‘Oh, come on. It’s no fun going out with someone whose poo you have to pick up in a bag.’
‘There are far worse things,’ she says, smirking. ‘I know he’s not the most obedient dog – I mean, I can’t see him trotting off to fetch my Saturday
Guardian
anytime soon – but apart from that, he’s so undemanding and simple and at the moment, that’s just what I need.’
‘Undemanding and simple,’ Harvey muses. ‘So
that’s
what you look for in a man.’
‘Yes, although I don’t mind if he rolls over for a belly tickle now and then. Anyway, listen – I’m starving and I know the cupboards are bare at home. I’d better pick up some supplies.’
Harvey bunches his hands into his jeans pockets. ‘You’re welcome to come back to mine if you like.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she says quickly. ‘Buddy and I were thinking of having a romantic Saturday night in.’
‘Ethan will be there,’ Harvey adds, as if keen to convey that he has no intention of pouncing on her, ‘and there’s a lamb dansak I made last night, always better the next day …’
‘Well, that sounds great,’ she says with a wide smile. ‘I’d love to come if you’re sure that’s okay. Just let me drop Buddy off at home.’
‘You needn’t do that. Just bring him with you.’
‘But I thought you said Ethan was allergic to dogs?’
‘He’ll be fine for a while,’ Harvey says with a grin. ‘Anyway, it’ll pay him back for his little prank with my wig.’
‘Roberto,’ Mary says, ‘I need to talk to you.’
‘Uh-huh?’ He drags his gaze away from a fast-moving Swedish thriller which is impossible to follow without staring intently at the TV screen.
‘Please listen to me,’ Mary says, twisting her hands together.
He looks at her in her armchair with what he hopes passes for rapt attention. ‘I am listening, Mum, but I know what you’re going to say.’
Her brow furrows. ‘
What
am I going to say?’
With a sigh – no chance of figuring out who that guy in the alley was now – he flips the TV to mute and turns to face her.
‘Look, I know it’s been hard for you. I understand that you’re really fond of Kerry, and when all this settles down there’s no reason why you can’t still see her as much as you used to …’
‘It’s not Kerry,’ she says carefully, her neck turning mottled pink. ‘Well, it
is
, and you know how I feel about all that, but you’re a grown man and …’ Mary shrugs sadly. ‘You make your own choices in life.’
Rob nods. ‘Look, I tried everything to sort things out, but she wouldn’t hear of it …’
‘Can you blame her, Roberto? The way I understand it—’
‘Mum,’ Rob cuts in sharply, ‘I can’t go into this now. I’m with Nadine and that’s just the way it is. It’s not ideal but it’s happened, and we’re trying to make it work.’ He blinks at his mother, wishing his dad would bring the children in now; they’re out in Eugene’s shed in the back garden, a treasure trove crammed with model steam engines at various stages of construction, where his father whiles away much of his spare time.
‘I’m doing my best, Mum,’ Rob adds. ‘You’ll like Nadine once you get to know her. She’s just young and she was nervous about meeting you, but she’s a sweet girl really and she means well …’
Mary waggles a foot, allowing a sheepskin slipper to drop onto the ivy-patterned carpet. ‘She’s certainly very attractive.’
‘Mmmm.’ Rob can sense her peering at him as he picks at a fingernail.
‘It all happened very quickly, didn’t it? I had no idea you and Kerry were having difficulties.’
‘Mum,
please
.’ The credits are rolling on TV; final episode too.
‘Does Nadine mind about this … this
thing
you have?’
‘What thing?’
Mary inhales deeply. ‘This thing about being born in the wrong body.’
‘
What?
’ Rob turns and stares at her. What is she on about now? He glances out of the living room window, focusing on the glowing window of Eugene’s shed.
‘I read about it in a magazine, Roberto.’ She lowers her voice and casts a quick glance at the TV, as if the muted model in the insurance ad might be able to hear them.
‘You mean … people who think they’ve been born the wrong sex?’
Mary shudders. ‘Yes, and I know what you’ll go through. It starts with hormones and you change shape and the beard stops growing and then …’ She looks at him, her eyes wet and shiny, the tears threatening to spill over. ‘And then breasts come.’
Rob stares at his mother. Her veiny hands are trembling on her lap as she fiddles with the pleats of her olive-coloured skirt.
‘You don’t think …’ he starts.
She nods, unable to form words for a moment, then blurts out, ‘They have surgery, don’t they? To remove it, I mean. It’s irreversible, Roberto …’
Her cheeks are flushed, fat tears coursing down her cheeks now as Rob lurches off the sofa and across the room to gather his mother up in his arms. ‘Mum, it’s okay, please don’t cry.’
‘But I read …’
‘
What
did you read? One of those real-life stories in some stupid women’s magazine?’
‘No.’ She shakes her head. ‘On your laptop …’
‘God, Mum.’ Rob sweeps his hands over his burning cheeks. ‘That’s a column I do, a pathetic thing my new boss is making me write in the guise of a woman.
Jesu
s …’
She looks up at him, blinking away tears. ‘You mean it’s not really you?’
‘No, of course not,’ he says, squeezing her bony hand. ‘Not the real me anyway. It’s just a stupid made-up persona.’
‘Really?’
He laughs mirthlessly, not hearing his father stepping into the hallway with Mia on one side and Freddie on the other as he declares, ‘Yes,
really
. Listen, Mum, I know you’re concerned about me right now, and I’ve been a pretty awful husband and father. There’s a lot to be worried about – I realise that. But I can promise you that I am perfectly happy being a man.’
Harvey’s curry has been eaten and pronounced delicious. Despite his warning about Ethan’s naan-draping tendencies, he actually placed it very politely at the side of his plate, perhaps due to being in the Presence of a Woman. Kerry has enjoyed herself hugely so far, managing to avoid becoming too drunk due to consuming her bodyweight in carbs. And now Ethan – short, chubby, carroty of hair – is standing before them in the small, book-filled living room, having set up a flipchart on a stand.
‘From my training days,’ he explains, brandishing a fat black felt tip. ‘I’m a failed actor like Harvey, you see.’ Harvey shoots him a mock-exasperated look.
‘What did you train people in?’ Kerry asks from her curled-up position on the sofa.
‘Teambuilding, motivation, making things happen – all that stuff.’
Harvey snorts. ‘Making what sort of things happen, Ethan?’
‘Oh, fuck off. Anyway,’ Ethan continues somewhat tipsily, ‘what I’m saying, Kerry, is that you need to view the situation objectively and list the pros and cons. Then you can make an informed decision.’
‘What the hell is he talking about?’ Harvey whispers to Kerry as she gives him a baffled shrug.
‘So here,’ Ethan says grandly, ‘is Dog.’ In the flipchart’s top left-hand corner, Ethan draws an approximation of a small, droopy-eared hound. ‘And here is Man,’ he continues, sketching a scrawny person, then writing DOG and MAN beneath them, to avoid any confusion. ‘So,’ he addresses Kerry, ‘give me some pros for choosing Dog over Man as your beloved.’
‘Er …’ She tears off a small corner of cold chapatti and chews it. ‘Loyal. Cheery. Always pleased to see me. Cuddly. Sweet. Likes playing. Never moans …’
‘Whoa, enough, hold on a minute …’
‘Never comes home pissed,’ Harvey adds as Ethan scribbles on the board.
‘Doesn’t try to broaden my musical tastes,’ Kerry suggests, recalling Rob’s unintelligible jazz phase when the house jarred with squawking saxophones.
Ethan frowns. ‘Can we just put “good taste in music”?’
Kerry glances at Buddy who has arranged himself, rather forwardly, across Harvey’s lap. ‘
No
musical preferences,’ she suggests. ‘That’s definitely a plus.’
‘Now cons?’ Ethan prompts Kerry.
‘Poos on pavement,’ she replies.
‘Anything else?’
‘Actually, I can’t think of any. Can we move onto Man now?’
‘Okay, Man: pros,’ Ethan says bossily.
‘Er.’ She cannot think of one positive thing.
‘C’mon, Kerry,’ he smirks, ‘there must be
something
the male of the species is good for.’
She shakes her head. ‘Don’t like Man. Man impregnate editorial assistant,’ which has them all convulsing with laughter.
‘Not your ex,’ Ethan says. ‘He sounds like a jerk. I’m talking generic everyman …’
‘He’s bloody lost it,’ Harvey chuckles.
‘Okay,’ Ethan bellows, ‘what can a man give you that a dog can’t?’
She considers this for a moment, feeling slightly sleepy now, full of delicious curry and wine and thinking about the walk home – only fifteen minutes, but still, it’s freezing out there. Anyway, the only pro she can think of to place Man above Dog is sex and right now, she doesn’t really want to go there.
‘Could I be cheeky,’ she says, ‘and ask for a coffee, Ethan?’
‘What, not another proper drink? Come on, it’s still early …’
‘Thanks, but I’d better head home. It’s been lovely, thank you, and you’ve really helped me to think about things …
objectively
.’ She catches Harvey’s eye and smiles as Ethan heads to the kitchen.
‘Come and give me a hand, Harvey,’ he calls back.
‘I’m sure you remember how to operate the kettle,’ Harvey mutters, but extracts himself from beneath Buddy anyway, who flops onto Kerry instead.
She sits there, looking at the flipchart bearing Ethan’s wonky scrawlings. ‘You embarrassed her,’ she hears Harvey murmur, just audible over the low music.
‘No I didn’t.’
‘Jesus, Ethan.’
‘She didn’t say the obvious, though – that a dog can’t take her out to dinner …’ There’s a snigger, and Kerry can’t decide if they don’t care that she might be able to hear, or are just drunk and think they’re whispering.
‘
I’d
take her out,’ Ethan slurs.
‘Oh, shut up.’
‘No, I would! Seriously. She’s fucking gorgeous, Harv. You never said. I’d even put up with her dog – I could always take an antihistamine …’
‘What
are
you on about?’
Ethan snorts. ‘You come back from your lessons making her sound plain and dreary …’ Kerry blinks down at her rice-speckled plate on the coffee table.
‘No I don’t,’ Harvey mutters.
‘Yeah, you do. I was imagining a middle-aged woman with chunky ankles and a lilac twinset stinking of mouldy rose petals …’
‘Shut
up
, for God’s sake.’
‘And she’s not, is she? She’s hot. You never said!’
Kerry stares ahead, deciding to bolt down her coffee as quickly as she can without scalding her mouth. Or maybe she won’t drink it at all. She’ll invent some domestic emergency she must rush home for and attend to at once. An iron left on, or the horrible feeling that she left something in the oven … While the evening has been fun, she now feels faintly ridiculous for coming back to the home of one man she barely knows, the other a complete stranger, just because she didn’t want to sit in an empty house on a Saturday night.
The sound of the boiling kettle has drowned out the two men’s voices. Then it clicks off, and the whole flat seems to fall deadly silent as Ethan says, ‘You know what, Harv? I’d love to meet a woman just like Kerry. But
younger
.’
It was just an offhand remark. Kerry doesn’t care if Ethan regards her as a well-preserved geriatric, the kind of woman you’d describe as ‘good for her age’ or – horrors – ‘young at heart’ (which, let’s face it, means
old
). Yet, infuriatingly, his words are still playing over and over in her mind the next day, like the way she sometimes finds herself humming a
Cuckoo Clock
song in the checkout queue.
Just like Kerry … but younger
. Bloody fantastic. Okay, she’s four or five years older than Ethan and Harvey, but is it really that obvious? Glancing into the tiny flower-shaped mirror stuck to the fridge, all she sees are under-eye shadows and a blur of crow’s feet. Shit. It’s one of the downsides of being distinctly un-vain, she realises. When you can go for days barely glancing into a mirror, merely giving your hair a quick brush and stuffing it into a ponytail, it comes as an almighty shock when you actually take the time to have a proper look. Maybe she should build up to it gradually, allowing herself just a casual glance before the full-on examination in what appears to be a
magnifying
mirror, she realises now. Ugh. So it’s almost a
relief when Rob’s car pulls up outside. At least, now the children are home, she won’t have time to ponder such a stupid, meaningless comment.
‘Hey,’ she says, trying to gather Freddie and Mia in for a hug as they charge into the house. ‘Have a good time?’
‘Yeah,’ Mia replies distractedly, having pushed past her in order to bestow Buddy with cuddles and kisses.
‘Nonno made us this, Mummy.’ Freddie holds up a beautiful gleaming green and gold steam engine.
‘Wow, that’s amazing! Isn’t he clever? You’ll have to take it in to school after the holidays.’ She glances at Mia, detecting a distinct lack of festive spirit. ‘You okay, sweetheart? Have you enjoyed yourself this weekend?’
‘Um … it was
okay
.’
Kerry frowns at Rob. ‘What’s wrong?’ she mouths as Freddie dumps his model on the table.
‘Can we play with Buddy in the garden?’ Mia asks.
‘Yes, sweetheart, as long as the gate’s shut… .’ As children and dog tumble back outside, Kerry fixes Rob with a quizzical stare. ‘So what’s up?’