‘Push me, Mum!’
It was then that I realised my feet were cold, dirty and bare once again.
‘I was only calling for Dad,’ said Lola, ‘to ask if he would be allowed to swing—’
There, that. Was that triumph in her voice?
‘Of course he can’t fuh—’ I said; Thomas was walking closer. ‘He can’t go on swings, Lola, sorry.’
‘Push me!’
‘No, Stevie!’ The look I gave her was as direct as I could make it. ‘If he breaks a leg he’ll be … it could set him right back. Permanently.’
Thomas took in a rapid breath. Lola lowered her chin.
‘Yes, of course. Sorry. It’s OK, you meant well, Lollapalooza,’ her father said.
‘Of course you did,’ I agreed. ‘No harm done.’
I never wanted him to feel he had to defend her from me. We both knew how well she had meant.
We binned the leaflet and tied up the swing.
Later, Lola disappeared off with a group of friends to something that gloried in the name of ‘Mungojaxx’, a ‘festival for faux-boho future bankers’, as Thomas described it, which drew a tight snort from me. The girl seemed keyed up as she walked out of the door and as she went a certain tension in the breeze whistled right out with her.
The next time we came over, I arrived with two small overnight bags.
Lola had let us in; Thomas hurried into the kitchen ten minutes later, fresh from work.
‘We were just saying yesterday,’ said Thomas, ‘it’ll be lovely to have him stay over. Weren’t we, Lollapalooza?’
‘Were we?’ she asked.
My back to them both, I pressed down on banana flesh with my masher.
‘Come on, Lo …’ he said.
‘What?’ She walked out of the kitchen.
‘Lola!’
‘It’s fine,’ I said, breaking eggs into a bowl. ‘It’s all still so new to her. Go get changed, relax, I’ll bring you something.’
That won his smile back. We were still so new to ourselves that every hackneyed and cosy gesture felt daring, sexy; mixing him a drink in his own home, baking in his Aga. I was now spending so much time at Littleton Lodge that we had decided: time for our first sleepover with Stevie.
‘OK. I’ll just go see to Lola first.’
I nodded and started whupping the eggs, quite hard. After he left I googled on my phone. As I had thought:
Lollapalooza
/ˌlɒləpəˈluːzə/
Noun, North American, informal – A person or object that is more than usually impressive or attractive.
I had heard the word out of that soft mouth a few too many times already. Time after time. I found it irritating, but I needed to stay calm. To relax. Vodka. I would make vodka tonics to ease us into our weekend. First, I scrolled down:
Lollapalooza; also, a gambling term for a made-up hand of cards.
In other words, tricky. I never claimed to be an intellectual, far from it, but I did indeed read into things. Meaning lurked everywhere, even though we could only look back or around us, never see what was to come.
And what was to come?
It had been over a month since the referendum. A lucky seven days since I had last smoked. Things in this country – as with things in my lungs – might have been calming down, or they might not. For a few days after the referendum I had raged. Raged. Then, Thomas had called and I had started to hope we would all just get on with it; rise in the heat, as we always had done. We got on with it. High Desford – not famous, not distinguished, beautiful to few – excelled in that it had become a truly blended town. White English people, Sikhs, Poles, Hindus, Afro-Caribbeans, Chinese, other Europeans and yes, Muslims; genders and sexualities every colour of that proud rainbow; all generations, everyone; even one local character who liked to drape a Partick Thistle scarf across his chilled wares in the market square. Surely, unless you mixed it all up, gave it some heat and bit in brave and hard, you never could know. And maybe a Swedish-born oven, raised in Shropshire, was always destined to bake some bloody lovely Jamaican banana bread.
As it rose in the oven, I went to the drinks fridge. But the bottle of vodka had gone, and the tonic too. I did not stress: that sunshine aroma was already billowing out from the cast-iron conundrum, filling such cracks in our day. Wine would do.
‘Mum?’ Stevie wandered into view. ‘The cartoon finished.’
‘OK, sweetie, I’m coming through.’
‘Can I have some ’nana cake, please?’
‘Not right now, after supper.’
No, the youth was not in charge, today; the grown-ups had already plotted. As our reward, the evening had passed off quietly – Stevie, having seen the size of his new room, lit up the longer silences – and everyone had gone to bed early and eager. None more so than Thomas and I.
Lights left on, always. Our pampered mouths – brushed clear of crumbs and newly minted – were now more than stunned by their discoveries, they were over-sexed and delighted for it. Our bodies were ahead of even our lips. Thomas had seized a no-messing handful of right thigh. With my toes pointing past his shoulder, he eased my thigh higher as we sat, naked, facing each other on the bed; higher he stretched me, back and higher …
‘Mum!’
‘Oh God!’ A hamstring twanged, good as snapped. ‘Stevie darling, hi—’
Thomas had already yanked up the duvet.
‘What are you doing, Mum?’
‘Exercises, poppet. Physio.’ I gave Thomas my first cross look. ‘Door?’
‘It was locked, I swear!’
‘What did you want, baby? You can’t sleep?’
‘I dreamed of Lolly and she came.’
‘What?’ we said.
‘Lolly was here, she told me you wanted me.’
Neither of us spoke for a moment. Then:
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘We always want you, my lovely one.’
Stevie, free of his callipers but broken by bad dreams, clambered on to the bed so he could throw his insubstantial arms around me. I sat back on my haunches, the right one aching like hell, and I pressed my lips to his crown. He wormed into the bed, nestled down under the duvet.
Behind me, a swallowed sigh.
In the morning, Thomas was all smiles and ‘more coffee?’. As the first sure-bring-Stevie sleepover it had not been an unqualified success. Not knowing which child to blame, we yawned, gulped the breakfast blend faster than normal, and blamed neither. But I knew.
I watched as Lola, triumphant, made a show of cutting soldiers for Stevie’s dippy egg.
‘… and this is the soldier that guards the queen!’
She caught my eye; we smiled. Yet my faking lips fell when she said:
‘Next time, Stevie, you’ll have to top-to-toe with me!’
Thomas laughed, grateful. I said:
‘His legs, though, you see …’ and the laughter died.
Maybe I was being too harsh on her, on all of us. Thomas doted on Lola, and Lola might have been coming to dote on Stevie.
I