‘Say bye-bye.’ Chloe waved her hand, and Amy followed suit. ‘See you again soon.’
Amy repeated the words almost perfectly, and Jon gave her a hug and a kiss. Then he walked them out to the car, standing to watch as they drove away, feeling suddenly as if the bottom had just dropped out of his world.
His cheek still burned where her lips had touched it. But now that Chloe had gone, he had forty-eight hours to put into operation the plan that he’d been fine-tuning for the last week. The challenge got him moving, and he strode into the house to fetch his jacket and car keys.
Everything he needed was piled up in the hallway of his house. A thank-you to Chloe for coming to his rescue and letting him stay here for the last month. Something that was easy for him to do and not so easy for her to achieve. And he hoped she’d love it.
* * *
Chloe drew up in the road outside her house, sitting for a moment in the car to gather her thoughts. She’d almost managed to believe that everything was going to be all right, that Hannah would find the confidence to take the first vital steps in taking Amy back to look after her. But everything had fallen apart.
The aching tiredness made her feel almost physically sick with instinctive fear. Chloe reminded herself that this was nothing like what she’d felt when she’d been ill, and that there was a good reason for it. Getting out of the car, leaving her bag still on the back seat, she pulled herself straight and walked to the front door.
Another instinct, this one more recently formed, made her wonder whether Jon would be there. He’d said that he would, and Jon hadn’t broken a promise yet, but everything else had gone horribly wrong this weekend. Why not this?
When she opened the front door, the smell hit her and for a moment she was too fatigued to even know what it was. As she twisted the handle of the kitchen door, she realised. Paint.
Maybe Jon had brought something home to paint at the kitchen table. When all she really wanted was a cup of tea...
He was sitting at the kitchen table, the look on his face something like that of an agonised boy who had hoped to do something right. Chloe looked around. The kitchen looked suddenly lighter and she couldn’t understand why for a moment.
It was the new paint on the ceiling and walls. The unusual tidiness of her worktop was because the old one had been cleared and removed and a new one installed. She realised that it was the same worktop she’d admired at Jon’s house, and the new doors on the kitchen cabinets were the same honeyed wood. Her old cooker had been cleaned to within an inch of its life and a couple of new spotlights, placed unobtrusively in the darker corners, made the room seem about twice the size.
She took a step inside, her legs almost failing to hold her. Beneath her feet, the old lino had been taken up and the quarry tiles underneath gleamed.
For a moment she couldn’t speak. Chloe walked over to the window and saw that the frame had been sanded down and painted—a proper job, not just a lick of paint to cover whatever flaws were hidden beneath it. It hit her suddenly that this was Jon’s thank-you to her. He hadn’t needed to give her a leaving present, certainly not something like this, but that was what it was.
And she’d given him everything he needed to work with. Chloe realised that the jokey conversation about colours and styles, what she’d do with the kitchen when she had the time, had all been noted down in his head. She’d even lifted a corner of the lino and shown him the quarry tiles underneath, saying she’d hire something to polish them up one day.
‘You...’ Jon’s voice was uncharacteristically full of doubt. ‘You could say something...’
No, she couldn’t. This was all too much. She’d lost almost everything this weekend, and now she was losing Jon. Chloe felt herself choke, and a sudden burst of energy took her up the stairs to fling herself onto
her bed to sob into her pillow.
* * *
Jon ran his hand across the wooden tabletop, which just thirty-six hours earlier had been in the garden, being sanded and polished. Maybe everything she’d said last week, about how the colour scheme he had in his kitchen was the one she wanted in hers, had been just idle talk, and not what she wanted at all. But she’d seemed so sure, as if she’d thought about it, and no one could deny that the kitchen looked great.
Or maybe she’d wanted to do it herself. That was a possibility, but Jon knew that she didn’t have the time or the energy at the moment. Maybe she was just overcome with delight... Jon shook his head, burying it in his hands. Unless Chloe’s delight looked a lot like dismay, that wasn’t very likely.
He hadn’t heard from her over the weekend and he’d assumed that things were going the way she’d hoped. But that could just be wishful thinking on his part. Would she really have given him a call to tell him that there was a problem?
Something was wrong. His decision to stay here, because Chloe obviously wanted to be alone, was dropped and Jon walked slowly up the stairs.
He tapped gently on her bedroom door and received no answer, so he pressed his ear against it. He couldn’t hear Chloe moving around, so he knocked again, this time a little louder.
She’d heard him. A rasping breath that sounded as if it was laced with tears came from the other side of the door.
‘Chloe... What’s wrong?’ he called to her, and there was still no answer. He supposed he could just go downstairs and leave her with whatever it was that was bothering her, but the thought that his actions might have been the cause of her tears glued him to the spot.
He could wait here, or go in. Waiting was obviously about as much good as going back downstairs, so he twisted the door handle slowly, ready to apologise and bang the door closed in his own face if she was undressing. But she wasn’t. He knew she wasn’t.
Just in case, he called her name again and told her he was coming in. There was still no answer, and he opened the door. Chloe was sitting on the bed, her face buried in her hands.
‘Chloe...I’m sorry. I really thought you’d like what I did...’ Suddenly it all seemed like a very bad idea. Why hadn’t he left well alone? Or just bought her a bunch of flowers.
‘It’s lovely...’ She gulped the words through her tears.