‘I could tell you weren’t exactly looking forward to it,’ I say. The camomile flowerheads in the glass teapot slip and slide into the silver strainer as I top up my cup.
He admits he wasn’t thinking straight. It has all been getting on top of him, he confesses. Cutbacks. The fear of where the next job will come from. The broken nights. Sometimes the prospect of stepping out of the rut is exhausting. ‘But you were absolutely right to arrange this,’ he says, ‘We need to shake it up a bit from time to time. Sod the expense.’ He manages not to wince at the bill.
We make lots of plans on the way home, giggling and leaning into each other as the tube rattles north, but the conversation evaporates as we step onto the platform and start the long ascent to the surface, the escalators grinding away beneath us.
By the time we’re at the end of our street, we’re almost sober, hauled back into the orbit of our usual preoccupations. My new shoes are starting to hurt, pinching a little at the heel. I look down at the red suede flaring as the street lamps come and go. Cats flee from a bin as we pass. Ben takes my hand. ‘Thanks for organising this,’ he says.
‘Don’t thank me, thank Nina,’ I say.
We let ourselves in and I hurry into the sitting room, not taking off my coat, keen to release her as soon as possible, so she knows we haven’t taken advantage. She rises from the sofa, a smile on her face, sliding her smartphone into a pocket. ‘Did you have fun?’ she asks. There’s a mug on the floor by her feet. She bends to retrieve it. ‘Let me,’ I say.
‘Oh, really, I . . .’
I take it from her and stand there, slightly dizzy. The wine. Or maybe I’m just tired. The room looks a little neater than when we left it. Oh God, she’s tidied it up for us. Toys in the box, crayons in the Golden Syrup tin, a sharp-edged pile of old newspapers and magazines on the coffee table.
‘Any problems? Did it all go OK?’ I ask.
‘Absolutely fine! Not a squeak out of her, she must have read the manual, and Christopher went off like a lamb after a few stories . . . well, three or four, plus some poems. I couldn’t resist A. A. Milne.’
I carry the mug through to the kitchen, noticing that she has cleared the surfaces, put a few things back into the cupboards. The plates and cups that I’d left in the sink have been washed and left to drain on the side.
I remove my coat and hang it up in the hall, and then I kick off my shoes. Ben’s coming down from checking on the children, suggesting wine or (silly voice) a wee dram, but Nina refuses, zipping up her boots, winding her thin dove-grey scarf around her throat.
‘We can’t thank you enough,’ I say. ‘Can we offer you—’
She frowns, reprovingly, and laughs. ‘Of course not! It was my pleasure. No, just give poor old Sophie another shot when you want another evening out. She was so sorry to let you down.’
‘How is she?’ I ask, and Nina says that when she rang earlier, Sophie was heating up some chicken soup and looking forward to an early night.
No, Nina didn’t have the M&S curry I’d defrosted: just a pear and a bit of cheese and a herbal tea. Honestly, it was no trouble, she was glad to help. Ben brings her coat, holds it out for her. She slides her arms into the sleeves, turns to smile up at him, pulls her thick dark hair free from the collar in one smooth gesture. Then she lifts a finger, points to a framed photograph on the bookshelf. ‘Let me guess: your parents, Emma? I’ve been looking at it all evening. Such a strong resemblance! Christopher looks so like your father.’
I pick up the picture, angling it so the reflection slides off their faces. The pair of them at my grandparents’ house one long-ago summer day: my father with a bit of a sandy summer beard, my mother in a smock with big buggy sunglasses pushed up on top of her head. The picture fades a little every year; at some point, I suppose, nothing will be left of it.
‘Really?’ I say, peering closer, and though of course I’ve occasionally seen my father in Christopher – mysterious flashes of familiarity during jokes or grumps – I never expected this from anyone else.
She says yes, absolutely. ‘Don’t you think?’ she asks Ben, who has poured himself a little whisky and thrown himself down in the stained armchair, displacing a squeaking bear. ‘You must have noticed it.’ He says he doesn’t really know; he never met them.
I explain that my mother died just after I left university; and that Dad had a heart attack six years ago, a few months before I met Ben.
She looks at me and says the usual things but I can see that she can feel it; she’s able to imagine what that must be like. It means something to her. The room blurs suddenly.
Christ. Bloody booze.
I turn away, replacing the photograph, straightening some junk on the mantelpiece, composing myself. I don’t think she notices. She goes up to the frame, touches it briefly with a fingertip (‘Fantastic sunglasses, aren’t they?’) and moves away, into the hall, and I’m fine then, right as rain.
‘Really, thanks for this,’ I say as she turns on the front step, the cold air flooding in. ‘I don’t know how to thank you. Would you and Charles come to dinner?’
‘Well, you don’t have to,’ she says, darting in for a kiss. ‘But that would be fun.’
When I’ve double-locked the front door and clipped on the security chain, I pick up my red shoes and wrap them in the pink tissue paper, and put them back in the black box, heel to toe. Sliding the box into the hallway cupboard, next to the walking boots and the tubes of tennis balls, I wonder when I’ll wear them next.
‘She’s rather glamorous, your friend,’ says Ben, yawning, his legs over the arm of the chair. There’s a hole in his sock, which I won’t be mending. ‘Her coat was Prada, incidentally. I’m sure I’ve seen her in Caffè Nero first thing. Gassing away about the head of Latin.’
‘God, those pulled-together women,’ I say, catching the yawn off him. ‘Their mani-pedis. Their coffee mornings and their 4x4s. All the time they spend at the facialist. When did beauticians become facialists, anyway?’ I’ve made him laugh, but at some cost: I feel bad, disloyal, ungracious. ‘Actually, you should see her paintings,’ I add. ‘She’s pretty good. You know, she’s not just one of those
wives
.’
‘I’m sure she isn’t,’ he says. The house is getting cold, the evening boost long-gone from the radiators. I look at my watch. Christ, Cecily will be up in five hours. Six, if we’re lucky.
‘I can’t imagine why she’s being so nice to me,’ I say, with a little more honesty. ‘Maybe she’s bored.’
‘Or, maybe she just likes you,’ says Ben, reaching for me. ‘Maybe she just thinks you’re
great
.’
Christopher wakes us at 3 a.m., having wet the bed. And Cecily is up at 6.30. Not a good night. But overall, it was worth it. Given the chance, we’d do it again.
A yellow envelope half-wedged through the letterbox. I open the flap and sequins tumble out – blue, green, gold – and twinkle to the floor. Irritated, I swing over to the wastepaper bin. The card is Christopher’s handiwork. Glue, glitter and potato prints.
She has nice handwriting, the confident loping clarity of the top set. Greek Es and capital As crossed at the bottom to make elegant triangles.
Thanks so much for lunch, what a treat. And if Sophie’s up for a bit of babysitting, tell her to get in touch.
Better if it all goes through me, I think, dropping the card in the recycling box.
‘How much?’ Sophie asks. She and Tasha are in the kitchen, leaning over the iPad, laughing about something on YouTube, raking back their hair with their fingers. Self-grooming, a sort of tic. The volume’s down low, I’ve no idea what they’re watching.
‘I’m not sure, what’s the going rate? You can sort that out with her,’ I say.
She dips her head to the straw, sucks. The pink in the glass goes down an inch, like the temperature dropping. There’s mess strewn all over the counter: banana skins, the hulls of strawberries, puddles of melted vanilla ice-cream. ‘Oh. Fine, tell her I’ll do it,’ she says. To Tasha, she says, ‘My mother’s pimping me out as a babysitter.’
‘You’re so
awesome
with the little ones,’ says Tasha, and they bend towards each other, quivering with the terrific effort of repressing laughter. If I asked what was so funny, they wouldn’t say; they’d just look up at me, suddenly impassive, making their eyes round and cool, and then, when I left the room, I’d hear the stools creak as they pull oh-my-God faces at each other and mouth, Shut
up
!
I drill down and get some dates out of Sophie, and Emma picks one of them, and the whole thing is fixed.
In the studio, I’m trying to start a new painting, but it’s not working. Things aren’t right, haven’t been right for a month or two. I can’t find the right place, I’m lost.
One morning, Michael from the gallery rings to say he has just sold another, the shingle bank picture I wasn’t sure about. ‘Yes, it’s all going well,’ I tell him, and then I put the phone down and go back and stand in front of the canvas, looking at the colour whipped up on my palette, the choppy lines of the knife in the paint.
Stuck.
The more I think about it, the worse it gets. I’m haunted as much by the time I’m wasting as by the lack of inspiration. I’ve been so close to something, and now it feels as if it’s slipping through my fingers, ducking out of sight. I’m reminded of those dreams when I find myself with important news to deliver, entering a grand room full of people, a party or a ball, and no one bothers to look in my direction; and when I open my mouth to shout at them no words come out, just a thin reedy whistle which is easy to ignore. All those turned backs.
At a quarter past one, I lock up and go down the concrete stairwell to the street. At the sandwich bar, Mario nods at my stained fingers as I pass him the money and asks, ‘All right? National Gallery bothering you yet?’
I walk north, passing the school gates, and veer into the Heath, the sudden verdant swell of Parliament Hill a customary surprise up ahead. There’s a free bench by the tennis courts, the one I usually choose, donated in memory of a violinist who liked to sit here. Inside the wire box, a twenty-something coach is putting some trim PTA-types through their paces, patting balls relentlessly over the net, shouting instructions and reprimands. ‘You took your eye off it!’ he calls, and, ‘Follow through!’ Eager for his attention, the women line up at the side of the court, pivoting in their white shoes, practising phantom returns. The new foliage on the trees ripples and shivers, a searing translucent yellow in the sunshine.
When I’ve finished my sandwich, I fold the paper wrapping and hold it in my lap, and I close my eyes, seeing black and red, feeling the hesitant promise of the season on my face. Little by little, we’re inching further into the year. I should take some comfort from this, but today I feel too bleak.
My phone vibrates in my pocket and when I pull it out, I see it’s a message from Emma, checking whether Sophie is still OK for the babysitting.
Absolutely!
I text back, with a confidence I don’t feel. The fantasy daughter I’ve loaned to Emma is looking forward to Friday, eager for the responsibility, full of jokes and rhymes and stories. She cannot wait to hold Christopher on her lap, to draw a finger over his palm while chanting ‘Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear . . .’
My Sophie, the real one, is not so bothered.
When I remind her about the arrangements for Friday she says, ‘Oh, right,’ in a way that makes it clear she had forgotten all about it.
She comes back from school at the end of the week drooping with cold, scattering Kleenex over the stairs (white flowers, or Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs) as she goes up to change out of her uniform. Instead of staying in her room or going out to meet her friends at Costa, she lies on the sofa in sweatpants and bedsocks, watching quizzes and cookery shows, every so often requesting – in a baby voice – hot honey and lemon. She doesn’t ask me to call Emma, she’s too sharp for that. She just lets me know she really shouldn’t be going out like this.
It’s Arnold’s fault for insisting on giving her such a lavish allowance, killing off any financial motivation she might otherwise have had.
For a while, I’m undecided. I think of Emma looking forward to her evening, excited but a little intimidated by all the effort involved in doing things differently, just this once: dressing up, leaving the kids, making conversation. Getting out into the world, seeing that it has all been ticking over happily, not missing her at all.
The thought of pulling the plug, robbing her of all this, is quite appealing.
And yet, and yet. There’s an opportunity here for me. I feel the rightness of it.
Why not? Two birds, one stone.
I mustn’t give her advance warning, or she’ll cry off. So I leave Sophie wrapped in her duvet in front of the telly, and I walk round to Emma’s house. The lights are on in the sitting room, and the curtains are open: from the street, I can see the framed print slightly askew on the rear wall, the dented sofa cushions, the black handles of the buggy, curled like rams’ horns, just edging out of the corridor.
I ring the bell. Ben opens the door. As I’m admitted to the hall, we feint through the carefully humorous business of introduction and explanation:
I’ve left her with plenty of water and paracetamol, right as rain by tomorrow. We couldn’t let you down.
Even after I’ve set him straight, he’s puzzled by me: I’m not what he was led to expect: his wife’s new friend, the person with all the answers, the person who keeps saving the day. Perhaps he was expecting someone heartier-looking.
He, on the other hand, is exactly as I’d anticipated.
I take it all in, quickly.
As we stand there, my eye catches a movement, and I glance over his shoulder and watch our reflections in the cloudy speckled mirror hanging behind him: the gleam and fall of my hair as I twist it behind an ear, the way he stoops towards me, making a self-conscious joke. The small gestures of embarrassment and courtesy and gratitude.
‘Well, it’s very kind of you,’ he’s saying, and I can hear he’s not totally confident about this, but it’s not his place to question it. ‘If you’re sure . . .’