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Thus speaks the man who has yet to have a child and learn what it is like to spend the rest of your life with your heart walking around outside your body.
‘She’sthree, Marc,’ Sian says. ‘Alexa can’t just leave her on her own in a strange hotel.’
Marc takes the handle of my carry-on bag with proprietary authority. ‘At least let me help you upstairs with this.’
‘Everyone’s waiting for us,’ Sian says.
‘You go back out. We’ll be down again in a minute.’
His bride-to-be smiles, but it doesn’t reach her pretty eyes.
There’s never been the slightest chance of a romantic liaison between Marc and me. We met when he started coaching the women’s football team at University College, London, where I studied law; for the first three years we knew each other, he only saw me sweaty and mud-spattered, in unflattering Lycra shorts and sporting a mouthguard.
I’ve liked some of his girlfriends. But he’s let several goodones get away by missing the proposal window: by the time he’s realised they’re perfect for him, they’ve grown tired of waiting and moved on.
Marc’s thirty-six now; a wealthy marketing director with every trapping of success bar a wife and family, and he’s been itching to get married for several years. Sian just happened to be the one holding the parcel when the music stopped.
My phone rings just as I slide the keycard into the hotel room door.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I wouldn’t take it, but it’s James—’
‘Go, go,’ Marc says. ‘I’ll get Lottie sorted out. Sian won’t mind if I stay a bit longer.’
I seriously doubt that, but I need to talk to James and find out what’s happening with my client, so I take Marc up on his offer to look after Lottie, and go back along the corridor to take the call somewhere quiet.
By the time I return to our room fifteen minutes later, Lottie is dressed in her pyjamas and tucked into one of the two queen-sized beds. Marc is perched next to her, reading her a story.
‘Ready to go down?’ he asks me, putting the book aside.
I hesitate. I’m wired from my conversation with James and wide awake; a glass of bourbon would put that right. But even though I’m fully aware I’m not a natural mother, I do my best to be a good one.
‘I can’t leave her,’ I say.
Lottie folds her fat arms crossly across her chest. ‘You didn’t read my story properly,’ she tells Marc. ‘Youmisseda page.’
‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘I’ve got this, Marc. You go. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
I settle down on the bed, leaning against the padded headboard and pulling Lottie into the crook of my arm. She hands me the book,Owl Babies, turning the well-thumbed cardboardpages for me as I read aloud the story of three baby owls, perched on a branch in the wood, waiting for their owl mummy to return.
And she does, swooping silently through the trees:You knew I’d come back.
Then I add the line that’s not in the book, the line Lottie’s been waiting for, the line that Luca, making up for my shortcomings, always used to add, with more faith than my history warranted: ‘Mummies always come back.’
