Tiryaka means diagonal or triangular. The pose is, almost quite literally, ‘cobra with a twist.’ While holding Bhujangasana, cobra pose, direct the gaze over the shoulders diagonally across the back of the body to the opposite heel. The secret of the pose is revealed in its name, which recalls the cobra’s strike when its body is coiled and weighted to the ground. As the cobra does, when practicing the pose keep the lower body strong and free the upper body as it rears up. This asana can remove back pain and keep the spine supple. A stiff spine impedes nervous impulses sent from the brain to the body, and vice versa. Improving the circulation of the back of the body will tone the nerves and enhance communication between brain and body. This asana stimulates the appetite, alleviates constipation, and benefits the abdominal organs.
It was midnight when Grace got back to Harry’s studio. She stared down the bed at her sleeping beauty. His latest self-help book, Change Your Life One Day at a Time, was open facedown beside him and his right foot dangled free of the covers as if he’d fallen asleep mid-getaway. Still too awake to join him, she went to sit on the wide ledged windowsill where, from the darkness of the studio, she had fallen into the habit of watching the couple in the house opposite. Grace liked to think of herself as the unobserved observer but knew well enough that she was spying on a love that seemed young, even though the lovers weren’t. Tonight she watched the end of their dinner party. Grace knew the scene and missed it: friends, conversation, red wine, the man across the street wrapping his arms around his woman—as Ted would have done, late at night, loving her. Grace looked across at Harry; she regretted that he had not stayed awake, but would not snuggle beside him in the hope of rousing him. Better to drive home to her empty bed than lie restless beside him.
The following morning, lying in bed, she invited images from last night’s meeting to linger: Dr. James sitting at the bar, taking off his tie; his face, animated in conversation; their respective confessions. She shivered suddenly, fearful that she had said too much, but was comforted that he had also confessed to disillusionment. Grace appreciated what they had shared. All she and Harry talked about these days was Lucy and Vicky. She grabbed her mobile and checked the time: not yet seven. Harry would be asleep. Recently he was lying in later than ever, and Grace recognized depressive symptoms. Only last week she had asked him to try Procent; she knew it was a long shot—Harry wouldn’t countenance food that wasn’t organic, let alone pills unless they were homeopathic. But Grace, tired of carrying the burden of Harry’s heavy mood and empty pocket, had procured a three months’ supply anyway. She’d asked him to be broad-minded and give the medication a chance. ‘It’s helped hundreds of thousands move on from a debilitating funk,’ she’d said.
Harry had thrown the pills back at her and insisted he was not depressed. ‘I’m in a depressing situation, that’s all,’ he’d said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me a little luck won’t cure.’ That luck was Harry’s Plan A was too precarious for Grace. Just thinking about Harry’s situation made her tired.
She got out of bed and lay down on her mat, unrolled and ready, right beneath the painting. There was plenty of time to practice before returning to Harry’s studio to witness the feng shui consultation he’d organized. Plan B she supposed, since luck hadn’t shown up.
Grace wondered what Max, the feng shui expert and Harry’s new friend, would make of her bedroom. Harry complained that it was over the top with its ornate mirror, classic boudoir dressing table, antique wardrobe, and green silk curtains. But he knew, and she knew, the root of the problem was the painting. Grace remembered the morning she had returned to the bedroom, dressed for Monday, to find Harry in his Calvin Kleins, looking up at the six-foot oil. His ‘who’s this?’ had sounded defensive. ‘A Howard Morgan,’ she’d said, offhand, tying back her hair.
‘I didn’t mean the artist, I meant the naked lovers,’ Harry said.
The lovers faced each other, the woman’s bent leg resting on the man’s hip, he about to penetrate her. Grace had continued looking in the mirror when she replied, ‘That’s me with Ted.’ Harry couldn’t believe they had posed like that. ‘Well, we did,’ Grace said quietly, walking out of the room.
The comfort of Grace’s house on Oxford Gardens put Harry on edge, reminding him, he had once confessed, of all the things he didn’t have. Reminders of Ted did not help. At the foot of the stairs an oil painting showed Ted as a boy, holding a shotgun and standing next to his grandfather, at his feet a retriever with a bleeding bird in its mouth. In the hall, three miniature oils recorded scenes from a nineteenth-century battle commanded by one of Ted’s ancestors. The towels in the bathroom bore his initials, as did the robe behind the bathroom door.
The dead can do no wrong, so competing with Ted was hard for Harry, but at least Grace’s past was dead, however much it haunted her. Harry’s meanwhile was very much alive; Vicky and Lucy dominated his world. It all came down to Lucy, he said. She was the reason he could put up with Vicky; in fact, it was why he and Vicky had got together in the first place. Grace knew the story: Vicky was forty-three and childless when she’d met Harry. Within three months she was pregnant. Abortion wasn’t an option. Harry would never ask a woman to go through that, and Vicky had no intention of getting rid of her dream come true, which wasn’t without complications. Five months into the pregnancy she had said to Harry, ‘Sweetheart, around the time I conceived, I got home late, remember?’ Harry remembered. Vicky had returned drunk and high at four in the morning, provoking an outrageous fight that had ended with consoling lovemaking.
‘The thing is,’ Vicky said, ‘before I got home, I crashed. I woke up next to Steve.’
‘So?’ Harry was accustomed to Vicky’s idea of a good time.
‘We were in bed.’
That was when Harry had raged, and Vicky had cried. Vicky never cried, so Harry had stopped pounding the sitting room door and, licking blood from his splintered knuckles, changed his tone to help Vicky establish her child’s paternity. ‘Was Steve wearing anything?’ he’d asked.
‘A condom?’ she said.
‘No, Vick, clothes. Was he wearing any clothes?’
‘I can’t remember. I don’t think anything happened.’ Vicky had kneeled beside Harry with her arms around his neck, hanging or hugging, it was hard to distinguish. ‘If you love me, love the baby—even if it isn’t yours,’ she said, her voice small to diminish the enormity of what she asked.
Harry knew Steve. He was on the scene and he was black. They wouldn’t need a DNA test. But Harry made the investment: he decided to love the baby. The ultrasound had revealed a girl, and Harry didn’t miss a single prenatal class, which was more than could be said for Vicky. She was ten years older than him and a handful, but she had provided him with a role: he was her partner and a father-in-waiting—in more ways than one.
Vicky had dark hair and eyes. Lucy arrived blonde, blue eyed, his. On the day she was born he had promised to be the father she deserved. That it took another three years to give up the substances was a pity, and it felt like a punishment that sobriety exposed his incompatibility with Lucy’s mother. When he moved out, Harry’s intention of being the good father suffered a setback, which he was determined to overcome. Vicky didn’t make it easy.
For the sake of seeing Lucy, Harry tolerated Vicky’s delinquency and told Grace that if she loved him enough she would do the same. Grace was optimistic that Vicky would weary of being obstructive, but it was she, not Vicky, who was bruised by the constant fighting that connected Harry and his ex more convincingly than love.
What Vicky had wanted from Harry, and what she’d got, was a child, but Grace never talked about being a mother, even though she was at the age when most women who hadn’t been pregnant were desperate to be. While Harry certainly didn’t want another child right now, the fact that Grace wasn’t begging him for one was an issue. Grace seemed to him absolute, sufficient unto herself. More than once he had asked her why she was with him.
That Harry was a father appealed to Grace. If it was sometimes difficult to compete with his five-year-old look-alike for his attention, she forgave them both. Grace had always been committed to getting on with Lucy. It wouldn’t only be Harry she was leaving if they split. Grace still wanted to believe they could be if not a family, a unit that looked like a family and sometimes acted like one. It didn’t matter to her that Lucy wasn’t hers; some days it was her love for the child that kept Grace in the relationship. She had even booked builders to convert her attic into a bedroom for Lucy—the first step toward turning her house into their home, even though Harry still resisted moving in.
‘I moved in with Vicky too soon, and lost my way in that woman’s world. It’s a mistake I don’t want to repeat,’ he said.
Money was the other reason Harry didn’t want to give up his studio. He feared that moving in with Grace would disqualify him from welfare and housing benefits—handouts from the government that granted a semblance of independence. Grace couldn’t understand his willingness to be on benefit, rather than get to work and take the future into his own hands. At her insistence, Harry had consulted the benefit office to find out where he would stand if he did move in. ‘My girlfriend’s house and money aren’t mine. She’s the one with the assets. I’m the one with the kid,’ he’d preempted when facing the signing-on woman across her desk.
‘All I do is put the information in,’ the woman said. ‘The computer decides what you’re entitled to.’
Harry already knew the exercise was pointless—Grace’s assets would disqualify him instantly. There was a way around the system: to deny their relationship, and move in with Grace as her lodger—an idea he had put to her that week. ‘The benefit office will send you the rent check that currently goes to Mr. French, and I can keep signing on. It’s a win-win,’ he’d grinned.
‘Harry, it’s called benefit fraud. If you need money, get a job,’ she’d responded. They were back to that, which was why Harry was counting on feng shui to fix things.
‘What good is that going to do?’ Grace had asked.
‘Defend against Vicky, and boost the positive energies in our lives.’
‘Who said feng shui could do that?’
‘Max,’ Harry said.
Max was mortal proof of feng shui’s transformational power. The two men had met in the vitamins and herbs section of Whole Foods, the organic store on Westbourne Grove. Harry had looked up when he’d heard a lowered voice ask the assistant ‘what’s good for warts?’ A shaggy beard could not conceal warts the size of raisins on the big man’s face.
‘Get them lasered,’ Harry said quietly, as he reached for his Rescue Remedy (alcohol free). Max caught up with Harry at the cash register, clutching a bottle of chelidonium.
‘Did you have warts?’
‘No,’ Harry said. ‘My ex. She had a wart on her nose, and that stuff didn’t shift it.’ Vicky’s misfortune still made Harry chuckle, which is when Max’s memory clicked in.
Max had a mind that filed and graded celebrity pictures with a rigor that caused him real pride, but whose commercial potential had eluded him until enlightened by feng shui. Max had retrieved Harry’s face within minutes of seeing him, even though it was four years since Vicky’s Ibiza villa had filled eight pages of Hello!, Harry in every photograph completing the picture of her perfect life. The magazine hit the stands the week after Harry moved out.
Intent on discussing the laser surgeon, Max had invited Harry to join him for coffee—or Barley Cup with soy milk, in Harry’s case. Max eyed the Barley Cup and said he couldn’t imagine a more disgusting drink. A onetime car salesman from Chingford, whose real name was Craig, Max wasn’t as alternative as the feng shui suggested, and his offer to transform the stagnated energies in Harry’s flat, and by implication, Harry’s stagnated life, was a spasm of altruism ignited by self-interest. Vicky, famous for creating serene interiors nothing like her own, could make Max’s career.
Grace was skeptical about feng shui, but she was intrigued about meeting Max, who was gaining a reputation among the Notting Hill nobility as something of a wizard. Certainly his chameleon progress from Essex showroom forecourt to London Wll’s stucco terraces was powerful testimony that a transition from the conventional sales sector to the alternative realm could be achieved, if ambition burned.
At half past eight, she called Harry.
‘Where are you?’ he yawned.
‘Home. Sorry I didn’t stay last night.’
‘Is everything all right?’
‘Yes, fine.’
‘I mean between us?’
‘You were sleeping. I didn’t want to disturb you.’
‘You could have. By the way, good news—Max has promised to feng shui my place for nothing if I introduce him to Vicky.’
‘A great trade when you consider the fifteen square feet you call home.’
Harry grunted acknowledgement. ‘He’s here at ten, if you want to meet. And sweetheart, pick up some breakfast, would you. I’m starving.’
Harry could have fallen out of bed into Whole Foods, he was that close, but he had no cash. He had long ago assumed that such treats were for Grace to procure.
‘You certainly gave up the luxuries,’ observed Max, as though Harry had sacrificed much without knowing why. Then Grace walked in with a bag full of breakfast. ‘But who cares about that when you’ve got a woman like this. Love is the finest compensation,’ he said, greeting her with open arms, registering her face—and more. ‘You know, it isn’t so bad in here. I like the high ceilings,’ he said, checking his watch as he set to work.
‘The light’s amazing, but I’m swamped with antiques,’ Harry said, setting down three mugs of bitter herbal tea.
‘Ditch the antiques and paint the walls in here green. That will shake things up,’ Max said, blowing on his tea, delaying the taste of it.
‘The antiques are holding me back. They’ve got to go,’ Harry said, convinced that he could count on his landlord to take them away at short notice. Mr. French owned the building and the antiques business on the ground floor, and filled all his rentals with old furniture. Harry and Mr. French got along, Mr. French being a gentleman who liked to mind his own business.
‘Sort that now if you can,’ said Max.
Harry left Max plotting the studio on graph paper. When he’d gone, Max asked Grace, ‘What’s your theory on Harry’s slow progress?’
‘Certainly the past has a hold on him,’ she acknowledged, ‘but I’m not sure you can pin the blame on the antiques.’
Max’s eyes sparkled: if he was going to be challenged, it might as well be by a hot woman. ‘Getting this furniture out will make a difference, which is when you’ll call me to feng shui your place,’ he said, winking at her.
‘We’ll see about that,’ Grace said, skeptical but admiring his confidence.
Harry buzzed the shop door. Mr. French peered from the back to check that it was safe before letting him in. The growing affluence on the street made him nervous. Back in the day, when he’d inherited the house from his father’s mistress, the neighborhood had been seedy but honest. He’d preferred it that way.
‘Hello, Harry. Anything I can do for you?’ Mr. French half expected some kind of problem.
‘It’s the antiques, Mr. French.’
‘One of them broken?’ Mr. French winced but kept his voice steady.
‘No, no. Nothing like that. It’s unsettling to be surrounded by so much history.’
‘You want me to change the bed?’
‘I’d like to keep the mattress, but you could take the base and the headboard.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Mr. French.
Harry was sure. The bed was carved with luscious fruits and exotic birds in imitation of Grinling Gibbons, the seventeenth-century master craftsman, and too ornate for Harry’s taste—as were the bureau, the chaise longue, the dining table, and the Chinese lamps. Mr. French stopped writing his list. ‘You’re getting rid of everything. What’s this all about?’
When Mr. French heard about the feng shui he thought the lamps could have stayed, but promised that his son would clear the studio if that’s what his tenant wanted. ‘The shop could do with the stock,’ he reflected. ‘And of course, the curtains, you’ll want them down,’ he said, upbeat. The curtains, a vivid orange with a psychedelic floral print, had always offended Mr. French. His wife had bought them in Portobello market for a shilling and he’d been looking for an excuse to get rid of them ever since.
‘The curtains can stay,’ said Harry. In Harry’s mind the orange print would complement the green he’d be painting the main room, and add to his retro intentions, which, for the moment, he was keeping to himself.
Back in the studio, Max was in a hurry to finish. ‘John Barratt is expecting me.’
‘Are you talking about Sir John Barratt?’ Harry lit up.
Max crooked one eyebrow.
‘That’s serious. He’s serious.’ Grace was incredulous that the recently knighted old actor would fall for feng shui. ‘How did you meet?’
‘His wife. I bumped into her in Whole Foods.’
‘You mean, you stalked her,’ Harry laughed.
‘Be nice. She wants me to start their house in Holland Park and see how we go. I might have to charge them more than usual.’
‘How much is that?’ Harry asked.
‘Two hundred.’
‘A day?’ Harry asked.
‘An hour. The rich pay double. Expensive makes them feel good. Making people feel good is my job.’
Grace watched Max move around the studio using a compass, sketching ticks and crosses on his feng shui diagram. ‘So how long did it take to get from selling second-hand cars to here?’ she asked.
‘I pestered my feng shui teacher until he promised to teach me everything he knew. And I meditate, which helps on every level.’
Grace glanced at Harry and slyly shook her head. She was intrigued by Max’s metamorphosis, but did not believe it had much to do with sitting still with his eyes closed. Grace knew that Max was a chancer, and a charmer, but she followed him and Harry into the bathroom anyway. ‘All your relationships will improve,’ he was saying, ‘once you paint these walls any color in the red ray. Put up a picture of swans, or dolphins—they mate for life. Avoid penguins. Penguins are monogamous, but only for a year.’
Harry was hanging on every word. ‘How’s my money corner?’ he asked as they turned into the kitchen.
‘Your waste bin’s in it.’ Max hauled the bin to a propitious position beneath the breakfast bar.
‘It doesn’t look great there,’ Harry complained.
‘That won’t bother you once you see money in the bank,’ said Max, spreading out the completed feng shui diagram. ‘Ticks are positive, crosses negative.’
The map of the flat was annotated with more ticks than crosses, which implied that the energies in Harry’s flat, and consequently Harry’s life, were better than he—and certainly Grace—had expected.
‘Your relationship corner needs the most help,’ Max said with the authority of a Chinese master. ‘Paint the bathroom as soon as you can, and when you do, have a clear intention of what you want. Use these when you’re done.’ He handed Harry a purple velvet pouch. ‘You need crystals and these are the finest money can buy. The Barratts won’t miss a few.’
Harry poured the shining stones into his palm: pink, emerald, purple, and blue. Vibrant colours from deep within the earth. ‘Let’s paint the bathroom this afternoon,’ he said to Grace, turning over the rose quartz.
As soon as Max had gone, Harry propelled Grace to the hardware store as though a brighter future depended on it. He picked out the High Red Ultra Gloss.
‘Brave to go for gloss. Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ Grace asked. Harry was adamant, but hours later applying the paint had left them defeated. The good intentions for the future that Max had told them to keep in mind while they worked were all but forgotten. The depth of the colour somehow left them emotionally drained, while the paint’s viscosity had tugged hairs from the brushes and transplanted them onto the walls.
‘Emulsion would have been cheaper to buy and quicker to apply,’ Harry said, frustrated. Finally, when the four walls were painted red, Harry moved to the other corners identified on Max’s diagram. A raid on Lucy’s craft box lifted his spirits. ‘How lucky is this,’ he said, holding up a strip of cartoon stickers. Dolphins with pink smiling lips jumped in pairs over a breaking wave; Harry stuck one on the wall in the relationship corner. Below, in the bath’s corner ledge on either side of Sir John Barratt’s rose quartz, he placed two candles. Grace lit them. Suddenly, Harry and Grace seemed mysterious to one another in the dark red light.
It was only four o’clock, but they agreed to share a bath. Perhaps the charade was worth it, thought Grace, while the hot was running and Harry searched for lavender oil to scent the water. The oil eluded him but he discovered instead a condom. He placed it behind the crystal, which ruined the aesthetic but was worth the sacrifice; good sex, they knew, was cement in the kind of relationship they wanted. They lay in the bath, Grace’s back to Harry’s front, the only sound the dripping tap.
‘It’s my father’s birthday today,’ Harry said.
‘Did you send a card?’
‘No. I should go see him though,’ he responded, vaguely. That Harry didn’t bother with his father lessened the guilt Grace sometimes felt about neglecting her own.
‘Fathers. It’s not easy having one,’ she said.
‘Or being one.’
‘I’m glad we’ve got each other.’ Grace rolled onto her tummy. They were face-to-face now, her body half floating on top of his in the warm water. It was good right then, all very good, but when the telephone rang Harry couldn’t ignore it. He got up from the bath. It was always like this when he hadn’t heard from his daughter for a while. Alone in the water, Grace sank back. A call from Vicky was overdue.
‘I’ll be over in twenty minutes,’ was all Grace heard him say.
Vicky could summon Harry whenever it suited her, as though he were her minion—his response invariably reassured her that he was. ‘Have we got Lucy?’ Grace said, out of the bath, toweling her body dry.
‘Looks like it.’
‘You can drive over. I’ll come with you if you like,’ she said, prompted—perhaps by the feng shui—to present a united front. Grace knew that Harry did not like her to drive him when Lucy was in the car. He’d once confessed the best thing about Vicky was that she’d always thrown him the car keys.
When they were outside Vicky’s house on Pembridge Place, Harry called to warn her that he was there—a precautionary tactic to avoid having to go inside, where the risk of a protracted argument was high. This evening, Vicky didn’t answer. ‘Come on, let’s go in together,’ he said to Grace. ‘I’ll keep the in-out short, nothing to worry about.’ But Grace always did: just driving past Vicky’s road made her anxious. She bit her bottom lip as Harry rang the bell.
To make Harry wait was one of Vicky’s tricks, a reminder, if one were needed, of who called the shots. Five minutes later Grace hissed, ‘When are you going to stand up to her?’
‘She’s the mother of my child. It’s all the entitlement she needs—’
‘To treat you like shit?’
‘As long as I see Lucy, that’s all that matters.’
Grace held the anger for them both. Her recurring fantasy was to lob a brick through Vicky’s window—either the Range Rover’s windscreen, or the prized blue-glass windowpane on the first floor of the immaculate house. In her head, Grace would see the brick fly, hear the smash, watch the glass shatter. Picturing herself in police custody was the only thing that stopped her. Such visions evaporated when Vicky opened the door.
‘Hi, Ken,’ Vicky said under her breath, loud enough for Grace to hear. Lucy had told them that ‘the fantastic plastic couple’ was Vicky’s latest name for them—in the battle between her parents, the child was indeed her mother’s free-range missile. Grace was ready to be rude if Vicky so much as whispered Barbie, but Vicky was too shrewd for that. Her dark hair was piled high and she wore a brilliant-coloured caftan that elegantly concealed her weight. Since Harry had moved out, Vicky had piled on the pounds, and her fat had acquired a permanence that would take some shifting. Grace smelled smoke. So that was the delay: they’d caught Vicky with a Marlboro Light. She talked of quitting but Harry said she never would and no longer cared. His concern was for Lucy, who coughed some mornings as though the thirty-a-day habit was hers.
‘Dada!’ Lucy ran down the stairs.
‘In pyjamas already, Loobiloo?’ Harry said, lifting her high into the air.
‘She didn’t feel like getting dressed today,’ Vicky explained.
Lucy looked at Grace and made a funny face, as if to acknowledge that she had indeed been petulant. Apart from this quick look, Lucy ignored Grace. Warring parents had made her a minidiplomat and she instinctively knew to conceal her affection for her father’s girlfriend until the time was right.
‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,’ she said, skipping around him until he picked her up again. She was skinny, a sparrow. Vicky hovered in the hallway, as if to absorb a little of what Lucy and Harry had. It was love after all, love they all wanted.
‘I’m hungry. Mummy won’t let me have cheesy pasta,’ Lucy said, her too-pink lips to Harry’s ear as he rocked her in his arms.
‘The homeopath said it’s dairy giving her that mouth rash, so no dairy from now on. And I wouldn’t mind something toward the doctor.’
Harry carried Lucy upstairs as much to avoid being berated for not paying anything toward her expenses as to get the child dressed and ready. The homeopath had been his idea but Vicky had chosen one on Harley Street; he couldn’t afford a tenth of the bill, as they all knew.
Vicky offered Grace a cigarette, fully aware she didn’t smoke. ‘So you’re letting him drive?’ she asked.
‘He drives the car when he wants,’ Grace lied.
‘Harry’s a good driver, just don’t expect him to fill the car with petrol.’
Grace was wary of Vicky’s random, negative comments and, over the years, had tried to block them out. But Vicky knew Grace’s position better than anyone. Who else would have vibed that the last time Harry had borrowed her Mercedes, he’d returned it empty, so that Grace had been stuck on Bayswater, out of gas, in the middle of rush hour?
‘Decorating?’ Vicky inquired, casting an eye at Grace’s paint-splattered hands. Grace nodded. ‘Your place or his?’
‘His.’
‘That figures. He’s good with a paintbrush, I’ll say that for him. He should be an odd job man—we’d all be better off. Why don’t you come in, have a drink?’ A conversation with Vicky was a minefield, and the last thing Grace needed when she was trying to maintain faith in Harry. What’s more, she had learned that Vicky’s gracious moods rarely lasted from one minute to the next.
‘We just had a cup of tea, thanks,’ Grace said.
‘Don’t mind if I shut the door then,’ Vicky said, and promptly did so, leaving Grace on the door mat.
Within minutes the door opened again, in time for Grace to witness the group hug, Lucy squeezed between her parents, willing to be squashed to death she wanted them back together so much. Harry explained this as Lucy’s need to believe in her parents’ love, no matter how many years she might have watched them ripping each other apart. ‘Our happy family happened once upon a time, and Lucy wants it back,’ he had memorably explained.
In the studio, Harry switched on the electric heater. When Lucy was over he kept the place warm, to hell with the expense. ‘Next time you’re here, Loobiloo, the studio will be empty. I’m getting rid of the furniture.’
‘What about the hummingbirds?’
The birds engraved on the headboard were characters in Lucy’s bedtime stories. Hummingbirds fly free of time, Harry had told her. They carried hopes and dreams for love and happiness, and they carried away Lucy’s nightmares, too. ‘Dada, we need the birds,’ Lucy said from the bed, tracing the carvings with her tiny hands.
‘Don’t worry, sweetheart, Mr. French will look after the birds.’
‘But who will look after us?’
‘We’ll all look after each other,’ Harry said, winking at Grace and gathering his daughter in his arms. ‘Now how about a hot chocolate?’ he said, carrying her into the kitchen for the ritual that started all their winter days. While he prepared the drink—this time with soy milk but with twice as much sugar in the hope she couldn’t tell—Lucy drew on the blackboard Harry had put up on the kitchen wall. With Lucy there, he never talked about having a cigarette. Lucy filled him up, he said. Later, they pulled the desk away from the wall to fit the chairs around, and in the electric heater’s sorry heat ate supper, or in Lucy’s case didn’t. The Alternative Cheesy Pasta, with vegan cheese and soy milk, didn’t go down well. She filled up on toast made with lashings of butter and honey, sitting on Grace’s lap to eat it. Grace was always staggered by the child’s ability to switch in and out of modes: one minute loving her mother, the next snuggling up to her as though her mother didn’t exist.
When it was bedtime, Lucy stood on the bed as Harry helped undress her. ‘Miss you, Loo,’ Harry said, carefully easing the pullover over her head. From woolly darkness a small voice echoed, ‘miss you, too.’ Smoothing the static out of her flyaway hair, he kissed her face. ‘You’re the best girl in the whole wide world. I love you.’
Grace gathered the pyjamas she’d put to warm on the heater, then kissed Lucy good night before clearing the table. It hurt sometimes, but Grace understood that Harry cherished the bedtime ritual and didn’t want to share it. He didn’t see his daughter enough as it was and Grace was not invited to step into what he chose to see as his territory.
When Lucy was in bed, Harry stretched out beside his daughter, stroking her forehead as he read the last pages of Matilda. Grace turned to the washing up, determined to call her builders the next day: this three-in-a-bed had gone on too long. Lucy soon would be six: time for her own room. What’s more, Grace wanted privacy with Harry come the night. Harry didn’t see it that way: he may have lived half the time at Grace’s, but when he had his daughter, he liked to stay at the studio. The little house, as Lucy called it, was where she had always come to be with him. Grace understood the nostalgic connection, but it didn’t make sense for the three of them to cram in together while her big house languished, empty, five minutes’ drive away.