Isobel squeals, and sees the taxi driver rolls his eyes again through the smeared rearview mirror. She takes out her bright-purple purse and pushes some money through the partition, waving away Tom’s money.
‘Can I have the note, please?’ she asks. The driver twists around, confusion blurring his unpleasantly roguish features. ‘The one that my partner gave you when we set off,’ she says, looking at him expectantly.
It’s pushed back through the glass, along with her change, creased and dented by pound coins. She looks down at the piece of paper as the cab rattles off down the road. Tom’s writing is block-like, square.
Please take us to Portobello Market, but don’t tell her – it’s a surprise!
Tom takes her hand. ‘What did you ask him to give you that for?’
Isobel clutches it to her chest. ‘I want to keep it. Today is perfect and I want to always remember it.’
It’s still early and the morning air is crisp and cold. They meander through the endless antiques, Isobel stopping at the brightly coloured jewellery stalls and gazing out over the amber brooches, mint-green bracelets, glittering black-stone rings.
‘Are you going to get something?’ Tom asks.
‘Yes. Definitely.’
They stop at a stall crammed with stock: elegant teapots, jewellery, gold-rimmed saucers, china animals, staring Victorian dolls.
‘Look! We could get the baby something,’ Isobel says, reaching for a small doll with china lips and stiff black curls.
Tom grimaces and backs away slightly. ‘I don’t know. Something about old things like that freaks me out. Especially dolls.’
Isobel nestles the doll back amongst the others. ‘I love them. But we can leave it if you want. It might even be a boy. If it’s a girl, we can get her a vintage doll when she’s a bit older. Look at this, though.’ She pulls a ring with a ruby-coloured stone from the mass of items. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘Taking it, love?’ the female seller asks, not missing a beat. ‘Ruby is the stone of love and energy. It keeps you safe and makes you powerful. Warns you of danger too.’
Her voice is monotone: it’s as though the woman is reading from a prompt card for the hundredth time that week, and the stone in the ring obviously isn’t a real ruby, but there’s something about the words that Isobel likes. She slides the cool ring onto her middle finger and moves her head, watching the red stone twinkle in the weak light. ‘Yes. I will,’ she says. She picks up a turquoise compact mirror in the shape of a rose. ‘I’ll take this, too.’
‘You’ll be safe now,’ the woman says as she stuffs Isobel’s notes into her till.
A couple of weeks after their London trip, Isobel lies in Tom’s bed, staring up at his cracked grey ceiling. He always wakes later than her. Every time she’s stayed over here, she has woken early and listened to Tom’s easy breaths and the sound of the thrashing sea.
It is Sunday. Exactly two months to the day that Isobel and Tom first met.
Isobel turns over onto her side, stares out of the curtainless window at the blank grey sky, and waits for Tom to wake up.
‘Happy anniversary,’ she says when he does. She leans across him, into the warmth of his sleep and kisses his forehead.
‘Anniversary? How long have I been asleep?’ Tom asks lazily, draping an arm over Isobel.
‘Oh, a hundred years.’
‘Then our baby is a hundred years old now?’
Isobel laughs and kisses Tom again. ‘It’s our two-month anniversary. I was just thinking, it’s two months since we met in September.’
‘Wow. It seems longer. I can’t imagine not knowing you.’
‘I know. I can’t imagine things any different, now. The baby, us.’
‘Let’s celebrate. I’m off today, so let’s go out for lunch somewhere, and then look for some things for the baby.’
Isobel imagines a shop full of married couples and bright toys and muted newborn clothes: lemon and white and beige. She feels the tug of excitement that has been bubbling inside her for the past few weeks, even stronger now.
‘Okay. Let’s do it.’
After lunch in Mayor’s, the high street’s biggest café, they drive to a nursery shop just outside Silenshore in a grey retail park with huge square chain stores lined with car parks and trolleys. The shop smells sweet, like talcum powder and fresh cotton. Isobel stares at the prams and cots and car seats. Tom leans over them, checking the straps and the mattresses, muttering things about regulations and price.
‘It’s bad luck to buy a pram before the baby’s born. We can’t get a pram today,’ Isobel says as she sees Tom checking the price dangling from a tight black hood.
‘I’m just looking,’ he murmurs, before wandering over to the cribs.
Isobel pushes one gently and it rocks. She moves along the aisle, through wooden and white cribs, until she reaches the last one. It’s mahogany: a dark, luscious colour that reminds Isobel of another place and time.
‘I like this one,’ she calls to Tom. He puts down a yellow blanket and walks over to her.
‘It’s very nice,’ he says as Isobel runs her fingers along the glossy wooden sides. ‘Do you prefer that to white?’
Isobel nods emphatically. ‘Yes, definitely. Why, do you prefer white?’
Tom laughs and puts his hands up in mock defense. ‘No, no. I was just checking that you were happy with your choice.’
‘Shall we go back to mine once we’ve paid for it?’ he asks. ‘I’ll put the crib together, and we can see how it looks. If we know we’re happy with it then we can take it down again and store it until the baby arrives.’
‘Okay.’ Isobel feels doubt niggling at her, but pushes it away impatiently. ‘Sounds great.’
Once Tom has carried the box up the stairs to his flat, and Isobel has made them a cup of tea each, and they have sat and sipped it, listening to the patter of the rain that soon turns into pelting shards of water against the glass and into the sea outside, Tom opens the box and peers inside.
About twenty minutes later the crib is made. Tom works methodically, taking the instructions seriously, frowning at the paper and the letter-coded parts and the minute screws that scatter from his hands and roll across the uneven floor.
Isobel knows as soon as he makes the frame. She knew it in the shop, really, but refused to succumb to the doubt. Now, there’s no avoiding it, no pushing it aside.
The crib is too big.
It won’t fit in the bedroom. It only just fits in the lounge, in front of the television, with the coffee table pushed up against the window.
They stare at it, their eyes glazing over. As soon as one of them says it, it’s real.
‘There’s no room for it, is there?’ Isobel says eventually.
Tom shrugs, but his face is ever so slightly pink with the stress of the tiny screws and the letters, and now the dimensions that mean all his efforts are wasted. ‘I’ll carry it to my bedroom, and we’ll see if there’s any way it’ll fit in there.’
Isobel follows him, watching as he sets the crib down at the door, watching as he shuffles it further into the room, until it won’t go in any more.
‘It won’t fit,’ he says eventually. ‘I’m not sure what we can do, other