Of course there are long boring wet Tuesdays, when he wants to pull down the shutters and methodically drink all the red wine, but not today. It’s a warm day, he is seeing his daughter tonight and will be with her for much of the next eight days while Sylvie and that bastard Callum go on another of their constant holidays. By some strange mystery Jasmine is now two and a half years old, self-possessed and beautiful like her mother, and she can come in and play shops and be fussed over by the other staff, and when he gets home tonight Emma will be there. For the first time in many years he is more or less where he wants to be. He has a partner whom he loves and desires and who is also his best friend. He has a beautiful, intelligent daughter. He does alright. Everything will be fine, just as long as nothing ever changes.
Two miles away, just off the Hornsey Road, Emma climbs the flights of stairs, unlocks the front door and feels the cool, stale air of a flat that has been unoccupied for four days. She makes tea, sits at her desk, turns on her computer, and stares at it for the best part of an hour. There’s a lot to do — scripts for the second series of ‘Julie Criscoll’ to read and approve, five hundred words of the third volume to write, illustrations to work on. There are letters and emails from young readers, earnest and often disconcertingly personal notes that she must give some attention to, about loneliness and being bullied and this boy I really, really like.
But her mind keeps slipping back to Dexter’s proposal. During the long, strange summer in Paris last year they had made certain resolutions about their future together — if in fact they did have a future together — and central to the scheme was that they would not live together: separate lives, separate flats, separate friends. They would endeavour to be together, and faithful of course, but not in any conventional way. No traipsing around estate agents at the weekend, no joint dinner parties, no Valentine’s Day flowers, none of the paraphernalia of coupledom or domesticity. Both of them had tried it, neither had succeeded.
She had imagined this arrangement to be sophisticated, modern, a new design for living. But so much effort is required to pretend that they don’t want to be together that it has recently seemed inevitable that one of them will crack. She just hadn’t expected it to be Dexter. One subject has remained largely unspoken, and now there seems to be no way to avoid it. She will have to take a deep breath and just say the word. Children. No, not ‘children’, best not scare him, better use the singular. She wants a child.
They have spoken about it before, in a roundabout facetious way, and he has made noises about maybe, in the future, when things are a little bit more settled. But how much more settled can things be? The subject sits there in the middle of the room and they keep walking into it. It’s there every time her parents telephone, it’s there every time she and Dexter make love (less frequently now than in the debauch of the flat in Paris, but still often enough). It keeps her awake at night. Sometimes it seems that she can chart her life by what she worries about at three a.m. Once it was boys, then for too long it was money, then career, then her relationship with Ian, then her infidelity. Now it is this. She is thirty-six years old, a child is what she wants, and if he doesn’t want it too, then perhaps they had better. .
What? Call it a day? It seems melodramatic and degrading to issue that kind of ultimatum, and the thought of carrying out the threat seems inconceivable, for the moment at least. But she resolves that she will raise the subject tonight. No, not tonight, not with Jasmine staying, but soon. Soon.
After a distracted morning of time-wasting, Emma goes for a lunch-time swim, ploughing up and down the lanes yet still unable to clear her head. Then with her hair still wet she cycles back to Dexter’s flat and arrives to find an immense, vaguely sinister black 4x4 waiting outside the house. It’s a gangsters’ car, two silhouettes visible against the windscreen, one broad and short, the other tall and slim; Sylvie and Callum, both gesticu lating wildly in the middle of another argument. Even from across the road Emma can hear them, and as she wheels her bike closer she can see Callum’s snarled face, and Jasmine in the back seat, eyes fixed on a picture book in an attempt to filter out the noise. Emma taps the window nearest Jasmine and sees her look up and grin, tiny white teeth in a wide mouth, straining forwards against her seatbelt to get out.
Through the car window, Emma and Callum nod. There’s something of the playground about the etiquette of infidelity, separation and divorce, but allegiances have been declared, enmities sworn, and despite having known him for nearly twenty years Emma must no longer talk directly to Callum. As for the ex-wife, Sylvie and Emma have settled on a tone, self-consciously bright and grudge-free, but even so dislike shimmers between them like a heat haze.
‘Sorry about that!’ says Sylvie, unfolding her long legs from the car. ‘Just a little disagreement about how much luggage we’re taking!’
‘Holidays can be stressful,’ says Emma, meaninglessly. Jasmine is unbuckled from her car seat, and clambers up into Emma’s arms, her face pressed into her neck, skinny legs wrapped around Emma’s hips. Emma smiles, a little embarrassed, as if to say ‘what can I do?’ and Sylvie smiles back, a smile so stiff and unnatural that it’s surprising she doesn’t have to use her fingers.
‘Where’s Daddy?’ says Jasmine into Emma’s neck.
‘He’s at work, he’ll be back very soon.’
Emma and Sylvie smile some more.
‘How is that going then?’ Sylvie manages. ‘The café?’
‘Really well, really well.’
‘Well I’m sorry not to see him. Send him my love.’
More silence. Callum gives her a nudge by starting the engine.
‘Do you want to come in?’ asks Emma, knowing the answer.
‘No, we should head off.’
‘Where is it again?’
‘Mexico.’
‘Mexico. Lovely.’
‘You’ve been?’
‘No, though I worked in a Mexican restaurant once.’
Sylvie actually tuts, and Callum’s voice booms from the front seat. ‘Come on! I want to avoid the traffic!’
Jasmine is passed back into the car for goodbyes and be-goods and not-too-much-TV and Emma discreetly takes Jasmine’s luggage inside, a candy-pink vinyl suitcase on wheels and a rucksack in the form of a panda. When she comes back Jasmine is waiting rather formally on the pavement, a pile of picture books held against her chest. She is pretty, chic, immaculate, a little mournful, every inch her mother’s child, very much not Emma’s.
‘We must go. Check-in’s a nightmare these days.’ Sylvie tucks her long legs back into the car like some sort of folding knife. Callum stares forwards.
‘So. Enjoy Mexico. Enjoy your snorkelling.’
‘Not snorkelling, scuba-diving. Snorkelling is what children do,’ says Sylvie, unintentionally harsh.
Emma bridles. ‘I’m sorry. Scuba-diving! Don’t drown!’ Sylvie raises her eyebrows, her mouth forming a little ‘o’ and what can Emma say? I meant it, Sylvie, please don’t drown, I don’t want you to drown?Too late, the damage is done, the illusion of sorority shattered. Sylvie stamps a kiss on the top of Jasmine’s head, slams the door and is gone.
Emma and Jasmine stand and wave.
‘So, Min, your dad’s not back until six. What do you want to do?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘It’s early. We could go to the zoo?’
Jasmine nods vigorously. Emma holds a family pass to the zoo, and she goes inside to get ready for another afternoon spent with someone else’s daughter.
In the big black car the former Mrs Mayhew sits with her arms folded, her head resting against the smoky glass, her feet tucked up beneath her on the seat while Callum swears at the traffic on the Euston Road. They rarely speak these days, just shout and hiss, and this holiday, like the others, is an attempt to patch things up.
