by Voss, Louise
‘Are you looking forward to going back to school, Max?’
‘Yes! I’m not going to be in Nursery anymore. I’m going to be in Reception, and I won’t have to play with Aaron White in the home corner anymore.’
‘Well, I think Aaron will still be in your class, Max,’ said Adam. ‘We must get your new winter uniform tomorrow. All those name tapes to sew in!’ He made a face at me, and it took every ounce of restraint I possessed not to offer to sew Max’s name tapes in myself.
‘Thanks for cooking dinner, Anna, it was absolutely delicious. We don’t get many meals like that outside of restaurants.’
Max turned to me then, casually resting his hand on my leg. I wanted to clamp my own hand over the top of his, press it down and iron it to me, to make his skin into my skin.
‘You’re very welcome,’ I replied faintly, the combination of Max’s touch and Adam’s words leaving me feeling that I had never enjoyed a simple compliment more. Max wandered off into the next room and we heard the electronic crescendo of the computer being switched on. I drained the dregs of my wineglass, and Adam held out the bottle to me.
‘Better not. I’ve got to drive home.’
‘Not yet, I hope. And you could always get a cab.’
I laughed, then stopped abruptly, worried that he’d think I was laughing at the ridiculousness of the idea of staying longer. I wondered what he’d think if I told him that a cab back to my real house would cost a hundred pounds at least. How was I going to get out of this one?
‘Well, maybe just a drop more.’ I’d only had one glass. I’d be fine to drive. If there had ever been a time I needed a drink, it was then.
‘Is there any more pasta?’ Adam asked, finished up his last mouthful.
‘Yes, in the pan.’ I wanted to laugh again at the strangeness of the situation. We were like an old married couple having a weekday supper together, as natural as breathing, our child playing in the background—and yet we’d only just met.
Nonetheless, I was loving it. It was the scene I’d dreamed of for years; the quiet pull of domesticity, the chattering of a child, the astonishingly potent comfort of gratitude, of being needed. Even if it was the wrong man, the wrong house and the wrong family, I still wanted to relish it, and make it last as long as possible. If Ken hadn’t always been travelling or out, or if he were perhaps less obviously the provider - then maybe I’d have felt closer to the idyll with him, even in the stillness of a child-free home. But I had never felt like this with him. Love didn’t come into it; it wasn’t about love.
Still, I was relieved that I’d labelled the situation the way I had: wrong man, wrong house and wrong family. It would have been worse if I’d thought that all those things were right, and it was Ken who was out of place.
It wasn’t the wrong child, though. Max was, somehow, the right child.
I wished I knew why Adam had let me stay and cook dinner. Had he felt sorry for me? Was he too embarrassed to say no? Or was he attracted to me, and saw it as some kind of come-on? I hoped not. It was tricky. I was genuinely glad I liked him so much—it would have been so much harder to bond with Max had I not—but it was of paramount importance that Adam didn’t think this was the start of a courtship. The last thing I wanted was for anybody to get hurt in this little charade of mine.
I was about to open my mouth and splurge out some lies along the lines of thinking about getting back, because my partner would be home soon, when I thought, no, how could I say that? He already thought I wasn’t married, but it wasn’t even an issue of actual marriage. It was how weird it would sound, for me in effect to announce, well, I’m off home to cook another supper for another man. Or woman. Would it have made things easier if I pretended to be a lesbian? At least that way he would know that I wasn’t coming on to him.
All of a sudden I realized that cooking supper for another man was really a very intimate gesture, unless that other man was a very old friend, or a family member. It was categorically not what one did when one was meant to be in a relationship with someone else. The bait of Max, wriggling right in front of my eyes on the line, had confused me and I’d risen to meet him, eyes shut, mouth open. I wouldn’t have dreamed of cooking for another man under any other circumstances. No wonder Adam had initially been hesitant.
And now—oh God, what was I getting into?—Adam was looking at me with, unless I was very much mistaken, a faintly dreamy warm expression, his eyes smiling and his mouth curving upwards. He might as well have had a speech bubble coming out of his mouth containing the words ‘I really like you, Anna.’ I may have been out of practise, but I still knew a smitten look when I saw one.
‘You will stay a bit longer, won’t you Anna? I need to get Max to bed soon, but it would be lovely to have more of a chat after that.’
A chat. A chat. He didn’t mean just a chat, did he? Look at those eyes, I thought frantically. He fancies me, and because I’ve cooked supper, he thinks it’s mutual. Once Max had gone to bed we’d be drinking more wine, he’d put on a mellow CD, and before I knew it we’d be rolling around together mussing up the Indian throw on the sofa and waiting to see who’d make the first tentative queries about birth control. Then, whoops, I’d be having an affair that I didn’t want, with a person I hardly knew, who lived a hundred miles away and who I didn’t even really fancy. Aargh.
If I’d left then, though, just when I was getting to know Max, how would I have been able to come back, having burned my bridges with his father? And I had an urge, almost physical in its intensity, to read Max a bedtime story. It might be my only chance to, I thought. I had to risk it. I could handle Adam; head him off at the pass. For heaven’s sake, I’d just tell him that I only wanted to be friends. Simple.
Strange electronic noises filtered through from the other room, reminding me of Ken and his Blackberry. ‘What’s Max playing?’ I asked abruptly.
‘Pinball, probably. He’s not very good at it yet, but give him a few more weeks and he’ll be expert.’
‘Pinball? How do you play pinball on a computer?’
‘Go and have a look, if you like. It’s really good.’
I didn’t need asking twice. Scraping back my chair in haste, I shot through the kitchen into the living room as if I were the silver ball in the pinball machine, kicked into action by a coiled spring. Max was sitting at the table clicking away, accompanied by a soundtrack of what sounded like digital stomach gurgles.
‘Yes! Wormhole!’ he crowed, after a particularly jubilant gurgle.
‘May I see?’ I asked, pulling up a chair next to him. He nodded, without taking his eyes off the screen.
The pinball was identical to the machines I’d played many times in pubs over the years, and I marvelled at the the way a complex three-dimensional game was rendered one-dimensional, whilst retaining a faithful impression of the clacking, moving handles, ramps, and those three mushroom-like structures at the top between which the ball noisily ricochetted. Max was controlling the two flapping gates at the bottom with deft pressure on two of the keys on his computer keyboard; a Z and a slash, as far as I could see, and it was the spacebar which pulled back the spring to release the ball, but apart from that, everything was the same as on the real thing. The ball careened erratically around, and I had to remind myself that it wasn’t even a real ball.
How was it possible, I thought, that somebody could design a computer program as complicated as virtual pinball, and yet nothing, from the vast field of medical knowledge, had been discovered on how to prevent a miscarriage? Not all miscarriages were due to birth defects in the foetus, they knew that much. It wasn’t even something as complicated as preventing the common cold or curing cancer. It made me angry to think of computer nerds spending years developing a way of getting one stupid imaginary silver ball to behave like a real ball in a pub machine when there were so many other, important discoveries to be made.
The machine gave a low, disappointed gurgle. ‘Game over. Terrible score,’ said Max. ‘Only six numbers.�
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I squinted at the screen. ‘No, Max, your score was 104,492—that’s brilliant, isn’t it?’
‘Is that less than six million?’
‘Well, yes.’
He frowned. ‘That’s no good then. Dad can do six million. Do you want a go?’
‘Um…Ok, I’ll give it a shot. Although I’m sure your score will be higher than mine.’
‘Can I sit on your knee?’
My breath caught in my throat. ‘Of course.’
Max slid onto my lap, all gangly arms and legs, his bony bottom so different to Crystal’s solidity. I wanted to gather up his limbs and keep them together; keep him literally in one piece, for ever. He smelled of sawdust and shampoo, tomato sauce and pencil lead. I pressed my lips together in an effort to stop myself kissing his hair. His presence made it more difficult to see the screen—he didn’t seem to realize that his head was blocking my view—but I didn’t care.
My first attempt at pinball was a disaster. The ball just about limped to the top of the screen, flicked itself half-heartedly against the mushrooms, and plummeted down in the gap between the two flappy gates which I was trying to control. Score: fifteen thousand.
‘If you press them both together, it makes a bigger space for the ball to go through, so it’s better not to,’ said my coach earnestly.
‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘So I see.’
I tried again, and did slightly better, although this time I was distracted by Adam putting on a CD: Van Morrison, Astral Weeks. It wasn’t Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing or anything, but all the same, undeniably mood-setting and borderline smoochy. As my virtual ball disappeared into a hole, prompting a cacophony of whoops from the machine and a ‘yay, Anna!’ from Max, I found myself trying to remember what sort of underwear I had on. Even though I had absolutely no intention of allowing myself to be seduced. It was an oddly Pavlovian reaction, I thought. If he opens another bottle of wine, or, heaven forbid, lights any candles, then I’ll know I’m in trouble. A rogue part of me felt a small thrill of anticipation, which I tried to crush immediately. What the hell was wrong with me? Flirty Thirties, that’s what Vicky called them. Maybe I was just experiencing an attack of the Flirty Thirties; wanting to know that, even though I was happily married, I was still attractive to other men.
I sneaked a peek over my shoulder to see what Adam was doing. He was bending down, collecting up some Happy Family cards which had lain scattered on the floor. I couldn’t help but notice that his bottom in its faded Levis was rather appealing. Very appealing, in fact.
Not that that had anything to do with anything.
I was losing it. I really ought to leave now, I thought. But the warmth and weight of Max on my lap pinned me there, a happy captive. Just go with the flow, said the devil on my shoulder. Worry about the complexities of it all later.
‘Right, bedtime, Max,’ called Adam. He came over to us, holding a mug of milk.
‘Awww, Dad,’ said Max, but he slid off my lap immediately, taking his father’s hand. I was very impressed. Where were the tantrums, the pleading and bargaining, the histrionics which always accompanied that same announcement in Vicky’s house?
Vicky. Was she still pregnant, or not? Vicky and her problems seemed a million miles away from this shabby warm terraced house, and I felt grateful for it. Being there with Adam and Max was like an escape: I was exempt from real life when I was there; immune to it all except the immediate experience. It was as good as a holiday. I hadn’t realized how much I’d wanted a break from my life.
‘Say goodnight to Anna.’ Then he turned to me. ‘I’ll be about ten minutes, so do make yourself at home. Watch TV if you like—the remote’s on the armchair.’
‘Goodnight Anna,’ Max said dutifully, hovering at his father’s side. Then he let go of Adam’s hand, skipped forward and gave me a spontaneous and warm hug around my middle which left me dizzy with emotion. I hugged him back, unable to reply, thus losing my chance to ask to read him a bedtime story. There was just going to have to be a next time, that was all, I thought, waving at him as he and Adam turned to walk up the stairs. My vision was so blurred with tears that they looked as if they were floating away from me.
Once they were out of sight, though, the spell was suddenly broken. I was alone in this strange narrow house with fingerprints on the wallpaper and greying skirting boards, Van Morrison in the background and the glare of a computer screen accusing me of thinking about infidelity. It was nice to have felt that I belonged here, but I didn’t.
But if I left now, I agonized, when would I be allowed back? Max might ask after me for a time, then pretty soon he’d forget me, once he was back in a term-time routine of packed lunches and skinned knees, friends to play with and friends to fall out with. Adam might say, remember that nice lady Anna who cooked us supper that time? Max’s brow would furrow. No-oo, he’d reply. I don’t remember.
I paced up and down the front room in a state of mind which, if not quite a panic, was a definite funk. Decisiveness never had been my strong point—my dad used to call me Little Miss Ditherer—but I really couldn’t decide what to do. Then I began to worry that Adam would hear me wearing tracks through his carpet, so I made myself stand still, and distracted myself by having a good nose around the room instead.
Photographs of Max, some with Adam, some on his own, dotted the built-in shelves on either side of a drab tiled fireplace. There was a small snap of a much younger Max, bald, and looking heartbreakingly unwell, with the stick limbs and translucent skin of the child invalid. He lay, half-smiling, in the arms of a woman whom I assumed was the absentee mother. Her beaming face seemed at odds with Max’s obvious frailty. She was quite pretty, despite being slightly moonfaced and soft under the jaw—one of those women who knew that their smile was their best asset. I could hear Adam’s voice in my head, besotted with her when they first met: “You have such a beautiful smile.”
‘You ain’t all that,’ I muttered at her photograph. ‘And where the hell are you now? Don’t you think your son needs you?’
Still, I thought. Her absence was what made my presence possible, so I ought to have been thankful to her.
I tilted my head to one side to read the spines of the books on the lower shelves. They were an eclectic mixture of titles, the vast majority of which made me feel ill-educated and inferior: Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Goethe, Kundera. I searched in vain for something to identify with, a Marian Keyes or a Stephen King, but the closest Adam came to contemporary fiction was a copy of Joseph O’Connor’s Inishowen. I was impressed. There were a lot of spiritual-sounding books too, confirming my suspicions about Adam’s hippie origins: Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul; Rudoph Steiner’s Understanding Angels, Parkers’Astrology. What with Van banging on in the background, I realized that the house reminded me overwhelmingly of a step up from a student room in a hall of residence in the late Seventies: the batik hangings and tie-dye cushions, tatty philosophy and un-hoovered carpet, potted cactuses, Van Morrison and—I checked—other hippie staples such as the Doobie Brothers, Little Feat and The Byrds on the CD shelf.
I was slightly ashamed that my reaction was so snobbish, a sort of ‘so this is how the other half lives.’ Wealth had crept up on Ken and I, measured by his regular bonuses and promotions, and a percentage of royalty points on a pop album which had gone several times platinum two years previously. Our houses, although we hadn’t done much with them, had become larger and larger, in better and better areas. When we socialised, we did so with people of our own social status or higher, I’d sort of forgotten that not everybody had such a comfortable lifestyle: two cars, a cab account, thinking nothing of spending over ninety pounds on a dinner for two, or five grand on a fortnight in the Caribbean. Although the chance would be a fine thing, I thought wistfully. We had the wherewithal for a lounger by a turquoise pool somewhere tropical, but Ken never seemed able to take enough time off to make it worth the effort of going. He just proudly showed me his payslips instead, and talked about his bonu
ses as fondly as if they were his offspring, as if that ought to make up for it.
It struck me suddenly that I would have swapped my life and all its material trappings in a heartbeat, for this scruffy little house with Max in it. Money couldn’t buy what I wanted most.
Upstairs a toilet flushed, Max giggled, and footsteps pounded along a hallway and into a room over my head. I heard the squeak of bedsprings and the sound of curtains being drawn. Adam’s voice, soothing but firm, then quiet. I strained to hear more, but could make out nothing further than the low hum of reading.
To distract me from the envy I felt that it wasn’t me reading to Max, I delved into my bag and extracted my mobile. Switching it on, I saw that there was a text message from Ken: HOPE YOU WON’T BE TOO LATE. WILL BE HOME WHEN YOU GET IN COS I’VE GOT A SURPRISE FOR YOU! LOVE YOU XXX
Guilt washed over me, bathing me in its sickly green light until I felt like I was drowning. The message made up my mind for me: I had to go. I had to get home to my husband before things got out of hand, Max or no Max. I shoved the phone back in my bag, and looked around for something to write a note to Adam on. If I saw him, I wouldn’t be able to leave.
At that moment, I heard a tread on the stairs.
‘Sorry, Anna, to put this on you, but do you think you could pop up here for a minute? Max wants to show you something.’
My head blocked out Adam’s voice. My head made for the door, took out my car keys and left without another word. My head knew it was for the best. My head was on the road home - before it realized that my body had bounded two by two up the stairs and was squeezing past Adam in the hallway to end up standing by Max’s bed.
‘Guess what I can do, Anna? I forgot to show you earlier. Listen -’ Max was lying with his head on the pillow, in Bob the Builder pyjamas, looking utterly angelic. He put his finger into his mouth, inflated his cheek, and made several enthusiastic ‘pop goes the weasel’ sounds by yanking the finger out again. ‘That’s brilliant. I couldn’t do that until I was much older than you are.’
