Page 8 of We All Live Here
It sounds ridiculous the way he says it and this makes her even crosser. “That’s about it. Maybe if you didn’t just walk into people’s front gardens, they wouldn’t feel obliged to say anything at all.”
“Actually I came into your front garden because I had an appointment with Bill.”
“What?”
“I had an appointment with Bill. About doing the garden. But nobody answered the door so I’m guessing he’s not in.”
She deflates. “Oh,” she says, and just then Truant, clearly maddened by this unending transgression, starts twisting against the lead, unsure whether he wants to fly at this man or flee. She wrestles with him, trying to calm him, but her tone has clearly sent him into a spiral of anxiety and he will not be settled.
“Bill’s at his place.” She has to shout this twice, as the first words are swallowed by the noise. “His place.Down the road. Look, I’m sorry. Come in and I’ll call him. He’s obviously forgotten.”
But the man takes two steps back so that he is on the pavement. “You’re all right. I’ll call him myself.” And he heads off along the street, pulling his phone from his pocket as he leaves.
•••
“I’m not surprisedhe ran away. You’re quite…stabby since Dan left.”
“Stabby?”
“Like most of the time you walk around looking like you could quite easily assassinate someone.”
Lila eyes the fork she has been waving around as she told Eleanor the story of the Garden Interloper Who Wasn’t and lowers it carefully. “I do not. Not like an actual knife stabby person.”
Eleanor is between jobs, which means she is wearing carefully applied makeup. When she is on a job—she does hair and makeup for television—she says she cannot be arsed to do her own face too. Lila looks at her and wonders if Eleanor is aging a lot better than she is. She’s…radiant.
“Well…”
“You’re saying I look like a crazy person.”
“Nope.” Eleanor stabs a piece of sushi and forks it into her mouth with a single chopstick. “I’m saying, as your oldest friend, that you can be a little…quick to rise these days.” Seeing Lila’s crestfallen face, she says, “I mean, totally understandable given what you’ve been through and everything. But I’d save that for Dan. You just might want to be careful about the vibes you give out to randoms.”
“Vibes?”
“Well, just maybe cutthisa little.” She narrows her eyes suddenly and stares at Lila, her face stony.
Lila pushes her plate away from her. “Is that meant to be me?”
“Well, not actual you. You do a jutting thing with your chin too. I don’t think I can do that.”
“Wow. Thanks.”
“I say it with love, Lils. And there’s a whole raft of people you should totally give that vibe to. Dan at the top of the list. But humble gardener just staring at a tree while he waits for your elderly stepfather? Maybe not so much. Try this.” She slowly and exaggeratedly pulls her face into a smile.
“Funny.”
“I’m not being funny. Try it.”
“I know how to smile, El.”
“Maybe. But you don’t do it very much any more. I just don’t want youto end up, you know, one of those tight-lipped divorcées. It’s very hard to get lipstick to go on nicely once you get grooves.” She purses her lips and points to the tiny lines that result. “How’s Bill doing, anyway?”
Lila sighs, and takes a drink of water. “Hard to say. He could have his leg hanging off and still insist he was fine.” She has a vision of him plodding silently around the house, plugged into his earphones so that he can listen to Radio 3. He seems to need a constant supply of classical music, his barrier against the rest of the world. “He’s okay. I think. He makes the girls eat a lot of pulses.”
“Which they love.”
“You can imagine. I don’t know. He and Mum had this kind of regimented thing going on. Schedules and healthy food and tidiness and…order. So it can be a little tricky living with him. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad he’s there. I think it’s good for us to have the…continuity. But I wish he could unbend a little.” She sees Eleanor glance at her watch. “Are you going somewhere? You look really nice by the way.”
“Do I?” says Eleanor, with the insouciance of someone who knows it to be true. She has a huge shock of wavy mid-brown hair with a white streak at the front that manages to be both natural and ridiculously cool. She is wearing a bright scarlet silk shirt and half a dozen silver bangles. “I’m seeing Jamie and Nicoletta this evening.”
