Lady: Impossible (59 page)

I’ll have to do this convincing carefully, as there’s no text message this time. He’s calling me.

‘Hello, Millie speaking.’

Blair launches straight in with bitter criticism. ‘So she told you, did she?’
 

‘If you’re referring to my mother, then no, she didn’t tell me a fucking thing.’
 

I understand why she didn’t. It wasn’t her place to tell me, but it doesn’t erase the trauma of being blindsided by sheer happenstance.

‘You’re angry you didn’t know?’ He laughs cruelly, as if it’s the most absurd concept ever. ‘Boy, you are entitled.’

‘Don’t talk to me like that. I do not deserve that from you.’

‘You and I don’t deserve anything from each other. Go home.’

‘I will not go home. I will sleep here in the car on this random street until you tell me where to meet you.’

‘No woman should be sleeping in a car, especially in an area they are not familiar with.’

‘I will make a “come and get it” sign and wait for my fate.’

‘That is a disgusting threat.’

‘Is it? How desperate of me.’

The ensuing silence is loaded with resentment, but somehow I’m able to find a degree of solace in it. At least he’s talking to me. Yelling and sniping is better than not hearing from him at all, and if he’s this worked up, he must care more than he lets on. Surely?

‘Okay, I’ll tell you where I live, where my family lives,’ he says, his voice strained but steady. ‘Come and see how much we don’t have.’

He hangs up, his last challenge speaking volumes about loss and perspective. Yet when the text with his address comes through, I’m not any more rattled than I was before.
 

I’m going to get some answers.
 

Chapter 29:

Usually when I get into a rage, there’s no way to reason with me – no compromise. There’s just me, channelling white-hot anger like a superconductor.
 

Oh, how things have changed. I may be fired up, but now there’s caution involved. I have a vested interest. So, while I want to speed down these residential streets at sixty miles an hour, I’m actually doing about twenty, clutching my iPhone in one hand and slowing down at every street sign because, for some reason, I’m picking this very moment to doubt Google Maps.
 

It must look insane – this flashy car stop-starting like the driver doesn’t know how to work a manual. The guys on
Top Gear
would be horrified at the way I’m handling the steering. I’ve already mounted one curb and had a near miss with two angry-looking garden gnomes. Do you know how scary garden gnomes are when it’s dark and you’re straining to see street signs and house numbers? Fucking scary. It’s akin to a child’s fear of all their toys coming alive at night.

I don’t want to add gnome-killer to the list of cons that Blair has surely drawn up against me. Even with a favourable pros to cons balance, I’m still up against his inner demons. Those demons are Harrow-educated and have at least a year of Oxford under their belts. This torment of his is real. It may be a mind-fuck for me to hear about, but it would’ve been even more of a mind-fuck for him to experience.
 

I slow down when I get to his street, my heart pumping like an overworked piston. There’s so much room for error – something I’m reminded of when the turn I make is imprecise, leading me to drag one side of the car over the curb. My eyes are focused further down the street, scanning every pocket of light in anticipation of Blair’s house. Street lamps. Porch lights. The occasional lit window… Yellow. White. Pale, unnatural blue. My senses are on overload, and so are my emotions.

As I follow the odd-numbered countdown to my right, I see a figure up ahead. The person paces up and down, withdrawing to the garden path and then back to the roadside. For some stupid reason, I put my headlights on high beam so I can get a better view and confirm it is Blair. It’s Blair, and now I’ve blinded him. Perfect!

I switch the lights off and come to a stop in front of his house, but he retreats once more into the garden, his hands on his hips and his back to me. It’s crazy, but I feel like abducting him – just dragging him into the car and speeding away. Whether or not he’d answer my questions, he’d still be with me, and being so near him now, all I want is to keep him with me. I cannot fuck this up. I cannot lose him.
 

Gnome-killer. Abductor. Time to rein in the criminal madness.

I get out and make my way towards him, slamming the door entirely too hard in the process. The swift punch and click is satisfying, like it’s telling him I mean business. He turns and, before I can say a single word, he rounds on me, getting right up close and peering down with those fiery eyes I love so much.

His voice is crisp and clear, cutting through the stagnant summer air. ‘So how did you find out?’
 

That’s what he wants to know – how I found out. What I want to know is the whole bloody story.

I meet his gaze unafraid and unimpressed. I just want to embrace him. It’s a milder impulse to that of the kidnapping, but reason prevails so here I stand, galvanised, if slightly unhinged.
 

‘If you must know, I’ll tell you,’ I say, trying to find my balance on the unpaved gravel and grass. ‘But only after you explain your wealthier past.’

His swift response bursts from his lips. ‘Why make me repeat something you already know?’
 

‘Because I haven’t heard it from you!’ I poke him hard in the chest. ‘Harrow? Oxford? Even if you did drop out, you were there long enough to be a star polo player. I didn’t know any of this.’

He shakes his head, his grin of disbelief making him appear borderline maniacal. ‘You want me to tell you the whole sob story?’

‘You gave me your address, didn’t you? I’m here.’

The grin disappears. He pauses, holding my gaze for several seconds before pointing over his shoulder. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you see behind me?’
 

I look at the house that is his family home: two-storey; narrow, whitewashed facade; visible cracks and signs of wear; an unkempt garden with just as many weeds as plants. And, not only is a light on upstairs, but the curtains of a first-floor window are being jostled, creating shifting shadows that confirm someone is trying to secretly watch this exchange.
 

Apart from the identities of its occupants, I don’t know what’s inside the house. Is it messy? The interior dated? Are there obvious signs of too many people living in one place? I’m not sure Blair is going to show me. What I dare to assume is that there are many people who are perfectly happy living in houses like the one before me now. When you’ve had more, however, the downgrade would be particularly embittering.
 

I take a step back, as if the extra distance will help me process the picture before me. Like a camera refocusing, I redirect my attention to Blair in the forefront and see his hostility take on a sadness he probably doesn’t want to show.

‘Sir Francis Eldridge,’ I tell him, hoping my voice carries no hint of pity. ‘I found out from Sir Francis Eldridge.’

It’s a name that instantly breaks his composure. Just like that, his bravado is stripped away, leaving him somewhat defenceless. His face is not one of a guilty man, but of a man who knows pretence will not help.
 

Dropping his hands from his hips, he enunciates carefully. ‘I wasn’t aware you knew him.’

‘I don’t know him. He’s a friend of a family friend. That’s the thing with these social circles. They overlap because there are only so many of us.’

‘Outed by a Venn diagram.’ He raises an eyebrow, a bitter smirk accompanying it. ‘And to think I see most things as mutually exclusive.’

‘Like you and me?’

‘Don’t even…’
 

More head-shaking. His shoves his hands into his pockets and stares into the distance, his expression vacant for at least ten seconds.

I tuck my hair behind my ears and sigh heavily. ‘Blair?’

‘Let’s not do this out here.’

His next gesture is subtle, a slight wave of the hand, almost like a secret signal. In reality, I know it’s more a sign of his reluctance. He may have been resolute on the phone but now that I’m here, about to step into the house, it’s different. I follow him as he makes his way slowly to the front door, a part of me now wanting to reach out and hug him from behind. Luckily, I know better than to try comforting him. He opens the door, but only wide enough to poke his head inside and speak to somebody who’s in earshot, and though at first I think he’s shielding me from his family, the truth is that he’s shielding them from me.

‘I need to have a meeting with my employer,’ he says to whoever is there. ‘Just go upstairs for a bit… Give me some privacy, come on… Thank you.’

I hear the sound of at least two girls talking and the thump-thump-thump of them stomping up the stairs. The door is ajar enough that they’re able to see me once they get to a decent height. Since neither of them are Julie, they must be Francie and Sylvie. Though probably years apart in age, they are strikingly similar: tall and lithe but, unlike their brothers, beautiful in a plain way. You wouldn’t necessarily peg them as supermodels on first glance, but the more you stare the more you appreciate their features.
 

They’re appraising me as I appraise them through the opening in the door. Wide-eyed and curious, they slow when they near the top of the stairs. I can no longer see their faces from where I am, but I can tell from the way Blair has tensed that he doesn’t appreciate the mutual curiosity.
 

After waiting a few more seconds, he looks over his shoulder at me. ‘I suppose I’m making this worse by not acting like this is a routine visit.’

‘Your house, your rules.’

‘That’s the thing. It’s not my house.’

‘Okay, not your house per se, but where your family lives.’ I tell myself to bite my tongue before I overdo the aggravation.

As he swings open the door he stares at me as if my reaction is all he wants to get from this experience. I’m so taken with him that I momentarily forget to notice our surroundings.
 

Blair steps aside so I can walk into the house. I see the entirety of the steep, narrow staircase, its worn shag carpet making me wonder about the rest of the interior I’m about to see. The floorboards creak when I take another step, and I find myself staring at my Jimmy Choos as if I’ve walked into a church wearing muddy work boots. I’m insulting a sacred space or something.
 

‘You don’t have to take your shoes off if you don’t want to,’ Blair says, closing the door behind him. ‘You won’t be staying long anyway.’

I replay his words three times in my head, only looking up after the third time. I’m wondering if this is the house his family were banished to after they lost all their money, or if there have been other houses before.

It’s warm and stuffy in here. Too warm and stuffy – aren’t any of the windows open? Or maybe I’m actually getting ‘the vapours’. I should’ve paid more attention to the Sixth Countess’s diaries when she went into detail about her ‘spells’. Maybe this is a hereditary thing.
 

‘Lady Emilia?’

I finally snap out of it. ‘Don’t call me that! You’ve brought me in here to make a point. The least you could do is to call me Millie.’

I don’t know why I think this is the instance where my complaint is going to stick. He doesn’t care. Furthermore, in the light, I can now see the fatigue in the lines of his face and the bloodshot weariness of his eyes.

Instinct tells me Blair has been crying, though he’d probably prefer to tidy my bathroom every day for the next decade than admit it. ‘Have you been sleeping at all?’
 

His response is muttered. ‘If you were me, would you be getting any sleep?’

He doesn’t wait for a reply, leading me to what appears to be the living room. I say ‘appears’ because it’s not a set-up one is likely to come across often. There are so many belongings packed into this small space that I immediately feel claustrophobic. In what I think is the size of a regular hotel room – the non-suite kind – there are two armchairs, one sofa bed, an old television set on a chest of drawers, plus piles and piles of clothes, books and assorted knick-knacks, all stacked so high that I wonder how they haven’t already toppled over. It’s not quite hoarding, not when there seems to be some semblance of order and system to the higgledy-piggledy towers, but it’s confronting nonetheless.
 

‘Sorry for the mess,’ Blair says with biting sarcasm, stepping over a folded blanket. ‘Shall I show you the kitchen next?’

I stay rooted to the spot. Blair leaves me where I am, waiting for me on the other side of the room, in the doorway to the kitchen. I’ve spotted something and now want to brave trying to reach it.

I’ve been in hedge mazes where the groundskeeper tells you to keep a hand out, feeling the hedge on one side, and to just keep going if you get lost. No such option here. I scan the area and see a path open in front of me. Without asking for permission, I move a stack of biology textbooks, step over a box marked
Francie
, squeeze past the sofa bed, lean over a basket full of winter clothes and then balance on one foot so I can reach up high to grab a particular photo frame from the shelf. Had I not looked past a certain tower of books, I wouldn’t have noticed it.
 

‘What do you have there?’ he asks, sounding more intrigued than angry.

‘Your school photo.’ I yank the frame off the shelf and stumble backwards, nearly losing my footing completely. Relieved, I hold my hands high like a gymnast finishing a floor routine.

‘How did you even spot that?’

I lower my arms and look at the photo, then at Blair and then back at the photo.
 

‘I’m obsessed with you. Call it female intuition at its worst.’

‘Put it back.’ He says this plainly and patiently, as if it’s a test designed to gauge my level of reason.
 

I could easily ignore him and continue to study this snapshot of who he used to be. In fact, I’ve already spotted him: there he is in blazer and straw hat, fifth from the right in the third row. He looks as happy as any of the other smiling Sixth Form boys. It’s this unfamiliar smile, however, that makes me wonder whether it’s my place to pry like this – I grabbed the photo on impulse, not thinking beforehand. It’s only after a few more seconds pass that a voice inside me tells me it
is
my place, because who else genuinely has feelings for Blair the way I do? Shouldn’t I do everything in my power to get through to him, even if it means being nosy?