As Good As It Gets? (11 page)

She pauses. ‘So, er … d’you have any contact with—’

‘Her real father?’ I shake my head. ‘No, not since before she was born.’

‘Really? God!’

We break off to thank Will for platefuls of barbecued deliciousness, and wait until he’s resumed his position as head chef before continuing. ‘I met him when we were Inter-railing,’ I add, ‘and he’s never even seen her.’

‘Bastard,’ Sabrina splutters.

I shrug. ‘You know, I don’t really feel like that. Not anymore. He obviously couldn’t cope with the idea of being a dad. At least, he put on a great show
pretending
he could, but then …’ I nibble a chicken skewer before adding, in a brisker tone, ‘He just disappeared when I was pregnant. There was a terse letter from his mother, warning me off, then nothing.’
And of course, I haven’t thought about him at all …

Sabrina frowns, processing this. ‘But that’s outrageous, Charlotte. What an absolute dick …’

‘I know, and of course, I did try to get in touch. I tried calling his parents’ place, where he lived, but they’d changed the number and any letters were sent back to me. Anyway, my parents stepped in, and were fantastic – and then I met Will and it’s all worked out.’ I beam brightly to show how precisely fantastic everything is.

‘You mean he’s never even contributed?’ Sabrina checks herself. ‘Sorry, Charlotte, that’s so nosy of me. Tell me to shut the hell up …’

I smile, enjoying her lack of restraint. She is fun and refreshingly honest, and I think – I
hope
– we’ll be friends. ‘It’s fine, honestly. There was a cheque from his mum, but …’ I tail off as a bunch of men burst out through the back door, hooting with laughter and carrying a life-sized blow-up doll. She is a vision in marshmallow-pink plastic with a mass of bouncy red hair, rather lethal-looking pointy breasts and a circular, red-lipped mouth. ‘Who invited her?’ I exclaim, laughing.

Sabrina cackles. ‘Oh, that’s Chloe. Friend of Tommy’s gave her to him for Christmas.’ I catch Will’s startled expression and laugh even harder. ‘Classy, huh?’ she adds. ‘She always makes an appearance at parties.’

Ollie and Saul appear at my side. ‘What’s that?’ Saul asks, eyes agog.

‘It’s, er, a sort of doll.’

‘A
doll
?’ He guffaws and nudges Ollie.

I glance at Sabrina, who’s in hysterics now, with her blow-dry mussed up and her lipstick worn off, bar the pencilled outline. ‘It’s Tommy’s,’ I explain as Chloe is paraded past us, as if about to be given her birthday bumps. Even Will is creasing up with laughter now.

‘But what’s it
for
?’ Ollie wants to know.

‘It’s, er, a sort of pretend girlfriend,’ Sabrina replies, trying to keep a straight face.

Saul looks incredulous. ‘What does he do with her?’

She smirks and takes a big swig of wine.

‘What’s she for, Mum?’ Ollie demands.

‘Er, they probably sit and watch TV together,’ I explain, noticing Saul nudging Ollie, then the two of them dissolving in laughter – my cue, I think, to whisk the kids off home. It’s gone eleven; amazingly, none of the neighbours have complained about the thumping music.

‘We’re heading back,’ I tell Will, finding him chatting away to Tommy, ‘but you stay as long as you like.’

‘Hey,’ Tommy chuckles, ‘you’ve got a late pass, mate,’ which isn’t what I meant at all, but never mind. At least he’s enjoying himself, which sparks a tiny flicker of optimism that he’ll soon put his special foraging gloves into retirement and rejoin the human race. A job, and colleagues, and the odd rowdy night out – that’s what he needs, urgently. Then we’ll start to have fun again, like in the old days. This party has proved that Will can shake off his grumpiness and be charming and lovely, like he used to be.

Wrapping a matey arm around Will’s shoulders, Tommy hands him a beer. Will grins, clearly enjoying being made so welcome and having his barbecuing skills praised to the hilt. And my heart does a little skip, forcing the trials of late into the background: my lovely,
hot
Will, whom women joke about ‘borrowing’. Does it matter that we haven’t done it since Mother’s Day? It’s normal, I think. All couples’ sex lives fall into a pattern eventually, and ours now seems to happen quarterly, like a VAT return.

Even so, as I hug Sabrina goodbye I make a supreme effort not to even
glance
at her shed.

*

Tired and yawning, the boys shuffle straight off to Ollie’s room, leaving Rosie and me in the kitchen. How lovely, I think: some mum – daughter time. Who cares that it’s almost midnight? No school or work tomorrow. ‘You seemed to be getting on well with Zach,’ I say lightly, clicking on the kettle for tea.

‘Yeah, he’s all right.’ She perches on the edge of the worktop, swinging her almost endless, denim-clad legs. Her feet are bare and pretty, her nails painted duck-egg blue. ‘We were just talking,’ she adds.

‘I wasn’t suggesting anything else, love.’

Her face softens. ‘He’s nice. Interesting. We had a laugh.’

I try to arrange my features into a casual expression. What I’d love to do now is ask her about boys, and if there’s anyone around whom she likes at the moment. But it doesn’t feel right to quiz her. I’d always imagined we’d have one of those lovely, discuss-anything mother/daughter relationships – boys, sex, the whole caboodle – but it hasn’t quite happened that way. Whenever I’ve tried, tentatively, to touch upon sensitive matters, she’s shuffled uncomfortably as if I’m a PSE teacher about to thrust a wad of embarrassing leaflets at her. It’s so hard to know how to be with her these days. I know she doesn’t want me checking her homework, or running her a bath, or doing any of those motherly things I used to do for her – yet she’s not quite grown-up either. She seems incapable of fixing herself breakfast without leaving a scattering of Frosties in her wake, and I’ve found her prodding nervously at the washing machine buttons as if the appliance might blow up in her face.

She jumps down from the worktop. ‘Think I’ll get some sleep, Mum.’

‘What about your tea? Want to take it up with you?’ I fish out the teabag and add a generous slosh of milk, plus two sugars, just the way she likes it.

‘Thanks, Mum, but I’m pretty tired.’ She allows me to hug her, then pulls back and meets my gaze. ‘That was a bit weird for me, you know,’ she murmurs.

‘What, the party? I thought you were enjoying it …’

‘No, that thing the man said at the agency.’ I frown at her, genuinely uncomprehending for a moment. ‘About me being the image of Dad,’ she adds.

‘Oh.’ My heart drops like a stone.

She picks at a fingernail. ‘I’ve thought about it all week. I can’t
stop
thinking about it.’

I blink at her, shimmeringly sober now despite all the wine and champagne I’ve knocked back tonight. At least Will’s not here. That’s a relief. ‘I’m sure it was a bit weird for you,’ I manage. ‘But, you know … you
do
look like him. Like Dad, I mean. Like Will.’

The pause is filled by faint music drifting across from Tommy and Sabrina’s house. ‘So am I like my real dad too?’ she asks.

‘Er, yes, I suppose you are. But to be honest, it’s so long since I’ve seen him, I can’t really picture—’

‘You can’t picture his
face
?’ She looks aghast.

‘Well, yes, of course I can but, you know – it’s kind of … blurry.’

‘Blurry?’ she repeats. ‘That’s nice, Mum.’

Well, yes, being sent a packet of bird seed and a sod-off-don’t-bother-us-again cheque was nice too.
‘I’m just trying to be honest,’ I say gently.

She wrinkles her nose. ‘You mean you can hardly remember him at all?’

‘No, of course I can.’ I can sense my cheeks sizzling, and my heart seems to be rattling away at twice its normal speed. In fact, his face
has
faded in my mind, like an old tea towel where the pattern’s nearly gone. Yet the
essence
of Fraser – his huge, bright smile, his raucous, head-turning laugh, the way he made me feel as we giggled our way around Europe – is indelibly imprinted on my mind.

‘D’you have any photos of him?’ Now Rosie, who professed to be so tired, is showing no sign of heading up to bed.

‘No, sorry, I don’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘They must’ve all got lost,’ I mutter, at which she utters a little
pfff
of disdain and trots up to her room.

And of course, I know my response wasn’t in any way adequate. What I should do now is follow her up and coax her to talk, and find out what she wants to do next – track him down somehow? And arrange to meet him? I would, if Will and I felt closer at this moment in time. But we need to handle this together, and right now, together is the
last
thing I feel.

Crushingly tired now, I pad lightly upstairs. I’ve made up a bed on Ollie’s bedroom floor for Saul; the light is off and it looks as if they’ve crashed out already. While Rosie’s is still on, I can sense
do-not-disturb
vibes seeping out beneath her closed bedroom door. So I go to bed and try to calm myself by thinking about positive things: the people I’ve met tonight, and the way Will saved the day with his minted lamb and glamorous salads.
You’re lucky,
I remind myself,
and we’ll handle the Fraser thing carefully, when the time’s right. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about.

It’s gone 2 a.m. when Will slips into bed beside me. His beery breath is oddly alluring, reminding me as it does of our earlier days when we went out nearly every night and woke up entangled in each other’s arms, a time before he even owned a strimmer.

‘Enjoy the rest of the party?’ I murmur.

‘Yeah. Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.’

‘It’s okay, I haven’t managed to drop off yet.’

I want to tell him about Rosie, and the whole blurted-out thing about Fraser, but now’s not the time, not in the middle of the night when he’s fuzzy with booze. Instead, I snuggle closer, spooning around his naked body. I’m ridiculously pleased when he takes my hand and wraps my arm around him. It’s a gesture which I interpret to mean he wouldn’t be completely appalled if I were to become a little, uh … amorous. I mean, he’s not giving the impression that he’d throw me off and scream for the police. So I edge my hand downwards.

Will flinches, as if an electric current has shot out of my fingers. Perhaps I’m being too tentative, and just tickling him. Better be firmer – not too languorous, either, as I can tell by his deep, steady breathing that he’s moments away from sleep. My foot brushes his, and I detect a fine knit: M&S lambswool blend, at a guess. He’s forgotten to take his socks off. That’s good, I decide. It means he’s pretty pissed, which might make him less worried about anyone hearing, or any of the other possible reasons he’ll only do it with me four times a year.

Yep, socks I can handle. Christ, I’d do it with him wearing a fake fur tiger outfit if that’s what it took. I mean, I’m not
fussy
—

‘Hahaha!’ Laughter rings out from Ollie’s room. ‘That inflatable doll, that was
so
funny …’

Ah, it would appear that my darling son and his friend are not slumbering after all. ‘Yeah,’ Saul agrees. ‘What did your mum say again?’

‘That it was for watching telly with.’

‘HAHAAAA!’ They both hoot with mirth while Will grunts into his pillow and politely removes my hand from his nether regions. Well, that’s that then. It’ll probably be Halloween before the next opportunity comes up. Perhaps I could wear Dracula fangs and a cape.

I tune in as the boys resume their chat. ‘Think she really believes that?’ Saul asks.

‘Yeah, I reckon. She’s a bit … y’know …’

A bit
what
? Prudish? A buttoned-up old hag? I try, fruitlessly, to steady my breathing in order to bring on the blissful release of sleep.

‘You know what those dolls are really for,’ Saul adds sagely.

‘Yeah,’ Ollie sniggers, ‘for men to have sex with ’cause they can’t get a real woman.’ They both peal with laughter until Rosie thumps her bedroom wall to shut them up.

All is silent again. Then my son’s voice booms out, loudly and clearly through the wall: ‘You’d think my mum’d know that at her age. God, she’s naive.’

Chapter Eleven

Will’s hangover hovers over the house like a damp, rather rank-smelling flannel. ‘Feel like my liver’s about to give up,’ he moans, flipping through the Sunday papers at the kitchen table.

‘Oh, come on,’ I say briskly. ‘It was only a few beers.’

‘That’s easy for you to say.’

I consider this. ‘It is, actually. I mean, I had tons to drink too. More than normal, anyway, and I feel fine—’

‘Well,’ he says wearily, ‘I
don’t,
so please stop rubbing it in how amazingly full of joie de vivre you are.’

Whoo, touchy-pants this morning. ‘Maybe you’re just out of practice,’ I suggest. ‘We should go out more often, Will. It was really fun last night. We don’t even have to take the kids. Rosie’s old enough to look after Ollie—’

‘You’d pay me, though?’ she asks, only partly joking as she strolls into the kitchen, flings open a cupboard and groans in disappointment. ‘Why’s there
never
anything to eat?’

I laugh. ‘What are you talking about? The house is stuffed with food. There are tons of crisps—’

‘Crisps!
’ she repeats witheringly. ‘It’s always crisps. Crisps, crisps, crisps …’

‘… and the freezer’s so full,’ Will cuts in, ‘I could hardly squeeze a little packet of lovage into it—’

She frowns at him. ‘What’s lovage?’

‘A herb,’ he replies flatly.

‘You mean a weed?’ She is teasing him now, and, miraculously, he raises a small smile.

‘Technically, yes, but I think you’ll find it’s delicious.’

‘Why can’t we eat normal food?’ she asks him, then turns to me. ‘And why wouldn’t you pay me for doing a responsible job?’

I blink at her. ‘Sorry?’

‘I mean looking after Ollie so you and Dad could start going out again, and doing stuff and having a nice time together …’ I glance at Will. Has Rosie detected the malaise between us, or am I just being paranoid? I have to say, he doesn’t look thrilled at the idea of regular date nights with me.