Читать книгу Being Kari - Qarnita Loxton - Страница 13

02:30 PM Dirk: Hi, let me know you’re ok? Please ring me. Love you x

Di tried her best to get me to move but I stayed in that room, even when Kate and Sarah were home. It was just not my day for playing princesses and tiaras. I listened to Di give them lunch and help with homework, like a family sitcom playing on the TV in another room. Who would’ve thought a seven- and a nine-year-old could have so much homework? And that Di could say the same thing so many times without losing her mind. Silence while they all rushed off somewhere and came back from somewhere, and then the Bartlett Family Barney was back on full volume. Homework with more foodfest, nagfest, moanfest – except this time it ended with them going off to bed just as Alan got home. I was sure I didn’t have what it took to be good at it. The mother thing.

Loud hellos from Alan and goodnights from the girls to their dad, the two ships nearly passing in the night. And then a knock on my door, his door. Alan stuck his head into the room. He crinkled a grey monobrow at me. (Has it been that long since I last saw him? That mono is new, I’m sure. Had Di been waxing it before?)

“Can I come in?” he asked. I guessed he meant Just quickly, before Di comes.

Somehow LSDoK were off limits to Alan after he and Di’s thing, after his fling, and so I hadn’t seen him in a while. Two nights I’d spent in his home and we hadn’t even been allowed to bump into each other. On my nod, his stripy shirtsleeves and then the rest of his body crept quickly around the door into the room. The collar of his shirt was loose around his neck; the past year must have taken some weight.

“Di told me what happened, Kari. I’m really very sorry. And about your gran, obviously.” He shoved his hands halfway into his pockets, hairy bits poking out the top. (Jeez, did Di used to wax the man everywhere?) He looked like a big pregnant woman trying to hold up her belly, standing there, except there was no baby, just the bulge of his too-big shirt. Looking at his feet, he worked one toe against the skirting, leaving a little black mark. Di would notice tomorrow.

“Men and women. We can be so stupid, sometimes we don’t think. We don’t know what we have. We take it for granted.” He said this into his moustache. (No, but seriously, how have I not noticed before how hairy Alan is?) “Maybe Di will kill me for saying it . . . but give Dirk a small chance? See what he does with it? Mistakes, even big ones, can happen to anyone. Even to you. None of us are perfect.” His eyes were red and shiny when he did look up, but he didn’t say anything more. He just smiled a straight-line smile that dimpled his cheeks but didn’t crinkle his eyes. And then he was gone. I didn’t have a chance to answer him. I wouldn’t have known what to say anyway.

I could never have done what Dirk did was all that sat in my head.

I didn’t answer Dirk either.

10:30 PM: Di says I should give you some space, that you will ring when you are ready. I will try. Love you x

Ready. Today I couldn’t leave Di’s guest bed. I was about as far from ready as it got.