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‘Shake it like a Polaroid picture?’
She laughs easily at his reference to a song they both loved. ‘Or an espresso martini,’ she says. ‘Oh my God, do you remember Jo puking that time?’
‘Hard to forget.’
They laugh together, their eyes meeting for a split second before they return to the serious business of Tommy’s care. Naomi sits next to Sam on the couch while he gives Tommy a bottle. He tries not to think of her astride him on this very sofa, naked but for his shirt, which she had thrown across her beautiful freckled shoulders, as if that would have been enough to protect her from embarrassment had Joyce returned from bridge club at the wrong moment.
Tommy sucks at the plastic teat, his eyes never leaving Sam’s. Who are you? Sam thinks, imagines his son thinking the same thing.
Naomi leans in close enough that he can smell her perfume. ‘You’re a natural.’
After the feed, she shows him how to wind the baby, both of them screeching in delight when Tommy emits an almighty belch.
‘Crikey,’ Sam says, giggling. ‘That’s like Simon after six pints of Otter.’
‘You should hear him at the other end. Even my dad couldn’t fart as loudly as baby Tommy.’
Sam laughs, though Naomi is suddenly serious.
‘Is something wrong?’ he asks. ‘How is your dad, by the way?’
She closes her eyes and shakes her head. When she opens them, they are filmed with tears.
‘We lost him,’ she whispers. ‘To COVID.’
‘What?Oh my God, Nomes, that’s terrible.’ He pulls her to him, an impulse as natural as breathing. No wonder she has changed so much. Her edges have been not so much smoothed as sand-blasted. Life has humbled her. And while it’s perhaps true that she needed a little humility, he would never have wished it to be gained like this.
Together they stay like that in the silence: himself, his baby son on one shoulder, his ex-partner enfolded in his free arm. For that moment, they are an imperfect, fractured almost-family.
The front door slams. Sam springs away from Naomi, who looks at the floor and blows at her fringe. Joyce’s footsteps echo on the hall tiles. Unsure of what to say, how to be, he is saved by a squirting noise followed by a bad smell. On his shoulder, Tommy coos, his breath hot on Sam’s neck, as if he weren’t in any way responsible.
‘Poo!’ Sam says. ‘Whoa, that stinks.’
Naomi throws back her head and bursts into loud laughter. ‘Lesson number three! How to change a nappy.’
‘Hello, chaps.’ Joyce is coming through the wide square doorway to the kitchen. She is wearing her red jeans, trainers, her red hexagonal glasses. Her hair is spiked with wax and her cheeks are pink with exertion. ‘I braved the hill.’
‘Wow,’ Sam says. ‘You wentoutout?’
‘All the way down to Langmoor Gardens, if you don’t mind. I’m going to build up until I can get down to the sea and back. As far as the fish shop, at least. Then I can get my scallops.’
‘Naomi’s about to train me in the art of waste management,’ Sam says.
Joyce wrinkles her nose. ‘I think I’ll play the great-grandmother card. I can make coffee though.’
While Joyce heads for the range, Naomi lays the changing mat on the old oak table. ‘Is it OK to change him in here?’ she asks.
‘Yes, yes, of course.’
She talks him through it. When his fingers are clumsy, she only laughs. When he gets it right, finally, she tells him he’s done really well. He has a flashing image of her, mouth contorted with rage:I can’t believe you fucked it up – again.
He can’t remember whatitwas. He never can. There were so manyits.
‘Remind me how you take your coffee, Naomi,’ Joyce calls.
‘Actually, I’m going to give you guys some space,’ Naomi says, picking up her coat. She meets Sam’s eyes, hers tender. ‘You can put him down for his morning nap now. I’ll fetch his travel cot from the car, and his sleep suit.’ She places a warm hand on Sam’s arm before leaving him and Joyce in the kitchen.
Joyce blinks at him, her eyes large behind the lenses of her specs, her smile vanished now that Naomi is out of the room. ‘Are you comfortable with that? Was that the arrangement?’
