Just The Way You Are(78)

Ebenezer nodded. ‘I’d noticed.’

I happened to notice that he didn’t contradict Joan’s suggestion. I made a note to tread slowly and carefully with my neighbour. Like a hunter sneaking up on a deer, we’d have to get close to him before he realised what was happening. Then, BAM, we’d be friends.





26





On Thursday morning, Joan finally gave up bumping about in her bedroom and clattered downstairs around six thirty. I decided to stop pretending I could sleep and join her. While I was of course anxious and apprehensive about the trip, I had to admit that the thought of Sam accompanying us had a complicated effect on my emotional state. While relieved to have another adult involved, the prospect of spending a whole day with him couldn’t help but jack up my jitters.

‘I can’t eat!’ Joan groaned, lolling over the table. ‘My stomach is all scrumpled.’

‘I know how you feel, but you’ll have to unscrumple it. We aren’t leaving until you’ve had breakfast.’

‘Ugh!’ She shook her head in frustration. ‘I’ll have a snack in the car.’

‘We aren’t leaving for another two hours. Why don’t you get dressed, and then read for a bit to settle your nerves?’

‘Read? How am I supposed to concentrate on a book when I’m about to meet my grandparents for the first time!’

‘Hopefully meet…’

‘Yes, I know, I know!’

She thumped upstairs and, I found out forty minutes later when I went to see where she’d got to, proceeded to try on and then toss aside every single one of her outfits.

‘I have nothing to wear!’

‘The clothes mountain would imply otherwise.’

‘Arrrgggh! You don’t get it! I have nothing right for this!’ She began randomly picking up items and throwing them over her shoulder in dismissal. ‘This is too small. This has a hole in the knee. This is stained. This looks weird. This makes me look about nine. This doesn’t go with anything else…’

‘Joan.’ I stepped over the pile and put my arms around her. ‘If they are the people we think they are, the kind of grandparents who want to be a part of your life, then they won’t care what you wear.’

‘They might, though!’

‘Are you going to care what they’re wearing?’

She sniffed, pressing her face onto my shoulder. ‘I would if it was a Nazi uniform. Or just a dirty pair of pants and a string vest. Or like one of Ebenezer’s T-shirts but it said something like “I hate reading” or “All lives matter”.’

‘Well, you’ll be fine then in your blue shorts and the stripy T-shirt.’

‘I wish I had a nice dress. Or… or something pink with flowers on it. The kind of clothes nice, pretty girls wear.’

‘Joan.’ I pulled back so I could look her right in the eyes. ‘You are a fantastic, interesting, clever, brave, beautiful girl, and you don’t like flowery pink dresses. Girls and women can wear whatever they like. It has no reflection on how nice or pretty they are.’

She shrugged, unconvinced. ‘I just want to look like a normal kid.’

‘Oh my darling. Don’t ever wish you were normal – as if any one of us really is. Do normal girls find their long-lost grandparents and plan an expedition to meet them? Do they take in half-dead puppies they find in the woods and teach them how to dance? Do they decide that they’re so determined to be courageous and powerful that they change their own name? You are anything but normal, and that’s what makes you so incredible. Was Frodo normal? Was Katniss Everdeen? Joan of Arc was pretty much the least normal woman in history!’

‘Okay, okay, I get it!’ Joan sniffled, laughing through her tears. ‘I’m a weirdo but a good weirdo, so I might as well dress like it so we can find out straight away if Nana and Grandad are going to be all right with it or not.’

‘Genuinely, your outfit is not going to matter.’ I handed her a tissue from the box by her bed. ‘I understand that first impressions count, but I promise that it won’t make a difference here. Neither will what you say, or how you act.’

‘When you first saw me, what did you think?’ she asked, trying to sound blasé about it.

‘I thought, That girl has very fine taste in books. I think I’d better buy the house next-door-but-one so we can be friends.’

‘Oh, shut up!’ Joan gave me a frustrated shove, but when she appeared downstairs ten minutes later in her shorts and T-shirt, the worried look had been replaced by a gleam of excitement.

When I opened the front door, it took me a couple of blinks to process that it was Sam rather than a stray premiership footballer or Hollywood actor. The dark navy suit and white shirt unbuttoned at the tanned neck altered not only his appearance, but his whole posture and manner.

‘I told you,’ he said, grinning at the look on my face before affecting a serious, yet compassionate expression as he gazed (or dare I say smouldered?) into my eyes. ‘Hello, I do apologise for interrupting your day, but I’m Samuel Parker, solicitor with Parker and Sons. I was hoping to speak with Olivia Tennyson?’

Yes please!

The corner of his mouth creased up in a hint of a smile, and I had to turn away before my knees buckled beneath me.