Page 43 of We All Live Here
“Tricky day?”
“Yup. And the really annoying thing is I didn’t think it was going to be.”
“Those are the worst.”
They sit in silence for a while. Her garden, she thinks, resembles the Somme. What was once a vaguely pleasing wilderness of overgrown plants and uncut lawn is now a mess of trenches, piles of earth, and concrete.
“You look like you could do with a drink.”
She pulls her attention back to him. “Yeah…Not really one of my vices.”
He raises one eyebrow.
“Oh, no, I’m not AA or anything like that. It’s just…my dad drank. Drinks. And Mum hated it for that reason. And he kind of messed up his life.” From the house, they can hear Bill’s determined piano. “And is still messing it up, apparently. So I guess I’ve just never seen the appeal.”
“You’ve never been drunk?”
“A couple of times. But I don’t…I don’t really like feeling…you know, out of control.”And if I started drinking while I feel like this, she says silently,I think I’d never stop.
“Fair enough. Tough never to get a holiday from your head, though.”
“I smoke. To get to sleep. Sometimes,” she says, in case she sounds too prim. “But I can’t anymore because I caught my daughter doing it. Apparently I need to be a good example.”
“That’s a terrifying thought.” He laughs.
She asks him if he has children and he says no.
“Did your wife not want them? Actually, forget I asked. That’s horribly intrusive. The kind of thing you’re not meant to say. Sorry.”
“My wife?”
She glances at his finger. The wedding ring is gone. “I—I thought you wore a wedding ring.”
He turns over his hand, as if looking for clues. “Oh! No. That’s my dad’s old ring. It’s a little loose on my right hand so when I’m gardening I wedge it onto the left so I don’t lose it.”
“Ah.”
The discovery that he is single, and that she has noted it, seems briefly to silence them. Lila sits on the bench that Bill made for her mother and runs her hand gently over the arm, feeling the carefully sanded wood, all the hours of work, the love that went into this piece of furniture. Shecannot imagine anyone making a bench for her, and shakes her head, trying to get rid of the thought.
“I’d better go in,” she says, trying to make herself sound brighter than she feels. “Back to work.”
“I’ll stop the drilling for now. We’re nearly there anyway,” he says.
As she picks her way back across the rubble-strewn garden he calls: “You know, it’s going to be a nice thing.”
She turns to face him, shielding her eyes against the sun.
“The garden. It’s going to be a nice thing.” When she doesn’t say anything he grins and adds: “Sometimes things just turn out…nice.”
•••
I asked himout. And he hasn’t replied.
Eleanor’s response comes within seconds:How long ago did you send it?
Two hours.
That’s nothing. Could be in a meeting.
