two boxes today: a large pile of ancient finger paintings and children’s drawings—all labelled ‘Hugh’ with a date in the mid-nineteen-eighties—and all of his school reports, from preschool through to Year Thirteen.
But it was some photos that she picked up now, in a messy pile she’d attempted to make neat. But that had been impossible with the collection of different-sized photos: some round-edged, others standard photo-sized, some cut out small and weathered, as if they’d been kept in someone’s purse.
‘These are from your first days of school,’ she said.
Hugh didn’t even look at them. He shrugged. ‘I don’t care.’
But he wasn’t meeting her gaze, he was just looking—April thought—determinedly uninterested.
‘I don’t believe you.’
That got his attention.
‘I beg your pardon?’ he said, sounding as British as April had ever heard him.
‘I don’t believe you don’t care,’ she said, slowly and clearly. As if there was any chance he’d misunderstand.
His gaze was locked on hers now. ‘I don’t see how that matters.’
April fanned the photos out as if they were a deck of cards. ‘Look,’ she said, giving them a shake. ‘These are photos of you in your school uniform. For each year there’s a photo by yourself, with your school bag. And another with your mum. These are special.’
‘They’re not,’ he said. He nodded at the box. ‘Please put them back.’
April shook her head. ‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No,’ she said firmly, her gaze remaining steady.
It would seem she’d thrown her professionalism out of the window.
She’d get extra shifts at the supermarket if he fired her and the temp agency blacklisted her. Or clean toilets. Whatever. She just couldn’t pretend that she agreed with this.
‘You’re making a mistake.’
His eyes narrowed. His voice was rough. ‘You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.’ He turned away from her and continued down the hallway. ‘I’ll just throw them out tomorrow.’
‘Do you hate her?’ April blurted out the words to his rapidly retreating back.
Faster than she’d thought possible he was back in front of her. Right in front of her. He’d dropped the box at some point and there was now no barrier between them.
His presence crowded her, but she didn’t take a step back.
‘No!’ he said. Not loudly, but with bite. Then he blinked, and belatedly added, ‘That is none of your business.’
His words were calm now, but—again—deliberately so.
‘I know,’ she said, because of course it was true. But she just couldn’t stop. ‘You know, I don’t have any photos of myself with my mum like this,’ she said conversationally. ‘I know that because my sisters went through all Mum’s old photos when I had my thirtieth birthday party, for one of those photo-board things.’ She swallowed, ignoring Hugh’s glower. ‘I have a couple from my first day of school in Year One, but that’s about it. And I have hardly any photos of myself as a kid with my mum. It was different twenty-five years ago—people didn’t take as many photos. And it was usually Mum who took the photos anyway, rather than being in them.’
Hugh didn’t say anything.
‘I’d love photos of me like this with my mum. In fact I have more photos of me as a kid with my dad—again, because Mum was the photographer. And I don’t even like him. But I love my mum.’ She knew she was rambling, but didn’t stop. ‘So it’s all backwards, really.’
‘You don’t like your dad?’ Hugh asked.
April blinked. ‘No. He left when I was five. I hardly saw him, growing up, and I have nothing to do with him now.’
Hugh nodded. ‘My father did something similar,’ he said. ‘I never saw him again.’
He didn’t elaborate further.
‘That sucks,’ she said.
His lips quirked. ‘Yeah.’
‘But your mum obviously loved you?’
She could see his jaw tense—but then relax. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She did.’
‘That’s why she took all these photos.’
The tension was instantly back. ‘The number of photos my mother took—and, trust me, within this house there are thousands—is not a reflection of how much she loved me, April. I’d still know she loved me if she hadn’t taken even one. They’re just things.’
April shook her head vigorously. ‘No. They’re not. They’re memories. They’re irreplaceable. What if you ever have kids? Won’t you want to—?’
‘I’m never having kids. And that is definitely none of your business.’
She didn’t understand. She didn’t understand any of this.
But he’d turned, retrieved the box from the floor. He faced her again, gesturing with the box for April to dump the photos inside.
But she couldn’t. She could not.
‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked, still holding the photos tight.
For the first time the steady, unreadable gaze he’d trained on her began to slip. In his gaze—just briefly—there flashed emotion. Flashed pain.
‘I don’t have to explain anything to you, Ms Spencer. All I want is for you to empty this house. That’s it. Empty the house. I don’t require any commentary or concern or—’
‘You want an empty house?’ April interrupted, grasping forcefully on to a faint possibility.
He sighed with exasperation. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Well, then,’ she said, with a smile she could tell surprised him. ‘I can work with that.’
‘Work with what?’ His expression was wary.
‘Getting this stuff out of your mother’s house.’ A pause. ‘Just not into a skip.’
‘A storage unit solves nothing. This isn’t about relocating the hoard. I want it gone.’
Again she smiled, still disbelieving, and now she was certain she was right. ‘You’re the CEO of an international software company, right?’ she said.
His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t respond.
‘So why didn’t you think to just scan all this? You could even put it all in the cloud, so you don’t even have a physical hard drive or anything left behind. It would be all gone, the house would be empty, and...’
And you won’t do something you’ll regret for the rest of your life.
But she didn’t say that. Instinctively she knew she couldn’t. She couldn’t give him something to argue with—that he could refute with, You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.
Which would be true. Or should be true. But it wasn’t. And, no matter how weird that was, and how little she knew about this man, she was certain she was right.
When she looked at Hugh Bennell—or at least when he really looked at her, and didn’t obscure himself behind that indecipherable gaze—she saw so much emotion. So much...more. More than she’d see if he didn’t care.
She was sure there were people out there who truly didn’t care about photos and old school report cards and badly drawn houses with the sun a quarter crescent in the corner.
But