Outside the door was the sound of squishing. Blop blop blop. I put down the box I was reluctantly unpacking and listened. ‘Alex?’
There was quiet for a moment. Then a small voice said, ‘It’s not me.’
I got up from my table and opened the door. ‘Hey, look, it is you.’
His face creased in existential uncertainty. He was wearing his yellow mac and red wellies, and on his head his train driver’s cap flattened his gorgeous dark fuzz. ‘What’s in there today?’ I indicated his wellies. Patrick encouraged him to wear them for some reason, both out of the house and in.
He stepped carefully from one foot to the other. ‘Guess.’
Something dry. ‘Crisps?’ I guessed. He nodded. ‘What type?’
‘Orange ones.’
‘Wotsits? You’ve got Wotsits in your wellies?’
He nodded solemnly.
In the time I’d spent in this house so far, I had picked up that Alex had a weird habit of putting things in his wellies. Mostly food—Angel Delight, avocado, biscuits—but also gravel, marbles and once his friend Zoltan’s hamster. Luckily, Harry was rescued before any feet went into the boots, and Alex received a lecture about not putting living things in the wellies—and yes, frogspawn counted.
‘Why does he do it?’ I’d asked Patrick, over what had become our nightly glass of wine.
‘I think it’s something to do with safety—he puts in things he likes. To keep them there, maybe.’
I didn’t want to ask why Alex would be afraid of losing the things he loved, and for a moment, I felt stunned by gratitude that Dan and I hadn’t managed to have a baby. I couldn’t imagine bringing a child into the middle of everything that was going on.
‘What are you doing?’ Alex was watching me setting out my art supplies on my new desk. ‘Are you colouring in?’
‘Sort of.’ I showed him some of my old drawings, drafts of wedding caricatures and funny sketches for magazines. ‘People ask me to do pictures for their birthdays, or weddings. Cartoons.’
He looked puzzled. ‘Cartoons like on TV?’
‘Well, yes, those start off as pictures too.’
‘They’re on TV.’ Alex was sceptical.
I gave up trying to explain animation, largely because I couldn’t understand it myself. Alex fixed me with his dark eyes. ‘Will you do a funny picture for me, Rachel?’
I looked at my things, my Japanese paper inset with silk, my fine ink pens, my paintbrushes and easel. It would be the simplest thing in the world to pick them up and draw. After all, I used to make money from it. I knew I could do it. And yet I hadn’t lifted a pen or a brush since the Incident. ‘I don’t know, Alex. I …’
‘Oh, please! Max really wants one. He told me he did.’
I sighed. I had to start sometime, and no one else had to see it except a small child and a dog, after all. I selected a fresh sheet of card and lifted my favourite drawing pen, feeling it snug between my fingers. I took a deep breath. ‘What would you like a picture of?’
‘Max,’ he said immediately. On cue, the little dog emerged from round the door and took a leap onto my lap, putting his head on the table. Two pairs of dark eyes watched me. I’ve never really wanted to draw ‘straight’—which is why I didn’t go to art school and failed Art A-level—but I could do funny things, doodles and caricatures, and people seemed to like them. Or at least they had before the Incident. I quickly drew Max, a sad-faced dog, all droopy ears and big eyes. ‘There you go.’ In a thought bubble was a picture of some biscuits surrounded by hearts.
Alex’s laugh went right to my heart, the purest sound I thought I’d ever heard.
I held out my hand to him. ‘Come on, let’s go and have a biscuit ourselves. But you can’t eat it with your boots on.’
‘Why not?’ His hand was warm and sticky.
‘Um … it’s a very old rule. Bad manners.’
With this combination of bribery and lies, I persuaded him to let me rinse the Wotsits off his feet. Then I followed him downstairs, plucking up washing and toys as I did. I’d fallen into this routine in the two weeks I’d spent in the house, and it was a peaceful, ordered existence. When the kid was in bed, Patrick and I talked, getting to know each other, gently skirting around the topics of Michelle and Dan. It was so nice to have someone to cook for—for the past year or so Dan had rarely stopped working for dinner, or ate with his BlackBerry in his lap. Patrick was a real foodie, and when he cooked it was all seared scallops and marinated venison. My parents would have choked—Monday night was Dolmio and pasta for them.
‘Rachel!’ came an impatient voice up the stairs. ‘You said I could have a biscuit!’
‘Coming,’ I called, scooping up the disembodied face of James the Red Engine on my way downstairs.
Today was going to suck anyway, because I had to see Dan’s mum. Jane was everything I wasn’t—elegant, controlled, decorous. I had never once seen her without heels on, even round the house. She’d been a nice mother-in-law, I supposed—all thoughtful little gifts and cards in the post when I had an interview, or an anniversary, or it was the pot plant’s birthday, that sort of thing. But often I’d wished Dan had a gaggle of siblings milling about, so I wouldn’t have to go to that beautiful empty house and answer questions in strained silence as the clock ticked.
It was Saturday, so Patrick was at the kitchen table as I tried to leave, watching me flap about trying to find my shoes while he drank coffee from his posh silver machine. I was scared of that thing. It had more buttons than a NASA launch pad. ‘What is it today?’
‘Mother-in-law,’ I said miserably, lacing up my Converse with one foot on the stairs.
‘Ah.’ He winced. ‘Luckily, my in-laws are in New York. I had to ask Michelle’s father, the congressman, for permission to marry her.’
‘Isn’t that a bit medieval?’ Dan had suggested the same, and once I had stopped laughing I’d told him not to be daft. I hadn’t asked Dad for permission for anything since I was seven, and unless it was about Airfix models or Countdown, he wasn’t going to have an opinion.
‘She insisted. I keep wondering if I’m supposed to sign her back in again like a hire car.’ Look at him, making jokes about divorce while he ate those little teeth-shattering biscuits he liked. He had come on.
Finally, I was ready. A bit of dishevelment would probably help my case anyway. ‘I better go,’ I said reluctantly.
‘Good luck,’ Patrick
