‘What did he say?’
‘He was for it, in moderation.’
‘Seems sensible.’
They were momentarily silent.
‘It’s not really working out for you, the alphabet thing, is it?’
‘Not really, no.’
He only had a couple of minutes, but for some reason he wanted to tell her the quandary he was in, that something had died inside him, age 28. Not every ounce of love for his job – he still found investigations fascinating, still loved the chase, still wanted to nail their perp. He’d recently gone out to a scene with a younger officer who was breathless with adrenalin at viewing the stiff and setting off on his main lines of enquiry and Davy had found himself saying, ‘Calm down. No need to get over-excited. You need to go about this methodically.’ His voice full of weariness and restraint. Sad, really. Do not hurry, do not rest – whoever said that was bang on the money.
His faith in the meritocracy and the idea there might be an immutable space for him at work, that had ebbed, as he imagined it must for everyone except the most delusional or the most ruthless. He worked for an organisation, and organisations couldn’t love you back. Occasionally, you got an allright boss; other times you got an arsehole. It was random.
He must’ve made a stab at explaining this to her, his date, though he doesn’t remember what he said exactly.
‘Why d’you think everyone starts wanting to get married around the age of 30?’ she replied, matter-of-factly. ‘Death of ideas. Birth of pragmatism, leading to compromise in choice of life partner, leading to procreation.’
‘You make it sound so romantic.’
‘True though.’
He looks now at Manon feeding her baby and thinks, not just pragmatism. It’s wanting to get on with it. Wanting some change, wanting meaning – he shifts in his seat, wondering if he’s sat on a wet babygro because his trousers feel damp – some of this chaos to rough life up.
‘Actually I met someone,’ he says to Manon.
‘First time? You’re fucking kidding me. That’s not fair.’
She has lifted Edward onto her shoulder, draping a muslim there first, and is rubbing the baby’s back. The boob just hangs there, pendulously. Edward lets out a belch which would put a man in a pub to shame, and Manon clips her breast safely back inside her bra – to Davy’s relief – only to open the flap on the other one.
Mark walks in, looking like he got dressed in the dark this morning. His jacket has a white stain on the shoulder and his socks don’t match. His eyes are squinty, his hair all over the place. ‘Hello, Davy,’ he says. He kisses Manon’s and the baby’s head and asks, ‘How are you two?’
‘Good,’ says Manon. ‘I didn’t cry today.’
‘Wow, that is a good day. Shall we celebrate with a takeaway?’
‘Yes, but let’s wait for Fly to choose. He’ll be back from karate soon.’
August
Manon
She opens the door to Eddie’s room, called there by his mewling; lifts his sugar-bag body out of the cot, overjoyed to see him even at 4 a.m. In the darkness, Manon can shower him with the adoration she feels she must tone down during daylight hours or in the presence of others. Secret lovers, glad to be back together. Loving Ed is physical – tingling in Manon’s follicles, expansion in the depths of her lungs.
She especially doesn’t want to love the baby too fulsomely in front of Fly, who is still with them but only just. A slow thaw.
The police intelligence system threw up numerous previous convictions for Adewale Sane, not least fabricating details of his medical training in Nigeria. Davy urged Manon to tell Fly, in order to dissuade him from investing in the relationship. Manon shook her head.
‘Everything that comes from me is just further evidence of how the police try to pin things on people. If it comes from me, it’ll push him further into Adewale’s arms.’
Besides, she is confident Adewale will reveal his fecklessness to Fly soon enough. Adewale is exhibiting no keenness to house and feed a 12-year-old, which Fly explains to her with feigned confidence. ‘He’s between flats right now. He just wants to get himself straight before I go there.’
‘Righto. Lay the table will you, kiddo?’
This and other lines like it, Manon uses to bluster across her uncertainty. She knows their status quo is fragile, that she cannot rely on Fly to stay; knows that he is emerging as a grown person in his separation from her and that she must let this happen.
It is enough, she tells herself, to have him here for now. She is aware life is at its fullest and, having been alone for so long that the loneliness had worked into her marrow, she does not take the fullness for granted. She knows, ever so sadly, that there will be a life after the children.
Slowly, slowly, they co-exist. Fly is still unhappy at school, though he has moved class – away from the Cole twins – and this has allowed him a fresh start of sorts. She must stop referring to things as fresh starts; kiss of death. His schoolwork is improving. Slowly, slowly. She is anxious not to foist the baby on him, though Fly does love a baby. Manon watches how hard it is for him to resist Eddie. The other day, they lay on their sides on the carpet, looking into each other’s eyes. Then Ed tried to breastfeed from Fly’s nose.
‘Urgh,’ he shouted, delighted. ‘He’s sucking my face.’
‘Consider yourself honoured. He doesn’t suck on just anyone’s face.’
Actually, he really would. Eddie would suck on anyone’s face.
In the past, she has tutted irritably at idiot-parents gurning over their offspring. Now she finds herself calling Edward ‘the Gnu’. Mark calls him ‘sausage’. They can’t get enough of him.
She fells herself like a chopped tree onto the single bed beside the cot, holding the baby tight and opens her nightdress, already damp with leaking milk. Darts of responsiveness shoot towards her nipple as he latches on and then the feeling of spreading relief as he sucks, the engorgement of the night releasing itself. Then the flooding: her baby’s satisfaction and her own. The here and now is at its fullest, she realises, and soon she will have to mourn it. This is what happiness contains, she thinks; the awareness that it can’t last.
‘Don’t grow up,’ she whispers to Eddie.