Page 29 of We All Live Here
It takes Bill a moment longer to recover his composure. He straightens his tie, which has been pulled from his collar in the commotion. “Always joking,” he says, with a smile that doesn’t stretch quite as far as his eyes. “Nothing to worry about, Violet. It’s just a little joke between Gene and me.”
“Yeah. A joke,” says Gene.
“Because Gene actually loves it when I do this.” Bill flicks out the tea-towel again. It catches Gene’s nose. Lila watches as Gene’s expression grows faintly glassy. And then he recovers his smile.
“Sure. We’re just a bundle of laughs. And Bill loves it when I do this!” He reaches out and pulls Bill’s tie from his pullover, waggling it so that Bill’s head retreats into his collar and he blinks several times.
“Hah-hah-hah,” says Bill.
“Hah-hah-hah,” says Gene.
“Oh, he’s a veritable riot,” says Bill.
“And now they are definitely stopping their play-fight. We’ve all had quite enough fun for this evening,” says Lila. “Wouldn’t you two agree? Quite enough play-fighting?”
Gene is the first to speak. He smiles broadly, takes a step toward his granddaughter. “Sure. See, Violet? Everyone here is friends. Say, why don’t the two of us watch an episode ofStar Squadron Zero? You’re gonna love the one with the Martian uprising.”
Violet scans the three adults’ faces and seems to relax a little. She looks up at Lila, as if checking that this is okay, and Lila smiles encouragingly, suddenly reminded that Violet, for all her bluster, is still a little girl, dealing with a lot of upheaval.
“Of course. You two sit on the sofa and watchStar Squadron Zero. I’ll help Bill in the kitchen.”
“One more night,” she mouths at Gene, as she passes, and tries not to notice the look of bemused horror on his face.
“You should tell him he has to leave immediately,” mutters Bill, when she has settled Violet and Gene with the iPad. She can hear the tinny theme tune of the show, Gene’s humming beneath it.
“One more night,” says Lila, and tries not to feel despondent when Bill folds his tea-towel slowly and meticulously on the draining board and heads pointedly up to his room.
Chapter Nine
Although they are allegedly different, there is a weird uniformity to all publishing and agenting reception areas: the pale wood floors, the shelf of the latest bestsellers and not-so-bestselling books, rearranged daily to flatter and reassure whichever author is due in that day. A brightly colored sofa, possibly Ikea. And in the case of Anoushka Mellors, film and literary agent, a never-ending merry-go-round of identikit receptionists: sweet-natured twenty-something girls with lovely hair and a ready smile, whose names Lila can never quite remember. She sits on the bright turquoise sofa, checkingThe Rebuildon the bestseller shelf, and declines the coffee offered to her. She has been awake since five, and had already had three coffees by the time she’d set off. One more may push her over the edge from “slightly agitated” to “full on nervo.”
“She won’t be a minute,” says the sweet receptionist, for the third time. “She just had to take a call with a very important publisher.”
“No problem,” says Lila.
Bill had been absolutely furious the morning after the fight. He had shown it, as was Bill’s wont, in slightly peevish silences and a porridge so dense that the girls had held their spoons upside down for minutes as an experiment to see if any would fall off. It didn’t. Violet had quizzed her relentlessly about the play-fight when Bill left the kitchen, asking if it was definitely playing if someone flicked your nose really hard with a tea-towel (yes), whether Gene and Bill liked each other (of course they did), and what Grandma would have said if she had still been here (she couldn’t answer that one).
And then she had walked past her study on her way to brush her teeth and stopped dead in the doorway. Gene and his bag were gone.
She had stood there, taking in the empty room, the bed—of course unmade—and wondering how it was possible to feel so relieved yet at the same time conflicted in some undefined way. Her father had disappeared again. True to form. Always vanishing before the complicated conversations, before he was required to take ownership of any difficult situation. She wondered whether he had found some cast member to crash with, or perhaps some weary divorcée for whom he is still sprinkled lightly with stardust. She had felt a sudden, almost overwhelming melancholy. And then the girls had started shouting at each other about ownership of a particular hairbrush and Gene’s disappearance had fallen out of her head. She had, however, tripped over his cardboard boxes in the hall on her way out, which felt somehow fitting.
Gabriel Mallory has not been at the drop-off area for two days.
“I hope you don’t mind me saying, but I really loved your book.”
Lila’s head shoots up. The girl is leaning forward over the desk, a shy smile playing around her beautifully outlined lips. “I hope it’s not unprofessional of me to say so.”
“Not at all. Thank you,” says Lila. “That’s very kind of you.”
“Me and my boyfriend were having a bit of trouble at the time—wedo tend to trigger each other a lot. He’s an anxious attachment style and I’m an avoidant attachment style—and I read a lot of what you said about how you talk to your husband and it really helped us.”
Lila’s heart sinks a little. “That’s lovely to hear,” she says, and then looks at her phone.
“I hope we’re like you when we’ve been together for twenty years.” The girl smiles fully now, a conspiratorial smile. “That whole thing about counting to fifteen before you react to anything. I do it all the time now. It’s madesucha difference. And the thing about radical acceptance and not trying to change your partner. You’re both sowise.”
Lila opens her mouth and closes it again.
The girl is looking at her expectantly.
