One Day, Someday

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  ‘No, no. She’s the presenter, isn’t she? No. The other one.’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t watch it that often. It’s Del who likes it. Anyway, water all right?’

  He puts the letter on the coffee table and stretches out his legs. ‘Come and sit by me,’ he says.

  Which I do, of course, because I am powerless to resist him, but within moments, he’s bounded off again. Into the hall this time, to retrieve his paper. He wrestles the pad and half a dozen pencils from the bag, which he folds up and puts on the floor. Then he moves across the room and sits in the armchair instead. ‘I thought I might make some sketches of you,’ he says, folding the cover back, and skimming through a number of leaves.

  ‘Oh, right,’ I say, putting my glass on the coffee table. I feel vaguely embarrassed. ‘If you like.’

  ‘Only I’ve been itching to draw you. You’ve got a beautiful face and a wonderful body. Very sinuous.’ Hmmm. ‘Very fluid.’ He tests the tip of a pencil. ‘Lean back, will you? Loop your arm over the back of the sofa. That’s it. And pull your right knee up a bit. That’s it. Now turn your body slightly and lean forward a little so your breasts - that’s the way. Perfect. Stay exactly like that. Perfect.’

  I don’t think I’ve had anyone sketch me since we were paired up for an art class when I was about fourteen with instructions to draw each other’s faces. On that occasion, I ended up with a girl whom I’d narrowly beaten to the affections of some boy or other, and she’d felt it fair recompense to make the most of the opportunity to highlight every zit on my face. I’d been so distressed that I’d gone home that night and attacked them all with the point of my compass. It was a scarring experience. I looked like a celeriac for weeks.

  But this one is a delight. In no more than ten minutes he is back beside me on the sofa and I’m looking at a simple but oh-so-good likeness of myself. The kink in my nose. The way that my hair, which is heavy and wavy, hangs in a scythe shape down one side of my face. My eyes are smiling back at me. I almost look pretty.

  ‘Oh, that’s lovely, Stefan! Really lovely. Can I keep it?’

  He clutches it to his chest. ‘Absolutely not!’ he exclaims. ‘I never give away my sketches.’ He lifts his pencil and waggles it at me. ‘And neither should you.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t,’ I say. ‘I keep them all tucked up, out of sight, in the loft.’

  ‘Nothing here, then?’ He glances around him.

  ‘In my own house? God, no!’

  He grins, then leans across and kisses me, lovingly. ‘Shall I do another?’ he says.

  He does five in the end, all posed slightly differently, and I find myself pleased beyond measure that we didn’t go out after all. Not to mention pleased that he didn’t warm to my original suggestion that I cook him dinner. This is much more fun. I feel like a fashion model. He’s still insistent that he’s not going to let me get my hands on any of them, but I don’t mind. ‘Though I’m perfectly happy,’ he says, finally returning to his place on the sofa, ‘to let you get your hands on me instead.’

  Which kind of comment would normally have me twitching and palpitating and getting in a dither, but from him it seems absolutely the right thing to say. He is so very lovely, and so very clever. And so very at home in his beautiful skin.

  And mine, too, it would appear. He takes a mouthful of his water and snuggles up beside me. ‘Mmm,’ he says languidly. ‘There’s a gap just here. Between your T-shirt and the top of your jeans. Your back’s very brown.’ He slides his hand along it. His fingers are cold, from the glass, and slightly rough against my skin.

  ‘It’s genetic. My mother’s side.’

  His other hand glides over the top of my head and makes its way down my hair to join its partner, pulling me in towards him. ‘Dark skin. Dark eyes. Yet so fair.’ He means mouse. ‘A fair maiden, indeed.’ He kisses me again. This time arching my back a little and easing me downwards. Oh, lummy, I can’t breathe for gasping. He takes one hand away. I feel plumped, like my cushions. Then he re-sites it on my breast.

  ‘I don’t know about maiden,’ I quip, conscious of his quickening breathing and that he already seems to have undone my bra. From the outside. ‘I think maiden might be stretching the point just a little …’

  I tail off here, because Stefan lifts his finger to his lips, then promptly proceeds to undress.

  He has only taken off his shirt and, yes, there is a T-shirt underneath it, but it’s the deft way he flicks undone the rivet on his jeans that has prudence prevail over lust. I sit up.

  ‘Stefan, I don’t think - I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to take our clothes off …’ I roll my eyes and nod towards the stairs.

  ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Oh, yes. Right.’ He resumes kissing me, we resume our position, and his hands resume their ever more adventurous forays. But within seconds I become aware of some feverish scrabbling in the lower torso region, and this time my own jeans seem to be involved. I disconnect my lips from his.

  ‘Stefan,’ I whisper. ‘We can’t do this. Not here.’

  His lips are on mine again. ‘Where, then?’ he mouths.

  Oh dear. ‘We can’t. Not now.’

  ‘Not now? He pulls his head back. ‘You’re kidding.’

  I blink at him. ‘I’m not.’

  He looks at me carefully. ‘No, Lu. You’re not, are you?’

  So we have a cup of coffee instead. The hair on Stefan’s brow is damp and clinging to his forehead, a little as it had when he arrived here tonight. It’s not quite eleven but he has a long way to cycle, and I’m almost glad when he says he’d better push off home. Too much temptation. Too much heat for one night.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘but you know how it is.’

  ‘So am I,’ he agrees, pulling me towards him on the doorstep and kissing me again. ‘You may be fair, my lovely lady, but you are very wicked as well. I shall prevail, though. You know that, Lu, don’t you? Do you have plans for Saturday?’ I shake my head.

  ‘Good,’ he says, putting on his jacket. ‘You do now.’

  I watch him walk round to his bike, feeling tingly and excited in a way that I haven’t in a long time. He lashes his pad carefully to the little rack on the back, then gets astride it and turns it round. As he switches his light on, he turns back towards me.

  ‘Just remembered,’ he calls out. ‘Tia Slater.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Roomaround. I’ve just remembered what her name is. Tia Slater. The one with the toolbelt. So long.’

  5

  Thursday 26 April

  ‘SMBC.’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘SMBC. Single Mother By Choice. I’ve just been reading this article in The Times, and I saved it for you. You’re one of a new breed - isn’t that nice to know? - of women who have babies in the full and certain knowledge that they are going to be bringing the child up on their own. It’s rather good. I thought you’d like it. It’s an Americanism,’ she adds, by way of some sort of explanation.

  It’s not even eight yet, but as I talk to Del I can already see sunlight sparkling on chrome and am reminded that there is a car parked outside that must be worth almost as much as I paid for my house. Of course, property prices being what they are in north Cardiff these days, I could now sell my house and buy two of them, but it still looks ridiculous in my little drive, which is essentially two strips of badly laid concrete with a dandelion/ gravel/ weed strip in between. Like a big stroppy bullfrog sitting on a cow pat. What a curious, curious turn of events.

  ‘Del,’ I correct her, ‘I am not an SMBC. I am an SMBA. No, tell a lie. I am an SMBC but only because the A had already happened and the other choice was to SWAB.’

  ‘SWAB?’

  ‘As you well know. Or NHL.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not Have Leo. Which might have been an option, I suppose.’ I shudder even to think of it. ‘But as I didn’t discover that SWAB was what I’d actually be doing until I was four months pregnant, then NHL wasn’t really t
enable, was it?’

  ‘Yes, but SWAB, Lu?’

  ‘Yes, SWAB. And you can add another A. Staying With An Absolute Bastard.’

  She laughs. ‘You sound a bit twitchy this morning. So. Roomaround. It’s obviously going to be hard getting out of this one. ‘Come on, then. What did lover-boy say?’

  I tell Del I’m still at the sounding-him-out stage, and that when I see him again on Saturday evening, I’ll do my very best. Lover-boy, indeed. Oh, what a long way away Saturday suddenly seems.

  But at least I don’t have to pick up Joe this morning. Which is a plus, because I get to drive all the way to work unencumbered by his scathing instructions, and am free to park by means of a twenty-seven-point turn if I so wish. He has gone by cab. Which is because he went to a seven a.m. breakfast meeting, which is the kind of thing people like him apparently do. When I finally get to the office (via Del’s, via another row about the bloody Pokemon cards, via school, via the hateful parking space, via the hike up Queen Street, etc.), it is to find that there is an enormous pink teddy on my desk.

  ‘Oh, there’s lovely,’ says Iona, coming in with the post. ‘It’s a boy, of course, but I dare say she won’t mind.’

  I take this to mean that Lily has had her baby. Which would explain why Emma couldn’t babysit last night. Lily’s husband, I seem to remember, was banned from the labour ward on account of being as much use in a maternity situation as a round of Spam sandwiches, so Julia was on call for the grisly bits.

  ‘Oh, I thought it was yours,’ I say, stroking it absently. I’m busy trying to locate the phone number of Swindon police station, in the interests of fending off imminent parenticide.

  ‘It’s mine,’ says Joe, coming in. He looks alarmingly pale today, and has managed to get his sling integrated with his tie. Iona, without preamble, takes charge of the knotting, in a manner that leads me to surmise that she might also launder his pants, if required. ‘Well, not mine, of course. Can you sort it for me? Get it couriered to the hospital? There’s a card there as well somewhere.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ says Iona. ‘I’m off down there myself at lunchtime. I’ll pop it along for you, lovely. Bless.’

  After Iona’s gone I find there is also a note on my desk. Do the flowers bit, will you? Oh, and while you’re at it, I need some more sent. Jeannine Carver. Address in my diary. Ta.

  Joe’s handwriting, like his presence, is tall and a bit too full of itself. Doesn’t bother with the tedium of lines and so on. His signature takes up almost half the space on a cheque, even given the in-your-face big fat business ones he favours. There is an address in Cyncoed in the diary, which I recognize, having sent flowers there for him a couple of weeks back.

  Quite apart from its near illegibility, the minutiae of Joe’s diary has suddenly taken on a disconcerting new significance for me. It tells me that while today I have nothing more taxing than his parts store in Ely to negotiate, Friday involves all sorts of uncharted motoring hazards: an appointment for Joe at the hospital (much traffic, little parking, and, God, the new multi-storey), a meeting with the Luxotel team at the Royal (Lego-sized car park, sneering valet, low-slung arrangements of pansies in stone troughs) plus a trip to make a site inspection in Newport (enough said). I feel like I’ve just started driving.

  I send a blue-themed silk basket to Lily and Malcolm, and a Cellophaned, raffia-tied hostess bouquet of roses, stalks, twigs, etc., to Jeannine. I don’t know who she is, exactly, but as her house is called Cedar Folly and is in such a posh bit of town, it strikes me she’s probably the sort of woman who’d not be best pleased with a bunch of pinks. ‘Who’s Jeannine?’ I ask Iona, when she comes in with the franking.

  She winks at me as she gathers up the teddy. ‘We’ve not been advised, lovely. Not as yet. Hum-de-hum.’

  ‘His girlfriend?’

  She laughs at me. ‘One of, no doubt.’

  But there is little chance of any romantic assignations for Joe today, because tonight I have to deposit him at his house early. Thursday is his access night and though normally he’d drive out to pick up his daughter from the posh red-brick school she attends just outside Newport, tonight his ex-wife, in what he explains on the way is a worrying display of uncharacteristic niceness, is going to drop her round to him after school instead. We are just cruising along Cyncoed Road, when the worry takes violent, high-volumed voice.

  ‘Shit! Shhhiiiiiitttt! Stop the car! Turn it round!’

  I pull in, as one generally does when one’s passenger is catatonic and spitting. ‘What on earth is the matter?’

  He slams a hand against his forehead. ‘Oh, shit. Oh, God! No! Not there! Go down Bryn Gwyn Road instead. Next right! Go on! Quick!’

  I pull out into the road again and take the next turning, while Joe swivels anxiously to see out of the back.

  ‘Shall I stop now?’

  ‘OK. Here. No, go on round the bend there. By that lamp-post. There. Behind that green MG. That’s safer. OK. Now, let’s think. Think! Joseph, think!’

  I bring the car to a stop by the kerb and turn, mystified, towards him. He swipes his good hand across his face again and seems to get himself into some sort of order.

  ‘OK. OK,’ he says. Then, ‘Mobile. OK.’

  ‘OK?’

  A car passes. ‘Oh, God! No. It’s all right. We’re OK.’ He starts punching out numbers then puts the phone to his ear.

  ‘Yes, it’s me,’ he says then, in an altogether different voice. ‘No. Bit of a logistics crisis. I’m on the way now. Should be … um, let’s see. Half an hour? No. Say three-quarters … Yes, I know. But these things happen, OK? … No. I have not. Lunch! Huh! Fat chance. I barely made the meeting. I sat in X-ray all bloody morning!’ There is a silence. ‘Well, tell the bloody hospital, then!’ And another. ‘All right! … No. No. Where are you? … OK … No. Still my place … No. Five fifteen’s fine … No. I haven’t … No. No!’

  He puts the phone back in his lap and exhales slowly.

  ‘Um,’ I begin, ‘is there something I’ve missed here?’

  He shakes his head. ‘No. Look. Right. It’s all right. They haven’t left yet. So, let me see,’ he looks at his watch, ‘right. Change of plan. We have to go back into town. You can drop me and drive around or something while I’m in there. Yes. That’s the best plan. Let’s do that.’

  ‘Do what, Joe?’

  He looks at me as if I’m quite, quite mad. ‘What do you think? Go to Toys’R’Us, of course.’

  Which is, of course, what we then do.

  Along with what appears to be the entire population of ten-year-old boys in Cardiff. There is, it seems, some sort of Pokemon trading session in progress and the whole area is teeming with hot-blooded parents vying for the coach-parking space round the side. Which means that by the time we return to Joe’s house, it is ten past six. And there is a lavender hatchback parked outside. Joe says, ‘Oh, shit,’ again, then instructs me to pull up behind it. The passenger door is already opening and by the time I have turned off the ignition a little girl is running towards us and waving. Joe, grunting slightly, swings his legs round and gets out, his expression now softened by a smile. I get out as well.

  ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!’

  ‘Hello, chicken,’ he calls. A woman is emerging from the car also. She has Disneyland hair the colour of red pesto, long slender legs and, as near as can be achieved when your features are classic and chiselled and contoured and perfect, a face like a smacked arse.

  While Joe attempts a touching air of paternal jollity and bends down to submit to a close inspection of his stitches, the woman glides down the pavement and glares at him.

  ‘You said five fifteen,’ she says, glancing briefly in my direction. I’m not quite sure what my part in this cheery family tableau is supposed to be, so I walk round to the back of the car and begin pulling packages from the boot.

  The little girl, who is really quite striking, with her mother’s hair but the same liquid green eyes as her father, pokes him
on the shoulder. ‘Yes,’ she trills. ‘You’re late. Naughty Daddy.’

  ‘Very late,’ agrees her mother, then hisses, ‘I was just about to ring you. But, then, I presume you think I have nothing better to do than hang around waiting till you deign to show up.’ And adds, ‘Which would figure, of course.’

  Therein hangs a tale or two, I suspect.

  Joe straightens then nods in my direction and tuts. Tuts? ‘Just can’t get the staff!’ he quips. He is attempting, I assume, to lighten a situation the dynamics of which are writ plain as the microfine ivory residue on his ex-wife’s stony face. She looks as unimpressed as I feel. We exchange a look of our own. Joe fails to see it.

  ‘Angharad, this is my assistant,’ he continues, ‘while Lily’s away having her baby. Her name’s Lu. Say hello.’

  The little girl looks at me warily.

  I look pointedly at Joe, before gushing dutifully at her. ‘Hi,’ I say. ‘I’m terribly sorry we’re late, Angharad. I had to wrap all your presents up because your daddy can’t manage at the moment.’ I gesture towards his plaster.

  ‘Yes, and then she went and left them in the office!’ adds Joe brightly. Oh, I see. I return his conspiratorial wink with a glare.

  Angharad nods. ‘Oh. Right,’ she says.

  ‘Oh, ri-ight,’ echoes her mother, swinging her key fob.

  Angharad gives the parcel in her hand a good shaking then begins jumping up and down a mite more enthusiastically than the situation strictly calls for, as if this is the role she knows she must play on her birthday, lest her parents descend into squabbles and sulks. ‘Presents, presents, presents!’ she whoops, as the pile grows on the pavement.

  ‘Hmmm,’ says the woman, glancing at me then batting the key fob in the direction of Joe’s arm. She lowers her voice. ‘And how is she going to get home? I suppose you think I’m going to come out and pick her up again, do you?’

  Joe moves himself a little way down the pavement towards her, and the smile leaves his face altogether. ‘Unless you expect me to walk her home, I do.’

  ‘Well, I can’t. So you’ll have to come in a cab with her, won’t you? Nine thirty. No later.’