Her skin was cool and smooth. She looked as though she was wearing perfectly matched foundation, although I would have put money on her being bare-faced. I had never noticed before how oversized her wedding ring was on her slim pianist’s fingers. She pushed a pain au chocolat at me that she’d brought with her. ‘What are you going to do?’
I put my face in my hands. ‘Well, I’ve already signed her up to a lot of email newsletters, for a start.’
Laura coughed as she inhaled a crumb of pastry. She raised her eyebrows. ‘Pardon?’
Alexa’s business website listed her email address in full and I’d signed her up to more than 200 mailing lists, to ensure her inbox was packed with advertising and newsletters, at least until she figured out how to unsubscribe from them all. Stephen would be no help – he still struggled to remember his email password.
There are some surprising benefits to my job. I’d written a story a couple of weeks earlier about a private investigator who told me what some of her clients did when they discovered their suspicions about their cheating husbands were correct. Some of it was genius stuff – hiding anchovies in expensive cars, selling pricey one-off designer suits at no reserve on eBay. Since Stephen walked out, I’d returned to a few of their blogs and chat groups. The inbox email idea had belonged to one of them.
‘Wow.’ Laura’s eyes were sparkling as she leant back against the couch. ‘You’re right. That’ll be very annoying.’
I shrugged. ‘Well, it will keep them occupied.’
Lila returned and burrowed between Laura’s legs. Laura reached down and stroked a stray piece of hair back from her daughter’s face.
I smiled at Lila. She was only three months younger than Thomas, but she seemed so slight compared to his sturdy legs and barrel-like torso. She was wearing one of those sparkly baby pink dresses with layers of petticoat tulle that now seemed to be a daily uniform for small girls, whether they’re going to a birthday party, riding a bike with their mothers, or making mud pies. She ducked back under the insufficient hiding place of Laura’s athletic thighs. I suddenly desperately wanted to change the subject.
‘How’s everything going with you?’
Laura pushed the question away. ‘Oh, fine. If the hospital could learn to fit a part-time shift into part-time hours or had enough staff to cover the workload, that would be fantastic. But otherwise, you know, we’re fine.’
We sat in silence, watching Thomas tip over another box, sending a convoy of small trucks zipping across the floor. ‘Good riddance to him,’ Laura murmured at last. ‘I mean, if you’d left him, he would have been a total disaster. But you without him …’ Her voice trailed off.
‘Yeah. I’ll probably survive. I know. I just don’t feel it yet.’
Lila’s head snapped up. She had found some of Thomas’s marker pens on the floor and had drawn on her arms and face. ‘Pretty.’ She smiled at us.
Laura turned back to me. ‘I’m sorry. It’s fine to be angry. Be furious. But can you promise me something?’
I groaned. ‘What?’
‘Can you please call me at least daily? I know you, and now you’re going on leave with no work to think about you’ll just sit around here getting pissed off, and I don’t think that’s going to be helpful for anyone.’
‘Sorry.’ I looked at my hands. ‘I just didn’t want to tell you until …’
‘Yes, I know. You don’t like to talk about these sorts of things until they’re over and you’ve got everything back how you want it. But you can’t get through this one alone. Now …’ She was businesslike. ‘What would you like to do? I know you don’t like a whole day with nothing planned, even when you haven’t got this other stuff going on.’
What did I want to do? I had been so focused on plodding through each minute that I had not allowed myself to think much beyond the most basic necessities of getting the last bits of work done, feeding myself and Thomas, and remembering to shower from time to time. I realised she was still waiting for an answer.
I cast around for something. ‘Shall we go for a little walk? See how far I can waddle along? Some fresh air might be good to clear my head a bit.’
Laura snapped her fingers. ‘We can do that. Come on, children, we’re going on an adventure.’
We returned to the house less than twenty-five minutes later, after Thomas and Lila shrieked at each other in disagreement about which way around the block they wanted to walk. They were horrified when we would not allow them to bring home some bits of old plastic bottles and dog poo they found while conducting a ‘treasure hunt’. I pretended to be exasperated that we were giving up, but I could feel the exertion in my growing varicose veins, and my daughter seemed to have joined in with an intrauterine walk of her own. Amy’s car was in the driveway as we arrived back. Laura glanced at me. ‘We might leave you to it.’
When Amy and Laura had first met, Amy had lectured her – at length – about why she thought all of her customers who claimed to be on a gluten-free diet were insufferable and putting it on to be trendy. ‘Trying to get attention when there’s nothing else interesting about them,’ I think were her words.
Laura, a coeliac with a nursing degree, had hurled a few insults of her own. ‘Uneducated’ and ‘narrow-minded’ were the ones I remembered best. Ever since, Amy had thought it hilarious to joke about what she might have hidden in food that Laura ate at my house.
I kissed Laura on the cheek. ‘Let me go and deal with her. Thanks for visiting.’
Lila gave us a shy wave from the seat Laura had fixed on to her bike for her, just behind her handlebars. ‘Say bye, Thomas,’ I prompted. He returned the wave.
As the bike rounded the edge of the driveway, he dropped to the ground. ‘No! Lila come back. Come back!’ I scooped him up and carried him inside under one arm, his legs still kicking behind me.
Music was blaring from the spare room. Amy emerged, scarves draping and spiky, scuffed stiletto heels sticking out of a half-taped box under her arm. I had not realised that she, too, had a spare key to the house.
‘What are you doing?’ I watched as she returned to her car and pulled out a clothes rack, which she then tried to manoeuvre through the door. ‘What’s going on?’
She stopped and grinned at me. ‘I have a plan.’
I rocked from my heels to the balls of my feet and back again. Heat spread across my lower back. A walk really hadn’t been such a good idea.
‘I’m going to come and live with you.’ Amy dropped a box to the ground. ‘I heard what Mum said to you before you left the other day about staying there. Can you imagine? You’ll be her pet project again before you know it and Dad will want to know what you’re doing every time you’re five minutes late. Torture!’
She patted me on the shoulder as she went to get another bag. ‘You won’t even know I’m here. Promise. I’ll just help you when you need me.’
I followed her out to the car. I could just imagine having her as my permanent house guest. She’d assure me that she would be home to help with dinner at 5.30 p.m., roll in at 7.30 p.m. and wonder why I was upset. No doubt she still sang in the shower at the top of her voice, even in the middle of the night. Dishes would be piled in the sink and skimpy underwear added to my laundry pile. There would never be any mention of rent being paid.
‘It’ll be okay, honestly.’
Her face fell. ‘No?’
‘No. Really. Thanks for the offer, though.’
She bit the rough edge of her index fingernail. ‘The thing is …’
I waited. There was always something.