The effort was exhausting him; instead of getting excited he felt depressed and hopeless. He sighed and stretched his arms out in front of him until his linked fingers cracked at the knuckles, then looked down again at the magazine on his lap, turning the page to be confronted by yet another tight, artificially tanned bottom thrusting uninvitingly up at him, breasts lolling in the background. Instead of making him stiffer, it merely made him despair.
Throwing the magazine back on to the table he stood up, moved over to the line of videos in the small bookcase and scanned the covers in search of inspiration, humming an unidentifiable tune as he turned his head first one way and then another to read the titles. ‘Might be worth a try,’ he muttered to himself as he pulled one out, then slotted it into the open-mouthed recorder and sat back to watch. After a few moments of fascination at the proportions of the girls gambolling on the beach, he realised he had completely forgotten the purpose of it all and had let his mind wander off into thinking how small the little lines must be to fit in six hundred and twenty-five on the screen. ‘Oh, this is ridiculous,’ he said out loud, and blew out his lips in exasperation as he got up and switched off the recorder.
Another tack. He sat on the plastic seat of the nearest chair, leant back against the wall, closed his eyes and thought of Julie, picturing her undressing in the slowly casual way she did when she knew he was watching her. He felt a comforting little twitch of response and persevered. Julie arching her back as she undid her bra, leaning forward to pull down her tights, smiling at him from under her hair as if shy of him after ten years of marriage.
Disappointingly, she was suddenly dressed again and putting the Sunday joint in the oven. He managed to force her clothes off again with a huge effort of will but as soon as she was naked they irritatingly snapped back on again.
He opened his eyes, resisted a strong temptation to look at his watch, and picked up another magazine.
At last Harry was sleeping. After a night of walking the baby up and down, rubbing his back as he struggled against her left shoulder in the seemingly unending battle against colic, Anna had spent much of the morning trying to settle him in his cot. Finally she had given up and decided to go out, hoping that a long journey in the old-fashioned pram would work its usual magic and lull him to sleep. He had still been wide awake and grizzling as she reached the row of shops where she usually stopped, so she had kept going for half a mile or so towards another supermarket where she hadn’t shopped since before his birth three months earlier. He had drifted off only moments before she turned the corner into Streatham High Road, his eyelids closing in spite of himself, his natural curiosity at the extraordinary business of being alive stifled by the irresistible drowsiness produced by the comforting jolting of the pram wheels over the pavement.
She pushed open the heavy glass door of the shop with one hand and manoeuvred the pram inside by pushing it with her body as she gripped the handle and her bag with the other, then stopped in annoyance. It was immediately clear that there would be no chance of the large second-hand pram fitting comfortably back through the checkouts on her way out, and even the narrow aisles, though they were empty of customers, were littered with dump bins carrying special offers, and looked dauntingly difficult to negotiate. Letting the glass door swing shut behind her, she instinctively reached down to pick up the baby, then hesitated as she looked at Harry’s peacefully dreaming face, his brow smooth and untroubled, his eyes gently moving under their pink translucent lids.
‘Oh God, I can’t wake you up again, I just can’t,’ she muttered under her breath. She sighed, then parked the pram just inside the entrance where she could keep half an eye on it, pushing her foot down to lock the brake in place. She bent down and kissed Harry very lightly on a flushed, rounded cheek, then pressed her mouth to his unconscious ear and whispered gently, ‘It’s only a few things. You’re out for hours by the look of you. Won’t be a moment.’
She picked up her bag, collected a trolley and, making her way into the heart of the store, pushed it quickly but without enthusiasm down the aisle, bored by the very idea of the shopping she had to do, and wearied at the tiresome business of having to keep count of every price as she chose the things she needed. The cardboard boxes balanced on the shelves on either side towered over her in depressing brown walls as she collected tins of baby food and baked beans, and she looked away from them and down into the cabinets, where packets of frozen vegetables were piled in their plastic bags, each covered with a thin white film of frost.
She chucked two solid, icy packets of peas on top of the tins then stopped and pulled a small piece of paper from her pocket. ‘Now, what was it I knew I’d forget?’ she muttered as she stood in the middle of the aisle, studying the neatly written list, but with her other hand still firmly holding on to her small fake leather knapsack which she had rested on the handle of the trolley.
She instinctively gripped it even more tightly as a grey-haired woman wearing a padded coat like an eiderdown came round a corner and pushed past her, tutting a little as she did so. Anna looked up at the large pear-shaped figure as she waddled away towards the gravy powders, and threw a disinterested ‘What’s your problem, then?’ after her.
The woman stopped and turned to look back at Anna, whose small figure with spiky jet-black dyed hair, huge earrings and spindly calves, exaggerated by tight, black leggings and loose white shirt hanging down below a thick black jumper, was dwarfed by the mountains of goods on either side. ‘It’s people like you that’s the problem, love,’ she answered. ‘Learn some manners.’
Anna looked down at her list again, murmuring quietly, ‘Oh go fuck yourself.’ But she felt suddenly uneasy and glanced up towards the doorway. Her view was blocked for a moment by a blonde customer in a blue blazer coming through the door, but as the woman moved towards the stacked row of trolleys Anna was reassured by the sight of the pram still sitting where she had left it. She stuffed the list in her pocket and headed for the nappies.
Juliet turned back from the trolleys and moved quickly over to the pram. As she looked down she suddenly knew for certain what she had suspected when she had seen it through the large plate-glass window. The baby looked so sweet lying there in his blue baby-gro, so securely tucked in and peaceful that it seemed a shame to move him, but she knew she must. As she bent over the pram she breathed in his warm, milky, almost edible smell and felt her womb contract in sympathy. She pulled back the blue cotton blanket, gently slipped her hands under his armpits and lifted him up confidently on to her left shoulder, letting his head fall softly against the wool of her jacket as she held him with one hand and picked up the blanket with the other. He lifted his head slightly, making it wobble on its red, pleated neck, gave a little whimper and screwed up his eyes, then made a small sucking movement with wet lips before giving a tiny sigh and settling back into a deep sleep.
Juliet smiled to herself as she rubbed the side of her face against the fuzzy head, then pushed open the glass door and made her way quickly out of the shop. She tucked the cover round the baby with her free hand as she moved away from the supermarket and crossed the road, walking purposefully up the street and away from the shops: a tall, striking woman dressed in expensive-looking but creased blazer and trousers, her streaked blonde hair unkempt and