I FaceTime Tom from Yorkshire, my nephew, Noah – desperate to speak to Uncle Tom with me while his dad cooks us pasta – sitting on my lap.
Tom appears on the screen and I can see that he is guzzling our adored Noah up, but he looks pale.
‘Why aren’t you at work?’ I ask. ‘I told Noah we would try you just in case, but I thought the most we’d get was a quick thirty-second hello. You look awful.’
‘I have food poisoning,’ he says quickly.
‘Didn’t you go out last night?’ I ask. ‘Is food poisoning code?’
I nod at my nephew.
‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘He understands hangovers. Noah’s dad’s a Yorkshireman.’
‘I’m serious,’ he snips.
I ease off.
‘I had a burger. Rich is feeling rough, too.’
I raise an eyebrow, but then Noah demonstrates to Tom the toddler yoga he does at nursery and I am focused on the tiny bottom stuck up in the air that’s making me laugh until I can’t breathe.
It’s only when I look up that I see Tom isn’t laughing. He is looking away, distracted, elsewhere when normally Noah consumes us both.
‘Lex, on your way back can you stop at the key place and get a flat key cut? I lost my keys last night. The porter had to let me in.’
‘Shit,’ I say, then check Noah didn’t hear. ‘Should we get the locks changed?’
‘No, I’ve got my wallet, so there’s nothing anyone could get our address from. Just a stupid drunk mistake.’
I laugh.
‘Ah! so you were drunk? But I thought it was the burger.’
He doesn’t even smile.
I get home the next day and the night passes into history, for now.
Something hangs between us, though. I think about how close we were when we started talking about starting a family. I see the us from then and the us from now. I think of the times we fill silences by both blurting out something inane at the same time and then politely withdrawing, to let the other speak. I think of the extra few centimetres between us in bed at night. At the lack of touch. Of the slight tilt of Tom’s diary – no longer a source of amusement to me but part of our routine, part of our calm – away from me now as he writes while I read, as we do.
I think about how a hug we shared the other day reminded me of the ones I get from my parents. Hanging back. Not quite invested. I think of how it’s rare now that we get tipsy together slowly and speak about being teenagers, or politics, or any other conversation that meanders its way through a bottle of wine. I try to remember the last time we kissed, just kissed, without it being about trying for a baby, and I cannot. Alone that night in a bed at the other end of the country, I feel very distant and suddenly, very sad.