After the End(104)
“It’s like an episode of Robot Wars, isn’t it?” I say, as we rescue them. “You half expect them to spontaneously combust.” We lift the children over the low picket fence that encloses the baby zone, and I’m settling Grace for a feed when Priya arrives with Aeesha, her shock of black shiny hair already long enough for two pink hair bobbles on top of her head.
“Sorry I’m late.” Priya looks around. “No Charlotte?”
“She’s gone back to work,” I remind her.
We move up and Priya squeezes onto the sofa. “Ugh. It’s like the summer holidays are ending and now term’s starting.”
“Not for me,” Kat says. “I’m going to be broke but happy, staying home, getting fat and making cakes and babies.” She grins, and looks at me. “Has work approved your hours yet?”
“Yes, I can go back part-time next month. But that only works if Max can convince his boss to give him some flexibility.” Grace pulls away from me, too distracted by the noise and colour around her to feed properly. I rearrange my T-shirt and root in my bag for a bread stick for her. “I can do one five-day trip each fortnight, but only if Max can guarantee to work from the UK office on those days, so he can do the daycare runs.”
“And his boss won’t let him?”
“It’s a work in progress. Chester’s not big on family.” I stand up. “Right, I need coffee—anyone else?”
I’m standing in the queue at the café, when a familiar voice calls my name.
“I thought it was you!”
I turn round to see Alison, a sticky-fingered toddler on her hip, and a broad smile on her face.
“You look amazing. Gosh, how long’s it been?”
Since you stopped including me in invitations? “Must be three years,” I say lightly.
“Must be.” She pulls a face. “Isn’t that terrible? Isaac and Toby are in year two now, can you believe that?”
Can she really be that crass? That insensitive? Doesn’t she think I know full well what year her children are in at school, what year Dylan would have been in? Doesn’t she imagine how it feels, each September, to see the barrage of photos on Facebook of uniformed children clutching oversized book bags?
“A little bird told me you’d had a baby. A boy, wasn’t it?”
“A girl. Grace.” No doubt the same little bird told her that Max and I have split up.
“Lovely name. This is Mabel.” Alison presents the sticky-fingered toddler to me, and I notice the stickiness extends to her face. Mabel was clearly mid–jam sandwich when Alison spotted me. “Say hello, Mabel.” Mabel buries her face in her mother’s chest, and I take comfort from knowing that Alison’s light grey angora cardigan is now smeared with raspberry jam. I move forward in the queue.
“She’s a bit shy. Fiona’s over there—she’s had another little girl, too. Why don’t you join us? It would be lovely to catch up. So lovely to see you looking so well, after all that awful business.”
All that awful business. All that time in hospital. All that devastating news, the terminal diagnosis, the decision no parent should ever have to make. All that media intrusion, all that time in court. All that awful business of your son dying . . .
I take a long hard look at Alison, who has discovered the jam on her cardigan, and is trying in vain to wipe it off with a tissue. “I don’t think so, thank you. I’m here with some friends.” I reach the front of the queue and turn my back on Alison. “Two flat whites and a tea, please.”
* * *
What a bitch.” Lars is sitting on the floor of my sitting room with Grace, stacking plastic blocks on top of one another. Each time he completes the tower Grace pushes them over and laughs hysterically, and Lars rebuilds it. Again and again and again.
“She always was, I think, I just hadn’t noticed it.” Or perhaps, I think guiltily, Alison’s bitchiness simply hadn’t ever been directed at me. I look at the clock. I need to get Grace into the bath.
“I’m not working tomorrow.” Lars continues stacking blocks, with a focus that far outweighs the task at hand. He leaves a silence I think I’m supposed to fill.
“So . . .”
Grace swipes obediently at the finished tower, and Lars holds his hands over his face in mock dismay. My daughter laughs and laughs, and Lars smiles at her as he carries on speaking to me. “I could stay. After dinner. I could stay the night. You know, if . . .” He stacks the blocks, his eyes resolutely on the brightly coloured plastic.
We are, it seems, in a relationship, of sorts. It is not a conventional relationship—it certainly did not have a conventional beginning, but then, for the past four years, little about my life has been conventional.
“I’d like to take you for dinner,” Lars said, when Grace was six weeks old. “But because that’s logistically a little difficult for you, right now, I wondered if it would be OK to bring dinner to you?”
If I had any doubt that this was to be a Proper Date, it vanished when I opened the door to find Lars in a beautiful navy suit, with a pale pink shirt and navy tie. He had a large bag in each hand.
“I’m not quite ready yet—sorry. Would you mind watching Grace, while I get changed?” I had already changed—into a clean pair of jeans, and a top that didn’t have baby sick on it—but it would take moments to change again. I hated the thought that Lars might feel overdressed, and as I pulled from the wardrobe a dress in which I would still be able to breastfeed, I felt a spark of excitement I hadn’t felt for a while. I was going on a date! And I didn’t even have to leave the house for it.