Page 23 of Fix Them Up
‘Oh, you’ve done it now, Hunter,’ Lydia muttered under her breath.
‘It’s fine. I can handle it.’
‘If you say so,’ Lydia said in a sing-song voice.
Liam sat down, his face forward, and all I could do was stare at him, dumbfounded.
‘Close your mouth. You look like a goldfish.’ He turned and looked at me, a glimmer of something in his eyes. A challenge? Entertainment, perhaps? I wasn’t sure.
‘Why –’ I sputtered. ‘You clearly hate me –’
Liam’s eyes closed briefly. ‘I don’t hate you.’
‘Okay, you dislike me. Semantics. Why would you help –’
In a hushed tone, Liam said, ‘You might not know your family very well, but they are good people. The best people. Your aunt is like a mum to me. I owe her. So I will help you out.’
Liam sat back, watching the next item on the agenda in themeeting. I wanted to ask more, but here wasn’t the place. Not when so many members seemed to be eyeing us up curiously.
It was when Sandra called the meeting to a close that the onslaught began – it was like every single member of the Everly Heath community lined up in front of Liam. Liam sighed and got up to talk to the first lady, a woman in her mid-sixties. She had a wide, feline smile on her face.
I turned to Lydia. ‘What is going on?’
‘Liam just opened the floodgates. He’s been putting in major boundaries since he took over from his dad. Kevin used to do a lot of favours for people – he was the first to bend over backwards for people. Liam put a stop to it. Well –’ She glanced down at me. ‘Until you, apparently.’
My cheeks burned, and unanswered questions rang through my head. What had changed his mind?
I sat and waited for Liam to finish speaking to people. I wanted to speak to him. I wanted to know where I stood when it came to the house and the next steps. Liam was speaking to the fifth person – a young lad who couldn’t be eighteen – when I decided to get a pint while I waited for him. When I came back, he was gone.
‘He managed to escape,’ Lydia explained when I looked confused, holding my pint of Guinness and a Coke Zero for Liam – his usual order, according to Sandra. I tried to hide the way I deflated.
Later, I piled into an Uber. After another drink or two with Lydia and Jack, things were too hazy, and I was too lazy to walk. Plus, I used the excuse of the persistent drizzle that had sprinkled down all evening, glossing the roads and the trees like the Lancôme juicy tubes I had coveted as a kid.
I spotted something new attached to my door when I got to the house. A new shiny silver lock was neatly screwed into thewood. While the door was knackered, the new lock shone in the porch light.
A key was Sellotaped to the frame, with a note which read:
No more strange men “committing domestic burglary”.
I’ll be in touch.
-L
Chapter Nine
Kat’s To-Do List
Find the old to-do list
Thank-you card for Liam? Is that weird?
Call LiamWait for Liam to text
I hated waiting. I’d always hated waiting. As a kid, it was the queue at the ice-cream van. As a teenager, it had been waiting for the DVD release of my favourite films so I could rewatch them again and again. As an adult, it was waiting for the latest season ofGrey’s Anatomyto come onto Prime Video, even when I promised myself not to watch yetanotherseason. Impatience should be my middle name instead of Jane.
So, it wasn’t surprising that I spent the days after the social club with shaking legs, praying for Liam’s text to come through. But he took his sweet time, and I was sure he was doing it on purpose to torture me. It was only Liam being evasive. After Sandra’s social club announcement, I’d had numerous visits from locals.
The day after the social club, Davide and John knocked. They were a gay couple with matching bright white teeth. They brought over homemade pastel de natal and asked about the renovationprogress. I showed them around the house, and they ummed and ahhed over my plans.
