| |
Darrell adjusted the shoulder straps on the front facing baby carrier and looked down on the dark fuzz of Cosmo’s hair as he slept, head cradled by the padded support. The baby carrier, Darrell remembered well, had been chosen because the marketing blurb promised that you could carry your baby up high enough to check their breathing. There was something else about “essential closeness”, but Darrell had latched onto the sentence about breathing, mainly because it had never occurred to her that her baby’s might need checking when he was sleeping against her chest. At night, yes – Darrell knew all about cot death, and was vigilant about changing the batteries in the baby monitor. But she’d assumed during the night was the only time a baby might stop breathing. Until she’d read the baby carrier brochure.
Ninety per cent of sudden deaths, Darrell knew, happened to babies under six months old. Cosmo was less than half that now and Darrell found herself, much like a prisoner in solitary, chalking off the days to that magical six-month mark. Six months was also when Darrell intended to stop breastfeeding. Darrell found breastfeeding exhausting, and she was frustratingly ineffective at expressing. But bottle feeding, according to the authority on all things baby – Clare – posed manifold threats to Cosmo’s health, both physical and psychological. Darrell wasn’t keen to risk it, though she wasn’t entirely sure what she was more afraid of: compromising Cosmo’s immune system and emotional development or facing the disapproval of Clare.
‘Do you want me to carry him?’
Anselo was at her side, baby bag on his shoulder.
‘He must be getting heavy now,’ he said. ‘Or we could get a pram? They don’t all cost as much as a house in Peckham.’
The mention of a pram filled Darrell with the usual ambivalence. Part of her longed for a pram, yearned to be free of the stifling feeling of still being umbilically connected to her baby. But if something went wrong because she wasn’t close enough to notice it, she would never forgive herself. Darrell battled with these counterpoints every day. She was secretly glad that the risk of smothering meant she and Anselo did not have to share their bed with Cosmo. But she agonised over the fact that, because their bedroom was simply too tiny even to fit a bassinet, Cosmo had to sleep in the other room. A little distance was a relief, thought Darrell. But too much felt like you were tempting fate.
‘No, I’m fine,’ Darrell said. ‘You can take him at the café, though. If you want?’
Anselo opened the front door and waited for her to go through. ‘Sure,’ he said.
‘Why do we do this every Saturday?’ Darrell said to him, as they walked up the road to the café. ‘I mean, Patrick’s fine. I adore Patrick. But . . . well, you know.’
‘We don’t have to,’ said Anselo. ‘I can explain to Patrick.’
‘That’s all very well,’ said Darrell. ‘But how will he explain it to her? If he concocts some tale about us taking up Saturday morning water babies or infant tai chi, or anything like that, I’ll be grilled mercilessly about how we’re finding it. And if I try to fob her off with some blather along the lines of ‘Oh it’s great’, I’ll be subjected to a litany of research that confirms any benefit I may have observed has been a product of my own ignorant delusion.’
‘You shouldn’t let Clare intimidate you,’ said Anselo. ‘Doesn’t matter what she thinks.’
Darrell tried very hard not to hate her husband at that moment. But it was a bit rich, she felt, for him to accuse her of being at the mercy of other people’s opinions when he’d spent his whole life being acutely sensitive to what others thought of him. Patrick in particular, although the brew of admiration and resentment towards his older cousin that had been on full boil when she’d met Anselo had reduced markedly since Patrick asked Anselo to join him in business.
Darrell had initially had misgivings about this, feeling it might be better for Anselo if he continued being self-employed. His building business had been growing and Darrell had noted a corresponding increase in Anselo’s levels of confidence and ease with himself. She’d worried that taking up Patrick’s offer would put her husband in the shadow of the man he considered the epitome of success, and that Anselo would once more fixate on the gap he imagined lay between them.
But so far, Darrell hadn’t seen that happen. If anything, it was Patrick who’d seemed to step back and let Anselo take more of the lead. Darrell knew, as all the family did, that the situation with little Tom had become increasingly difficult, so she supposed that was the reason. To her annoyance, she found this was yet another situation about which she had mixed feelings. On the upside, Anselo had risen to the challenge and was looking and sounding more confident than he’d ever done. Which made him a great deal easier to be around, Darrell had to rather guiltily admit. On the downside, the opportunities to experience this benefit were increasingly limited due to the fact Anselo was spending a lot of time at work. More than Darrell had bargained on. More than Anselo had promised.
He’d kept his hours down, at first. But in the last few weeks, Darrell had noticed a gradual but inexorable extension – leaving earlier in the morning and coming home later at night. Darrell knew that Patrick was not asking this of him; Anselo’s choice of hours was entirely his own. If his choice was being driven by a dedication to the job, it would be easier to cope with.
But it wasn’t, was it, Darrell thought. Anselo was spending more time at work because he was less happy spending time with her. She knew that was her fault. Since Cosmo was born, she’d been so wrapped up with him that it was no wonder Anselo felt on the outer. She didn’t want to be so focused on the baby, but she couldn’t help it. Even when Cosmo was asleep – and by golly, he was a champion sleeper – she couldn’t switch off completely. It was like an incredibly important upcoming event you’re so terrified you’ll forget that it keeps leaping into your consciousness, creating an electric jolt of fear every time. It made it so difficult to be present for anyone else, including Anselo. Darrell had no one else to blame now he was choosing to be not so present for her.
She wished she knew what to do about it. She missed so much what they’d had BC: Before Cosmo. They’d barely been together a year before she’d got knocked up, and she’d loved feeling that it was just the two of them. She’d loved being able to phone Anselo whenever she was tired, bored or fed up, and have him chat to her or even drop what he was doing and come back home. ‘I’ll say I’m out getting supplies,’ he’d say. ‘Do you want a custard tart from the café?’
Darrell missed those custard tarts. She even missed his old voicemail, with the gruff ‘Anselo Herne. Leave a message.’ Now, she got the message recorded for him by that posh bird from his office, Charlotte or Scarlett or whatever her name was, with the hint of dominatrix or dog trainer about her vowels.
It occurred to Darrell that Charlotte-or-Scarlett was exactly the type that the innocent but gutsy heroines in her romance novels had to do battle with to win their billionaire hero. Said billionaire always had a mistress ensconced in some Manhattan or Parisian apartment, with whom he was exchanging an accommodation of his sexual demands for, most usually, a large amount of emerald jewellery. The transactional nature of this relationship would become unsatisfactory to the mistress the instant the gutsy innocent entered the scene, and she’d begin a merciless campaign to reduce the heroine to dust with a swift grind of her Louboutin heels. It never worked. The scales invariably fell from the billionaire’s eyes and the shards of ice melted within his heart. He’d declare that he no longer desired to protect himself emotionally with a shield of clinical perfection, and what he really wanted was a full-figured young girl with simple charms, who would tell him right out when he was being a prick. And then he’d marry her and take her off to his private beach in the Maldives.
It then occurred to Darrell that she’d spent the last five minutes in her head, and that they were now actually at the café, where Patrick and Clare, with Tom, were already waiting at an outside table, under a green sun umbrella. Darrell regretted the mental excursion because now she had no time to plan what her tactics might be if Clare launched into her about something to do with Cosmo. She also regretted not taking up Anselo’s offer to strap on the baby carrier. It was mid-July, already seventeen degrees at ten in the morning, and Cosmo felt like a hot-water bottle filled against safety advice with boiling water. A little pool of sweat was starting to gather in Darrell’s cleavage where Cosmo’s head lay, but as he was still asleep, she was reluctant to move him. She sank down into a spare chair, grateful for the umbrella’s shade, and glanced towards Anselo for reassurance and potential aid. But he’d already slung the baby bag down and gone inside to order. He didn’t have to ask what she wanted – he had it off by heart. Darrell knew she should be pleased that he’d bothered to memorise her preferences. But she wasn’t; she was resentful. He’d gone off and left her unprotected, and now all she could do was sit and wait for Clare to begin her inevitable assault.
The realisation that she absolutely did not want to be there raced through Darrell. But where did she want to be, and with who?
Clare opened her mouth to speak. Darrell braced herself.
‘We’re going to Italy,’ said Clare, ‘to share a villa with your friend Michelle. What’s she like?’
Darrell couldn’t help a glance at Patrick. Surely, Patrick had given Clare his opinion on Michelle? He’d met her last year when he’d travelled to the States to look at buying a winery.
Clare caught the glance and smiled grimly. ‘Oh, yes. I asked Patrick. He called her a “card”. That’s why I want the truth from you. He always resorts to outmoded Cockneyisms when he’s hiding something.’
‘I do not!’ said Patrick.
‘You do, too. Whenever your mother phones, you sound like the chorus of My Old Man’s a Dustman.’
‘I grew up in Bethnal Green,’ said Patrick, expression mulish. ‘It’s a family trait.’
‘That is a bunch of Khyber Pass,’ said his wife. ‘Your mother sounds nothing like a Pearly Queen. More like Queen Mary sentencing Protestants to burn.’
Darrell covered the fact she was smiling by unfastening the baby carrier so she could hold Cosmo in her arms. Patrick’s mother, Consuela, was generally regarded as the family’s most terrifying matriarch, which, considering the competition, was quite a feat. Darrell found her own mother-in-law, Adrienne, alarming enough and was relieved that because Anselo was only one of her five children and Cosmo her tenth grandchild, Grandma Adi’s visits were mercifully infrequent. There were no grandfathers. Anselo’s father was dead. Patrick’s father, as far as Darrell knew, had never been present at all.
Perhaps it was a good thing Clare and she had boys, thought Darrell. The clan needed them. She just wished the gene pool was slightly more dependable.
Anselo was back. He placed an espresso and a custard tart in front of Darrell, who saw Clare give it a sideways look. If she mentioned how many calories it contained, Darrell would shove it in Clare’s hand and squish her fingers shut until custard oozed out the gaps.
Fortunately, Anselo spoke first. ‘Is Tom OK with that dog over there?’
Both Patrick and Clare sat up, tense and on alert. Neither, Darrell realised, had noticed Tom walking away from the table. He was now sitting down, resting against a young dog that was tied up, lying asleep in the shady lee of a wall, next to a bowl of water.
Patrick sat back, his relief obvious.
‘Yeah, he’s fine,’ he said. ‘It’s only Flea. And he wouldn’t hurt a . . . well, fly.’
‘Flea?’ said Anselo. ‘Who calls their dog Flea?’
‘Your sister, as it happens,’ said Patrick. ‘Actually, her son. Gulliver named him after the bassist in the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Similar energy levels, apparently.’ He looked across at the comatose puppy. ‘When he’s awake.’
‘And why do you have Aishe’s dog?’ said Anselo.
Patrick and Clare exchanged a glance.
‘Gulliver’s own bass-playing abilities have scored him a trip to Dusseldorf with his school jazz band,’ said Patrick. ‘Clare – we – offered to look after Flea.’
‘I thought it was school holidays?’
‘Summer jazz festival circuit,’ said Patrick. ‘They could be off to Paris next.’
‘Leaving the dog with you again, I suppose.’ Anselo shook his head. ‘Give her a bloody inch.’
He leaned towards Patrick. ‘Aishe’s perfectly capable of organising a boarding kennel. Scratch that – she’s perfectly capable of getting Benedict to organise a boarding kennel. Don’t let her push you around.’
Darrell eyed her husband with a curiosity tinged with alarm. It was one thing for him to tell her not to be intimidated but quite another to say the same to Patrick. Anselo’s usual attitude to Patrick was one of respect edging into deference. Which, to be fair, was most people’s attitude. Patrick drove through life like an ebullient Panzer and people tended to react to him as opposing rugby players used to react to France’s Sébastien Chabal or New Zealand’s Jonah Lomu; they’d get out of his way. Yet here was Anselo telling Patrick, in no uncertain terms, what to do. And in the presence of Clare, another traditionally inhibiting factor.
Part of Darrell was pleased that Anselo’s new-found confidence was expanding. But mostly, her heart thudded with anxiety. Confident Anselo was not the Anselo she’d married, and it occurred to her that the time they’d had together before Cosmo was not enough to truly get to know each other. They’d been together months rather than years, and for the last two of those months, she’d been more intimately acquainted with anti-leak breast pads than her husband. And if she continued to put Cosmo up between them, like some sort of powder-scented deflector shield, then Anselo would only become more distant.
Darrell didn’t want that. But lessening the gap between her and Anselo meant widening it between her and Cosmo. And that, right now, was unthinkable.