Saz’s few days alone with Matilda were easy. The little girl was on good form, laughing and playing and pulling herself forward in a one-legged crawl – catalogue daughter designed to make the child-free yearn for their own, and the already-parenting wonder if now wasn’t the perfect time to make yet another. Catalogue mother kidding herself the sleepless nights were all in the past and there were no more to come. Not even when Matilda reached sweet suffering sixteen. Or nine, if the pseudo-It-Girl behaviour of her middle niece was anything to go by.
Saz spent the Saturday afternoon and night at her own parents’ house, being spoiled and waited on. With four other grandchildren well beyond the cute baby stage, Saz’s parents were delighted to welcome another small one into their home, take her out to the park, laugh with her for half an hour at a time. Delighted to welcome, and not a little relieved when Saz and Matilda left them in peace, and the prized ornaments and sharp corners could be restored to their rightful places. Despite their best efforts, it had always been obvious that Patrick and Hazel were more than content with each other for company. Enjoying the silence in the lounge, the cooking shuffle coming from the kitchen, breathing in the scent of roasting lamb, Saz’s father flicked through the Sunday papers to the weekend’s hot story of yet another famous actor and his third young wife having a new baby in the actor’s early seventies. He shook his head in horror at the thought of a full-time baby in his own life, checked the clock and wondered if there wasn’t time for them to pop out for a quick drink
before lunch. Pint of bitter, brandy and lemonade, packet of salt and vinegar to share. He put down the paper and went to get Hazel’s coat.
Saz took Matilda to lunch with Chris and Marc, where the little girl was indulged by her fathers, and Saz was given a pretty good time too. Then, late afternoon, full of food and just-within-the-limit wine, mother and baby drove home across north London, Matilda as ever soothed and sleeping with the motion of the car. Saz enjoyed the time to herself, the flat for just her and Matilda. Molly had always worked long hours, Ute often shift work, ever since they first met, and Saz recognised a growing sense of loss at never having their flat to herself any more. Not that she’d ever tell Molly. Or Matilda. Even now, like her own parents, she was setting limits on the truths she’d tell her child. By the time the early autumn sun was setting, with Matilda skilfully removed from her car seat in one swift and only slightly-grizzling movement and now fast asleep in her own cot, it was almost like the old days, Saz’s own time, and just herself to please. Which she did by settling down for a night in front of the TV with takeaway pizza and a bottle of diet coke.
She was starting to doze in front of the new season big expense costume drama – pleasingly populated with a variety of heaving bosoms – when the doorbell rang. She ran to answer it before a second ring could wake Matilda. There was a man standing on the step. Her age maybe, oddly familiar but not. He was wearing a very good suit, had smooth rounded nails on the hand he held out to her. She didn’t shake hands. Didn’t want to talk to him. Couldn’t believe it was really him. Standing there, grinning at her.
“What are you doing here?”
Nothing more. He was smiling, lit by the light spill from the hallway behind her. Smiling at her, at her discomfort she thought.
“What the fuck do you want?”
“I was hoping we might have a little chat?”
London accent, like Saz’s, something estuary around the edges, but drawn tighter for the city. Harder. Less real. Less true.
“Why?”
Saz waited for the man to speak. He just smiled. Saz tightened her grip on the door lock, wondered again why she and Molly hadn’t got around to putting on a chain. Forced into speaking by his silence, the strength of his silence.
“Look, I’m not working at the moment. I don’t … work. Anymore. I mean, if that’s what you wanted … ?”
About to explain about Matilda, her reason for giving up, the public reason, not Molly’s reason. Reasons. Stopped herself. Too much information. None from him.
“Not many people do work at this time on a Sunday night though, do they?”
He was still smiling, held out his hand, looked like he was offering a hand to shake, in reality holding tight to the door Saz was trying to close.
“It’s Will? Will Gallagher?”
Saz thought she might throw up, pushing against the door, pushing him back. “I know who you are.”
“Well, good. Because we need to talk.”
“I have nothing to say to you.”
As he took his hand off the door, ready to come into the hallway, Saz pushed harder still and slammed the door in his face, double-locking it. He was laughing on the other side of the red-painted panels.
“Ah, really – we do need to talk? Something’s happened. We need to talk about it.”
“Go away.”
He called again, through the closed and locked door, “I’ll come back later. Tomorrow maybe, the day after?”
“Go away.”
Still under her breath, too quiet for him to hear, leaning with her whole body-weight against the double-locked door he wasn’t even trying to open. He was walking off, she heard his footsteps, round the side of the house, down the path and into the street, leaving now, singing to himself a song in French. She hated that song. She’d always hated that song.
Saz leaned against the door for a long time. Eventually she realised she was cold and then remembered she was home, remembered she was grown, and therefore, apparently, she was safe. She pulled herself up from the floor, back creased in door panel indents, went round the flat checking every window, every lock. She sat in Matilda’s boxroom, the room they were well aware their daughter would outgrow before the end of the year, lit by the amber elephant night-light, and watched her child breathing, sleeping soundly, until her own heart eased its furious pace enough for her to go back to the sofa and the cold pizza. Saz finished her glass of coke, toyed with congealed cheese and tomato before she dumped the pizza and went to bed. She lay, eyes wide, staring into the darkened bedroom. The occasional lights of cars passing on the street outside were a comfort. Eventually she slept. She didn’t dream. Or if she did, she didn’t remember. Saz definitely didn’t want to remember.