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‘You too.’ She doesn’t look at him. Instead, she clips the baby into the seat belt, touching her nose against his, grinning and cooing at him before she rounds the front of the car – her trusty red Golf, repository of more memories, more games of dare: himself at the steering wheel, in broad daylight, open traffic; her lowering her head to his lap…
He feels himself blush, wonders if she will notice, for one crazy moment, whether she will read his mind.
But she starts the engine, causing him to step back, and reverses out while he stands there, inert, caught between leaving and staying. Briefly she lifts a hand before pulling away – if she looks at him at all, it is only a cursory glance in the rear-view mirror. He watches, still rooted to the tarmac. The car disappears around the shop that sells buckets, spades and the paraphernalia of holidays by the sea.
His hand is still raised in a wave. He lowers it.
CHAPTER 2
Sam arrives home, an attack of the nausea he hasn’t had for months now passing through him. He opens the front door to the porch, then the inner door.
‘Sam?’ His gran’s voice reaches him. It seems to be coming from the sitting room. ‘Samuel, love, is that you?’
‘No, it’s Sir Paul McCartney.’
A pause. He knows she is smiling, shaking her head at this game they play, and this settles him a little.
‘Tea?’ she calls, and he hears her footsteps moving through the back of the house.
‘Please.’ He drops his bag and takes off his boots, places them neatly in the porch before peeling off his damp hiking socks. Barefoot, he hobbles on his heels over the cold chequerboard tiles of the hallway to the utility room, which smells of damp plaster, even in the summer. Here, he throws his socks directly into the washing machine with the clothes he loaded this morning. A mixed colours cycle set to run, he slides his feet into his old Birkenstocks and goes to find Joyce in the kitchen, already stirring sugar into his tea. A homely bell of welcome, the teaspoon clanks against the china; steam curls against the black kettle on the red range cooker. He kisses her on the cheek and takes the mug from the countertop.
‘Cheers,’ he says.
‘There’s chocolate digestives in the barrel.’
He takes three and eats the first in two bites, sits down and groans at the stiffness in his thighs.
‘How’ve you gone on?’
‘Good, yeah. Very boggy still in the undercliff, but I took some nice shots. Might sketch them later, get my watercolours out. I caught the bus to Seaton and walked back. Popped down to Monmouth before coming back up.’
‘Good for you. I’m jealous. Good workout that. I’ve been three times round the garden and done my yoga with Adriene. Well, not the headstand, but I managed some of it.’
He lifts his tea, but it is too hot to drink, so he puts it back down on the battered kitchen table.
‘I saw Naomi,’ he says,
Behind her reading specs, his gran’s pale eyes widen. She lowers herself onto a high-backed chair. Tuts. ‘Suppose it had to happen sooner or later.’
‘That’s what I thought. Still a shock though.’ He blows on his tea, observes the mini wake.
‘How did she look?’
‘Well. She looked well.’
When he looks up, Joyce is staring at him, blinking as if she’s just put in eye drops, not missing a trick. Those lenses really do magnify everything. ‘Actually, she had a baby with her,’ he adds.
‘Did she?’ Emphasis on thedid. ‘Did she indeed?’
He eats another half-biscuit. The milk chocolate melts on his tongue. He wonders what he wants to say. Or doesn’t. He knows exactly what he wants to say. What he’s wondering is whether or not to say it, whether it is simply too explosive to voice aloud.
‘Boy or girl?’ Joyce asks.
‘Boy.’
She lifts her own mug to her lips and slurps the top layer of tea with the asbestos-tongued prowess of octogenarians everywhere. ‘How old?’
‘Decent size. Not a newborn. A few months, I’d say, but not walking yet, I don’t think. It… he was in one of those car seat things. Maybe six, seven months? Big. Biggish.’ He sips his tea, sweet and hot. From the bird clock on the wall, the spotted woodpecker rat-a-tat-tats. Four o’clock then. ‘It was her friend’s, she said.’
