The Family Upstairs(14)

‘Well, hello, Fitz,’ he says, scruffing the dog under his chin. ‘Aren’t you a cute little guy.’ Then he stands back and appraises Lucy and her little family. It’s the same way he used to appraise Lucy when he was considering the possibility of punishing her. That knife edge of time that could end with a laugh and a hug or could end with a broken finger or a Chinese burn.

‘Well, well, well,’ he says, ‘look at you all. You are all just adorable. Can I get you anything? Some juice?’ He looks at Lucy. ‘Are they allowed juice?’

She nods and Michael looks up at the maid who is hanging behind in the shade of the terrace at the back of the house. ‘Joy! Some juice for the children! Thank you! And you, Lucy? Wine? Beer?’

Lucy hasn’t had a drink for weeks. She would die for a beer. But she can’t. She has to keep all her wits about her for the next half an hour or so. She shakes her head. ‘No, thank you. Juice would be fine for me too.’

‘Three juices, Joy. Thank you. And I’ll have another beer. Oh, and some potato chips. Those, erm what are they called, you know, with the ridges? Great.’

He turns his gaze back to Lucy, still playing it wide-eyed and boyish. ‘Sit down, sit down.’

He rearranges the chairs, they sit. ‘So,’ he says, ‘Lucy Lou, how the hell have you been?’

She shrugs and smiles. ‘You know. Getting on with it. Getting older. Getting wiser.’

‘And you’ve been out here, all this time?’

‘Yup.’

‘Never went back to the UK?’

‘Nope.’

‘And your daughter … her father? Are you married?’

‘Nope,’ she says again. ‘We lived together for a couple of years. Then he went back to Algeria to “visit family” about three years ago and we haven’t heard from him since.’

Michael winces as though Stella’s dad’s disappearance was a physical assault upon her. Too ironic to bear. ‘Tough,’ he says. ‘That’s tough. So you’re a single mom?’

‘Yes. I am. Very much so.’

Joy returns with a tray laid with a carafe of chilled orange juice, three glasses on paper coasters, crisps in small silver bowls, tiny paper napkins, straws. Michael pours the juice and passes the glasses to each of them, offers them the ridged crisps. The children pounce on them eagerly.

‘Slow down,’ she hisses.

‘It’s fine,’ says Michael. ‘I have packets and packets of the things. So, where are you living?’

‘Here and there.’

‘And are you still …?’ He mimes playing the fiddle.

She smiles wryly. ‘Well, I was. Yes. Until some drunk English dick on a stag night decided to snatch it off me and then made me chase him and his mates around for half an hour trying to get it back before tossing it over a wall. Now it’s being repaired. Or at least, it has been repaired. But …’ The insides of her mouth are dry with dread. ‘I don’t have the money to pay to collect it.’

He throws her his oh, poor baby look, the one he used to give her after he’d hurt her.

‘How much?’ he says, and he’s already twisting in his seat to locate his wallet in his back pocket.

‘A hundred and ten euros,’ she says, her voice catching slightly.

She watches him peeling off the notes. He folds them in half and passes them to her. ‘There,’ he says. ‘And a little extra. Maybe for a haircut for my boy.’ He scruffs Marco’s hair again. ‘And maybe you too.’ And it’s there, when he glances at her hair, that terrible dark look of disappointment. You’ve let yourself go. You’re not trying hard enough. How can I love you when. You. Don’t. Make. Any. Fucking. Effort.

She takes the folded notes from his hand and feels the almost imperceptible tug as he grips them a little tighter, the hint of a nasty game of control and power. He smiles and loosens his grip. She puts the notes in her shoulder bag and says, ‘Thank you. I’m very grateful. I’ll get it back to you in a couple of weeks. I promise.’

‘No,’ he says, leaning back, spreading his legs a little, smiling darkly. ‘I don’t want it back. But …’

A trickle of coldness runs down Lucy’s spine.

‘Promise me one thing.’

Her smile freezes.

‘I’d love to see you. I mean, more of you. You and Marco. And you too of course.’ He switches his grim gaze to Stella, winking at her. ‘I’m here all summer. Until mid-September. Between jobs. You know.’

‘And your wife, is she …?’

‘Rachel had to go back. She has important business to attend to in the UK.’ He says this in a dismissive tone of voice. Rachel could be a brain surgeon or a politician for all Lucy knows, she might hold the lives of hundreds, thousands in her hands. But as far as Michael is concerned, anything that distracts a woman’s attention away from him for even a moment is some kind of pathetic joke. Including babies.

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘That’s a shame.’

‘Not really,’ he says. ‘I needed some space. Because guess what I’m doing …?’

Lucy shakes her head briskly, and smiles.

‘I am writing a book. Or in fact, a memoir. Or possibly a blend of the two. A semi-autobiographical kind of thing. I don’t know yet.’