saturday, july 20, 2013

morning

evie wakes just before six. i get out of bed, slip intothe nursery and pick her up. i feed her and takeher back to bed with me.

when i wake again, tom’s not at my side, but ican hear his footfalls on the stairs. he’s singing, lowand tuneless, “happy birthday to you, happy birthdayto you?.?.?.” i hadn’t even thought about it earlier, i’dcompletely forgotten; i didn’t think of anything butfetching my little girl and getting back to bed. nowi’m giggling before i’m even properly awake. i openmy eyes and evie’s smiling, too, and when i look up,tom’s standing at the foot of the bed, holding a tray.

he’s wearing my orla kiely apron and nothing else.

“breakfast in bed, birthday girl,” he says. he placesthe tray at the end of the bed and scoots round tokiss me.

i open my presents. i have a pretty silver braceletwith onyx inlay from evie, and a black silk teddy andmatching knickers from tom, and i can’t stopsmiling. he climbs back into bed and we lie with eviebetween us. she has her fingers curled tightly aroundhis forefinger and i have hold of her perfect pinkfoot, and i feel as though fireworks are going off inmy chest. it’s impossible, this much love.

a while later, when evie gets bored of lying there, iget her up and we go downstairs and leave tom tosnooze. he deserves it. i potter round, tidying up abit. i drink my coffee outside on the patio, watchingthe half-empty trains rattle past, and think aboutlunch. it’s hot—too hot for a roast, but i’ll do oneanyway, because tom loves roast beef, and we canhave ice cream afterwards to cool us down. i justneed to pop out to get that merlot he likes, so i getevie ready, strap her in the buggy and we strolldown to the shops.

everyone told me i was insane to agree to move into tom’s house. but then everyone thought i wasinsane to get involved with a married man, let alonea married man whose wife was highly unstable, andi’ve proved them wrong on that one. no matter howmuch trouble she causes, tom and evie are worth it.

but they were right about the house. on days liketoday, with the sun shining, when you walk downour little street—tree-lined and tidy, not quite acul-de-sac, but with the same sense of community—itcould be perfect. its pavements are busy withmothers just like me, with dogs on leads andtoddlers on scooters. it could be ideal. it could be, ifyou weren’t able to hear the screeching brakes of thetrains. it could be, so long as you didn’t turn aroundand look back down towards number fifteen.

when i get back, tom is sitting at the dining roomtable looking at something on the computer. he’swearing shorts but no shirt; i can see the musclesmoving under his skin when he moves. it still givesme butterflies to look at him. i say hello, but he’s ina world of his own, and when i run my fingertipsover his shoulder he jumps. the laptop snaps shut.

“hey,” he says, getting to his feet. he’s smiling buthe looks tired, worried. he takes evie from mewithout looking me in the eye.

“what?” i ask. “what is it?”

“nothing,” he says, and he turns away towards thewindow, bouncing evie on his hip.

“tom, what?”

“it’s nothing.” he turns back and gives me a look,and i know what he’s going to say before he says it.

“rachel. another email.” he shakes his head and helooks so wounded, so upset, and i hate it, i can’tbear it. sometimes i want to kill that woman.

“what’s she said?”

he just shakes his head again. “it doesn’t matter.

it’s just?.?.?. the usual. bullshit.”

“i’m sorry,” i say, and i don’t ask what bullshitexactly, because i know he won’t want to tell me. hehates upsetting me with this stuff.

“it’s ok. it’s nothing. just the usual pissednonsense.”

“god, is she ever going to go away? is she evergoing to just let us be happy?”

he comes over to me and, with our daughterbetween us, kisses me. “we are happy,” he says.

“we are.”

evening

we are happy. we had lunch and lay out on thelawn, and then when it got too hot we came insideand ate ice cream while tom watched the grandprix. evie and i made play dough, and she ate quitea bit of that, too. i think about what’s going ondown the road and i think about how lucky i am,how i got everything that i wanted. when i look attom, i thank god that he found me, too, that i wasthere to rescue him from that woman. she’d havedriven him mad in the end, i really think that—she’dhave ground him down, she’d have made him intosomething he’s not.

tom’s taken evie upstairs to give her a bath. i canhear her squealing with delight from here and i’msmiling again—the smile has barely fallen from my lipsall day. i do the washing up, tidy up the living room,think about dinner. something light. it’s funny,because a few years ago i would have hated the ideaof staying in and cooking on my birthday, but nowit’s perfect, it’s the way it should be. just the threeof us.

i pick up evie’s toys, scattered around the livingroom floor, and return them to their trunk. i’mlooking forward to putting her down early tonight, toslipping into that teddy tom bought me. it won’t bedark for hours yet, but i light the candles on themantelpiece and open the second bottle of merlot tolet it breathe. i’m just leaning over the sofa to pullthe curtains shut when i see a woman, her headbent to her chest, scuttling along the pavement onthe opposite side of the street. she doesn’t look up,but it’s her, i’m sure of it. i lean farther forward, myheart hammering in my chest, trying to get a betterlook, but the angle’s wrong and i can’t see her now.

i turn, ready to bolt out of the front door to chaseher down the street, but tom’s standing there in thedoorway, evie wrapped in a towel in his arms.

“are you ok?” he asks. “what’s wrong?”

“nothing,” i say, stuffing my hands into my pocketsso that he can’t see them shaking. “nothing’s wrong.

nothing at all.”