she lies back down, feeling that familiar dread wash over her: he will come back up, get dressed, perhaps stay for a polite cup of coffee and then leave, and it will be just her and Billy again, till bedtime. Oh, Lord, roll on bedtime.
It’s the second time she and Eduardo have had sex this week and the sixth since Billy was born. Mia knows this because she keeps tabs. It’s a bit like notches on the bedpost, although she’s painfully aware it doesn’t quite hold the same air of bragging arrogance as the teenage version.
This tab – at least at first – was more for herself. Somehow by writing down when they had sex, she could pretend it didn’t mean anything, that he was just ‘servicing’ her – and what woman living in 2008 shouldn’t be serviced, if she so desired? It kept things clinical, like a nurse keeping medical notes: frequency of urination, blood pressure, that sort of thing.
Lately, however, there’s been a shift. The tab she keeps is no longer so she can tell herself it means nothing, as it means something. Twice in one week – this is starting to become a habit – and part of her hopes it will become more than a habit for Eduardo, that he will find it in him to love her, properly, like she deserves to be loved. The other part of her, of course, wishes he’d fuck off and die, and it’s a constant source of fascination to Mia how the two can exist in unison.
He is at least starting to make an effort, she thinks. Historically, he would turn up drunk, at midnight, with no consideration for the fact she had to go to work, or now, get up with their son.
Since Liv’s birthday reunion, however, and leaving her in the lurch, he has actually turned up at the designated time to have Billy, and last night they had fun – proper, actual fun. They drank wine and talked about movies. She modelled her new Primark sundress for him, then they drank more wine and – when they ran out of that – some more, because woo-hoo! there was someone to go to the off-licence!
Then they snogged and danced to the Buena Vista Social Club in her kitchen, occasionally breaking to smoke out of the window, the view of Lancaster Castle high up on its hill, floodlit, like something out of a child’s dream.
Now, of course, hungover and with the prospect of looking after a baby all day, Mia regrets it. In fact she despises him for coming over here on a Tuesday night, taking her away from Holby City and a macaroni-cheese-for-one and corrupting her with his heady, Latino ways.
But she also needed it like a person needs air.
Last night, pressed close to him, dancing barefoot in her new summer dress, albeit one probably made in a sweatshop in Latin America, she felt alive; she felt primitive and sexual.
And she needs to feel primitive and sexual, she thinks, looking at their clothes strewn all over her laminated bedroom floor, otherwise she will go mad and life will feel like one big washing machine cycle. She needs to know she can do things with her body other than feeding a child, or hauling him up on her hip a thousand times a day, and if, right now, it is only the often flaky, unreliable father of her child that can give her that, then she is going to take it.
Also, sex with Eduardo is doubly exciting, because it is forbidden, after all. If any of her friends found out, they would go mad – wouldn’t they? Now she thinks about it, she wonders if they aren’t too wrapped up in their own lives to give a toss about who she’s sleeping with these days. Except Liv. Oh, Liv. It makes her suck air through her teeth just thinking about it. ‘He wears sunglasses inside, darling, he’ll bring you nothing but grief.’ And look at her now. Liv would have her guts for garters.
Then there’s Fraser … he already knows something’s afoot; if he knew the whole truth. God. It didn’t bear thinking about.
Fraser can’t stand Eduardo. He has tolerated him in the past – just, the effort etched on his face, but ever since he walked out when Mia was pregnant, she can’t mention his name without Fraser practically spitting on the floor, something she feels is slightly over the top. After all, it’s not his life, is it? And anyway, what does he care now since he’s seeing ‘Karen’? Mia has to try really, really hard not to make a face when she says the word ‘Karen’. It’s just, even the name has a desperate, over-the-hill air to it, and she suspects Fraser is using Karen as a crutch, that she’s not making him happy or vice versa. Which would be a terrible thing to do. Terrible.
She listens to Eduardo clattering around downstairs, probably making the polite coffee that he will drink whilst sitting on the side of the bed, before announcing he is leaving – stuff to do/mates to see/a shift to get ready for. She has no idea what he does with his day and has given up asking – and anyway, even though her friends would be shocked to hear it, deep down she wonders if this whole situation is partly her fault.
She went batty when she was pregnant. Batty. Did she drive Eduardo away? Did her hormones warp everything so that she demonized him, made him out to be worse than he actually is? As she lies in bed listening to the kettle, the clinking of china, the comforting sounds of another body in the house, she gets an image in her head, a memory: her, seven months gone, huge already and haring through Shoreditch on her bicycle at 2 a.m. Ha! What a bloody nutcase! The Wicked Witch of the East End! So fat she could barely turn the pedals for her bump.
She’d become convinced Eduardo was having an affair and decided to catch him out. She knew he’d be at the MOTHER bar – oh, yes, the MOTHER bar – and she burst through those doors, bump first, practically fighting the bouncers to the ground, a force of nature in maternity jeans. She stampeded around, Billy kicking inside her, alarmed at the sudden onslaught of hardcore techno. When she finally located him in a darkened corner, he was topless, wearing sunglasses and writhing around with another man who was also topless.
So he was gay! That was what all this was about. She had almost felt a rush of relief that it wasn’t just because he was a complete bastard.
But no, he was not gay, he said; he was just off his face, and apparently this was what one does when off one’s face. He was also scared and overwhelmed by the prospect of being a father and he just wanted some fun whilst he still could – was that so bad?
It seemed so at the time, but now she’s not sure, and when she pictures that scene now – him, bare-chested in Ray-Bans, chewing the inside of his cheek whilst she stood before him, a mountain of a woman, bicycle clips around the bottom of her maternity jeans, shouting ‘I hate you; I fucking hate your guts!’ – she starts to giggle, then really laugh, until she is doubled over in a fit of hysterics.
‘What are you laughing at?’ Eduardo stands in the doorway of her bedroom, naked, a mug in each hand, laughing at her laughing.
‘Oh, nothing, nothing … come to bed,’ she says, stretching out a hand. He bends down, puts the two mugs on the floor and almost jumps down beside her.
‘Eduardo! Bloody hell! About four of the slats in this bed are broken, you’ll break it even more if you’re not careful.’
‘Have you still not got round to getting a new bed?’ he says, snuggling up to her.
WELL I WOULD IF I HAD A MAN IN THE HOUSE TO ERECT ONE. She fights the urge to shout, but it’s so very hard.
‘No, I have still not got a new bed.’ She smiles, inhaling his smoky, musky scent. ‘But perhaps you could buy one for me. It’s the least you could do.’
Eduardo ignores that comment and tidies a strand of hair behind her ear. Here it comes, she thinks, the ‘better be going’. But he doesn’t. Instead he starts to kiss her tenderly, ever so gently, so she thinks she might cry, and she once more becomes aware of how much she needs this to stay alive, to
