“Social services thought so too for a while, but no one could deny she loved me, and she honestly believed in it all.”
“Did that ever change?”
“That she loved me, or that she was basically trying to cure me with witchcraft?”
“The witchcraft thing.”
“No, but my dad got made redundant when I was nine and he put a stop to it all. It was okay after that, medication-wise.”
“But?”
“My dad found it really hard to get another job. He was on the dole for six years. My parents took in lodgers to pay the bills, but none of them stayed long, so the house was pretty much Piccadilly Circus.”
Isha nodded. “My parents had lodgers too. At one point, there were twelve of us living in a three bedroom house. I hated it. And I’ve been protective of my own space ever since.”
“What about the kids? You can’t get much time to yourself when they’re around.”
“I don’t. But I like it that way now. I’ve learned to appreciate the noise and mess.”
“They’re good kids.”
“I know.”
A comfortable silence fell over us. Some nights we put the TV on, but talking in the dark had become more usual. If Isha showing up for a sleepover every couple of days could be defined as usual. Sex, food, talking, more sex, and sleep. Huh. I liked that routine.
I’d have liked it better if Isha had ever given me any indication how long it was going to last. But he didn’t. He left every morning with no indication of when he’d be back, and living on the edge of something so normal was wearing me down. When I stopped to think about it, at least, which was rarely when he was naked in my lap.
I bent to kiss him. “What about you? Are you close to your parents? What about siblings? I don’t have any.”
“My dad is dead, my mum lives up north, and I haven’t spoken to my brother in years.”
“Why not?”
“Nothing to say, I suppose. I worked as a football agent for a long time. It took me away from my roots, and reality, too. All that money and excess. It’s poison, I swear.”
“I’ll take your word for it. Money has always been a ball ache for me, mainly because I’ve never had any.”
Isha’s gaze turned shrewd, like it always did when I bitched about my finances. “I’ve been thinking about that.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.”
“Sorry,” Isha said. “Habit. I can’t help wondering, though, if there’s things you do for free that you should be charging for. Tam was looking on Pets R Us the other night—”
I opened my mouth. He held up his hand to shush me.
“Don’t start,” he said. “He was looking at fish photos, not trying to get me to buy something from there. He knows better than that. Anyway, my point is, they charge fifty quid to set up a vivarium for, say, one of those teeny yellow things—”
“Leopard gecko, you arsehole. Don’t pretend you don’t know.”
Isha rolled his eyes. “Regardless. You set vivariums up for free, which costs you in both time and money. Perhaps you could reconsider that.”
“But what if people don’t want to pay and don’t bother with a proper set up at all? Animals die in the wrong habitat.”
“Well, that’s where you’d have to work on your sales patter. I’m not suggesting you charge fifty quid for something you’ve previously done for free, but maybe undercut the chain stores? Say, like, twenty-five? Your customers are getting a bargain, and you still get paid for your time.”
I scowled. “Please tell me you haven’t been sitting up at night thinking about this?”
“I haven’t. It occurred to me the other day when I was thinking about you and Tam happened to be nearby with his iPad. And I know it’s none of my business, so…”