The evening light was barely any different to the day. The sun hovered, waiting to fall. The music lulled the tipsy guests into barefoot dancing while the babies slept in buggies under soft blankets. Wilf hauled out an ice bucket full of champagne and went round topping up glasses with fizz that bubbled over hands and onto the grass.
Jemima was asleep on a sun-lounger by the pool. Harry watched Hannah drape a beach towel over her and sit with her hand on her shoulder, watching as she gently snored. His eyes followed as she moved away and sat down on the edge of the pool, her skirt tucked up underneath her, and dangled her legs into the water.
He glanced to his left and saw that Alfonso, who had a moment before gone to the bar to get drinks, had been waylaid by Wilf who was waving his champagne bottle around as he gesticulated wildly about some story or other.
Harry took the opportunity to slip in and take Alfonso’s place. Strolling casually over to the pool he sat down about a foot away from Hannah and said, ‘He’s far too smooth for you, you know?’
Hannah looked up in surprise. ‘Who? Alfonso?’
Harry nodded.
She laughed through her nose. ‘Oh right. And you’re better, I take it?’
Harry frowned. ‘Absolutely not. I’m just keeping you abreast of my thoughts.’
Hannah looked away with a smile, kicking the water with her foot so that it splashed in an arc of bubbles.
In the background Harry could hear Alfonso trying to wrap things up with the drunken Wilf. He knew he only had a couple of minutes before he came over to join them, but wasn’t sure what else to say, conscious of not appearing too grumpy.
But he was grumpy. That was his schtick.
As he rolled through a couple of options, Jemima did a big snore on the sun-lounger and turned over, snuggling down under the towel.
Hannah glanced across to check she was OK and then turned to look at Harry. ‘You were good with her today. She enjoyed it.’
Harry nodded. ‘Yeah. Me too.’
‘Seems you’re on the same level,’ Hannah said, eyebrows raised and a quick smirk of a smile.
Harry laughed. ‘You’re probably right.’
‘And you said you didn’t like kids.’
‘Ah…’ He held up a hand to correct her. ‘I didn’t say I didn’t like them, I just didn’t want them. That’s the difference.’
She paused before replying. Then, as she looked down at her feet gently splashing the water, she said, ‘I can understand that.’
He narrowed his eyes, waiting for her to say more. Presuming it was a test of some sort. That he was about to get a lecture about too much choice in the world and just getting on with it. About responsibility and that he’d love it as soon as he had one.
‘You should only do it if you really want it. I think. I didn’t want a child either but it happened and it took me a long time to get used to it.’ She pulled her feet up out the water and wrapped her arms around her legs. ‘I wouldn’t change it now for the world but… It was really hard. So yeah.’ She glanced at him. ‘Don’t do it unless you want to. Definitely not.’
Harry found himself frowning. This was completely different from the history that Jemima had spun. He hadn’t expected the frankness. He realised he’d liked the sugar coating. ‘But you just said that you wouldn’t change it now.’
‘I know, I wouldn’t.’
‘So then, surely you’re saying that you should do it, even if you don’t want to?’
Hannah laughed. ‘You should do what you like, Harry. Don’t try and talk me into persuading you that you should have a child. You need to find someone you want to have a child with first. Well…’ she paused. ‘You might have already done that. I don’t know.’
Harry didn’t reply, just shook his head about the having someone special in his life. He was confused. He didn’t think her argument stood up but she was agreeing with him so he shouldn’t care. But he felt strangely jealous that she had had something thrust upon her that she didn’t want and now that she had it, she found it infinitely precious. Harry would never make the mistake of having a baby that he didn’t want. He lived his life too controlled. He didn’t allow that kind of mistake to happen. So he would never have that risk. And, he sat back on his hands as he thought about it, yes, he was envious of that. Of the chance, of the risk, of being wrong. And the possibility of liking it.
The thought niggled and, in a knee-jerk reaction, almost to deflect the emotion he felt back onto Hannah, he found himself bringing up what Jemima had said about her father. ‘So she said this thing about her dad being an adventurer,’ Harry said.
‘And?’ Hannah asked, looking him straight in the eye, almost like a warning.
‘Was he?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think that you’ve lied to the kid,’ Harry said and the moment he did he realised he shouldn’t have.
‘I didn’t lie,’ Hannah said, running her hand roughly through her hair. ‘He was. He was a kind of an adventurer.’ She paused, flicked some pool water with her feet. ‘He was a serial traveller. That’s exploring the world. What do you want me to have said, Harry?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It just seems like giving her false expectations.’
Hannah blew out a breath. ‘Yeah well at the time it seemed better than: he was really good-looking, he had shitloads of tattoos, he was hilariously funny but actually, you know what, he was a liar. He was out for a good time, just like her mother. Would that have been better?’ She turned to look at him. ‘Is that what I should have said?’
Harry found it quite hard to meet her eye. In the course of her talking he’d realised that perhaps he’d been wrong not to bring it up but to think it in the first place. Jemima had been so pleased with the story, with the aspiration. Was it so wrong to give the girl a hero?
‘Jesus, Harry. I don’t want her thinking that. I want her to admire him. To admire his memory.’
He wanted to say something but his normal stubbornness and refusal to admit when he was wrong strangled his voice in his throat.
‘Christ, Harry, you really take the biscuit,’ Hannah said with a shake of her head. ‘You don’t think I should have lied to her…? You, who has clearly bowed out of anything more difficult than whatever happens in your kitchen, thinks he knows better about raising a child?’ She sighed and rested back on her hands, tipping her head up towards the faint outline of the moon in the still-bright sky.
Harry swallowed. He wished he hadn’t said anything. Wished it all back into his body. Wondered how he’d managed to mess up what should have been the type of light, frothy round-the-pool chit-chat he watched other people do with such ease. He sucked in his top lip and then, after a second said, ‘I’m sorry.’
Hannah rolled her head to look his way. ‘Really?’
He nodded.
She sat up, clearly a bit surprised.
Harry shrugged a shoulder and then added, ‘I have a tattoo.’
Hannah laughed. ‘I bet you bloody do. What’s it of? A saucepan?’
Harry was about to show her the tattoo of a match and flame on his hip bone that he’d had done one night when he was really drunk when he heard the clink of glasses. Hannah looked up and said, ‘Alfonso.’
‘Sorry.’ Alfonso shook his head as he went to sit down on the other side of Hannah from Harry. ‘I got stuck with Wilf. He’s pretty drunk. Hey, Harry.’ Alfonso leant round in front of Hannah to nod at Harry. ‘Great food today, as always.’
‘Cheers, mate,’ Harry said, then pushed himself up to standing.
‘Don’t go on my account,’ Alfonso said with a laugh.
‘No, no, I er…’ Harry pointed in the direction of the barbecue. ‘I’ve got stuff I should just, you know, clear up.’ And with a quick wave he turned and headed back to the outhouse.
There he took a seat in the fraying wicker chair and, reaching into the now-warm water of the drinks bucket, he pulled out a beer. Amongst all the chatter of the guests he could hear the murmur of conversation between Hannah and Alfonso. He could hear her laugh.
He closed his eyes and thought of New York. Of his lovely apartment with a sliver of view of Central Park. Of his bike. Of his books and Netflix account. Of the restaurant and his chefs and his crisp white menu and the morning meetings with the sounds of the city flooding in through the back door. Of the moment when he lost himself and then appeared again at the end of a shift. Jumped through a portal into his work with a freedom akin, he could only imagine, to flying.
He woke up a couple of hours later just in time to see Alfonso carrying the still-sleeping Jemima up to her room, Hannah walking next to him.
Groggy and half-asleep, Harry’s instinct told him to jump up and wrestle the kid from Alfonso, like some battle for territory in the Serengeti. But luckily Wilf appeared, blocking his view and said, ‘Off to bed now, Harry, big day tomorrow.’
He rubbed his eyes. ‘Why, what’s happening tomorrow?’
‘You’ll see,’ said Wilf.