The Greatest Mind I Ever Knew

Chapter 30: Very Very Good And Clever Special

Until the day before our wedding Lotan continued to cope without a piano at home each night, instead filling his time with the ideas I'd stuck around our new house and helping me with Joshua. Sometimes this distraction method meant he was vacuuming at three in the morning, or cooking breakfast before the sunrise: sometimes he left our bed so quietly I didn't even notice he'd gone!
               With the privacy and size of our new mansion near the woods, North-West of the city of London, being separated from my fiancé at night even for an hour or two became easy. If Lotan needed to go and fight his demons, there were twenty other rooms he could do it in and I wouldn't hear a sound. It became easy for me to forget he had demons at all, some nights. It became easy for me to believe things were getting better.
               And whether I woke up beside my gorgeous fiancé or not, the sun rose each morning over our beautiful house, in which Lotan, Joshua and I had begun a happy new life. We had breakfast together in the kitchen every morning, and dinner together in the dining room each evening, complete with candles and flowers on the table which Lotan brought home with him after work. He and I spent our evenings giggling in the bathtub together, or lounging together on the sofa watching ballet on the TV, before snuggling up in bed until I fell asleep and Lotan edged out from my embrace to go and do whatever it was he did all night long.
               Every morning at 6am Mum waited for him at the bottom of the track to our house, just outside the gates, warming up in her running gear. Lotan went out to meet her in his tracksuit bottoms and whichever t-shirt I hadn't stolen from him, and the two of them ran into town and back, always returning rosy cheeked and completely puffed out. Then they kissed, parted, and Lotan returned to the house to shower before breakfast and another 9-5 day at work. If he was performing in the evening I'd save our dinner until he got home so we could eat together: those romantic evenings always started with a glass of wine and ended with moans and groans upon our bed. I adored those evenings.
               We'd fallen into a routine, and I loved it. While Lotan was working I spent my time with our baby, videoing every adorable thing he did and sketching him from every possible angle. Part of me craved to return to ballet: to feel the vitality of exercise, and the thrill of performing: but another part of me was incredibly thankful for this time I could spend with Joshua, adjusting us both to our new home. Each day I could wake up stress-free and excited about life, not having to worry about the bills or mortgage or the cost of groceries, or whether Lotan would take care of us well. He always did. That loyal man always came home on time with a smile on his face and his heart on his sleeve.
               While Joshua napped in the afternoons I unpacked more of the house, and on Lotan's days off he took us shopping, so we could buy more things to fill the large rooms up with: flower stands, wooden furniture, ornaments, lights, mirrors and so on. We hadn't considered that when you move to a very large house from a very small one, you won't have enough stuff to fill every room! But the artist in me enjoyed the challenge of decorating a mansion-shaped canvas, and Lotan offered me no end of money to spend on making this my dream house.
               And thankfully, before the end of May, the move was finished. Dad and Leonardo had helped Lotan with the heavy work, while I focused on making the large, brick palace more homely. My hanging, painted canvases softened the stone of the walls, I added sconces along the passageways, plants on every corner, strings of lights around photo frames on the walls, velvet curtains and plush Persian rugs. But my real pride and joy was Joshua's nursery, which was everything a little boy's bedroom should be: it had blue walls which Dad painted clouds onto, like he had for my childhood bedroom. Joshua's cot lay in the centre, surrounded by baskets filled with soft animals. Against the back wall lived his toy chest, a small bookshelf, and a chest of drawers for all his tiny little clothes. There was a big window in the adjacent wall, over which I hung thick blue curtains and on its sill, I put some framed family photos. Then there was Joshua's night light, casting colour changing silhouettes of Disney characters around his room and playing quiet music. Oh, and of course, Mum's sinky, back-breaking rocking chair. That old chair would outlive us all!
               Joshua's room was the most colourful, while I kept the rest of the house cosier than a log-cabin under a starry night sky, with oak furniture and exposed brick everywhere I could find it, and tall, slightly wonky bookshelves. Oh, and of course, blankets. Lots and lots of blankets, cushions, throws, quilts, you name it, everywhere!
               Lotan's favourite room became the library, while mine became the art studio. It was a largely empty room; besides setting up an easel and some shelves, there wasn't much to decorate the white space with. But the windows gave me a beautiful view of the woodland beyond our garden, and the lighting was bright: I felt totally free to create there.
               Lotan had helped me bring all my blank canvases and pots of paint up to the room happily, but I could tell he was envious. After all, I had this room and the ballet studio to enjoy, but what did he have? No piano, no music studio, no creative license in this house at all! He had no man cave. No hideaway. It made me feel achingly guilty, constantly, but how could I let Lotan have another piano in our home when it would put at risk the happiness we'd finally rediscovered?