Because there was really nothing else to say.
Chapter Twenty-One
Lily
Lily had to admit, Nate was right per usual, it did work.
In a way, if you didn’t count Fazire and a variety of other things.
Okay, perhaps a great many other things.
Okay, perhaps it seemed only to be working for Nate and Tash. And Tash was the most important so Lily tried not to worry about it too much.
Although she did worry, just not too much instead of worrying about it twenty-four hours a day, she only worried about it during waking hours which she thought consisted of “not too much”.
After Fazire heard the news that Lily and Nate were getting married and Nate was moving in, there had been a genie explosion that had to rock the Genie Richter Scale at about two hundred and eleven.
“Have you forgotten these last eight years, Lily-child?” Fazire stormed after fifteen minutes of bluster and shouting. He was floating so close to the ceiling he had to tilt his head to the side to accommodate his altitude. All of this was done while Nate was taking Tash out for a treat from The Witches Dozen in order to give Lily time to break the news privately.
“Why does everyone keep going on about the last eight years? I wasn’t alone, I had you and Maxie. We didn’t starve or live out of a cardboard box, for goodness sake!” she exclaimed.
“That is easy for you to say. You didn’t watch you slowly fade away, day in, day out, year after year,” Fazire returned, his dark eyes narrowing angrily.
“What’s that supposed to mean? I took care of Tash and you well enough!” Lily’s own temper was coming to the surface.
Fazire didn’t respond, just floated towards his bottle. “Just mark my words, if it happens to you again, Fazire will not be here to pick up the pieces.”
Shocked and angry, Lily breathed, “Fazire, I can’t believe you just said that.”
Lily was stunned and she truly disliked it when he referred to himself in the third person. Not that he could go anywhere until she had her final wish but the fact that he threatened to go somewhere was shocking, to say the least.
He turned his head away from her in a magnificent genie pout and his body began to vaporise but the words hung in the air.
“I’ve some channelling to do. The other genies are just not going to believe this!”
For the next week Fazire held resolutely to his pout even though it was like Nate wasn’t even there. Nate got up at an ungodly hour every morning, woke Lily (only partially) with a kiss, and went to London. He came home at an ungodly hour every evening, kissed the sleeping Tash (who didn’t wake for anything) and turned the sleeping Lily into his arms.
Lily didn’t know how he could do it, he was running himself ragged.
But he did it, day after day (after day).
Although Nate wasn’t there, all that was Nate definitely was.
Workmen arrived the day after he moved in with the edict to finish the house to Nate’s plans and Lily’s decorating specifications. There wasn’t just one of them or even two but a dozen workmen milling around the house which, according to Fazire, was another black mark against Nate’s name in Fazire’s Book as Fazire rarely left the house and didn’t like company very much.
And then there were the interior designers, three of them, showing her paint chips, fabric swatches, handing her catalogues of a dizzying array of bathroom fittings, furniture, wall coverings and the like. Amongst these she was to choose, to coordinate, to give them her “vision”.
Nate also ordered every item in the house that had a plug and was more than a year old, which was all of them, to be replaced by state-of-the-art, top-of-the line items. He also decreed that any piece of worn out or cheap-appearing (and thus likely to wear out) item in the house, which was most of it, be replaced.
The designers drifted through the house pointing at this sofa. “That has to go.”
And at that bookshelf. “That has to go.”
And the other chair. “That should never have been created in the first place.”
It was part hilarious, part humiliating and part annoying, mostly the last part.
Lily called Nate’s office in London.
“It’s too much too soon,” she told him while watching her living room furniture being carted out the door.
“It’s too little too late,” Nate retorted firmly.
Quite clearly they were in a stalemate. And even more clearly, they were not going to discuss it because they didn’t have time to discuss anything and probably wouldn’t discuss anything even if they had time.
Lily had transferred her financial burdens firmly onto his very strong shoulders mainly because he’d demanded she do it. Seven million pounds in the bank or no, all the bills were immediately switched to be debited from his accounts.
This, for some bizarre reason, he’d commanded she do the very first morning he awoke beside Lily in their new bed. As it was an ungodly hour and she’d been half asleep at the time, she didn’t put up much of a fight and simply told him sleepily where she kept her household files.
“I do not like this,” Fazire said, standing outside the door of a room on the top floor. It used to be a room that held junk. Now three workmen were diligently making it into the bathroom part of a master suite for Lily and Nate that was to make up most of the top floor.
Lily tried cajoling. “When this is done, you’ll only have to share the bathroom with Tash.”
Fazire turned cold eyes to her, unimpressed.
Lily kept trying. “You can have my bedroom when we move out, it’s lovely in there now.”
Fazire’s eyes turned to stone at this reminder of Nate’s grandiosity.
“Fazire, I’m doing this for Tash,” she finally whispered.
His eyes flickered for a moment and then he whispered right back, “I know you, Lily-child. You’ll lose your heart.”
“No I won’t, I promise Fazire. I know exactly what there is to lose and I’m not going through it again,” she replied fervently, so fervently she half-believed it herself but the other half wasn’t so sure anymore.
In just days Nate was demonstrating, in every way, he was intent on taking care of them and exhausting himself and (likely) bankrupting himself in order to do it.
Fazire watched her closely for a moment, nodded, although it was clear to see he was not convinced, likely seeing the stronger other half, and then he floated down the stairs even though she’d asked him not to do any of his genie antics in front of the workmen. Fazire really didn’t like stairs, going up or going down. Luckily the workmen were too busy to notice.
The next week, Nate’s temporary office in Bristol was ready for him and life changed again in the seafront terraced house.
Nate was a force of nature not living in the house. He filled it with his quiet dynamic when he actually spent time there.
Fazire’s genie pout switched immediately to open hostility. If he’d been allowed to do magic, there would have been hell to pay. Instead, he burnt Nate’s toast all week even though Tash’s and Lily’s was perfection, accidentally misplaced Nate’s car keys twice and kept moving Nate’s mobile phone to various deep regions in the house.
This last backfired as Nate would ring his phone with Lily’s mobile and Tash would run around the house trying to find it just like it was a game. Fazire would watch this with an expression that clearly said, “Foiled”.