his smile; one warm poultice for our wound.
‘That was scary.’ I stopped short of patting my chest. ‘I have never, ever had that said to me. I was born here—’
‘Idiot,’ he said.
‘Big mad angry violent idiot.’
‘So dumb.’
‘As in “referendumb”.’
‘Ha, precisely. Don’t worry, though. He’s just one nutter.’
‘But he’s clearly swallowed at least two others.’
He laughed, shook his head. ‘They feel emboldened, they were always going to. It’ll pass.’
‘Or get worse.’
‘It’ll be fine. We’re all better than that.’
‘Well … Thank you.’
‘Pleasure.’
‘No, seriously.’ It had to be now. ‘How can I ever thank you?’
‘Actually …’ he said.
‘I always buy them and she pretends not to mind, but she does. I’d be so grateful—’
‘I’m not actually going to bake you one, you know!’
We walked on through the aisles and, laughing, stopped.
‘Here we are,’ I said. ‘Look.’
‘Great.’ He reached for the nearest factory sponge.
‘No, listen.’ I surprised myself with that flirty-bossy tone, me trying to take over his senses so soon. Look … listen … ‘You don’t want a big-brand one with loads of E numbers. Think cricket wife. Wonky, homemade.’
‘Oh, but I—’
‘Hang on.’ There I went again. ‘This one, with apricot jam. Ah, organic. Perfect.’
‘Hold your horses,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit … you know.’
‘What?’ I scanned it for flaws.
‘A bit …’ He smiled. ‘Naked.’
‘Forward,’ I said, walking on.
We put the nuddy-cake in his trolley and continued, weighing each step.
‘Look,’ I said, a few steps later. ‘Icing sugar. You—’
‘I ice it myself, slap “Happy Birthday” on it.’
‘You catch on quick.’
‘Insanely good teacher.’
‘Damn right,’ I said.
‘Best home-made money can buy.’
‘Our secret.’
‘Our naked secret.’ He shook his hair out of place. ‘Sorry, way too forward, crass of me …’
‘No problem.’ Then, new in this territory, in this changed world, I dared:
‘We’re married, remember?’
His eyes sparked, looked away:
‘Whatever happened to our honeymoon?’
Cloud to ground flashes, electric potential under the strip lighting. An atmosphere. After such a bad night I must have looked jaundiced, a proper fright, but his eyes were saying no such thing. I lowered my gaze, too.
‘You don’t even know my name.’
‘Care to rectify that?’
‘Darling.’
Delight, disbelief, then that dink of dropping copper. Every time.
‘You’re called Darling?’
Genuine pleasure, as if I’d chosen my ostrich feather of a name just to tickle him under the chin.
‘That’s me.’
‘I’m Thomas,’ he said and I knew, before he had even unlocked his phone, that my digits would soon be safe inside, if …
I ran the test.
‘Go ahead, you can laugh, my Stevie’s friends find my name hilarious too. He’s five; my little terror.’
‘Bet he is,’ he looked down for a moment. Two.
I counted in my head. Six, and then he said:
‘We could meet up sometime. Do you know Andante? The café on Stewart Street?’
I did. ‘I’ll find it.’
‘Could I take your number please, Darling?’
We met at Andante on the Tuesday; a safe get-together over coffee. We knocked around a little conversation like beginners playing pool. I did not smoke. Small sips, no clattering spoons. Then, someone else’s boldness breaking through: honeyed nibbles, unasked-for struffoli doughnuts which the owner brought to our table, flushed and apologising for the interruption, telling us that they meant all our Christmases had come that very morning. It was impossible not to give sweeter, more rounded smiles after that. Fortified, we ventured opening gambits, a brisk mapping out of our positions. I told him I was a trained nurse, and lived alone with Stevie; he was an architect, father to sixteen-year-old Lola and the widower of one Tess. The next time, Friday cinema, brought kisses that were warm if prosaic. I believe we wondered if it could be enough. Did we still carry the seeds for so much possibility? We were hardly teens, after all.
We went back to Andante twice the next week. He dropped in on the way back from the office; the first time I left Stevie with Ange, and then the next time with Demarcus, his father. Thomas revealed that this café had become his preferred thinking space in recent years, somewhere to be when Lola was out and he did not want to sit at home alone. In the battered leather and wood landscape we pitched our hopes on common ground. We drip-dropped our thoughts, tongue-felt the body of the house blend. Short, untroubled dates, tuned and timed so I could leave with a little regret, not too much, go home to breathe in secret smoke and marvel.
The second evening at Andante, a confession:
‘I never loved my wife enough.’
After that, a kiss that mattered. A little too much. Slow and familiar, rude and strong, not so dull as to be perfect; a real headfuck of a sensation, a first. It lifted us. We opened ourselves up to the times that might come after that moment; to possibility.
We stayed up.
Later, in the smallest hours, I dropped the DMD bomb.
‘Stevie
