witty in conversation, knowledgeable about history, proficient at the piano or perhaps even the harp. In other words, that he would be no great friend of mine whatever he thought of my legs. But I shrugged, blew the grey wisps of a spent dandelion in his direction, and announced that I preferred the music of seashells and mermaids, of bellowing whales and chattering dolphins. Wouldn’t the desert island be a symphony enough for me, providing as it did all of these sounds, not to mention the ceaseless clap of waves against rocks, the delicately lapping surf?
He seemed pleased with that answer. Clasping my naked ankle, he pulled me gently beside him on the rug, kissed me and called me darling.
I can only imagine what Penelope would have answered to such a question.
‘So, is this what is bothering you?’ asks Jacob now. His eyes are large and round in the dim light of his study. His leather chair creaks as he shifts his weight, leaning toward me. ‘This woman? Penelope?’
I shake my head. I don’t even know why I’ve wasted his time with this information. Wasted my time.
‘Then can we talk about what is really going on?’ Jacob asks.
‘I don’t know what is really going on,’ I say.
When I want him, I must go to him, find him, take him by the hand. In the sunlight, he lies on his back, his legs kicking the glass doors in a steady rhythm, his small fingers shoved down his nappy. He will not speak or look at me while I sound out words for him. It appears a deliberate effort, this turning away, for he seems to search for everything but my face, my eyes that seek him out, my lips that produce the words I am so desperate for him to try. ‘Mummy,’ I say, hoping he will imitate. Beside me is Emily, her mouth pursed reproachfully at her brother, who is pulling away from me now, having decided that if he cannot be left alone to kick the door he would rather be in another room. ‘Say Mummy, Daniel!’ Emily urges. But he will not speak to us or stay with us. He wiggles free and begins to climb. A spot of sunlight has divided into a rainbow across one side of the wall, and he is scrambling up the back of the sofa now to lay his tongue against its colours.
‘I’ve made an appointment for Daniel to see a consultant about his hearing,’ I tell Stephen. ‘So you’re going to have to move the school thing.’
He is sitting at the table eating his lunch as he studies the Financial Times. He flaps the paper to uncrease it, glances at me, then returns to the headlines. He says, ‘This is a top girls’ school and it has exactly two places available for the autumn.’
I decide that if he isn’t going to look at me, then I am not going to answer, at least not out loud. Instead, I shrug. I send my eyebrows up and tilt my head this way and that, as though considering what Stephen is saying. None of this can he see because he is too busy reading the Financial Times. But then he lays the paper on the table, folds his arms across his chest, and sighs. ‘Melanie, I am listening,’ he says reasonably. ‘I think we should both be there. Why aren’t you eating anything?’
In front of me is a cheese omelette, peas and grilled tomato, all of it grown cold. ‘I am eating,’ I say. ‘I’m about to eat.’
He says, ‘Emily should be there. They’ll want to meet her.’
At the other end of the table is Emily in a plastic smock with a big flower printed across the front. She is painting a blue cap on to a plastic monkey the size of her hand and seems wholly disinterested in our conversation. ‘She’s four years old,’ I say. ‘What are they going to do, give her a test?’
I’d meant to be sarcastic, but Stephen looks at me squarely and says, ‘Yes.’ Then he takes my fork and stabs at the omelette. Adding on a few peas, he holds the fork to my mouth. Then he smiles, a gorgeous warm smile, and it seems to me that I haven’t seen him smile at me in so long I stare at him, mesmerised. He looks so sweet all of a sudden that I wish we could just stay like this. He says, ‘You are going to eat. Emily is going to go to school. Things are going to be normal around here.’
I open my mouth for the omelette, chew slowly, still watching Stephen, who I realise now is just trying to manage our family the same way he manages his office. If I let him, perhaps he will succeed.
‘What about Daniel?’
‘What about him?’ he says.
‘The appointment with the consultant.’
‘How many consultants do you need?’ Stephen cuts some more of my omelette, hands me the fork, then nods to indicate that I should eat. ‘Didn’t you already take Daniel to a consultant? I certainly have a bill for a consultant.’
‘He wasn’t so good, that doctor. This next one is the very best.’ I chew slowly, then put my fork down, standing now to clear the plates. ‘I don’t want Emily tested,’ I say.
He is annoyed, but all he says is, ‘Move the appointment.’
‘I’m really worried about Daniel.’
‘About his hearing?’ asks Stephen. ‘You think there’s something wrong with his hearing?’
I consider this. ‘No, unfortunately, I doubt it’s his hearing,’ I say.
Stephen looks at me as though I’ve just said something very sinister, disloyal; immediately I am shamed. Then he says, ‘There’s nothing wrong with Daniel, full stop. He’s a boy. Boys are slower than girls. As for Emily, she won’t even know she’s being tested.’ He points his chin toward Emily. ‘Emily, do you care about being tested?’ he asks her.
Emily glances up from her monkey. She has a splash of paint across her cheek and some in her hair, too. ‘Yes,’ she says.
‘Oh, come on,’ Stephen says. ‘You don’t even know what “tested” means.’
‘Mummy thinks it’s bad,’ she says.
Stephen rolls his eyes at me. ‘Oh great.’
I say, ‘It’s as though she’s applying for a job.’
‘That’s ridiculous. Everybody tests kids these days,’ Stephen says. ‘It’s all part of the programme.’
Daniel has given up on the rainbow and wanders now into the kitchen where we are talking. I go to hug him but he refuses my body, rolling his shoulders to evade my grasp. Tiptoeing across the kitchen floor, he arrives at the refrigerator, expertly tackling the child lock, to remove two pints of milk. Emily adds a blue jacket to the monkey, who I suppose she wants to look like the circus ringmaster for Dumbo. He’d be more authentic if he didn’t have his fangs bared.
‘Then what’s going to happen when they test him?’ I say, meaning Daniel, who is now pouring the milk straight on to the floor, without even looking up to see if anybody is noticing.
When finally Stephen and I slept together, it was not in his flat but in Cath’s, which she’d left empty while on holiday in France. I didn’t quite understand why we were there (he’d said that he had to stop by to water the plants) or whose flat it was, and I must report that I felt a bit like a hooker. Things I couldn’t help noticing: how we made love on the floor, not the bed; how he washed out the coffee mugs we used and put them away so it seemed nobody had ever been there. When he told me he loved me I didn’t believe him. I judged him to be the sort of half-nice fellow who thinks he has to
