when she finally nodded at him, he smiled back at her as if they’d just consented to take a huge leap forward in cross-cultural understanding.
Unnerved, Kate made a show of efficiency, opening curtains, making the bed—all with one hand. ‘But not the mask—they won’t let you wear the mask to nursery.’
Findlay watched approvingly as she helped him into the Spiderman suit while listening to what was going on downstairs. Had Robert, who didn’t mind the economy bacon sandwiches as much as he pretended, finished making his way through the rashers leaking white residue, layered between Blue Ribbon margarine and two slices of Mighty White? She hadn’t heard him come back upstairs and he hadn’t brought her a cup of tea yet—a ritual observed every morning since the first time they woke up together.
Downstairs, Margery, who had been outraged when she’d discovered that Robert was expected to help himself to a bowl of cereal—when there was any—at breakfast, before a full day’s work, was overwhelmed with pride that now she was here she could send him out into the world with meat in his stomach as well as a greasy chin and cuffs. That was one wrong in this marriage she’d been determined to set to rights.
She trailed after him now to the front door, in a grey tracksuit she’d been given by American Airlines on one of her Florida trips when her luggage got lost, and waved frantically as he cycled off down the street—until he turned the corner, out of sight. Then she sighed involuntarily, stared threateningly at the innocent commuters passing No. 22 on their way to the station, and shut the front door quickly before the Jamaican next door saw her standing there and decided to rape her. According to the free paper they got at home, The New Shopper, these things happened in BROAD DAYLIGHT in London, and nobody lifted a finger to help.
When she turned round, Kate was standing at the foot of the stairs, watching her.
‘He’s gone,’ Margery said, fairly certain from the look on Kate’s face that this was the first—or one of the first times, anyway—that Robert had left the house in the morning without saying goodbye. Had the Hunter marriage entered a new phase, and would she—as she’d always hoped—live long enough to witness her son rising like a phoenix from the ashes of a passion gone cold?
Kate hid her face in her daughter’s back again, briefly shutting her eyes so that Margery couldn’t read in them the last two minutes spent at the bedroom window, watching Robert cycle off down Prendergast Road without so much as turning to look up at the house; without so much as even saying goodbye.
When she opened them again, Margery had disappeared into the kitchen.
‘You’re never wearing that to nursery,’ her voice exclaimed, outraged at the perversity of Findlay’s fancy dress when there was no occasion.
‘Mum said I could.’
‘You’ll get your eczema back if you wear that nylon suit in this heat.’
‘What’s nylon? I’m not hot anyway.’
‘You wear it day in, day out—it needs washing.’
This had been Kate’s point upstairs. Is that what she sounded like to Findlay? God.
Findlay didn’t respond to this.
‘You’ll be covered in eczema by this afternoon.’
‘I’m not hot,’ Findlay said again, beginning to sound tearful.
At this, Kate went into the kitchen.
‘The eczema’s got nothing to do with the heat, it’s stress related.’
‘Stress related?’ Margery stared at Findlay. ‘He’s five years old.’
‘I’m four and a half,’ Findlay said. ‘Can I have some fruit?’
Unable to bear it in the kitchen any longer and feeling suddenly displaced, Kate prepared Flo’s baby rice and took it upstairs, balancing Flo on their unmade bed among the pillows, and feeding her what she could. She got her dressed and was just getting into a pair of trousers when she heard Findlay, yelling distinctly, ‘I DON’T LIKE PINEAPPLE.’
Leaving Flo floundering on the bed, Kate ran back downstairs into the kitchen.
‘What’s going on down here?’
‘She’s giving me pineapple,’ Findlay said, pushing his face into his hands.
‘You like pineapple,’ Margery said petulantly.
‘I don’t,’ Findlay started to sob.
‘He drinks pineapple juice,’ Margery appealed to Kate.
‘I like pineapple juice, but I don’t like pineapple,’ Findlay sobbed.
‘It’s okay,’ Kate said, going up to him and stroking the back of his neck just beneath the hairline.
‘I’ve opened it now,’ Margery grunted. ‘It’ll go to waste.’
‘Opened what?’ Kate said, losing patience.
‘The can.’
‘Can of what?’
‘Pineapple.’
‘But we don’t have any cans of pineapple.’
‘I bought this yesterday.’ Margery held up the can with the can opener still clamped to the top, slamming it back down so that the syrup ran down the side over her fingers, which she started sucking on. ‘He said he wanted some fruit.’
Kate watched her, suddenly revolted.
‘He meant fresh fruit.’ She gestured aggressively towards the basket on the surface near the coffee machine, adding, ‘It’s not like we’re on rations or anything.’ She tried to laugh, but it didn’t work. She’d been waiting to say that for too long.
‘I know we’re not on rations,’ Margery said, thinking suddenly of a cousin of hers who’d fought in the war and been taken prisoner in Burma by the Japanese, ‘But real fruit’s expensive and it goes off in this weather—doesn’t keep.’
‘It doesn’t need to keep, it just gets eaten—and it’s only April,’ Kate said, her hand gripping tightly now onto Findlay’s neck.
Margery licked the last of the pineapple syrup off her fingers. She was drifting now, more concerned with the memory of her POW cousin than the preservative quality of tinned fruit.
She stared at Kate, trying to remember what on earth they’d been talking about, but in the end gave up and turned away from her, starting to wash the frying pan instead.
‘You’re sure you’ll be okay today?’ Kate said, finally letting Findlay go.
Findlay ran upstairs.
‘I’ll be fine,’ Margery responded, without turning round.
Kate wasn’t convinced. ‘You’re sure you’re going to be okay?’ she said again, feeling a sudden, unaccountable remorse at the sight of Margery’s swollen feet, bound purple with varicose veins,
