Fleur, in her Moses basket, has dozed back off into a post-milk sleep so that she looks like me after eight pints. I smile at her, touch those wisps of hair lightly. I’m sure Loll would tell me it’s not physically possible, but she makes my heart hurt.
Right now, I am that specific mix of exhausted and wired and completely in love, as Fleur naps.
I nod off on the sofa and each time I stir, I sit bolt upright and check my phone for news from Adam, even though the second I am awake I know it’s too soon.
As I check that Fleur is still gently snoring, reach over to touch those wisps of hair, I drift off again.
Over and over it goes.
In my half-asleep state, my mind starts exploring the before.
Walking into the Goodness Café on my day off to say hello to Romilly at work and grab a free coffee. I think I was partly checking up on her that day; making sure she wasn’t overdoing it. She was three months pregnant: the day before we had been at her twelve-week scan.
I sat down and looked over at her in her black Nikes, right hand on hip, left holding avocado-smeared plates, chatting to some regulars with a big smile on that tiny face, bump beginning to jut out into the world.
She hadn’t spotted me yet and for some reason I didn’t want her to for a little longer. I wanted to watch Romilly, in her natural environment. Didn’t want to spike the bubble.
God, I loved her.
An older man handed her a glass with the remnants of something orange in.
He had what looked like a grandchild on his lap. He squeezed the child hard. ‘They’re the best, kids.’
He glanced at her middle; I saw her hesitation to bring up her own ‘baby’ at this stage.
I was standing next to her before she noticed me and when I touched her on her arm, she jumped.
When I hung around she offered me her polenta and pistachio cake but I pulled a face and asked if they had any sticky toffee.
I remember looking around then as she went to check and thinking this was her world: a Morcheeba album played that I knew she had picked; the music was her soundtrack. On the wall was a chalkboard scrawled all over in Romilly’s writing: yoga class times, painting workshops, calligraphy courses, the monthly walk and talk.
The place was more than just a café; a community hub. Romilly, as the manager, had made it that way.
My wife booked local artists to run sculpture classes and chefs for Korean cooking courses. She knew everyone’s name and she thought carefully about what they’d like, what would make this place work just that bit harder for them.
Lots of people came to do their jobs at the Goodness Café at 9 a.m., set themselves up in the corner, didn’t leave until 5 and considered the other regulars their colleagues. Romilly worked long hours. It wasn’t her place, but it might as well have been. She longed for the day that it could be. There, or an equivalent.
‘Daydreaming about that café again,’ I said to her once as she plotted with Steffie in our garden.
‘I think the word you’re looking for is planning,’ said Steffie. She was smiling but her tone was short. She never likes being treated like she’s silly, Steffie. She certainly doesn’t like being patronised by men.
Romilly and Steffie joked that there was only one thing it can be called, when you live by the sea with the surname Beach. Beaches Café would happen, they said. It was just a matter of when. I looked at our finances and knew otherwise: if people said I was a dreamer, these two were worse.
‘Hey, Bob, we’re starting a book club next month,’ Romilly said that day as she walked away from the café table. Took some chalk out of her back pocket and wrote the book club onto the schedule. ‘You love your historical fiction, right? You should come. This author’s being called the new Mantel.’
And as she made this man smile, I stared at her, looking as radiant as all the clichés would describe, even though I knew she had had to eat a whole ham pizza for breakfast that morning to stem the nausea that was persisting, when she was usually an unwavering vegan.
‘Desperate times with these cravings,’ she had muttered, as she shoved in the final slice. ‘Bloody good job you had that in the freezer.’
It was 8 a.m.
I had laughed, kissed the top of her short black hair. The sight of it still surprised me sometimes. But she pulled off anything, Romilly: you do, with eyes like that. With a face like that.
‘Always happy to oblige with emergency supplies of morning pig,’ I said. ‘Though most people would prefer a bacon sandwich at this time but whatever works, right?’
She retched. ‘I know it’s a terrible thing to be in denial about what meat is, and that if I ate it I have to face that, but just … can you not call it pig again? At least not while I’m pregnant?’
She stood up and hugged me and groaned into my chest.
Now, Fleur wakes and I pick her spindly body up, hold her close to me, in this half and half state of awake, asleep, past, present.
Loll puts her key in the door; out of breath. It’s been fifteen minutes since Aurelia left, and that’s the longest Fleur and I have been left alone.
My eyes droop again.
However the midwife spoke to me.
However Loll catches my eye sometimes.
Whatever Aurelia hinted at.
However I feel like even Steffie has started to look at me.
That one thing is true: on that day, in that moment, Romilly and I were happy.
Always the husband is reductive.
There’s no such thing as always and what it really means is: look close.
But I am not the only one who is close to Romilly.
Look at the sister, I think.
Look at the mother.
Look at the best friend. Even look at my best friend. I’ve started to.
Look at them all closely.
And don’t blink first.