Chapter Two

DYLAN AND DAVID arrive for supper with two cats – the unnamed runts of a litter dropped by David’s daughter’s pet. It takes me a while to get my head around all this, but what with a risotto, the purée, a jar of Audrey’s home-made chutney and a ripe Epoisse which I can’t eat but whose ribald smell is sufficient compensation, there is ample time to hear the story of what Dylan calls David’s ‘road to Damascus’.

And, as David describes how he’d always suspected he was homosexual (enunciating all five vowel sounds, clearly relishing saying the word aloud), and how marriage to flame-haired Caryl only reinforced his suspicions, I find myself thinking about how our lives are changed by the choices we make, and how brave you’d have to be to have a change of heart.

Like my dad leaving my mother. I watch him help Audrey to some cheese, his gnarled hand firm on the knife, the blue veins standing proud from the pressure. I can almost feel his potter’s grip from when he used to wrap me in a towel at bathtime. I collect the pudding bowls from the cupboard and, as I set them down, see that he and Audrey are holding hands under the table.

*

Somehow, we end up keeping the cats. David intended them as child substitutes for his broody lover, and brought them to dinner en route to staying the night at what Dylan likes to call, with no little irony, his vicar-cage. After coffee, and having been banned from doing the washing up, Dad and Audrey have gone to bed. Dylan sits at the grand piano: a present from Matt to me when he was made a consultant. Its glossy lid is home to framed photos – two dozen or more: our wedding, a skiing trip, parties, christenings. I have my hair up. I have a bob. I have stick-on flicks. I have a henna rinse. I am blonde. I’m with friends; I’m holding their babies. Matt is kissing me.

Dylan is playing the piano. A female ball of fur and bones has commandeered his lap. Dylan is running through the songs to a Stephen Sondheim musical he hopes to stage to raise money to repair his church roof. His mother, Pamela, is threatening to audition. The male cat jumps off David’s knees, and saunters into a piano leg.

‘That cat’s got Amber’s sense of direction!’ guffaws Matt.

‘Better that’, I snap, ‘than that he has your sense of humour.’ Matt rises to close the front shutters and plants a noisy kiss on my head as he passes.

‘You guys!’ says David, whose hair reminds me of a startled grey mammal. I watch him flick cat fur from his combat trousers. Let’s hope it doesn’t fly up and get caught in the braces on his teeth. When I stop my silent bitch-fest, I realise that Dylan has been making up a song about the cats, which he has christened Tim and Tallulah.

‘Keep them!’ cries Dylan, thudding a final chord before swivelling round on the stool.

‘Now I know how Mary must have felt before the Angel Gabriel,’ says Matt, solemnly.

My insides curdle. Has Matt changed his mind about having children? ‘Don’t be daft, Dylan,’ I say quickly.

‘Why not? I’m running a retreat in a couple of days’ time, so, as much as David wants me to have them—’

‘Don’t be daft,’ I repeat, buying time for Matt to ride to my rescue, slay this evil offer and keep our pairing intact. As a psychiatrist, he’s rigid on boundaries. Apparently patients hate his professional neutrality, and attempt all manner of personal intrusions. They quiz him, wanting him as their special friend, their surrogate parent. And Matt smiles (at least I always picture him in his office smiling, since he’s always smiling at me), and scribbles a note or two on a pad. Then he wonders aloud why they want to know. This annoys them intensely, which makes for more notes, more smiles.

‘Sounds like a great idea,’ says Matt.

I glare at my husband. ‘Are they house-trained?’ I ask, as if remotely interested.

‘They’re barely five weeks old.’

‘Dylan tells me you’ve decided not to have kids—’ I note the way David slips this in, as if to say, Dylan’s told me everything about you ‘— so you won’t have to worry about small hands accidentally shutting them in the washing machine.’

‘It’s not their welfare I’m worried about,’ I snap.

‘And they do so match your Farrow & Ball paintwork,’ he adds, raising an eyebrow. I meet his look with one of my own, as a nickname for him, ‘Camp David’, takes up residence in my head.

Matt is on his haunches by the fireplace. One kitten is on its hind legs, tugging with its front paws at Matt’s sleeve; the other is being tickled, eyes half-closed in apparent ecstasy. A parent playing with the children. I feel a sharp stitch in my left side. ‘Dyl, why me?’

‘Because we’re like family, you and me. Friends are the new family—’

‘Like white is the new black,’ smirks David. I want to slug him.

‘And they’re sooooo adorable,’ says Dylan, watching Matt and the cats.

‘So, you have them, Dyl—’ Then I stop, realising in that moment that all three men are now looking at me in a particularly complicit way. My chest feels tight. I rub my collarbone.

‘All right,’ I say with a sigh. ‘But only until you’re back from your retreat.’ I watch as Matt rises to close the French windows. ‘Then you must have them. You’re the broody one around here.’

David taps his watch and reminds Dylan of his eight o’clock Communion tomorrow morning. He goes out to his car and returns with a cardboard box, which contains all the paraphernalia novice parents of juvenile cats need for those crucial first nights at home. Dylan is hunching on his jacket. Watching him flick his Pre- Raphaelite curls out from under the collar, a sudden rush of feeling floods my body. His eyes are red and watery, as if leaving the cats behind constitutes a loss of insurmountable proportions.

There is a pause. David, hovering by the car, clears his throat. I have this fleeting sense, perhaps incorrect, that David is prompting Dylan, that he’s taking control.

Dylan looks at me again, and this time his squeeze at the tops of my arms is just a little too sharp. ‘Darling, I meant to tell you earlier. David and I, we’re thinking of adopting.’