Page 85 of We All Live Here
“Bloody hell, El. Do you remember when we were sixteen and we thought we’d have all this stuff worked out by now? I thought I’d know it all by thirty.” Lila takes a bite out of a slightly soggy chocolate-chip cookie.
“I’ve got a horrible feeling we’re going to be having a variation of this conversation when we’re eighty-five.”
“He left his dentures on the side of my bed. Do you think that means he likes me?”
“He keeps smiling at another woman in the nursing home.”
“I’m sure I saw his mobility scooter parked outside the local pole-dancing club.”
“He can only get it up with fourteen Viagra tablets and a hoist.Does that mean I’m not attractive enough?”
They begin to cackle, and then, unaccountably, get an attack of the giggles. It is the best Lila has felt all week.
•••
Jensen arrives atlunchtime, just as she is taking a break from editing the first three chapters. She does this when she writes, going back over her previous work and honing, polishing, substituting words if she can think of better ones. It’s the part of writing she enjoys most. Heappears at the French windows with a wave just as she is downstairs making tea, and it seems a little off not to offer him some. They sit outside in the garden to drink it. He is dressed in non-gardening clothes, surprisingly smart in a pale gray cashmere jumper and dark jeans, headed to a potential job on the outskirts of London. “It’s a lot of work. I’ll probably have to take someone else on to get it all done. But it’s a beautiful old house and they want to restore the garden to its Georgian origins, so it’s been pretty nice just doing research and trying to work out what I should suggest to them.” He has a folder of drawings with him and shows her a couple: beautiful, precise diagrams of hedging, and geometric paths.
Her own garden is finished, the last of the plants dug in and watered, and for the last week she has sat out here every evening, Truant at her feet, just enjoying the space and the peace. It is as if she has been given a whole extra room in her house, a place where she can feel quite different, a place without a complicated history. Weirdly, Jensen and Bill had been right: when she sits on the bench that Bill made she does think about her mother. But it is a good feeling, more of a warm remembrance than a gaping maw of absence. Her mother would have loved this space. She would have used words like “heavenly” and “divine,” and murmured,Just look at how the light moves through those plants, Lila! Can’t you just wallow in all that birdsong?
“You really did a lovely job,” she says, breaking the silence. And he pulls a quick face, like people do when they’re not good at receiving compliments.
“I’m glad you think so,” he says, then scuffs at the path with the toe of his shoe. “This one was personal.” He gives her a quick sideways smile, and it is a little awkward but his eyes are kind.
Lila feels a faint pang in his presence. His broad, open face holds no secrets.
“Well,” she says. “You don’t have to be a stranger, just because you’ve finished working.”
“Yeah? What shall I do—just knock on your window at odd hours, demanding tea?”
“Absolutely. Maybe with a special free-form dance around the pond if you require biscuits.”
“I’ll start working on my choreography.”
She remembers how openly she was able to talk to him about the night they had spent together. How it had been funny, and straightforward—on his side, anyway—instead of making her feel anxious and unsure of herself. This realization—with its parallels—makes her feel faintly ill at ease, and when Truant suddenly streaks across the lawn toward the kitchen and starts baying at the door, she is almost glad of the interruption. “I’d better see what he’s barking at,” she says, standing.
“Sure. Oh! I actually popped by because I wondered if I could get a copy of that invoice I gave you a couple of weeks ago. My accounts software has apparently gone nuts and I need to see the last one so I can calculate what’s left to settle.”
Truant is inside the house now, apparently hurling himself at the front door.
“Sure,” she says, distracted. “I think it’s upstairs on my desk by the printer. Just give me a moment.” She has to shout now to be heard as she jogs toward the house.
“Don’t worry,” he says, from behind her. “I remember where the printer is. I’ll get it.”
It’s a delivery. For next door. Lila resists the urge to point mutely at the number on her door, clearly two digits out from the address on the packet, and has to endure a short speech from the man in the uniform about how hard the delivery company works him and his colleagues, how they are given no time between drop-offs, which is why things go to the wrong houses, all while Truant snarls and writhes at her heels, trying to get through the narrow gap in the door. Then the driver decides he might actually have something for her and walks back across theroad to his van, returning at a frankly leisurely pace with a parcel for Bill. She suspects it will be more sheet music: Bill has been ordering tranches of piano music so that he has new things to practice with Penelope.
When she finally shuts the door, shooing the dog away, and places the package on the hall table, her ears are ringing. Which may be why she doesn’t register the silence for a few minutes. She walks to the kitchen and looks out, but Jensen has gone. She thinks he must have let himself out through the garden while she was engaged at the front door, and walks over to pick up the empty tea mugs. He has left his folder of drawings on the bench. She picks it up and brings it inside, deciding she should probably call him to let him know. It won’t be good if he turns up at this new job without them.
She’s just about to dial his number when she hears footsteps on the stairs. She looks up, and Jensen is standing at the bottom, in the hallway. His face is ashen, and he’s holding some sheets of paper. He stares at her.
“My sexytimes with J—or how, after twenty years, I got back on the bike. What—what the hell is this?”
She realizes, with a sick feeling, what he is holding.
There is a brief silence.
“Jensen, I can explain. It’s not actually what—”
“He had joked earlier about his ‘dadbod.’ True, he wasn’t sculpted like a Greek god, but there was a friendly homeliness to his shape. ‘Friendly homeliness,’ huh? Nice.”
