I’ve packed an emergency bag in the hallway, my maternity notes wedged into the side pocket. Everyone, from my consultant to my mother-in-law, says I won’t need it, but not to have the bag prepared is to tempt fate. I’m not nervous about the birth. I’m booked in for a C-section at thirty-seven weeks. What really worries me is having three new relationships thrust on me overnight; a mother twice over and a co-parent. I suppose I can’t see how it will work, sharing Kit. It’s always been just me and one other person – me and my mum, then me and Dad, a succession of intimate friends throughout school, then me and Ling and now me and Kit. I suppose that, for a while, Beth was virtually living with us. My mistake, as I’m reminded every time I see or feel Kit’s scar, the valley of shiny flesh with its mountains of scar tissue on either side.
The doorbell rings, and I haul myself to my feet. The postman has a parcel for me to look after most days. Working from home means our house is the porter’s lodge for half of Wilbraham Road. I don’t mind, or at least I don’t mind now I’m pregnant. And I never minded the bulky stuff; I didn’t even mind the garden furniture for number 32 that once sat in my hallway for a whole week. It was the baby stuff that used to pain me, the parcels for Ronni from Mothercare or JoJo Maman Bébé or Petit Bateau. The packages of miniature clothes would mock me, the voice in my head screaming get them out get them out get them out get them out.
Our front hall is one of my favourite things about the house. The floor tiles are Minton, all fleur-de-lys and fiddly curlicues – they go for thousands on eBay – and the front door is the original Arts and Crafts, with leaded lights in four panels. I can tell through the coloured glass that it’s not the postman but Mac; his profile is quite distinctive these days. He was an early adopter of the now-ubiquitous beard and at the moment he looks rather like D. H. Lawrence, with a huge gingery fuzz that makes Kit’s putative beard look like five o’clock shadow.
‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ I say, unhooking the chain and throwing the door wide. Mac’s wearing hobnail boots, and tweed trousers held up by braces twanged over a short-sleeved shirt. I wouldn’t be surprised to find a penny farthing parked behind him. He’s carrying a big brown paper bag, the kind Americans put their groceries in on telly, only this one has the Bean/Bone logo printed on it. The forward slash was my idea.
‘Decaf latte for the calcium, some sourdough bread, couple of wheatbran muffins for later. And we’ve been juicing.’ He takes out four clear plastic cups with holes for straws in the top: purple, yellow, orange, and a green one that looks like it should have marsh gas coming off it.
‘What the fuck is this? Ectoplasm?’
‘Hemp and wheatgrass.’ He lines them up on the kitchen counter. ‘And the pièce de résistance.’ It’s the bone broth that gives his emporium its name and reputation – glorified stock, really, boiled-up bones and carcasses. People round here can’t get enough of it. ‘I can’t look after you as well as Kit does but at least I can feed you up,’ says Mac.
‘You shouldn’t have,’ I say, but my mouth waters against my will and I realise I still haven’t eaten. ‘Are you coming in?’
‘I’d better get back,’ he says. ‘But I’ll come around like this with brunch every day while Kit’s away, check you’re ok. And if you need anything, you just let me know. How are you feeling?’
‘I thought I was going to have an anxiety attack this morning just after he went, but I got it under control,’ I say.
Mac actually takes a step back. ‘Shall I call Ling?’ The implication is clear. Anything medical, anything to do with the babies, and he will drop everything and come around. Emotional problems are the women’s department. Mac has not mellowed completely.
‘No, no,’ I say. Ling’s a social worker; she’ll be knocking on the metal front door to some shitty flat about now, maybe with an interpreter in tow, maybe with the police. I’d have to be desperate to interrupt her during work hours.
‘Right, then, I’d better go.’ He bends down and gives me a clumsy kiss on the cheek. ‘I’m having the girls tonight, so I’ll see you again tomorrow.’
Ling and Mac haven’t been a couple since we were kids – they broke down, in every sense of the phrase, around the same time everything was happening to us – but they work better apart than they did together, so much so that when Ling got broody again, Mac obliged her with another baby. Their girls, Juno and Piper, live between two homes, both on the Ladder, four streets apart. Three homes if you count our house, where they have their own room, for now at least.
I pour the bone broth down the sink and go back to my tidying. The lamp on our hall table is a light-up globe, an old child’s toy that I fell in love with in a charity shop, and I draw the route of Kit’s ship, dragging my fingertips through the choppy North Sea. I can cover the whole of the path of totality, where the shadow falls fullest, with my thumb. The Faroe Islands are so tiny that even my little finger obscures them. They look too small to hide in. My arms start to bristle. Beth is a trapdoor; one thought of her and I lose my footing and fall. I pull my sleeves down over my skin and spin the globe until the oceans and the land blur green and blue, and the shadow covers everything.
Chapter 5
LAURA
10 August 1999
The coach reached its final destination somewhere south of Helston. Local police in fluoro jackets looked us up and down. At the edge of the road, Ling leant against the campervan, head tilted, trying to bask in sun that struggled weakly through gauzy cloud. A hand-painted cardboard sign propped next to her said, Heavy Tent? Lifts To Lizard Point ￡2.
At the sound of my voice she opened her eyes and broke into a smile.
‘I didn’t expect chauffeur service,’ I said.
‘The coaches can only go so far and the site’s miles away. Besides, it’s a way to claw back some money.’
She held out her hand for coins as people lined up, threw open the van door and the motley crew piled in. At the end of the century, youth tribes were blurring and along with the crusties and the goths were club girls in fairy wings and crisp Essex boys in designer jeans. A dirty red sleeping bag was rolled and strapped in the corner, and the smell of dope was inescapable. Those who couldn’t find a seat sat cross-legged on the oily floor, clearly delighted after nine hours in a National Express coach to be able to loll and smoke not only with impunity but encouragement.
I rode shotgun with Ling and put my feet up on the dashboard.