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“Arthur is cerebral. It’s all in there.” Ophelia points at her son’s head. “But doesn’t often make it out here.” She gestures at the space around them.
“Yes. I get that. It’s one of the things I love about him.”
“What else do you love about him?” John asks skeptically, making it sound like a trick question.
Polly moves her hand below the table, onto Arthur’s leg, and fixes John’s gaze squarely with hers. “I love his brain. I love his gentle soul. I love his hands. But mainly, I love how much he loves you two.”
Ophelia tips her head back slightly, then nods. “We’re very close knit.”
“Yes. And I admire that. It’s very much not what I’ve had.”
“What’s your family like?”
Polly blinks slowly. “My mum suffers from long-term chronic pain and depression and spends her whole life on the sofa getting stoned with my brother, who only leaves the house to score more weed. My father is dead. My mother’s family don’t want to know us. We’re kind of a shit family really. Which is why I so appreciate what Arthur’s told me about you all.”
She can see a softening of Ophelia’s features. “Family is everything,” the woman says, with a faint nod.
“I agree.” Polly turns her gaze toward John. He is staring into the middle distance, unengaged. He has that black look in his eyes that Polly sometimes notices in Arthur. A void.
Suddenly the man turns to look at Polly and says, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound skeptical, but what does a girl like you see in a boy like Arthur? Aside from a big brain, a good heart, and nice hands?”
“What more should I want?”
“A girl like you, all”—he flutters his fingers—“all dressed up to the nines, all spruced and polished, your fingernails just so, your hair just so, the way you hold your mouth…”
“The way I—?”
“Like this.” He puckers up his lips. “Like someone is about to take your photo.”
“Dad,” says Arthur.
“No, Arthur,” says Polly. “It’s fine. I can take care of myself. And I think it’s a reasonable question. I can see we maybe make a bit of an odd couple. But actually, we complement each other. We’re both looking for the same things.”
“Like what, exactly?”
“Like a chance to use our skills. Break free.”
“Break free of what?”
She gestures around the scruffy café and out towards the frothy brown sea. “Of this.”
“What’s wrong with this?” Ophelia asks.
She sees a muscle in the corner of John’s mouth twitch, and she knows that he knows exactly what’s wrong with this. He’s trapped here because of what he is, because of what he’s done. There’s no escape for him.
“It’s fine,” she says, appeasingly. “But it’s just not enough. And with my business acumen and Arthur’s brains, we could really get something going. Have you seen the website he made for me?”
She pulls her phone out of her bag and pulls up her website, turns the phone to Ophelia. The product displayed is called Beauty X. It’s not launched yet, but it looks polished and exciting. The webpage has large open spaces where text and photos will go when she’s got a full range of items to put on sale. Up top it says Do you want perfect skin? Well, you’ve come to the right place! and the logo is an X with a kiss mark behind it.
“You know,” she says, “like a kiss, and a kiss.”
Ophelia turns the screen of Polly’s phone to John. He nods neutrally.
“And then there’s this new social media platform called Instagram. It was just launched a couple of years ago. I’ve got an account on there. Only have a few followers at the moment, but once my product is ready to launch, I’ll do most of my marketing from there. And Arthur is going to help me with that too. He’s so good at all those kinds of things.”
She pauses as she takes the phone from Ophelia and slides it back into her handbag. “Just need to perfect the product really. Which is where you come in.”
She leaves the statement there, leaves it hanging between them. John looks at her, then out the window, where the endless ocean gray moves only slightly.
