Ripping off her clothes as if they were soaked in acid, Kate threw them from her and confronted herself in the full length mirror.
There was her recognisable, mundane body, with its baffling colour scheme of palest lilywhite to purple. Kate took in her lopsided bosom, her footballers’ knees and the hips where nineteen years of dessert congregated.
And she liked it. She knew that Charlie would like it too.
Tearing open the door, Kate launched herself at Charlie. He didn’t miss a beat, his arms closing around her as if powered by a mechanism.
‘Kate!’ Charlie looked down at her nakedness. ‘You’re way ahead of me.’
Kate yanked so hard at his jeans that a button flew off. Soon they were equals, both pale and nude and warm and moving against each other, deliriously happy.
Or as happy as two people about to make love can be; desire has a knack of leaving no room for other sensations.
With Charlie hard against her in the chaos they’d made of the bed, Kate whispered, ‘Are you sure?’
‘Shut up,’ growled Charlie.
‘Language!’ As punishment, Kate flipped him, hanging over him like a lovestruck bird of prey.
‘If only you’d done this sooner,’ said Charlie, his hands on her hips.
On the edge of Kate’s vision, a tiny rectangle lit up – the screen of Charlie’s mobile, a casualty of lust, fallen to the floorboards.
Charlie’s mouth was on her neck as her breasts crowded him, and his erection waved a hectic hello! but Kate still managed to read the text.
Where r u babes? What’s the point of moving in if you’re not here with me? Call me xXx
Kate pulled away from Charlie, from all of him, whether soft or hard. ‘Anna’s moved in with you?’
Disoriented at the sudden disappearance of so many lovely bits of Kate, Charlie managed to say, ‘What?’
Kate scrabbled for the duvet to cover herself up. Her nudity felt wrong. ‘Anna, Charlie!’ She tried not to shout. ‘She’s moved into your flat.’
‘No.’ Charlie looked insulted. He exhaled, passed a hand over his features. ‘Well, yes. Kind of.’
Her mouth numb from kissing, Kate demanded, ‘Which is it? Yes or no? Does she have a key? Are her possessions there?’
‘She moved in today but—’ Charlie sat up and covered his groin with a pillow as Kate let out an infuriated grunt and began to pace the room with the duvet trailing behind like an ill fitting bridal gown. ‘But, but, listen, it’s not like it’s, you know, official. Most of her gear is still at her mum’s. She’s kind of staying, yes.’ Charlie evidently preferred that term: his face, flustered and sweaty, lit up. ‘That’s all it is. Anna’s staying with me for a bit.’
‘Is that what Anna would call it?’
Silence was an eloquent answer.
As if floodlights had blazed into life, Kate saw the evening for what it was.
Her loins had billed it as a glorious, at-last moment just to get her head on board. The delirium wasn’t suppressed love, it was good old horniness. Kate was desperate and as for Charlie . . . ‘You’re a sexual opportunist, Charlie Garland.’
‘What? No I’m not.’ As stung as if she’d accused him of murder, Charlie shook his head. ‘This was as much you as it was me.’ He was shouting now. ‘It was more you!’
‘Very gallant. What a gent.’
‘I’m not an opportunist and I’m not a gentleman. I’m just me and you’re just you and this just happened.’ Charlie spoke more quietly now. Kate could hardly hear him when he held out his hand and said, ‘It could still happen.’
‘You’re right.’ Kate spun round, her hair on end and her eyes crazy. ‘It could happen because this is exactly what I need. A drunken romp behind your girlfriend’s back. What lady could refuse? It’s my dream, Charlie, my dream, I tell you. Will you let me give you a blow job before you toddle off home? Pretty please?’
Face grim, Charlie stared. Kate was no longer interested in what was behind the pillow he clutched but she suspected there was nothing much to see. ‘If you’re just going to be a bitch . . .’
‘I’m a bitch and you’re a cheat. What a lovely couple we make.’
It had been perfect. Exciting and right. Now it was ruined, like a birthday cake upended on the floor.
Breathing hard, Charlie said, eyes cast down, ‘Let’s give each other a few minutes and then talk.’
‘About what?’
‘About this.’ Charlie slapped the bed.
‘Text Anna back.’ Kate snatched up his phone and brandished it like a weapon. ‘Go on. Tell her where you are. Tell her what’s happening.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘Why not? Because it would be shitty?’ Kate let the phone slip from her fingers, all her fight dried out. ‘And you’re not a shitty man. But this, Charlie . . .’ She gestured around the room. ‘This is shitty.’
Charlie didn’t look as if he disagreed. They regarded each other with the same intensity of moments before, but this time it was laced with unhappiness and fear, not the prospect of wild lovemaking.
A small sound, nasal and snuffling, broke the spell.
Song. Kate wanted to fold down into herself, cringe until she was nothing. She’d forgotten Song.
Since Kate had brought her baby home they’d barely been out of each other’s sight. Kate had only managed to cope with putting Song to bed in the new cot – the one whose delivery had piqued Becca’s interest – by creeping up every twenty minutes to check her and admire her and find something new to adore in Song’s hair or hands or knees.
Keeping her tread light, Kate sprinted to the spare room – or, rather, the nursery – as a high, thin wail started up.
Song was a quiet soul. She never grizzled or cried. When Jia Tang had helped Kate prepare Song for her cleft palate operation at Beijing Stomatological Hospital, she’d stroked the child’s face, cooing, ‘Express yourself, little one. Let it out.’ Song’s silence made her an ‘easy’ baby but Jia Tang had hated it; ‘quiet babies have learned that nobody comes when they cry.’
‘Let it out, Song!’ Kate scooped up her little girl and gathered her to her chest.
Pristine in a white Babygro, Song roared.
‘Me too, darling,’ muttered Kate, rocking. ‘Me too.’
Charlie, trousers on, shirt buttoned halfway up, was in the doorway. ‘I should . . .’
‘Yeah, you should.’
Song, calmed by Kate’s heartbeat, lowered the volume of her protest.
‘I want you to know, this isn’t . . .’ Tongue tied, Charlie stood, irresolute, the picture of confusion. ‘This wasn’t sordid, OK? I could never see you that way.’
‘We had too much to drink.’
Clutching at this straw, Charlie nodded gratefully. ‘Exactly. And Anna . . .’
Be careful. Kate fired a look his way from the pastel haven of the nursery.
‘Anna moving in really was an ad hoc thing. It wasn’t planned. She’s been having problems with her landlord. She caught me off guard. I said why not?’ Charlie was frowning, as if reprimanding himself. ‘Maybe it was a mistake. I don’t know.’ He scratched his head violently, as if his scalp had offended him. ‘Damn. This is such a mess.’
For Anna, this bloke’s bird.
‘There you go. Rationalising again.’ Kate kissed Song’s head, revelling in the heavy warmth of the baby against her. Charlie seemed unable to concede the truth whenever he was in love. ‘Isn’t it time you got behind your romantic decisions? It can’t always be the woman’s fault. Becca. Anna.’ She hesitated, before plunging on. ‘This.’
Charlie sucked his lips. ‘This wasn’t anybody’s fault.’ He didn’t seem to have anything more to say.
‘This is the part where you go home to your girlfriend,’ said Kate.
Shaking his head sadly – a gesture Kate couldn’t decipher – Charlie looked at the floor as he said, ‘Goodnight, Kate.’ He put his hands over his face, muffling his words as he said, ‘And goo
dnight little Song. Sorry about upsetting your mummy.’
By the time the front door was pulled to, Song was asleep.
Even the birds were still in bed when Kate woke up. She envied Song asleep in her crib next door, a plush toy cat alongside her. Puss Cat had been in the package Jia Tang told her to open in London; some of his whiskers had been lost – loved off, by Song – but he never left the baby’s side.
Sleep eluded Kate, leaving her to relive the previous night’s feverish highs and guilty lows. A quotation bobbed to the surface of her teeming mind. When she’d been wakeful in her childhood bed, Dad used to tell her about Macbeth.
‘He had trouble sleeping too, and he longed for Sleep, that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care.’
Alight with purpose, Kate jumped out of bed, glad to leave the clammy sheets behind. Crossing to the suitcase standing open on the floor, Kate began to search. Methodical at first, she grew extra thumbs as panic set in. It’s really not here. The teapot photo, as she thought of the snap of herself and her father, was gone.
‘You’d have liked your granddad,’ whispered Kate as she gave Song her first bottle of the day. Dawn woke the colours of the house around them. ‘And he would have adored you.’
The arrival of Song would change the family’s roles, forcing them all to budge up and make room. Mum didn’t know it yet but she was a grandma. Becca was now an aunt, of sorts. Poor old Marjorie wouldn’t like the title ‘Great Aunt’; more excellent fodder for Great Uncle Hugh’s teasing. Flo had a longed-for cousin; the girls would get along just fine. Not caring to contemplate Charlie’s uncle-hood, Kate confronted her own title.
‘I’m your mummy.’ She said that dozens of times a day to Song, who stared back levelly with her deep set eyes. Kate imagined the baby thinking That’s old news, but, in truth, she had no idea what Song was thinking and that was turning out to be part of the fun.
Song burped. ‘Who’s a windy little lass?’ asked Kate, manipulating the small solid body until Song looked over Kate’s shoulder, resting against her, a cosy bolster.
Patting Song’s narrow back, Kate spoke into the baby’s hair as she wandered about the kitchen, the early sun making the mundane utensils and pans gleam like amulets. ‘We don’t need photos, Song,’ she said as the baby finished a thunderous burp. ‘I’ve got your granddad up here.’ Kate tapped her forehead. ‘You’ll know him through my stories and funny little sayings. It’s only a photograph that got lost. He left all the love behind, more than enough to keep us both going. You can’t drop love out of a suitcase, can you, Song, my pet?’
The child didn’t settle in her cot, with its new bedding and its array of soft animals lined up for her pleasure. She kicked and gurned until Kate picked her up again. ‘If I’m not careful I’ll spoil you rotten, young lady.’ Kate padded downstairs with the now content baby.
The new playpen with a multicoloured mat was laid out in the sitting room. Song lived in a world of new things, fresh out of the box. Trips back to Yulan House would help keep her grounded, and would do the same for Kate, who keenly felt the responsibility of caring for this malleable little person. It didn’t frighten her; on the contrary, it was exhilarating.
Setting down Puss Cat within mauling distance – Song loved to bite the poor thing’s ears – Kate reviewed her use of malleable. Song was fully formed, all there, a magnolia bud waiting to blossom.
‘What have you got there, naughty pants?’ Kate gently retrieved the cardboard square Song was sucking.
A little creased, a little damp, Kate’s mustachioed father stared out at Kate, who looked from the snap to Song, to Song from the snap.
‘Relax!’ snapped Becca. ‘Imagine I’m not here.’
Easier said than done. Each of Becca’s diets had added a few more pounds to her frame, and her blonde hair was so subsidised with hair extensions she was a trendy version of the Cowardly Lion.
‘I’ve never been filmed before,’ said Kate, straight backed on a hard chair, facing the single silver eye of a camera on a tripod. She didn’t know what to do with her hands; suddenly they were the size of table tennis bats.
Becca tutted. ‘You’re not a Masai tribeswoman. You’ve seen a camera before. It’s not going to eat your soul.’
Accustomed to subjects’ nerves, Leon was gentler than his wife. ‘Look over at Becca,’ he advised. ‘Not into the lens. Stand up and sit down again, casually, like you usually sit. And separate those hands.’
‘You look as if you’re strangling a chicken,’ added Becca.
‘And ignore my wife. Just cos she loves being filmed she thinks everybody else does too.’ Leon rolled his eyes at Becca’s eruption and his dreadlocks danced to the rhythm of his laughter.
‘Shut up, Leon,’ said Becca. It was without rancour; she said it four times an hour and never meant it. ‘Look, Kate, even though we’ve pinned a sheet up over the cabinets to make a neutral backdrop this is still just my kitchen diner.’ She always referred to it in that way, in case somebody might miss its splendour. Becca bent down to Song, who was playing with the laces on Becca’s boots, as focused as if splitting the atom. ‘Your mummy is nice and relaxed when she comes here for supper, isn’t she, Song?’
Your mummy. After six months back in Blighty, Kate still got goose bumps when she heard her title. Maybe the thrill would never wear off and the rest of her life would be a long succession of Christmas mornings.
‘Actually,’ said Leon, squinting at a light meter on a cord around his neck, ‘this is more relaxing than supper at our house because there’s no spare man sitting next to you, Kate.’
‘You mean . . .’ Kate feigned incredulity. ‘All those last minute unattached male guests are a set up?’
‘Mock me all you like,’ said Becca. ‘I won’t apologise for trying to fix up my pretty, clever, single mother, cousin. You’ll thank me one day.’ Becca was as unrepentant about her quest to marry Kate off as she was about smoking, or having cake for breakfast.
‘Is that what I am? A single mother?’ Kate was amused. She sounded like a statistic, something that would crop up in an earnest BBC documentary about broken Britain.
‘Yes,’ said Becca, happy to put her straight. ‘I was one and it was lonely and it was hard and I worried I’d die alone and the police could only identify me by my dental records.’
‘Surely,’ said Leon mildly as he bent to peer through his viewfinder, ‘they’d identify you by your silicone implants, love?’
‘I’m not alone,’ said Kate. ‘I’ve got Song, like you had Flo.’
‘It’s not the same.’ Becca was dismissive, as if this was Life 101. ‘I was a mess until this hunk of burning love came along.’ She slapped her husband lovingly (if extremely hard) on the bottom. ‘You need your own Leon, Kate.’
‘First, though,’ said Leon, accustomed to speeding matters along, ‘you need to contribute your soundbite to the video for Charlie’s launch party. So chop chop, ladies.’
‘Don’t chop chop me, Leon,’ said Becca, ramming glasses onto the bridge of her nose. A new nose, it was neither better nor worse than the perfectly nice original. ‘Right. Like I said, we’re getting a load of people, some well known, others nobodies like you, to talk about Charlie’s book. We’ll edit them all together and it’ll be projected on a big screen at the party.’ She winced. ‘Couldn’t you at least put a bit of lipstick on?’
‘Just start talking,’ said Leon to Kate.
‘BLOKE,’ said Kate, recognising Song’s bottom wiggle as a signifier that her nappy was full, ‘is a book I could read again and again.’ She had done exactly that, alone in bed, with Song in the next room. ‘It’s wise without being preachy. It’s a great story but that’s not all it is. I find something new each time I flick through the pages.’
Leon nodded, happy, encouraging, and Becca tried to look interested, even though Kate knew she was planning what to have for dinner.
‘Despite the title, it’s not just about blokes. It’s about people and how th
ey find each other and what they do to hang on to one another.’ Which was, when she stopped to think about it, ironic. Better not stop to think about it then. ‘I’ve never read anything quite like it before and I can’t wait for his next book.’ Kate shrugged. ‘Is that enough?’
Satisfied, Leon had left for a night shoot. Sharing a bottle of wine and an indifferent mezze Becca put together from the contents of the fridge, the women chatted about this and that. And Charlie.
Becca, who had a bloodhound’s nose for sniffing out intrigue, had easily broken down Kate’s defences about the sexual close call on the night of the un-party. When the wine came out, so did her insistence that Kate must ‘do something’ about Charlie.
‘I know I interfere, I know I’m a pain in the arse,’ said Becca, rifling the fridge for more foodstuffs to tip into bowls. ‘But I can see what you’re going through. You still love the silly git.’
‘So what?’ Kate pushed her glass out of Song’s reach. ‘It’s like the weather. It’s always there but I can’t affect it. There’s nothing I can do.’
‘There’s always something you can do.’ Becca sniffed at some olives in a plastic tub before slinging them into the bin. ‘Always.’
The last few months would have been very different without Becca’s support and enthusiasm and unhinged love for Song. All the vices which made her impossible were, turned on their heads, the virtues which made her invaluable. Her nosiness was concern. Her bossiness cleared a path when Kate was unsure what to do. Her rampaging ego mutated into ironclad self-confidence when dealing with the doctor who saw ‘no cause for concern’ at Song’s symptoms the time it transpired that the little girl had developed a hernia. Kate, cold with fear, had stood beside Becca in A&E while her cousin demanded a second opinion. Everything about Becca was turned up to eleven; these days Kate revelled in the amplified love more than she quailed at the volume.
‘Charlie and me,’ said Becca, ‘get along fine now.’
‘I noticed.’ Kate pushed a lock of hair out of Song’s eyes as she settled the sleepy child in a padded carrycot, on the floor between her mum and her aunt. ‘About time. Flo’s chuffed.’
These Days of Ours Page 26