How We Met (10 page)

‘That’s because I’ve been straddling you for the last ten minutes and in case you’d forgotten, I had a baby nine months ago,’ she says, trying desperately to keep an air of humour. ‘My hip flexors aren’t what they used to be, you know.’

He rubs her back, then places a lingering kiss on her shoulder. ‘I’m going for a smoke,’ he says, pulling back the covers, and Mia watches as his tiny, brown Brazilian bum – like a hazelnut she always thinks – disappears around the bedroom door, and she is left clutching her rounded, white one.

The pain eases and she lies back down, feeling that familiar dread wash over her: he will come back up, get dressed, perhaps stay for a polite cup of coffee and then leave, and it will be just her and Billy again, till bedtime. Oh, Lord, roll on bedtime.

It’s the second time she and Eduardo have had sex this
week and the
sixth since Billy was born. Mia knows this
because she keeps tabs. It’s a bit like notches on the bedpost, although she’s painfully aware it doesn’t quite hold the same air of bragging arrogance as the teenage version.

This tab – at least at first – was more for herself. Somehow by writing down when they had sex, she could pretend it didn’t mean anything, that he was just ‘servicing’ her – and what woman living in 2008 shouldn’t be serviced, if she so desired? It kept things clinical, like a nurse keeping medical notes: frequency of urination, blood pressure, that sort of thing.

Lately, however, there’s been a shift. The tab she keeps is no longer so she can tell herself it means nothing, as it means
something
. Twice in one week – this is starting to become a habit – and part of her hopes it will become more than a habit for Eduardo, that he will find it in him to love her, properly, like she deserves to be loved. The other part of her, of course, wishes he’d fuck off and die, and it’s a constant source of fascination to Mia how the two can exist in unison.

He is at least starting to make an effort, she thinks. Historically, he would turn up drunk, at midnight, with no consideration for the fact she had to go to work, or now, get up with
their
son.

Since Liv’s birthday reunion, however, and leaving her in the lurch, he has actually turned up at the designated time to have Billy, and last night they had fun – proper, actual fun. They drank wine and talked about movies. She modelled her new Primark sundress for him, then they drank more wine and – when they ran out of that – some more, because woo-hoo! there was someone to go to the off-licence!

Then they snogged and danced to the Buena Vista Social Club in her kitchen, occasionally breaking to smoke out of the window, the view of Lancaster Castle high up on its hill, floodlit, like something out of a child’s dream.

Now, of course, hungover and with the prospect of looking after a baby all day, Mia regrets it. In fact she despises him for coming over here on a Tuesday night, taking her away from
Holby City
and a macaroni-cheese-for-one and corrupting her with his heady, Latino ways.

But she also needed it like a person needs air.

Last night, pressed close to him, dancing barefoot in her new summer dress, albeit one probably made in a sweatshop in Latin America, she felt alive; she felt primitive and sexual.

And she needs to feel primitive and sexual, she thinks, looking at their clothes strewn all over her laminated bedroom floor, otherwise she will go mad and life will feel like one big washing machine cycle. She needs to know she can do things with her body other than feeding a child, or hauling him up on her hip a thousand times a day, and if, right now, it is only the often flaky, unreliable father of her child that can give her that, then she is going to take it.

Also, sex with Eduardo is doubly exciting, because it is forbidden, after all. If any of her friends found out, they would go mad
– wouldn’t they? Now she thinks about it, she wonders if they aren’t too wrapped up in their own lives to give a toss about who she’s sleeping with these days. Except Liv. Oh, Liv. It makes her suck air through her teeth just thinking about it. ‘He wears sunglasses inside, darling, he’ll bring you nothing but grief.’ And look at her now. Liv would have her guts for garters.

Then there’s Fraser … he already knows something’s afoot; if he knew the whole truth. God. It didn’t bear thinking about.

Fraser can’t stand Eduardo. He has tolerated him in the past – just, the effort etched on his face, but ever since he walked out when Mia was pregnant, she can’t mention his name without Fraser practically spitting on the floor, something she feels is slightly over the top. After all, it’s not his life, is it? And anyway, what does he care now since he’s seeing ‘Karen’? Mia has to try really, really hard not to make a face when she says the word ‘Karen’. It’s just, even the name has a desperate, over-the-hill air to it, and she suspects Fraser is using Karen as a crutch, that she’s not making him happy or vice versa. Which would be a terrible thing to do. Terrible.

She listens to Eduardo clattering around downstairs, probably making the polite coffee that he will drink whilst sitting on the side of the bed, before announcing he is leaving – stuff to do/mates to see/a shift to get ready for. She has no idea what he does with his day and has given up asking – and anyway, even though her friends would be shocked to hear it, deep down she wonders if this whole situation is partly her fault.

She went batty when she was pregnant. Batty. Did she drive Eduardo away? Did her hormones warp everything so that she demonized him, made him out to be worse than he actually is? As she lies in bed listening to the kettle, the clinking of china, the comforting sounds of another body in the house, she gets an image in her head, a memory: her, seven months gone, huge already and haring through Shoreditch on her bicycle at
2 a.m. Ha! What a bloody nutcase! The Wicked Witch of the East End! So fat she could barely turn the pedals for her bump.

She’d become convinced Eduardo was having an affair and decided to catch him out. She knew he’d be at the MOTHER bar – oh, yes, the MOTHER bar – and she burst through those doors, bump first, practically fighting the bouncers to the ground, a force of nature in maternity jeans. She stampeded around, Billy kicking inside her, alarmed at the sudden onslaught of hardcore techno. When she finally located him in a darkened corner, he was topless, wearing sunglasses and writhing around with another man who was also topless.

So he was gay! That was what all this was about. She had almost felt a rush of relief that it wasn’t just because he was a complete bastard.

But no, he was not gay, he said; he was just off his face, and apparently this was what one does when off one’s face. He was also scared and overwhelmed by the prospect of being a father and he just wanted some fun whilst he still could – was that so bad?

It seemed so at the time, but now she’s not sure, and when she pictures that scene now – him, bare-chested in Ray-B
ans, chewing the inside of his cheek whilst she stood before him, a mountain of a woman, bicycle clips around the bottom of her maternity jeans, shouting ‘I hate you; I fucking hate your guts!’ – she starts to giggle, then really laugh, until she is doubled over in a fit of hysterics.

‘What are you laughing at?’ Eduardo stands in the doorway of her bedroom, naked, a mug in each hand, laughing at her laughing.

‘Oh, nothing, nothing … come to bed,’ she says, stretching out a hand. He bends down, puts the two mugs on the floor and almost jumps down beside her.

‘Eduardo! Bloody hell! About four of the slats in this bed are broken, you’ll break it even more if you’re not careful.’

‘Have you still not got round to getting a new bed?’ he says, snuggling up to her.

WELL I WOULD IF I HAD A MAN IN THE HOUSE TO ERECT ONE. She fights the urge to shout, but it’s so very hard.

‘No, I have still not got a new bed.’ She smiles, inhaling his smoky, musky scent. ‘But perhaps you could buy one for me. It’s the least you could do.’

Eduardo ignores that comment and tidies a strand of hair behind her ear. Here it comes, she thinks, the ‘better be going’. But he doesn’t. Instead he starts to kiss her tenderly, ever so gently, so she thinks she might cry, and she once more becomes aware of how much she needs this to stay alive, to feel alive. Mia Woodhouse – you’re still in there, aren’t you?

He softly pushes her hair back. ‘Hello, beautiful,’ he whispers and she doesn’t say anything but she smiles and looks up at him. ‘I want to make love again. Can we make love again?’ If an English man said that I’d be laughing my head off by now, thinks Mia. But somehow a Brazilian gets away with it. Somehow from him, it’s irresistible. It’s 6.45 a.m., the early morning sunshine is turning the room golden, and Mia closes her eyes, throws her arms behind her in abandon as Eduardo presses his pelvis down onto hers.

Then ‘waaaaaaaahhhhhhh!’ Nine months on and it still rips right through her. Still feels like an assault.

‘Billy,’ she sighs, staring up at the ceiling.

‘He’ll stop, he’ll stop,’ says Eduardo, kissing her neck. ‘He’ll go back to sleep, come on, relaaax.’

She tries, she does, but it’s no use.

‘No, he won’t, unfortunately.’ She gently pushes Eduardo off her and drags herself out of the bed. ‘Believe me, that’s Billy for the day now.’

When Mia comes back from the kitchen where she has been preparing Billy’s breakfast, leaving him fastened to the high chair in the lounge, she half expects Eduardo to have gone. It’s the sort of shitty thing he does all the time, after all. But as she approaches the lounge door, she can hear talking.

For a moment she’s confused – whose is the other adult voice she can hear? – and then she realizes, it’s Eduardo’s. She freezes, the dish of porridge in her hand. Then, spying through the crack in the door, holding her breath, she watches them.

Eduardo has pulled up a chair and is leaning on the tray of Billy’s highchair, playing with his small plastic animals – Billy’s all-time favourite toys.

‘And this is a sheep,’ he’s saying. ‘In Portuguese we say “
ovelha
” … Can you say “
ovelha
”, Billy? That’s pretty cool, ha? Which is your favourite, Billy?’

Billy’s transfixed: wide-eyed, perfectly still, a string of drool hanging from his mouth, and Mia has to bite her lip to stifle a giggle. Poor baby. Never known a man in the house to talk to him like this, let alone his own father. Well this is a turn-up for the books, she imagines him thinking, I could get used to this.

She could get used to this.

This is how it should be, too. This is how she imagined family life: her wandering about of a morning in Eduardo’s shirt, sexy and yet homely at the same time, with tanned bare limbs (in her case, pale ones with a huge bruise up the side where she continually bangs into the coffee table, but never mind), and daddy, handsome and bare-chested, playing with his son, the smell of coffee wafting through the house.

Then her mobile goes on the sofa and she nearly jumps out of her skin.

‘Ooh, I’ll get that!’ she says chirpily, trying to make it look as though she literally arrived at the door just then, that she wasn’t spying.

‘Hello?’

Eduardo is still playing with the animals – perhaps even more enthusiastically now he knows he’s being watched, and Billy has started to do hiccupping giggles.

‘Mia, it’s me, Fraser.’

‘Fraser!’ Eduardo turns around and looks at her and she doesn’t know why but she smiles and waves at him. ‘How are you? OK? Actually you don’t sound OK.’

‘No, I’ve been better. I got punched in the face last night.’

‘What? Why?’

Mia takes herself off into the kitchen to talk.

‘Oh, God, long story, involving ex-boyfriends and salsa classes and Karen.’

‘My God, Karen didn’t punch you, did she?’

‘No, no, GOD no …’

‘Oh.’

She should really try to sound less disappointed to learn that he hasn’t been punched by his new girlfriend.

‘It was her ex-boyfriend.’

‘Really? Gosh. You are quite the threat then?’

She shakes her head. Why did she say that?

Silence. Mia turns round and looks out of her kitchen window.

‘Frase, are you OK?’

‘Yeah, I’m OK. Just look a bit like an old alky at the moment, bright red, fat nose …’

She closes her eyes. Poor Frase.

On the other end of the phone, Fraser is examining his face in Karen’s bathroom mirror. He looks dreadful; the bridge of his nose is so swollen that it’s closing up his eyes, so they’re piss holes in the snow, and he’s got a fat top lip.

Karen is at the shop getting milk and more frozen peas. She has taken to her role as Florence Nightingale with gusto and has woken him up several times in the night to check for signs of concussion and to clear his nasal passages of dried blood, so that he is now exhausted, as well as injured.

‘I take it Karen is looking after you?’ says Mia.

‘Oh, yeah, not wanting on that front. Karen is looking after me.’

‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it? That’s really, really good. So um, what was the salsa class like?’

‘Yeah, great,’ says Fraser. ‘Well, actually, I made a complete and utter tit of myself, but that’s OK, ’coz it’s all for Liv.’

She laughs. ‘And Olivia wouldn’t have it any other way, as we know. In fact she would be disappointed if you
didn’t
make a tit of yourself. So come on then, what happened?’

‘Well, besides getting my head kicked in at the end of it all, I was an appalling dancer, so bad it wasn’t funny.’

‘Oh, I bet it was.’

‘I assure you it was not, and I wore totally inappropriate footwear, basically my knackered, filthy running trainers, which then deposited little piles of mud all over this pristine white dance floor.’

Mia covers her eyes and smiles. ‘Oh, God, Fraser, only you.’

‘To top it off, Karen was a brilliant dancer – turns out she was some sort of semi-pro when she was a kid.’