‘Felix, look.’
When he glanced up, Abbie was holding what looked like a bundle of washing in her arms. As she lowered it towards him, he saw a doll’s face in the middle of the bundle, the face of a doll, except the skin was too fleshy, and the eyes too alive, and the lips too wet, and the murmur it made as she ran her finger across its eyebrows and cheeks was altogether too real.
Bewildered, Felix waited for the explanation.
‘I don’t get it,’ he said eventually.
‘This is Gabriel.’
‘Gabriel?’
‘Gabriel.’
‘And who is he?’
‘He’s ours.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘This is our baby.’
‘We haven’t got a baby, Abbie.’
‘A gift.’
‘A what?’
‘A gift.’
‘A gift from who?’
‘From Eliza and her mum. And from my dad.’
‘Abbie, what are you talking about?’
She was thoughtful. Then she spoke to Felix but never took her eyes from the child. ‘He’s my baby. To keep. Now, I’m going upstairs to give him a bath and make up a cot, and when I come down I want this house warm and tidy, and I want the Christmas tree in the corner instead of your golf dubs, and I want all the lights working and the angel on top.’ She said all that very calmly. Then she said, ‘And not another word.’
Lots of objects had been deposited in the porch. A baby chair. Various mats and covers. A car seat. A buggy. A carrier bag full of bottles and teats. And a smell he didn’t recognize. A smell that didn’t belong to him. Pulling the plastic tree out of the garden shed, Felix looked up at the bathroom, and listened to the crying and splashing coming from the open window.
Gabriel?
He plugged the Christmas lights into the socket in the kitchen. They didn’t come on. He trailed them on to the patio, sat down on the step and, one at a time, began meddling with the bulbs, twisting and tweaking them as hard as he dared without crushing the glass in his fingers. Thrown from the bedroom window above him, Abbie’s shadow was suddenly thick and black on the concrete slabs and the square of lawn, until the curtains were pulled. Then it started to snow. It was cold and dark and snowing, and Felix was outside, trying to get a string of dead stars to come alive in his hands.
The White Stuff Page 24