by Carmen Reid
Anna unpacked her books and settled down at the table behind the sofa. This way, Eve could help with homework without having to prise herself up again.
The clonky theme tune started up and Eve felt her eyelids hover. She wondered how long she could just 'rest' them shut before Anna had a question or Robbie poked her in the face.
Barely fifteen seconds later, she got her answer: 'What's six times eight again?' Anna asked.
'Well, what's five times eight?' she asked back.
'Forty, so plus eight, forty-eight.'
'Well done. Are you all packed, by the way?' Eve asked just as the doorbell rang.
'Is it Daddy?' Anna's face lit up.
'Better go see.' Eve uncurled from the sofa and caught herself arranging her hair. Oh good grief. And there were the strange tummy flutterings along with the surge of tension Joseph always managed to provoke in her. She wondered if it was going to feel different to meet him today now that she had taken such a big step, had started to see someone else ... properly.
She had never expected maintaining civil friendliness with Joseph to be easy. They had been together for seven years and she had loved him all the way. They'd had Anna together and several years of the kind of happiness you could never, ever regret, but things had begun to fall apart well before Robbie arrived.
In fact, Eve had called it off and moved Joseph out for what surely had to be the final time just a few months into the pregnancy. What had gone wrong? She would only ever explain it as 'He changed', which didn't really begin to describe the whole complicated set of circumstances but made it easier for her to cope with. Now, she considered herself still heartbroken and more than a little suspicious of new men, but determined not to be bitter, and some day to be able to get over it – as Joseph appeared to have done without too much problem.
So here they were: apart, trying to be civil and parenty, trying to ignore all the unresolved, difficult feelings still breaking out between them.
In some ways it had been easier when the father of Eve's two older boys, her husband Dennis, had left. He'd done the melodramatic, clean break, disappearing act. It might have been shocking and hell to adjust to, but at least there hadn't been all this confusion and toing and froing and on-ing and off-ing and having to try and be friends for the sake of the children.
'Hello, Joseph.' She stood up and smiled as he came into the room.
'Hi, Eve.' He did a quick stoop and brush of the cheek kiss. No, despite the afternoon of wild abandon with Nils, there was still a something, a little tiny rush ... a jolt. . . when he did that. It annoyed her so much. And no, it was still hard to keep her eyes off him. But maybe she wasn't alone here. He was tall and muscular slim with dark eyes and thick, black hair. Plenty of women found him a pleasure to look at.
'Hello Jofus,' Robbie was saying from the sofa.
'Hello, buddy, how are you?' He settled down on the sofa to speak to the son he saw so little of. He and Eve had agreed that Robbie would come with Anna on the weekend visits to Joseph's flat in Manchester 'when he was older' but time had passed and so far neither of them had discussed when that would be. Each felt the other should make the offer first. It was just another little fly in the relationship ointment.
Joseph stayed long enough to have a cup of tea and the handover chat: How were Anna and Robbie doing? How much homework should Anna take? What was she reading? And all the time Eve was watching him, noticing all sorts of little, personal things and he was doing the same.
He'd been at meetings in town all day and his dark suit had that soft, perfect cut look to it of criminal expense, but he wore it casually with a black T-shirt and the world's tiniest mobile phone clipped to the top pocket, the ear wire tucked round his collar. He had a new laptop computer. She saw the small, light bag at his feet. No doubt something very sleek and top of the range. He was doing well, turning into a wealthy, successful businessman. Just as she'd suspected ... and hated. She never accepted any child maintenance from him, but made sure he put the money into an account for the children when they were older. She tried not to interfere with his lavish treat buying.
Anna came back into the room with her small overnight bag.
'Are you sure you'll get it into the boot?' Eve asked because she couldn't resist. She couldn't remember what kind of car it was Joseph drove but it was the silliest, shiniest boy-toy ever and she loathed it.
'Miiiiiaaaaaoooow,' Joseph said but smiled at her anyway.
'Any plans for the weekend?' Eve tried out her 'being civil' voice again.
'Loads of plans. We'll have a great time, won't we, Anna?'
'Yeah. Is Michelle around?'
Joseph and Eve felt their involuntary intakes of breath. You could always rely on nine-year-olds to bring on those awkward questions.
'She's offered to make us dinner tomorrow, if you want.'
'Better eat before you go, darling.' Eve knew it was mean and evil and wicked, but she couldn't help herself.
Michelle, Joseph's girlfriend was – and Eve was only going on photographic evidence and what Anna had reported here – one of those perky gym bunnies always engrossed in the current diet fad. At the moment, Michelle didn't 'do' carbohydrates and apparently never even had so much as a mouthful of cake or chocolate or ice-cream or anything sugar-filled or fun because of the terror that she would just let go, let rip, gorge herself until her thighs ballooned, or her bottom burst or the seams of her latest designer outfit exploded.
Some fun she must be, Eve consoled herself.
'Eve,' Joseph warned, 'Behave.'
'Sorry.'
But then he couldn't help adding: 'At least Michelle can cook something other than lentils.'
Owww, oww, ouch: 'Oh, please,' she managed, hoping it sounded offhand and unwounded.
'Have you got plans?' he asked then, maybe trying to make up for the dig.
'Yeah. I've got a date tomorrow night. Our new vet actually – a very nice guy.'
If Joseph was a surprised by this, he didn't show it. She was studying him to read his reaction, but all that came was a smile and a polite-sounding: 'That's good, I hope you have fun.'
Yes I bloody well will she told herself, surprisingly hurt at his lack of interest in this, the first ever date she was telling him about. I will eat, drink and be merry and bring him home for a sexathon and not think of you for one moment. Even though Nils hadn't invited her for dinner or any sort of date and she had made this up on the spur of the moment just to annoy him.
'You're going on a date? With the vet?' Anna was asking. Oh no, now she had shocked the one person in the world she least wanted to: 'Why didn't you tell me?' She knelt down and said to Anna: 'Honey, it's just for fun. Robbie's coming and we're going to talk about the cats.' See. This is why she hardly ever lied. It always got far too complicated.
'OK.' Joseph picked up Anna's bag and started on the goodbyes.
'Give Mummy and Robbie a kiss, Anna. It's time to go.'
Robbie was in bed at 8p.m., cuddled into the bottom bunk with his bunnies, struggling to keep his eyes open as Eve read him a story.
She ate a solitary supper with the radio on and afterwards forced herself to go round the house doing the bare minimum of chores – washing in machine, cursory sweep of kitchen floor, wipe of surfaces, armfuls of child junk into toyboxes. In the kitchen she filled up the bread machine and clicked it on, then chopped up vegetables and threw them into boiling stock to simmer.
At least Michelle can cook something other than lentils, she couldn't help remembering as she stirred her soup. God, Joseph.
As if he'd been worried about her cooking skills on evenings when the big boys were away and Anna asleep in her cot, and they had come into the kitchen for supper, watching each other eat by candlelight, absolutely certain of what was going to come next.
She remembered him dripping salad dressing onto her warm, bare summer arm and licking it off all the way from her wrist to her shoulder, until she was sitting in his lap, tasting him, wanting
him, but he was tilting back to look into the fridge and see what other props he could find.
'What about ice cubes... or butter? Oh... the classic: we have cream and strawberries.'
'Yes, please.'
He'd once invented some ridiculous smorgasbord of snacks to complement oral sex: taramasalata, cream cheese, slivers of smoked salmon.
And sometimes he would tell her all the way through a meal what they were going to do afterwards, until they were so breathless they could hardly finish the food. 'See this strawberry—' he'd dip it into chocolate or hot caramel or cream and start to lick it with the very tip of his tongue, as she was imagining he would do to her nipple, her clitoris, the tip of her nose.
'Lucky strawberry,' she'd say, not able to take her eyes from his face, wondering once again how she'd managed to land such an irresistible man.
Why was Joseph so hard to get over?
This was the question which could still wake her up at 3a.m. and make it difficult to get back to sleep.
He looked exactly like the man she'd been so in love with. But she just couldn't believe what he had turned into. It was as if she was still, after all this time, expecting him to one day give up the executive position, return the car, the phones, the laptop and the gadgets, and appear on the doorstep all rumpled, delicious and studenty again saying 'I'm back the way you want me, please let me in.' Where had that person gone? The one she'd been so in love with? Was he inside there somewhere? Was there even the slightest chance she could lure him out again? Or had he disappeared completely?
The two cats, winding and purring round her legs as she stood at the cooker, were fed and then it was time to go out into the garden.
Eve slipped on her fleece jacket and heavy boots at the back door and went out, flicking on the outdoor spotlights, which lit up the green haven she had been working on since the day she'd moved into the flat.
Over the years, her garden had evolved and taken shape. She'd started off tending the lawn and border arrangement she'd inherited, but soon she'd built up the confidence to change it into something much more interesting and private. She'd heightened the three walls around the space with trellises, so they were now eight-foot-high walls of ivy, then the lawn had been ripped up and replaced with winding paths of stone slab planted all around with tall shrubs and greenery in pots, dense bushes and fruit trees, so that slowly the garden had grown higher and more tangled, more secluded from the other houses all around.
Now, it was like entering a secluded green world with something interesting to see in every corner. Pots in all colours, sizes, patterns and glazes, spilling over with every kind of plant: flowering bushes, roses, tall sculptural spiky palms, earthbound knotted alpines. Every space was filled: she had planted indiscriminately, coaxing whatever she could get her hands on into vigorous life.
There wasn't any plan. Rosemary, mint, parsley, lettuce – in winter, Brussels sprouts and cabbage – grew haphazardly on the edges of the big terracotta tubs, or in the spaces between the perennials, wherever she could find room.
In the summer, tomato plants were trained up the sunniest wall alongside the sweet-smelling crumpled-up-handkerchief roses, the sunflowers planted especially for Robbie and the wild and untameable courgette plants.
Her autumn bulbs were pushed into every available square centimetre of earth so that crocus, tulips, lilies, peonies, all sorts of multicoloured blossoms popped up unexpectedly from February onwards.
At the end of the garden was a pocket-sized patio, surrounded by green and covered with a canopy of climbing roses and clematis. There was a comfortable wooden garden bench there, out all year, and at the very start of summer Eve would bring out the wrought-iron chairs and the large round table she had decorated herself with a detailed mosaic. Big containers full of scented stocks and pink geraniums would take up the rest of the patio space and when the weather was good, supper was eaten outside every night in the twinkly light of candles on the mosaic and strings of fairy lights wound through the flower canopy above.
She loved not just to garden – to move among her plants watering, pinching off deadheads, trimming back shoots, pulling out the few stray weeds – she loved the garden. It was a place, a 'living' room which she had created. It was a private park for Robbie, a reading bower for Anna, an oasis for her, a clandestine place to sit, talk and eat with her friends; it was a magical extension to her life and she had made it almost all by herself with her own two hands.
Tonight, she was picking off snails by torchlight and drowning them with some distaste in a bucket half filled with water. Still, this was a better way to go than the ones unlucky enough to be crunched under her boots as she walked about in the dark. She loved to be in her garden at night, feeling alone, but not lonely, feeling busy, but at peace.
Chapter Three
Patricia opened her eyes and for a moment couldn't remember where the hell she was. Oh yes, in the tiny flat her boyfriend, Denny, shared with his brother Tom. There was Denny, still fast asleep beside her. Nice guy, she thought, watching his sleeping face, he took very good pictures, especially when the photo sessions ended in bed.
He'd probably do very well in the future and it was a shame she wasn't in love with him. She'd decided that about a month ago now. She wasn't in love with him and she didn't think she ever could be. Not his fault, just one of those things.
She looked at the bedside alarm clock: 7.18a.m. Shit. She was due over on the other side of town by ten and she had a lot to do – shower, shave, quick eyebrow pluck, nails, hair, make-up. This would be a great job, if she could get it. Every model she knew was after a shampoo contract. The money was amazing!
She was preening herself in the tiny bathroom mirror when there was a banging on the door.
'I have to come in,' came the choked voice on the other side.
'Hang on,' Patricia said, peering closely at the eyebrows. Were they matching? Or was the left one just a little bit too high?
'Please, it's urgent.'
'Oh for God's sake.' She recognized the voice now. Tom's girlfriend Deepa, Miss Completely Bloody Worthy medical student, who could barely hide the fact that she thought Patricia was a total waste of space.
She unbolted the door and Deepa ran in, lifted the toilet lid, bent over and threw up loudly.
'Oh yuk,' Patricia gathered up her make-up tools and backed out of the room, shutting the door behind her. It reminded her of the early days, all that miserable puking to stay thin. She'd graduated long ago to the ballerina method of two days a week, soup and fruit juice only.
Deepa was heaving up again. She felt appalling. Beads of sweat were leaping out of her forehead, upper lip, back of her neck.
She grabbed at a handful of toilet paper and wiped her face, then lurched over to the sink to splash herself with water.
Finally, she felt able to let herself out of the bathroom and head back to Tom's room. She was going to have to tell him, oh no . . . just the thought of that and – she raced back to the toilet again.
* * *
'Are you OK?' Tom's messy head was surfacing from the tangle of mismatched pillows, sheets and blankets.
'No.' She sat down on the edge of the bed beside him and put her hands up to support her head.
'What's the matter?' He sat up now, stretched and put an arm round her, stroking her soft velvet brown shoulders and silky black bob.
'Tom ...' She wasn't looking at him, she was focused on the battered old Oasis poster Blu-Tacked to the wall, 'I'm ten days late, I'm sick as a dog. I think I'm pregnant.'
