Kitty French - Knight and Day

Was it normal for babies to turn purple when they were mad? He’d finally quieted when Dylan wrapped him in the biggest towel he could find and held him against his shoulder while he tried to mix formula from the instructions on the side of the tin. He’d taken him up on deck and settled into one of the low-slung deck-chairs to feed him as the sun came up over the horizon, heralding the start of a brand new day.

His first day as a father, and his first day without Kara. He closed his eyes a few seconds after his son did, equally exhausted and infinitely more terrified.

Lucien stalked across the beach at Vadella, still deserted aside from a couple of early dog walkers and a yoga class in session on the sand outside a cafe. He jogged past the impressive boats moored in the bay, all the way to the smallest boat moored at the very end. Although he knew where Dylan was staying, he hadn’t visited. And like most visitors, he’d never seen anything like it before. Lucien lifted his sunglasses to peer more closely at the Love Tug as he drew level, then dropped them again hastily, assaulted by the carnival of clashing colours that hit his eyeballs. Trying to put aside his newly formed personal opinion on Dylan’s choice of abode, he stepped on board and peered inside through the open sliding door. A can of formula milk sat on the counter, and the kitchen looked and smelled as if a bomb of baby powder had been detonated in there. The presence of a pushchair in the small space confirmed it. There was a baby on board.

“I’m up here.”

Dylan’s voice came from the roof deck, low and resigned.

Lucien backed out of the junked kitchen and stepped up onto the roof deck. He surveyed the scene in silence. Dylan’s tired, haggard face, and the tiny infant swaddled in a towel in his arms.

“Seems the rumours are true then,” he said eventually. “Should I say congratulations? Offer you a cigar?” He enjoyed the flare of anguish that his words ignited in Dylan’s exhausted eyes. “Where’s your wife? Still in bed after your fucking reunion?”

“Ex-wife,” Dylan said, monotone. “We aren’t married any more.” He looked up at Lucien, the sun’s glare hurting his eyes. “Sit down, please man.”

“I’ll stand.”

Dylan shook his head, resigned. He couldn’t blame him.

“She’s gone, for what it’s worth. My ex-wife. She came, dumped a kid on me I didn’t know existed, and then she left again with my fuckwit of a brother in tow as her escort.”

Lucien stared at him for a long time, and then dropped into the seat opposite Dylan’s.

“Spectacular fuck up.”

“I know that.”

“I should lay you out cold for what you’ve done to Kara.”

“I wouldn’t hit you back.”

Lucien looked out over the mirror-still water, his mind on the broken girl back at the villa. She was the closest thing he had to a sister.

“That’s the thing about Kara. She’s bold, and people can mistake that for tough.”

“I didn’t mistake it.”

“No. But you went ahead and hurt her anyway, which is worse,” Lucien said. “And the most fucked up thing is that if you’d just had the balls to tell her the whole unvarnished truth, she’d probably have loved you anyway.”

Dylan closed his eyes and sighed wearily as he leaned his head back against the wooden back of the chair, but Lucien knew that every word was going in. He went on, relentless, “She has a heart as big as anyone I know, and you’ve broken it by lying to her.”

Dylan scrubbed his hand over his eyes.

“How is she?” he said, so quietly that Lucien almost missed it.

“Do you really need me to fucking answer that?”

Dylan didn’t. He knew exactly how hurt Kara was, because he’d hurt himself exactly the same. He wanted Lucien to understand that, but the words wouldn’t put themselves together properly in his sleep-deprived mind.

“It seemed so goddamn simple when I came here,” he said. “I just wanted to live an uncomplicated life. Everything back home was fucked up.”

“Trouble has a way of following trouble,” Lucien said.

Dylan huffed. “Doesn’t it just.”

The baby stirred against his bare chest, and he fell silent for a second. “I should never have married Suzie. It was a stupid, drunken mistake that we both regretted the morning after. We didn’t love each other. Hell, a lot of the time we didn’t even like each other.” He looked over at Lucien’s unreadable face. “She threw her lot in with the wrong crowd, skipped town months ago with the guy who took my club in recompense for Justin’s debts.” He paused. “I missed the club for a while.”

Lucien was listening without comment, and Dylan was grateful. Now he’d started talking, he didn’t want to stop till the end. He wanted it all out, now.

“So when I got off the plane here and someone asked me my name, I lied.” He shook his head. “Dylan fucking Day. You have no idea how much easier it was to sleep at night.” The baby wriggled again, and laid his small, soft palm flat against Dylan’s chest, his fingers so tiny they were almost translucent. “And however crazy and fucked up it sounds, in here,” Dylan touched his fingers against his heart, “In here, I feel like Dylan Day. I didn’t lie to hide the truth. I lied because I couldn’t stand to be Matthew McKenzie any longer. The world I grew up in wasn’t like this, Lucien.”

Lucien knew more than Dylan could possibly realise about inventing a different life for yourself because the one you have sucks.

“I don’t expect you to understand, and I’m not asking for your sympathy.” Dylan went on. “If I could wind the clock back and change things I would, but life doesn’t work like that, does it?” He levered himself up to sit straighter as the baby opened his eyes. Both men looked down at the child as he roused. “And then there’s him. A boy with a fraud for a father and a mother who doesn’t want him.”

Lucien frowned. “She’s left him with you for good?”

Dylan nodded. “ And I don’t have the first fucking clue what to do with a baby.” He moved the child awkwardly in his arms and the towel fell open. On cue, an arc of pee spouted all over Dylan’s knee, and both men looked on, aghast.

“Jesus, man. He needs a nappy.”

“I tried, they kept falling off,” Dylan said, exasperated. He mopped his leg with the corner of the towel as the baby fastened his gums around the bent thumb of his other hand. “Jesus. No one told me babies bite,” he said, trying to extricate his hand gently.

“I think he’s trying to tell you that he’s hungry,” Lucien said, and sighed with resignation. “Where are the nappies?”

Half an hour and a master class in the art of nappy changing later, Lucien picked up the baby boy and sat him on his knee, cradling his head in the way only a practised father can. He contemplated the tiny child for a moment and then looked up at Dylan.

“He has ridiculous hair.”

Dylan smiled for the first time since the moment he’d laid eyes on Justin last night. A half smile, a tired smile, but a smile, of sorts. “I kinda like it.”

Lucien nodded, digesting the implications of the comment. “I take it you’re planning to keep him?”

Dylan nodded. There was no question in his mind. From the moment that the baby had opened his eyes and looked at him last night, he’d known what he had to do.

“He’s my son. My responsibility.”

“And you’re going to live where? Here? On this boat with a baby?”

“Lucien, I don’t have a fucking clue what happens next. I didn’t know he existed this time yesterday. I’m not even sure how to keep him alive, but one way or another, yes. He stays with me.”

Lucien had to respect the conviction with which Dylan had accepted the parental responsibilities so unpromisingly foisted on him.

He scrubbed his hand over his chin, at war with himself, because the truth was that sitting there listening to Dylan, he almost understood.

He couldn’t condone the fact that he’d lied, but he could understand how one lie had led to the next, and that none of those lies had been borne of maliciousness or an underhand attempt to deceive.

But then he thought of Kara, hollow-eyed and heartbroken, and he wanted to grab Dylan around the throat out of pure frustration.

“And what about Kara?” he said.

“Kara.” Dylan said her name with the quiet reverence of a priest, then closed his eyes and sighed raggedly. Lucien looked away, settling the baby in the crook of his arm to give Dylan a few seconds to get himself back together.

“I’ve never met anyone like Kara before,” Dylan said. “She is good, and clean, and pure, and all of the things I’m not. She was falling for Dylan Day, and she made me want to be him forever. I still do. I can’t go back to life as Matthew McKenzie.” He looked down at the baby. “Especially not now.”

Lucien didn’t envy Dylan his new life as a single father. It seemed unfathomable that they were even having this discussion, when just yesterday they’d all laughed and toasted their idyllic Ibizan summer.

“Tell her I’m sorry?”

“You know I can’t do that.”

Dylan nodded. “These past few months have been the best of my life.”

Lucien looked down at Dylan’s son. “That’s good. Because these next few will be amongst the hardest.”

Lucien found Sophie sitting alone at the dining table when he returned to the villa a little while later. She looked up immediately as he came in the door, her face a study of concern as he dropped into the seat opposite her.

“Did you see him?”

He glanced over his shoulder. “Where’s Kara?”

Sophie shook her head miserably. “She’s gone.”

“Gone? Gone where?”

“Home. Back to England. She threw her things into a bag just after you left. I couldn’t persuade her to stay. I couldn’t even get her to let me take her to the airport."

Lucien pushed his hands through his hair. He’d been gone a few hours. Numerous flights left the airport every day bound for the UK: there was every chance that Kara was already airborne.

“What an absolute fucking mess.”

“She couldn’t stand the idea of running into Dylan again. She was desperate.” Tears filled Sophie’s eyes. “I’m so worried about her Lucien. She went through so much with Richard, I really thought Dylan was…” her words tailed off as a tear dripped from her cheek into the mug of cold coffee cradled in her hands.

“I know, Princess,” Lucien said. “I know.”

“So did you see him?” she asked again, and this time Lucien nodded.

“Yes. I saw him.”

Sophie’s head snapped up, her eyes blazing.

“What did he have to say for himself?”

“It’s complicated, Soph,” Lucien said softly after a couple of seconds, making her frown.

“Please don’t tell me you’re about to defend him,” she said quietly.

Lucien sighed. “I’m not defending him. It’s just not as cut and dried as you think.”

She stared at him blankly. “If he has a wife and child, then it’s pretty cut and dried from where I’m standing.”

“She’s his ex-wife. They are divorced.”

“But she still turned up here, and he has a child with her. Was she there?”

Lucien shook his head. “No. She’s gone.”

Sophie looked at him steadily, waiting for more.

“She’s gone, Sophie. She dumped a three week old kid on Dylan and then shot through back to the rock she crawled from under.”

It was too ridiculous an idea for Sophie to process. “She left a three week old baby? For how long?”

Lucien nodded. “Forever. He’s all kinds of screwed.”

Sophie took the news in.

“Do you expect me to feel sorry for him?” she asked after a moment. “Because I don’t. For the baby maybe, but not for him.”

“I get that.”

Sophie shook her head, not convinced Lucien did get it. He’d left the house furious and returned almost ready to fight Dylan’s corner. Dylan, or Matthew, or whoever he was, was clearly a very accomplished liar, because Lucien didn’t suffer fools gladly.

Still she couldn’t find it within herself to be mad at Lucien for wavering. She’d watched him grow close to Dylan over the months, and it had warmed her to see those bonds of friendship.

Over their years together she’d watched him learn to open his heart, first of all to her, and then to Tilly, and over time he’d encompassed Kara in his circle of trust. Dylan had brought something new and unfamiliar to his life, a sense of brotherhood and friendship that he’d never before known as a grown man. It wounded her to think he was going to lose that, and it wounded her to think that Dylan wasn’t the man she’d honestly believed him to be.