by Paige Toon
‘Didn’t your mum tell you about the birds and the bees?’ I ask sardonically.
He rolls his eyes at me. ‘Okay, so you ain’t gonna talk, but, Jesus,’ he says again, shaking his head. ‘I never would have known.’
‘He’s surprised me,’ I admit honestly. ‘I didn’t think he’d take it as well as he has.’
‘I can’t believe you’re here again,’ he says with a grin.
‘Neither can I.’
Dana emerges around lunchtime looking like a bear with a sore head. She’s wearing a white vest with a black bra underneath, skimpy white shorts and holey black tights. I wonder if she went out looking like that last night. Probably.
Barney is trying to feed himself chicken pasta with a spoon. It’s not pretty.
‘Morning, Mary Poppins,’ she says drily as she goes to the fridge.
I frown. ‘Mary Poppins was a nanny, not a mother.’
‘Technicalities.’ She opens up the fridge and looks inside before slamming the door in disgust. ‘Still no fucking cook?’ I flinch. ‘What the fuck has Lena been doing all week?’ she snaps.
‘Can you watch your language around my son, please?’ I ask tetchily. ‘We interviewed some new cooks on Friday.’
‘What do you mean by “we”?’ She pulls up a chair at the table and sits down. Not that I want company. Not hers, anyway.
‘“We” as in Lena and me.’
‘Why did you get involved?’ She looks confused.
‘Johnny asked me to.’
She gives me a hard stare for a moment and then shrugs. ‘Guess you did use to work for him. And you haven’t got much else to do around here. Except for looking after this little dude.’ She peers at Barney too closely and then laughs when he glances at her indifferently and carries on eating.
‘Where’s Johnny?’ I ask.
‘In bed. Had a big one last night.’
‘Did you go out?’
‘No, we partied at home,’ she replies with a smug smile. ‘Drank the rest of your champagne.’ She raises her eyebrows at me disapprovingly and then tuts. ‘Leaving it outside on the terrace going flat . . . Didn’t figure you for the wasteful type.’
‘Were you just drinking?’ I find myself asking.
‘As opposed to doing hard drugs?’ She laughs. ‘You’re not going to lecture me, are you, chick?’ I open my mouth to speak, but she continues, ‘Because I don’t oppose this little guy being here, but I’m sure as hell not going to take any crap from you.’
The way she says ‘you’ makes my mouth clamp shut again.
She glares at me and then gets up and goes to the door. ‘I’m gonna shoot. Tell Johnny I’ll catch him later.’
She walks out, not leaving me time to reply, even if I could come up with some suitably scathing words.
I’m still in a foul mood when Johnny emerges an hour later. I can barely look at him.
‘What’s up with you?’ he asks, sensing the bad atmosphere. Barney is asleep in his cot.
‘Can you tell your fucking girlfriend to stop swearing?’
‘Christ, Nutmeg, pot calling the kettle black.’
‘I mean it, Johnny. I’m angry.’
‘I can see that,’ he says, scratching his head. He looks rough. He has clearly been burning the candle at both ends.
‘What was she swearing about?’
‘About the cook . . .’ I falter, not really knowing what else to add. ‘What do you want to do about that?’ I ask, leaving the Dana conversation alone for the moment. ‘Shall I get Eddie in tomorrow so you can meet him?’
‘No, I don’t need to meet him. If you like him, hire him.’
‘Are you sure?’ I’m surprised after his initial reservations. Now he doesn’t seem to care.
‘Yeah, yeah, go ahead. I’m gonna head down to Big Sur for a few days.’
I went to Big Sur with him once. He’d gone there to do some writing and I’d joined him. I still remember being with him in the pool overlooking the ocean. That was the first time I felt a spark between us that wasn’t one-sided.
‘Is Dana going with you?’ I ask casually, and am stung when he replies.
‘Yeah, she could do with a break.’
‘Oh, right. I’ll get Eddie in, then, yes?’
‘Go for it.’
Chapter 32
I’m standing in the studio – alone. It’s late at night and I don’t feel tired. I turned twenty-seven today, but there were no celebrations. Johnny has been gone for four days. I feel like I did in France: isolated and lonely. Only this time it’s Johnny who’s left and not Christian. I miss him. Christian, I mean. He was going to take me to Barcelona for my birthday. I wonder if he remembers. I wonder what he’s doing right now.
I sit down on the chair and stare into the studio, remembering the first time I saw Johnny standing at the mic with his band behind him. He looked straight into my eyes and I felt like time stood still as he sang to me. Christian had invited me in to listen. What would he think now if he knew I was here? He’d hate me even more than he already does.
‘MUUUMMMMMYYY!’ Barney cries out on the monitor so I hurry out of the studio and go to his room. I put my hand on his chest, hoping to settle him, but instead I find that he’s unusually hot. He continues to cry, unsettled, as I press my hand to his forehead – again too hot. Worriedly I lift him out of his cot and put the lights on low, then go to the cupboard to retrieve his medicine. I administer some infant paracetamol and strip off his clothes, trying to cool him down. He stops crying, but continues to whimper and rub at his eyes and ears. Could this be an ear infection? I peer into his ear cavity, but can see nothing. I wonder if Mum would know. I spoke to her this morning, but what’s the time in France now? They’re ahead of us so it should be their morning. I call her, full of hope, but she doesn’t answer the home phone and the mobile goes straight through to voicemail. I feel like crying because right now all I want is my mummy.
I eventually bring Barney into bed with me at about four o’clock in the morning, after hours of going back and forth to his bedroom like a yo-yo. As soon as it’s light, I take him downstairs and hunt out Lena’s home number. I want to call Johnny’s doctor, but I don’t know if he’s aware of Barney’s existence and I’m not sure how to handle it. It’s exhausting, this – people not knowing. I know it’s going to be hard when it all comes out, but in a sense there should be some relief in the truth.
‘Hi, Lena, it’s Meg. I’m sorry to wake you,’ I say when she answers.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Barney isn’t well.’
‘Oh no, what’s wrong with him?’
‘He has a high temperature and has been unsettled all night. I think it may be an ear infection. I wanted to call Johnny’s doctor, but I didn’t know if he knew . . .’
‘He does. Let me get you the number.’
‘It’s okay, I have it here. Is it still Dr Navigo?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I’ll call him now,’ I tell her.
‘I’ll come straight in,’ she replies.
‘Don’t worry, go back to bed.’
She doesn’t, of course. In fact, she arrives before the doctor does. I’m sitting on the sofa, cradling a teary Barney in my arms and watching children’s TV.
‘You look tired.’ She touches my arm. ‘Did you get hold of Dr Navigo?’ she asks sympathetically.
I nod. ‘He’ll be here within the hour, he said.’
‘I’ll make you a cup of tea.’ She doesn’t wait for me to reply before going to the kitchen.
The doctor comes and confirms my suspicions. He’s professional and discreet, and doesn’t mention Barney’s relationship to Johnny. He writes out a prescription for antibiotics, which Lena promptly takes from me, and informs me that I should continue to dose him up with constant pain relief. Lena has already set off to the chemist by the time he leaves.
Barney doesn’t improve that day, and he’s even more unsettled that night. I finally get through to m
y parents, but feel worse than I already did when my mum demands to know what Johnny is doing having a jaunty little holiday when his new family is in town. I start to feel angry about his absence, but the next morning my anger turns to fear when I discover a blotchy red rash all over Barney’s body. Dr Navigo comes again and on examination he diagnoses a reaction to the antibiotics. He writes out a new prescription.
With no Lena here, I strap Barney into the Panamera and take him with me to the chemist. It’s an overcast day, but the air is deceptively muggy. I feel prickly and uncomfortable in my jeans and jumper and my eyes are stinging from lack of sleep. To my dismay, Barney starts to doze off on the way there and is far from happy when I have to get him out of his car seat to go into the chemist. His cries turn into full-on wails as I stand in the queue, struggling to hold him in my arms. I don’t want to wait until we get home to give him a dose of medicine, in case he falls asleep again; but he refuses to comply so eventually I have to force it into his mouth, and I’m at my wit’s end by the time that’s done. He’s still whimpering even as he nods off, but the moment he does, I pull over onto the side of the road and burst into tears.
My mum is right. What the hell is Johnny doing, buggering off to Big Sur when we’ve just arrived? I hate him! And I hate his fucking girlfriend! Even their fucking swearing is rubbing off on me.
Christian . . . Christian would never have left . . .
Oh, who am I kidding? He couldn’t even make it home for Barney’s first birthday. I can’t look at our life together through rose-tinted glasses. I won’t.
I’m alone in this world. Well, not alone. I’m with Barney. It’s just him and me. I wipe my tears from my eyes with steely resolution and set off for home.
By the time Johnny returns after almost a week away, Barney is much better. My little boy welcomes his biological father home with open arms, but I don’t even want to look at him, much less speak to him. Maybe this is me being irrational, but I feel like I’ve been to hell and back these last few months and I’m starting to accept that it’s not entirely my own doing.
‘Alright?’ Johnny asks. He looks knackered – even more so than he did before he left.
‘How was Big Sur?’ I ask without smiling.
‘We didn’t go there in the end,’ he replies indifferently.
‘Where did you go?’
‘Up to San Fran. Caught up with some friends.’
So that’s why he looks whacked. Instead of R&R in Big Sur he went for sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll in San Francisco. My simmering blood reaches boiling point.
‘What’s up with you?’ Johnny asks, sensing my mood.
‘Barney hasn’t been well.’
‘He looks alright to me.’ He reaches down and squeezes Barney’s shoulder, but his cutesy gesture has no effect on me.
‘He had an ear infection and then a bad reaction to his antibiotics. I had to call the doctor in twice.’
‘You did the right thing,’ he says, which I find extremely patronising. I stand there glaring at him, but he’s seemingly oblivious. ‘Had a hard few days. Going to hit the sack.’ He turns to walk away and I stare after him in disbelief. ‘Probably still going to do Big Sur this week,’ he adds.
‘Are you kidding me?’ I practically screech.
He turns around, confusion etched across his brow.
‘You’re not going anywhere!’
Even I realise I sound slightly demented, but I’ve had it up to my ears.
‘Excuse me?’ he replies, slightly sinisterly. Lena hurries out of the office and gives us both a wary look before ushering Barney outside with her. Somewhere inside I’m grateful, but my emotions are mostly anger.
‘What’s your problem?’ he asks.
‘You! You are my problem!’ Now there’s no end to my ranting. ‘What the hell am I even doing here?’
‘Where would you rather be? Back in France, living with your parents?’ he says cuttingly.
I ignore that comment. ‘You wanted to spend some more time with Barney, yet you’re buggering off with your druggy nut-job girlfriend left, right and centre!’
‘Hey!’ he warns. ‘You’re out of line.’
‘Why?’ I screech. ‘It’s true!’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Fuck you!’
‘Fuck you!’ He raises his voice and points at me. ‘I won’t have you talking about Dana like that!’
His words cut like a knife and, to my horror, my eyes fill with tears. I turn and flee up the stairs to the relative safety of my bedroom. I slam the door shut and lean up against it. I’m shaking. Tears pour down my cheeks and I angrily brush them away, furious with myself for not being able to argue my own corner. How can he still reduce me to a quivering wreck? I used to be strong. I somehow found the strength to leave last time – but it took too long. Way too long. I still despise myself for it.
Oh, God. My life is a wreck. I used to like myself. I haven’t liked myself for a long time. Johnny has always made me feel weak and out of control – ever since I first came to work for him.
There’s a knock on the door. I pause, wondering if it’s Lena with Barney.
‘Yes?’
‘Open up,’ Johnny says.
‘Go away,’ I respond angrily.
He starts to open the door.
‘I said, GO AWAY!’ I shout, pushing back against it like a crazy teenager.
‘Open the fucking door,’ he says gruffly. ‘I want to talk to you.’
I’m about to reply, ‘I don’t want to talk to you’, when I reel my fifteen-year-old self back in. It’s time to regain control.
I step away from the door and he stumbles into the bedroom.
‘What?’ I snap, defiantly staring into his piercing eyes.
He roughly pushes his hair away from his face. Suddenly the enormous room feels too small. The bed we slept on together is there, right there.
‘What do you want from me?’ he demands to know, his chest heaving underneath his black T-shirt.
I let out a sharp laugh. ‘Are you taking the piss?’
He frowns.
‘You were the one who wanted us to come here, Johnny. If you’re going to keep buggering off—’
‘For fuck’s sake, I’ve only been away for a few days.’
‘Almost a week! And you want to go away again.’
‘Aren’t you happy here? I’ve done what I can to make it as nice for you as possible . . .’
‘I appreciate that. But it’s not why we came.’ I take a deep breath. ‘We came so you could spend some quality time with your son, not so you could go off on little holidays with your girlfriend.’
‘That’s what the issue is, here, isn’t it?’ He gives me a look. ‘That I’m going away with her?’
‘What are you implying?’ I ask crossly. ‘Because if you think I’m still in any way interested in you, you’re out of your mind.’
‘Fine.’ He puts his hands up to stop me talking. ‘So you’ll be happy as long as I spend time with Barney?’
I sigh and turn my back on him, facing the bed. ‘Yes. I guess so.’ I don’t want to look at him, even though I feel his eyes on me. ‘I’d better get him.’ I start towards the door.
‘Lena has him.’
‘I know that, but she’ll have work to do.’
‘Just chill out for a minute, would you?’ he says with irritation. ‘You look knackered.’ I hesitate and then nod, defeated. He leans against the wall and folds his arms. ‘So he hasn’t been well?’
I shake my head. ‘No. He had an ear infection. He got it on my birthday,’ I add miserably.
‘Shit! Your birthday.’
‘Yep.’ My bottom lip goes out.
‘I forgot.’
‘I know.’
‘Anyway,’ I continue, ‘he’s been in a lot of pain and has barely slept so I’ve had a tough time of it with no one to help me.’
He stares at me and I wonder if he knows I’m missing Christian. ‘You need a nanny,’ he says
at last.
‘I don’t want a frigging nanny!’ I say crossly.
‘You said you needed help.’
‘Not hired help. I don’t want to hand over my son to someone who’s paid to look after him. I want people to want to look after him – friends, family . . .’
‘Damn, you’re difficult.’
‘I don’t think that’s me being difficult.’
‘It is. What about using an agency just so you can go out for a night? Celebrate your birthday? I’ve got tickets to the premiere of that new martial-arts flick and the after-show. You and that PA – what’s her name? Kerry?’
‘Kitty.’
‘You and Kitty could go.’
I narrow my eyes at him. ‘When?’ I’m not massively keen on martial-arts movies, but a premiere’s a premiere.
‘Thursday night.’
‘Because I can’t go out tonight. I can’t leave him so soon after he’s been ill.’
‘Like I said, Thursday night.’
I nod. ‘I’ll think about it.’
He rolls his eyes at me.
‘I said, I’ll think about it!’ I exclaim.
‘Yeah, yeah, whatever.’
He walks out of the room, leaving me – annoyingly – feeling foolish.
I wait a minute before following him out. He’s nowhere to be seen. I go downstairs and out through the sliding doors to find Lena playing with Barney under the shade of a large white umbrella.
‘Sorry about that,’ I say. ‘Thanks for looking after him.’
‘No problem,’ she replies. ‘We’re having fun.’
Barney beams up at her as if to accentuate that point.
‘You want to talk about it?’ she asks tentatively.
I shrug. ‘Not really.’ She nods, but I continue anyway, ‘He thinks I should get a nanny. But I’m not having one,’ I add defiantly. ‘He said I should at least use an agency so I can go out. He’s got premiere tickets to some new martial-arts film on Thursday night.’
