Her (13 page)

‘What about the cinema? I quite fancy the cinema . . .’

‘Maybe,’ he says doubtfully. I turn my back so he can’t see my expression. He has no idea how much energy I’ve put into arranging this. Finding Sophie, sorting logistics with Nina, nailing down a date and a fee. ‘Who’s this girl again?’ he’s saying. ‘How old did you say she was?’

Don’t you dare
, I think.
Don’t you fucking dare.

‘God, how many times?’ I say quietly into the open fridge as I replace the milk on the shelf. Then I turn round and say, ‘Nice sixth-former, her mother’s that painter who found Christopher, that time he – you know. You liked Sophie, didn’t you, darling?’

Christopher’s licking the jam off the toast, carefully, attentively. He doesn’t respond.

‘And Nina’s only up the road if Sophie needs any help. Which she won’t,’ I add.

Ben presses his lips together, judiciously, as if he has the casting vote.
Fuck’s sake
, I think. All my doubts about the evening scatter.
I’m going out, I’m going out if it bloody kills me.
I need something to look forward to, something more than takeaway Indian in front of another boxset.

I think of people taking my coat, pulling out my chair and pouring wine so cold it frosts the glass. Someone placing a plate in front of me, and then, some time later, unobtrusively removing it. Occasionally I used to go to restaurants where waiters would attend to the table after the main course with fairy-sized silver brushes and dustpans, scrupulously sweeping up the crumbs and spiriting them away, making everything wonderful again. I look at the mess on the floor, the mess on everyone’s hands and faces. Cecily has had enough of her high chair, and is beginning to twist and wail, waving buttery fists in the air.

Ben backs off, citing his clean shirt, looking at his watch.

I’m standing in the sitting room with Cecily on my hip, trying to find the overdue picture books, when he leaves the house. ‘Look, there’s Daddy,’ I say, going over to the window, lifting her up so she can see as he steps onto the street. ‘Wave at Daddy!’ Ben doesn’t look up. We watch as he pauses by the post box, reaching into his jacket pocket, pulling out two white cords, fitting them into his ears, then walking on, nicely sealed in.

The waste of it amazes me. Imagine having so much of it that you’d choose to shut some of it out.

Sophie babysitting
. It’s on the kitchen calendar, but we don’t speak of it again. Ben has robbed the prospect of some of its appeal. As the date approaches and I still haven’t decided how to make use of the evening, I catch myself wondering if it’s worth all the hassle. I can’t find a film I want to see. We’ll be knackered anyway. Perhaps I should cancel.

I send Nina a text, half-hoping she’ll do it for me:
S still OK for Friday?

Absolutely! She’ll be with you
6.30.

I remind Ben on the Friday morning. ‘I could meet you somewhere,’ I suggest.

‘I’ll come back and pick you up, we might as well drive,’ he says. A duty date, then. Just the one glass for him.

I decide I’m bloody well going to enjoy myself, if it kills me.

When Christopher is at playgroup and Cecily has gone down for a nap, I pick up the phone, and it’s a pitiful business: the people who answer heave little sighs, communicating their disappointment in me: such a shame to leave something like this to the last minute, to spoil my own evening by not thinking ahead. I’m offered a few tables here and there at 6 or 10; alas, there’s nothing else available. ‘Thank you so much,’ I say, and put the phone down, imagining a young woman in black crêpe pursing her lips and closing the ledger with a sorrowful snap. Then I dial another number.

I get six or seven knockbacks, and it’s beginning to take its toll. I’m on the point of calling The Headless Woman down the hill to see if they can fit us in at the bar (maybe Ben’ll be in the mood for black-pudding scotch eggs or mackerel with beetroot) when I think,
Oh, just one more throw for luck, and then I’ll give up
. So for the hell of it – because, really, we can’t afford it – I call Marcy’s, trying to keep the apology out of my voice as I tell the girl what I want. A table for two, at a decent time, in your restaurant.

‘Oh, but you’re in luck, I just had a cancellation,’ says the girl, sounding pleased for me.

Maybe it’s meant to be.

After that, Friday runs smoothly, finding its own structure: I pick up Christopher, make lunch, haul everyone round the supermarket, pop out to the park. Fran’s there; she asks us over for tea. By half past six, we’re back home, Cecily’s in the bath, chewing on a rubber duck, and Christopher is sitting on the bathmat, plucking off his socks, his forehead furrowed with the effort. His Schleich horses are lined up on the floor beside him, ears pricked through thick tumbling manes, daintily lifting their hooves: Arthur, Chocolate Cake, Broken Whitey.

I hear the sound of Ben coming home, the key in the lock and the door slamming, his coat sliding – with a percussive jangle of change and keys – from its peg onto the floor. Then he’s coming up the stairs, two at a time, a happy sort of noise.

‘Daddy!’ shouts Christopher, one sock off, and Ben comes in, rubbing his hands, saying: Thank God it’s the weekend, well done for nabbing Marcy’s, of course we can’t really afford it, but oh well what the hell, it’s not as if we do this very often.

The doorbell rings just as I’m lifting Cecily out into her orange towel, while he’s lowering Christopher in, calling him Monkey Boy. ‘That’ll be Sophie,’ I say, topping up with the hot tap and reaching for a nappy. ‘Would you let her in?’

As I pull Cecily’s sleep suit on and fasten the poppers, I hear the door opening, a grumble of traffic from the street drowning out the greeting, the door shutting, and then in the quiet I hear a woman laugh. It isn’t Sophie.

‘Will you be OK in here?’ I say to Christopher, spinning the tap off, but he’s not listening, he’s marching his horses over the elephant flannel, the soap boulder, the glacier of his knee. I get to my feet and put Cecily on my hip, and then I go to the top of the stairs. I look down, and I see the two of them, their dark heads shining in the light, standing together in front of the mirror. She lifts her face and laughs again, and then catches sight of me. ‘Hello Emma,’ she calls. ‘Hello Cecily.’

‘Nina!’ I say, and my first instinct is disappointment and a lack of surprise that this thing I’ve made happen has, in the end, come to nothing: Sophie has flu or has broken her leg,
poor her, never mind, of course it doesn’t matter, how sweet of you to come round to tell us in person, you shouldn’t have bothered.

Nina’s taking off her coat and Ben’s reaching out for it, then bending down to pick up his own, and then he’s hanging the two of them side by side, next to Christopher’s green anorak. While he’s doing this, he’s saying, ‘Really? Are you sure?’ and then he turns to me, hands open – helpless, accepting – and says, ‘Sophie’s not feeling very well, but Nina has very kindly offered to step into the breach.’

She pulls off her boots and comes up the stairs towards me, wrinkling her nose at Cecily, who lunges forward, drawn to the glittering black beads on her necklace. ‘You need a night out,’ she says, holding out her arms. Obediently, I find myself handing her Cecily, who is usually so clingy, so reluctant to go to strangers. But perhaps she remembers Nina. Perhaps her scent – that strange complicated scent, the perfume I’m not sure I entirely like – is familiar. ‘I saw the look on your face when we talked about it at lunch,’ Nina’s saying. ‘It’s important. You need a night off, every so often.’

‘Wow,’ I say. Cecily has her hands on the black beads, faceted to catch the light. She grips them in her fists, rattles them. Nina edges her neck away, tucks the necklace into her jersey. ‘Oh, you darling,’ she says to Cecily, pressing past me, heading to the bathroom. ‘Now, where is your delicious brother?’

I was planning to give Cecily the bottle myself, but Nina insists. She’ll do it. Look, here it is, all ready. They’ll be fine. She has it all sorted out: I can put Cecily down for the night just before we leave, while she and Christopher have a story. Or two. What’s your favourite bedtime story, Christopher?
Goodnight Moon
? Good choice!
Goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere
. Go ahead, she says to me, standing there in the doorway, my baby in her arms. Hop in the shower! Have a quick G&T! Seriously. It’s your night off.

I tell her the only other crucial piece of information that comes to mind – please don’t let Christopher, just out of nappies, have anything else to drink; as long as he has a wee after the story, he’ll stay dry overnight – and retreat, with Ben, to our bedroom. We shut the door and laugh quietly, both a little humiliated, but elated too, already demob-happy. ‘Isn’t it sweet of her?’ I say, pulling off my jumper, hoiking the wrap dress off its hanger, looking for tights. ‘Do you think we should have refused?’

‘I’m sure she has better things to do on a Friday night,’ says Ben. ‘She looks the type. Still: gift horse, mouth.’ While he’s ringing a taxi – I don’t comment, but this already feels like fun – he inspects himself in the mirror, pulls a jacket out of the wardrobe.

It all goes to plan. When we leave twenty minutes later, Cecily is silent in her dark room, the blackout blind pulled down to the radiator, door shut. In the pool of light cast by Christopher’s yellow-shaded lamp, Nina is curled up on the bottom of his bed, admiring his horses. I go in, picking through the channels of toys, and kiss him, and back away onto the landing, not looking at the brown stain on the corner of his ceiling, which I’m aware has grown a little larger since I last inspected it. ‘This one looks a fine fellow,’ Nina says, smiling at us over his bent head. ‘Have you thought about entering him for the Grand National?’ Busily arranging them on his duvet, basking in her attention, he barely notices our departure.

Thank you so much
, I signal from the doorway.
We’ll be back some time around eleven, I imagine.

It’s nothing
, she mouths back, waving a hand, encouraging us to go.
You look great! Have fun!

The minicab’s there, waiting for us, the radio cranking out elderly power ballads, people with big hair and raspy voices singing about true love, cheating hearts and the one who got away. It all sounds fine to me. London is lit up for us tonight, the street lamps like golden balls floating down the hill, the cheap gritty sparkle of north London, with its kebab shops and Irish pubs, giving way to the immaculate terraces of Regent’s Park: the shimmering windows of the Danish church, the flesh-coloured stucco villas with their staff entrances and floodlit porticoes set back behind arrow-head railings. Every so often, the quick blue wink of a primed security system: on, off, on.

I tell Ben (and it’s not the first time he’s heard this story, but he listens to it without demur) about a party Nick took me to in one of these buildings after the first year at university: a second-floor flat full of people he knew from school, all chain-smoking and talking in some sort of code. I can’t recall the name of the host, but I remember the impassive waiters in white jackets with brass buttons, the girl being sick in the loo, the aspect over Cumberland Green towards the Broadwalk.

The cab crosses Marylebone Road, sailing past the curved white cliff of Broadcasting House, tailing double-deckers down Regent Street. People swarm and cluster around bus stops and restaurant entrances, pausing to check their reflections in the plate-glass windows arranged with all the things people want us to want next: the New Sandal. The New Dress. In these displays, it’s already high summer. Time, marching on, stopping for nothing. I feel its pulse beating beneath the trashy commercial tattoo, and I can’t help it, I find it irresistible, intoxicating.

We step out of the cab onto the broad pavement, and pass into the pitch and yaw of the restaurant. The table we’re shown to at Marcy’s – we weave our way there between winks of candle flame – is at the edge of the room, with a good view. The thick gold carpet sucks up the clatter, the sound of rings on crystal and cutlery being laid to rest on china: all you hear is the low murmur of gossip and confidences, the soft pop of corks being pulled. This isn’t a place for spectacle or showing off. Nothing as cheap as that. We order drinks and pretend to study the menu, surreptitiously alerting each other to the elderly Hollywood diva dining with her much-younger husband, both with matching facelifts; the food writer eating seafood with her teenage children; the disgraced former Cabinet minister, whose date appears to be a no-show.

The butter is unsalted, a pale primrose-coloured moon beaded with ice water, in its own white dish. My knife slices into it. Over to our left the Hollywood legend laughs, a light ribbon of noise, a sound she has often been told is musical, like bells.

I have my phone in my pocket, set to vibrate, just in case. I don’t forget about it but I allow myself to become less conscious of it as we make our choices and drink the house wine and talk about a novel we’ve both read, the hope that one day we’ll be able to afford to build into the side return, the industry scandal involving people I used to know, Fran’s neighbours, the ones who let the budgerigars fly loose around the sitting room. We don’t really talk about the children. It’s something I become more aware of as the evening passes, and I’m a little proud of our achievement.
Look what we still have in common
, I think.
We’re both still here, underneath it all.

And yet at the back of my mind – while the courses succeed each other and the tide of diners ebbs and flows around us, thinning out a little, the room almost submerged by hush, and then filling up quickly as the theatres empty into it – there’s the constant thought of Nina, sitting on my sofa, her feet tucked beneath her, flicking through the
Standard
or watching the ten o’clock news, maybe walking around, making some tea, looking at the kitchen calendar and running a finger along the books on our shelves. That thought is a peculiar, shameful one.
Oh God, the mess.

‘You’re right,’ says Ben, as we wait for the bill. ‘We need to do this more often.’