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“It was a good show. Though I hated the fact we weren’t talking to each other afterwards.”
“Me, too.”
Alex lifts my hands up to his mouth, brushing his lips along my palm. “Are we friends again?”
“Yeah, we’re friends again.”
* * *
Max has developed a summer cold. It clogs up his nostrils with sticky, green mucus, and turns his breath into a sort of hacking wheeze that's painful to hear. I can tell he's frightened from his constant need to be carried, and I try to cuddle him for reassurance, but it never seems enough.
As always, I'm buried beneath a barrage of well-meaning suggestions. Alex's mum tells me to squirt breast milk up his nostrils as that will loosen the snot. Holly, his nursery nurse, suggests a little sucking device with a rubber end that will pull the mucus out with a vacuum. The doctor looks at me as if I'm wasting his time, and tells me that on average babies get around four colds a year.
Four? The thought panics me. It's only been a week since he caught it—another thing I'm blaming the music festival for—but it's been the most drawn out seven days of my life. His sleep has been fitful and noisy, and every time I attempt to drift off, another hacking cough makes me jump up in alarm.
So when we arrive at Alex's mum's house for Sunday lunch, we are the walking dead. A couple of mornings ago I found Alex curled up on our uncomfortable leather sofa with Max laying in his baby seat beside him. Alex had a throw draped over his legs as he twisted and turned to try and find a comfortable position. Still, as soon as we walk through the door he's pointed in the direction of the lawnmower, and he lopes off, jingling his keys in his pocket, mobile phone in his other hand.
“How's your dad?” Tina walks back into the kitchen and I follow her, Max clutching desperately to my shirt as if he's frightened I'll try to put him down. His earlier cries have mellowed into a low-level grizzle. I shift him onto my hip in an effort to hold him more easily.
“He's fine. I spoke to him a few weeks ago. Said he was enjoying the weather and getting out in the garden.”
“You should invite him here for lunch some time,” Tina suggests. “It doesn't seem right him rattling around that big house on his own. Does he come up to London much?”
“Not really. The last time he came was for our wedding. We took Max down for a visit a few months ago, but he didn’t seem that interested.”
“What a shame.” With her close-knit family, and her fierce love of her children, Tina finds it hard to understand the detachment I have from my father. It's not that I hate him, or even dislike him, we simply don't have much in common.
Even before my mum died we rarely spoke. In that sad, clichéd way, she was the glue that held our family together. When she died seven years ago, there didn't seem anything left. Just the odd sense of obligation, and even that dissipated as time went on. Visits became phone calls, which eventually petered out into Christmas and birthday cards. Nowadays if he calls, I immediately assume something is wrong.
Alex pops his head around the door. “You're out of oil. I'm gonna walk over to the petrol station.”
“Ooh, can you pick up a couple of pints of milk while you're there? I want to make custard,” Tina replies.
It's stupid how much the thought of custard cheers me up. After a week of no sleep, and constant crying from Max, all I want is the sweet, creamy goodness.
“You're making custard?” Alex looks as excited as I am. “What are we having it with?”
“Apple pie,” Tina replies, smugly. As much as we get on, she makes no secret of the fact she likes to spoil Alex rotten with her cooking. Luckily for her, this is the one thing I don't mind her being better at than me. Especially if it means I get a proper dinner every Sunday. “I can give you the recipe if you like?”
Alex bursts out laughing. “Lara couldn't make it. She cremates water.”
I'm about to say something snarky back, when Tina places a cool hand on my shoulder and turns to look at her son. “Actually, I was talking to you.”
“Ooh, burn.” I lick my finger and put it in the air, making a sizzling noise. “Alex doesn't even know how to turn on the oven.”
He laughs and flips me the bird, grabbing his jacket from the kitchen chair. “I'll leave you ladies to your bloody gossip, while I go out and do the man jobs.” He kisses my cheek then ruffles Max's scant hair and heads out the back door.
I think about the way Alex and I must seem so normal to his mum. We still joke, we still wind each other up, and yes, I still think he's the most beautiful man I've ever seen.
But… and there's always a but.
There's an awkwardness there which didn't exist before. It's like having a perfect china plate, then running my finger over it and feeling an imperfection. It doesn't matter how beautiful that plate looks, or how everybody stares at it and thinks it's flawless, the problem is I know the crack is there.
So I cover it with piles of strawberries and chocolate and hope nobody notices.
Alex is quiet when he gets back from the shop. Andrea arrives a little after two, and goes upstairs to drag a protesting Amy out of bed, who then proceeds to regale us with a long explanation of why she didn't get to bed until five in the morning, and how she ended up with only one shoe.
“So why did you give the guy only one shoe?” Andrea scratches her head. I'm glad she's as lost as I am. Things that make sense in Amy's world seem absolutely crazy in mine.
