yes. Thank you, Mr Bywater.’ I offered my hand to conclude our unorthodox meeting.

‘Call me Rohan.’ He reached for my hand, but instead of shaking it he turned it over in his, carefully placing my silver stud on my palm. I hadn’t even seen him pick it up.

‘It’s been nice meeting you, Miss Alwood,’ he said firmly. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

I felt my naked earlobe as I watched him follow Hannah out into the office to where James was talking to the marketing team. Rohan Bywater playfully slapped James on the back, pointing to the leg I’d kicked. He laughed, his hand on James’s shoulder. James began to laugh too, all boys together. Then Bywater pulled his trouser leg up. It was hard to tell from here, it could’ve been a birthmark or a graze perhaps, but I reckoned it to be another bruise that engulfed Bywater’s knee. Whatever it was, it was large and painful-looking. James stopped laughing, outdone where I hadn’t kicked him hard enough for him to compete with the bigger boy’s injuries. James looked defeated.

Rohan Bywater put his cap back on and with a parting glance almost caught me watching. He gave James a last friendly slap, then disappeared through the studio doors.

Common assault wasn’t what I’d been aiming for, but I’d have taken a sore leg over the sickening weight of revelation. Six months . Had they been sleeping together all that time? Or could I cling pathetically to the delusion that they might’ve been building up to it with a chaste courtship? Yeah, right.

I leant against the door frame, watching James across the office, already flexing his charisma, holding court once more. I must have been mad to think that if I could just stick it here, act normal, things might have a better chance of getting back that way. It hurt just to look at him. The way I’d felt when he’d walked into the boardroom made me wonder whether or not I should just get my things now. But I’d never loved anyone except James. Anna would be contacting us at some point, and I couldn’t do any of it without him. I wasn’t even sure that I knew who I was without him.

Phil’s face bobbed round the boardroom doorway, startling me with an expectant stare.

‘What?’ I grimaced.

‘Oh, I just wanted to say, well done on the cool , Ame. You nailed it. You were cooler than cool. In fact , I think you might have just knocked The Fonz off the top spot.’

APRIL HAD HAD a change of heart. It had decided it didn’t want to be a rubbishy month of late frosts and wet winds any more, it wanted to be daffodils and crocuses and bugs venturing onto the breeze for the first time since last year. I didn’t expect the sun would hold, but it was nice to see the lush green of young wheat fields rolling past the window.

I sat in the passenger seat, looking for signs pointing to Briddleton Mill while Hannah hummed along to the tune crackling from the stereo. It was pretty here. Just ten minutes’ drive south-west of Earleswicke, I’d enjoyed bike rides with my dad on the public footpaths near here before Jackson’s Park had become our agreed rendezvous point on the weekends Petra could spare him.

‘Is that it?’ Hannah called, slamming her brakes on. I lurched forward, the plush cheeseburger and fries toy dangling from Hannah’s rear-view mirror flapped into the side of my head. I batted them aside and read the sign.

‘Yeah, that’s it. Where the lane forks, we need to take it all the way round to the left, and the mill should be there.’ Trusting Hannah had enough information, I rooted around my bag for my compact. Sleeplessness took its toll on the over twenty-fives and I was starting to look like a panda. I swept a little more powder beneath my eyelids. Warpaint in place, I was ready to pretend to the world that I hadn’t stayed up into the early hours this morning, reading and rereading the messages James had sent me before he’d gone to bed. I was also ready to show Rohan Bywater that I really wasn’t a complete psycho.

‘Wow,’ Hannah said bluntly. ‘Welcome to my crib, MTV.’

I clasped shut the compact and slipped it back into my satchel. ‘Pretty beautiful,’ I agreed, taking in the tree-lined millpond stretching like a mini lake across the foreground. The mill itself, rising from the far edge of the black waters, seemed to double in size as Hannah pulled the car closer to the two VW vans parked out front. One was an old battered orange affair, a campervan like those I’d lusted after in my carefree student days; the other a very sleek and shiny truck you could easily imagine the A-Team exploding from.