I tried to remember everything she’d said, to puzzle it out. I couldn’t manage it. The foot had distracted me.
I ate my sticky date pudding, which was excellent, and told Daisy, “Mum’s coming tonight, by the way. That’s a load off my mind. I didn’t fancy her spending another night alone there, so close to Mount Zion.”
She said, “Oh, I’m glad.” Relieved not to be talking about Gilead anymore, and maybe … maybe not to be talking about sex signals anymore, either.
I wasn’t used to not being sure of how to proceed with women. You read the signals, and you responded to them. I was a physical fella, and reading body language had been my life for … well, for all my life. In rugby, and now. Whether you were guessing whether a fella was throwing the dummy or actually passing the ball, sitting across a table doing a contract negotiation, or talking to a foreman, you needed to see more than what somebody was apparently doing, and you needed to hear more than what they were saying. You needed to know what they were thinking, too. But I couldn’t read Daisy, except that it felt like I was holding a stunned bird in my palm, my hand stroking over its feathers, trying to find out how injured it was. Trying not to startle it more.
That, and all the dirty stuff, too.
I finished the sweet and said, “Awesome pudding. Cheers for dinner. I’ll be off, then. Get things ready for Mum.” If Daisy actually was that injured bird, I needed to give her space. Also, I had work to do.
Xena jumped up the second I did. It was hard to resent a dog who was that good at loving.
Daisy asked, “Would you like me to come over and help you?”
And there went the work, because it seemed I’d just kicked it to the curb. I asked, “Is this a trick question?”
She looked confused for a second, and then she smiled and said, “Right, then. Let’s do that.”
When we got to the door and I picked up my boots and socks, she slipped those pretty feet back into her jandals, and when I opened the door to my house for her, she kicked them off and said, “Good for the girls to do the washing-up alone, I’m telling myself. Sense of ownership.”
I looked at her, and she said, “I could be nervous.”
She was standing there, her back against the door, trying for her casual Daisy-smile. I set down my boots, took a step forward, put my hands on her hips, my thumbs brushing just above the waistline of the drawstring trousers, which were riding heart-stoppingly low, and told her, “You don’t have to be nervous.” And then I bent and kissed her soft mouth. Gently. Carefully. I pulled back and smiled at her, and she smiled back. It was tentative, though, and I felt a sudden, fierce desire to punch Gilead in the mouth.
I said, “Not so easy?”
“Well, no,” she said. “Since you ask.” She blinked, and I could tell that she was fighting the urge to run. “So … want to put sheets on your mum’s bed?”
She’d been so brave, and she was trying to be brave again now. I said, “Yeh. And you know … I need to take a shower. If I do that, will you trust me that it’s just a shower?”
“Yes,” she said. “Of course.” She laughed. “I’m being silly. Fainting maiden, eh.”
“No,” I said. “You’re not.” And then I stepped away, because I had to, and said, “Come on. I’ll show you Mum’s room. You can tell me how to make it not be horrible.”
Up the creaky old stairs with her padding barefoot behind me and Xena bringing up the rear, and to the dormer bedroom at the end of the hall. “I know,” I said, opening the door. “Pink and blue.” Pink walls, pale-blue carpet. It had been a girl’s room, obviously. It looked like one of those plastic doll houses, and not in a good way.
“You’re right,” she said. “That is horrible.”
“Isn’t it, though?” Actually, the dormer window was nice. That was it. The good feature. Well, that and some built-in cabinetry done to 1870 standard, which I always appreciated.
I went to the linen cupboard across the passage and grabbed sheets and a duvet, and she took them from me and said, “I’ll do it. Go take your shower. If you come back and I’m not