swallows hard and tries to centre himself by picturing Mia and Freddie on the beach last weekend, sculpting a sand mermaid with seaweed for hair. He attempts to think of ordinary things: the numerous cracks and leaks he must fix in the Shorling house, and the lone nit Freddie made him examine with a magnifying glass as it writhed on a sheet of white paper.
By the time Eddy, Frank and Ava get up to leave, Rob realises he’s even more inebriated than he first thought. Nadine springs up to fling her skinny arms around her friends before resuming her position on the sofa.
‘So, Rob,’ she starts, ‘what are you going to do?’
He drains the last of his vodka and tonic. ‘I have no fucking idea.’
‘Well,’ she says, ‘for what it’s worth, I have this mantra, okay? And it’s that we should all be true to ourselves …’
Normally, Rob would snort at the kind of fluffy sound-bite so beloved of women’s magazines: Follow your dreams. Life’s not a rehearsal. Be true to yourself … But it’s approaching 3 a.m. and her eyes are incredible – piercing blue, emphasised with the kind of flicked black eyeliner which makes him think of sexy French girls in arthouse movies.
‘You’re right,’ he blurts out. ‘The thought of leaving London …’
‘It’s like leaving a part of yourself,’ she suggests.
‘Yes! That’s exactly it. It’s where I’ve lived and worked my whole adult life …’
‘And you’ve done really well, Rob.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ he murmurs bashfully.
‘But you have! You virtually run the office … I’ve always found you a bit intimidating, to be honest.’
‘God, I hope not.’
‘No, that’s just me being silly.’
‘Well,’ he says with a grin, ‘I’ll try to be less intimidating in future …’
And so the night goes on, Rob now too drunk to care about whether he’s slurring or not, and sensing the little knots of tension starting to loosen in his shoulders and neck. He knows he should call a cab, but being here with Nadine is so much nicer especially as, with most of his family’s possessions transported to Shorling, ‘home’ feels like a bleak shell with a bed and a sofa plonked in it.
‘Look, Rob,’ Nadine is saying, looking sleepy now, ‘you can crash out here if you like. This is a sofa bed and I’ve got plenty of spare bedding.’
‘I …’ he starts, knowing he should continue: Thanks, but I’d better go home. But he can’t. He is physically incapable of coherent speech because every fibre of his being is focused on Nadine’s red lips.
They are getting closer and closer and Rob knows without doubt that she is going to kiss him. He also knows there is no way he’ll be able to resist kissing her back. Then they are kissing – snogging, actually – the just-turned-forty-year-old father-of-two with undeniable talents in the Lego department, and the beautiful rich girl who lives in Daddy’s flat and trots off to India whenever she feels like it. They pull apart, laughing in disbelief, and immediately she’s up on her feet, making up the sofa bed while he stares into space, wondering what the hell just happened. Perhaps it was a hallucination. He’s never kissed anyone but Kerry – not for over thirteen bloody years. But it’s okay, it didn’t mean anything …
Dizzy and overwhelmingly tired now, Rob is vaguely aware of saying goodnight to Nadine, then undressing to his boxers and falling into bed alone as the mauve-tinted dawn creeps into the room. Yet, when he wakes at 8.47 a.m., with his dried-out tongue gummed to the roof of his mouth, a tiny and naked Nadine is curled up on the sofa bed beside him.
Chapter Six
Kerry was up early – 6.35 a.m. – despite Freddie’s nocturnal wakening and that Cuckoo Clock theme tune chirping away in her brain for much of the night. But at least she has been able to shower uninterrupted and even managed to blow-dry her hair. Normally she lets it dry naturally, which makes it sound like a considered move, in the way a celeb might share a beauty tip: ‘I try to avoid exposing my hair to heat.’ However, it’s more to do with the fact that, since having Mia, and especially since having Freddie, Kerry’s ‘beauty regime’ (she can’t help twitching with mirth whenever she hears that term) has been whittled down to a spot of Nivea on her face before bed. Rob is more high-maintenance than she is these days.
Kerry has also managed to unearth her old favourite red shift dress, plus glossy heels that match – not the dress, obviously (that would be too much red) but each other, which feels like a major achievement. It’s a bit much for daytime, she suspects. But Kerry is hoping for maximum impact when she shows up to surprise Rob.
She’s at the bathroom mirror now, applying make-up under the watchful gaze of Mia, who rarely sees her mother beautifying herself. Teeth, Kerry thinks a little late in the proceedings, prompting Freddie to bellow, ‘Why are you sawing your mouth?’
‘I’m not sawing. I’m just cleaning the little gaps between my teeth.’ She has a fleeting memory of a time when she could perform bathroom-related duties alone.
‘Why?’ Mia asks.
‘Er, so my breath’s nice and fresh.’ Explaining about plaque and mouth germs seems a little unnecessary at this early hour.
A sly smile creeps across Freddie’s face. ‘That’s ’cause you’re gonna kiss Dad.’
Kerry drops her used dental floss strip into the bin. ‘Yes, well, I hope so, sweetheart. That’s the general idea, seeing as it’s his birthday.’
‘Can we phone Daddy now?’ he asks, plucking her used floss from the bin and bringing it up to his own mouth.
‘Freddie, put that back in the bin! It’s dirty …’
He throws it down at his feet. ‘Can I, Mum?’
‘Yeah, I wanna call Dad,’ Mia exclaims.
‘In a little while,’ Kerry says, brushing on mascara. ‘It’s only half eight and he might be having a lie in, seeing as it’s Saturday.’ She tries to remember what time he said the first people were coming round to look at the house. Around ten, was it? ‘We’ll call in about half an hour, okay?’
Mia sucks her teeth. ‘You never let us phone him.’
‘Sweetheart, that’s not true. Ow.’ Kerry jabs the mascara wand into her left eye, causing it to fill with tears. ‘We speak to Daddy nearly every evening …’
‘Yeah, but …’ She makes a little pfff sound.
‘Come on, darling. Dad’ll soon be living with us, then you’ll see him every day.’ Dabbing her watery eye with some loo roll, she glances down at her children who are perched on the edge of the shabby enamelled bath. Still friendless in Shorling, Kerry has taken to counting the days until Rob comes home for the weekends. Yet, when he is here, she detects a sense of distance between them, almost as if they’ve forgotten how to
