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His room is untidy. He scans it, not sure what he’s looking for, before his eyes settle on the stack of records in the corner. Still wrapped in his towel, he drops to his knees and lifts the albums one after another. Finds the Frank Ocean: orange vinyl, limited edition. It is hers; he took it by mistake. Here is the pretext. He will make no mention of the baby. He deletes the message and tries again.
Hi. Good to see you today. Forgot to say, I still have your Frank Ocean album. I could bring it over to Bridport this Saturday – we could have that coffee? Sam
The two grey ticks turn blue: she has read the message. But a moment later, she is offline. She has not replied.
Unsure what this means, his belly heats with anticipation, but he forces himself to get dressed, go downstairs and focus on cooking dinner.
Joyce crosses him on the stairs. She’s going to jump in the bath, she tells him. She’s aching all over from holding a funny position at the top of the stepladder.
In the kitchen, on the draining board, her tools are drying: the round-ended trowel, the float, the scraper. On the countertop, a large bag of powdered plasterboard adhesive and her water spray gun. Yesterday, he found her glossing the kitchen window, one hand in her wrist brace. Last summer, he had to stop her from climbing the extendable ladder to refresh the paint on the upstairs windows, telling her he would do it; in that moment, he reminds himself he must do before she tries again now the weather is finer.
So discombobulated was he by Naomi and the child, he has forgotten to pick up groceries on the way home. A quick examination of the various tins and jars suggests a simple store-cupboard puttanesca, one of Joyce’s favourites. He skins a tooth of garlic, crushes it against the flat of his knife. Don’t think about Naomi. Put her out of your mind. The garlic simmers in olive oil, is followed by the grey slither of anchovies. Naomi. Gently pushing her nose to the baby’s. He tips the bright, heavy falling sludge of tomatoes from the can. Naomi. Tenderly clipping the baby into the back seat of the car. He chops the black olives in half, throws them into the sauce. Naomi. Softly talking to the baby, her voice lilting. It was all so instinctive, so natural. These were not the exaggerated gestures of a woman unused to children, but the much smaller intimacies of someone close to the child, very close. It reminded him of the way Miranda is with little Betsy. He rinses the capers, empties them from the sieve into the red, bubbling shallows.
It is the small things that give us away, he thinks. It is not what we say but what we do.
Above him, Joyce’s bath gurgles away. He lights the gas under the pasta water and is lowering the spaghetti into the pan when she appears, pink-faced, her white hair sticking up in short wet spikes. She is wearing her black silk pyjamas, her tan leather clogs and the calf-length grey cashmere cardigan she often dons in the evening after a day engaged in her ongoing battle with the house. She doesn’t like to wear slippers or a dressing gown; they make her feel depressed, she says. As for the house, it will win one day. It is a wonder it hasn’t already. Even the mighty Joyce is no match for this great Georgian pile.
‘Red?’ She passes behind him to the wine rack. She has started to waddle a little; the pain in her hip must be getting worse.
‘Sure.’
Minutes later, he has brought the serving bowl to the table. His gran sits and takes a sip of the cheap Pinot Noir they buy in bulk from the big Morrisons outside Bridport.
‘Thank you for this beautiful meal,’ she says with feeling.
‘Bon appétit.’ He sits opposite her and begins to serve.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Joyce begins, twizzling an oily ball of orange strands onto her fork.
‘Me too.’
Over the round gold rims of her half-steamed-up glasses, her pale blue eyes meet his. ‘And?’
‘I think the baby might be mine.’
Her eyebrows rise, though not in surprise.
‘He has my colouring,’ he goes on. ‘And just… the way she was with him, you know? And I’ve never heard of a Cheryl, so that would have to be a new friend, which is weird. I mean, who made new friends in lockdown? And if he’s six or seven months old, that would mean she was around three months pregnant when I left. I know I said today she seemed… I don’t know, nicer. Softer. But at the same time… it’s just the sort of thing she would do. Keep him from me, I mean.’
His gran nods, her mouth a grim line. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’ve texted her. I’ve got an old record of hers I said I could give back.’
Another pause. Joyce’s fork hovers. ‘Have you thought about what you want?’
He takes a mouthful, the sauce salty and juicy on his tongue.
‘Not really,’ he says, swallowing. ‘I mean, I’d like to know. I have a right to know.’
Joyce says nothing. They eat, drink, talk in gentle flurries about Sam’s walk, the beach hut for sale on Monmouth.
‘Three hundred grand.’ She snorts. ‘Three hundred grand and no lav!’
While she rolls her after-dinner cigarette – medicinal, for her various muscular pains – they discuss what they might watch later on Netflix. She has always known how to leave him the space to get to where he needs. Their conversation is twenty-two years long: plenty of room for going round the houses until you arrive back where you began.
‘So,’ she says, with an air of finality, ‘this kiddie.’ She lights the joint and leans back in her chair, takes a drag and blows out a plume of sweet smoke.
‘If he’s mine,’ he says into the space, ‘and I’m not saying he is, butifhe is, I think… I think I have a right to see him. As in, be part of his life. I want… I want to be, y’know, his dad. I mean, if I am, that’s what I am, isn’t it? His dad? It’s not like I knew. It’s not like I lefthim, and maybe if I’d known, I wouldn’t have left. It’s just, I didn’t have a… I mean, I only had Mum till I was ten, so… Not that you weren’t… I mean, you were… you are… we’re—’
