Page 76 of Caught in a Storm
He puts his phone away, and they watch the quiet street. “I almost came back, you know.”
A few weeks ago, when she heard Axl say that she didn’t matter, the hurt was instantaneous. The hurt rises more slowly now, like something that’s lingered inside, waiting to unfurl itself. “When?” she asks.
“Right away. Nikki and I thought we’d make a go of it, right? But that was a bloody disaster. She’s quite a handful, you know. More important: I missed you. I missed seeing Pop Pop every day. I thought, what if I go back? Just show up. Jimmy would’ve let me up. He always liked you more than me, but I coulda slipped him a tenner.”
Margot imagines what that knock at the door would’ve been like, his face in the peephole, an alternate two decades. “Why didn’t you?”
“I was scared,” he says. “Of you, mostly. You’re quite small, but you’re scary. And I knew I’d blown it. I also knew I didn’t deserve you.”
He’s right, he didn’t, but she knows how quickly she’d have opened that goddamn door. “Why are you here, Lawson?” she asks. “And don’t say to win me back. Because we aren’t those people anymore.”
He takes her hand. “Fair. But imagine the new us. This little resurgence of yours? The return of the great Margot Hammer? Tip of the bloody iceberg.” He kisses her hand. His lips are cool but soft. “This bloke, Billy? Nice chap. I get it. And I’ve seen how he looks at you. Poor tosser’s crazy about you. But, Margie, love, we’d be unstoppable. Biggest story on the planet, us.”
Margot breathes in, meaning to sigh and tell him to fuck off, but the sudden intake offers a fresh blast of Lawson’s scent from his jacket.
“And you wouldn’t have to worry about…well, any more of that dirty business. I’m ready to give that up. It’s bloody exhausting anyway. A little tacky now, as well.”
When her phone vibrates in her back pocket, it’s a relief, because she doesn’t have to think about what he’s just said. She takes her iPhone out. Poppy again.
“We should answer that, yeah?” he says.
He’s right again. Earlier was the first time Margot has willingly not answered one of their daughter’s calls. She slides the bar at the bottom of the screen, and there’s Poppy, concerned.
“Hi, honey.”
“Mum?”
Lawson puts his face next to Margot’s. “Pop Star! There’s our girl!”
“Oh Jesus,” their daughter says.
“How are you, love?” says Lawson. “Your mum and I are catching up a bit. We just saw a rat the size of a bloody Yorkshire terrier. You should’ve seen it. Your mum was terrified!”
Chapter 42
The next morning, Billy hears Caleb shooting baskets outside. Which is horrifying, because Caleb is just a little boy, and there’s no hoop outside his apartment in Fells Point, just a street and cars bouncing up and down the cobblestone. Billy startles awake before he remembers that Caleb is eighteen. Billy isn’t in Fells Point, and this isn’t his apartment. If he inhales deeply enough, he can catch lingering whiffs of exhaust, because he’s currently above a garage.
When he rolls over, the space where Margot should be is empty. He touches the sheets, which are cold, and he sees a note torn from her notebook. Went to a farmer’s market with Robyn. -M
He stares. Her handwriting really is terrible. “A farmer’s market?” he says, because he can’t imagine a more improbable location: an underground rave maybe, or Mars.
More dribbling outside. From the swishing sounds every ten seconds, he wonders if Caleb has been practicing. Billy helped Aaron put the hoop up a few years ago. The two of them pouring concrete together went surprisingly well, although they had to throw their shoes away after.
Billy chose to pretend to be asleep when Margot returned to the apartment last night after her walk with Lawson. He was trying to make a point, he supposes—his way of saying, Well, you were certainly gone a long time. So long, in fact, that I am no longer conscious. He listened to her in the dark as she brushed her teeth, took off her boots, slid out of her jeans. When she eased in next to him, she touched his back and took a breath, like she might say something. Billy waited. But then the warmth of her hand was gone, and she rolled over. He’d like to know what she almost said. One of the worst things about being a person is that when you don’t know something, you assume the absolute worst.
Lawson and I made love in a parked car down by the dry cleaners. In case you were wondering, he’s way better at sex than you are. I’ll be leaving with him today and we will continue to make love in various exotic locations around the world. Come on, Billy. You assumed this would eventually happen, right? I mean, look at him. Look at you.
He gets out of bed and goes to the espresso machine, where he turns the appropriate levers and sets his little glass beneath the spout. Then he looks out the window into the driveway and discovers that the person shooting hoops isn’t his son, it’s Lawson Daniels. Lawson is wearing the same thing he wore last night. His leather jacket is folded neatly on the pavement. The actor pivots fifteen feet from the hoop and drains a jumper.
Swish.
* * *
—
“Well, ’ello there, mate.”
“Hey, man,” says Billy. He’s standing on the stairs outside the apartment overlooking the driveway. He’s not sure what compelled him to come out, but now here he is, committed to what he can only imagine will be among the strangest conversations of his life. “Did you stay here last night?”
