Elliott let out another unearthly shriek. Ed burst through the door like some boxer-shorted superhero. “What’s the matter?”
Elliott howled again. “I want Mummy!”
Ed crouched down next to him and put his arms round him. “Mummy’s out.”
Elliott screamed louder. “I want Mummy!”
“Darling. Mummy’s out. Daddy’s here. What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
“I want Mummy!”
“Is it your arm?” Ed felt his heart jump to his mouth for about the twenty-seventh time that day. “What’s wrong?”
Elliott turned to him tearfully. His face was wet and shining in the light. Racking sobs shook his body. “I weed up my nose!”
“What?”
Elliott sobbed again. “I weed up my nose!” He looked horrified at himself. “I couldn’t point my willy properly with my sore arm,” he wailed. “And my wee went up my nose!”
Ed stifled a smile. “It’s not the end of the world, Elliott.”
But the small boy remained unconvinced and cried louder.
“It’s just a little accident.” Ed went to pull his youngest son toward him and then remembered the wee dripping down Elliott’s face.
Elliott’s sobs subsided from hysterical to heartfelt. “I want Mummy.”
Ed swallowed hard. “She’s not here.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s gone to Aunty Jemma’s.”
“When will she be back?”
Ed felt his eyes prickle. “I’m not sure.” He scooped Elliott up and, holding him at arm’s length, maneuvered him to the sink. “Come on, let’s wash your face and get you some clean pajamas.” If he could remember where Ali kept the clean pajamas.
Elliott offered his face while Ed got to work with the flannel and soap. He took Elliott’s pajama top off. Tanya appeared at the bathroom door, yawning. “What’s wrong?”
“Elliott’s had an accident.”
“Another one?”
“I weed up my nose,” her little brother said miserably.
Tanya looked impressed. “Great party trick.”
Elliott smiled proudly.
“Do you know where Mummy puts your clean pajamas?”
Tanya nodded. “Of course I do.”
“Be an angel and get Elliott another pair.”
Tanya ambled off and banged around in the big chest of drawers at the top of the stairs. At this rate, Elliott’s accident was going to wake the entire street up. They’d remind him of it at drinks parties when he was twenty-one. They’d probably ask him to do it at drinks parties when he was twenty-one!
Thomas came sleepily into the bathroom. He was rubbing his eyes and looked deathly white. “Daddy,” he said. “I don’t feel well.” And he promptly threw up over Elliott’s pajama trousers, causing his brother to scream and indulge in a Navajo-style war dance round the bathroom, spreading the sick nicely round the vinyl flooring. “I want Mummy! I want Mummy!”
“I want Mummy too,” Thomas said politely, his pallid face merging nicely with the white bathroom tiles.
“I’m sorry. You’ll have to make do with me. Tanya!” Ed shouted. “Clean pajamas for two!”
With much shushing, Ed manhandled both of his sons into the shower and turned it on full. It smelled like some foul torture chamber from the Japanese game show Endurance. Ali always dealt with this sort of stuff. She had cream for everything. Vomit and blood did not faze her. She just waded in and mopped it up while making comforting cooing sounds. Whereas if he saw anyone being sick, he just wanted to join in. Ed yanked the boys out of the shower and toweled them down.
“That’s because he ate my burger as well as his own,” Tanya informed Ed, tossing the pajamas to him.
“Thanks,” he said. “You don’t want to part with any of your body fluids, do you?”
“Don’t be gross!”
“Just checking,” Ed said.
“Where’s Mum?”
“At Aunty Jemma’s.”
“Uh. What’s happened now?” Tanya said.
Ed paused. “Mummy will tell you when she gets back.”
“Will she, hell,” Tanya said. “She never tells me anything juicy.”
“Go to bed,” her father said.
Tanya wandered off, muttering.
Ed stuffed Elliott in his pajamas and buttoned up his jacket, amazed that this former screeching wreck could now look so angelic. Thomas quietly changed in the corner. “If Mummy’s not here,” Elliott mused, “can I get in bed with you?”
“Just this once,” Ed said wearily. “Don’t make a habit of it.”
“Can I too?” Thomas asked.
Ed smiled. “Of course you can, darling.” And firmly pushed the thought of his son throwing up in the bed to the back of his mind.
He gave the bathroom floor a quick once-over, vowed to do it properly in the morning and then shoved the dirty clothes in the linen basket, also to be dealt with the next day.
Ed guided his sons back to his bedroom, and Elliott bounded across the double bed heedless of his sprained, bandaged arm and bounced under the duvet. Tiredly, Ed got in beside him. Thomas slid in next, making a tight sandwich of Ed. “Don’t fidget, Elliott,” he warned. “Or you’re back in your own bed.”
Ed turned off the light, and Elliott and Thomas curled against him. It felt strange having these tiny, bony bodies nuzzled in next to him instead of Ali. It had been a long time since Elliott had slept in their bed. Even longer since Thomas had done it. And it had been a long time since he had shared a bed with anyone other than Alicia. She’d always hated their periods of enforced separation when he was away working on a film—it turned her cranky or whiney. He’d never minded too much because he was always totally exhausted or totally drunk by the time he fell into his bed on location, and everything else revolved around work, work and more work. There was only one night when he’d gone to bed with another woman, a production assistant or makeup girl, he couldn’t even remember now. She was cute, young, available. They’d both been very drunk and he’d had a row with Ali about something or nothing. The girl had probably tried to pick up Harrison Ford and had failed. Whichever way, they’d spent the night together and it was great fun. Until the morning. And then he’d felt wretched and stupid and she’d felt sober and stupid. They inched round each other on the set until the movie was in the can, and he’d never done anything like it since. It wasn’t that there hadn’t been the opportunity, but he felt the whole casual-sex thing wasn’t really worth the effort. He was happy with Alicia. He was in love with Alicia.
Elliott wriggled against him. “You smell nice, Daddy.”
Ed inhaled. Elliott smelled of wee. Thomas stank of puke. He would have to improve his nursing and washing skills.
Elliott sucked gently at his thumb as he drifted off into sleep. “I don’t like it when Mummy’s not here,” he mumbled.
“Me neither,” Thomas agreed.
“Ssh,” Ed said and stroked his sons’ soft downy hair. He stared at the ceiling in the dark even though he could no longer see the tiny cracks where it badly needed painting over. Ed didn’t like it when Ali wasn’t here either, and he fervently hoped it wasn’t something that he or his sons would have to get used to.
CHAPTER 26
The street Christian lives in is very posh. Which sort of surprises me. I don’t know why. I suppose I expected scruffy, student-style digs, but this is no such thing. You’d be pushed to find anywhere to live in this area unless you had about half a million quid sitting in your back pocket. Particularly since the area shot to fame in the film Notting Hill. Hugh Grant has made a lot of property owners round here very happy.
It’s a quiet, narrow street just behind Notting Hill Gate Tube station, lined with tall copper beech trees which will soon outgrow their limited space. The houses are mostly well-kept chichi terraces painted in hopeful Mediterranean shades of pink, yellow and cloudless-sky blue. In this tungsten-lit downpour they look as I feel, a little washed out and past
y. They all have iron railings, ornate wrought-iron porches and window boxes overflowing with daffodils and spring bulbs. Some of the houses have roof terraces, a desirable commodity in any London street. Their exotic blooms reach toward the moon and are buffeted by the rain against the skyline for their pains. On the street are parked the type of cars that little boys dream of. Don’t ask me what they are. I only care if my car starts in the morning and, at a push, what color it is. But you know the sort I mean. Flashy red things and long silver ones and soft tops that purr along and turn impressionable heads.
I marry the number on the card, which is now more than a little soggy at the edges, with the number on the front door. And double-check the address just to make sure this really is where Christian lives. I feel a knot of apprehension tightening within me and sigh out my breath like they told us to do at prenatal classes, which was just as useless during childbirth as it is now.
Christian’s house is a little shabbier than the rest, and that makes me feel slightly relieved. The window box seems to be bearing the remnants of last year’s geraniums, and they’re probably the only things round here grateful for the deluge of water. There are two bicycles chained to the railings, and the bin at the bottom of the basement steps is overflowing with rubbish. One of the neighborhood cats is enjoying what appears to be the remains of Chicken Chow Mein from a foil carton. The front door is purple and ornately carved, but on close inspection the paint is cracked and peeling.
A slight frisson of fear creeps over my scalp as I wonder if Christian lives here with his parents and hasn’t dared to confess, knowing how uncool that is? Before I can turn and run away, I press the doorbell, but hear no comforting ring on the other side.
I wait and get wetter and realize that this could probably be considered the worst night of my life to date. I’m clutching my pathetic little suitcase like some overgrown version of Paddington Bear and seething quietly. Like Jemma’s, there doesn’t appear to be a light on in the house, and it seems reasonable to assume that Christian has gone to bed. I’m sure if the doorbell worked, he’d be here by now. I press it again and stand a bit nearer to the door under the inadequate but attractive shelter of the overhanging porch. A few minutes pass, and I resort to twanging the letter box, convinced that the doorbell has died.
As I do, a girl opens the door, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She’s wearing a silky slip and nothing else. Do you remember me telling you about Caroline Gregory? She of the Gary Eccleston saga? Bitch sex kitten of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour High School? Remember? Well, her doppelganger is standing right in front of me.
I quickly check the address, fearing that the splat of rain might have impaired my reading (my glasses are also in my handbag) and that I’ve got some totally unconnected sex kitten out of bed in the middle of the night. She looks blankly at me. As well she might.
“Hi,” I say and push back my flat, wet, corkscrew hair so that I might appear marginally less like a madwoman. “I’m looking for Christian Winter.”
Her eyes widen, despite her sleepy state. “Chris?”
“Yes.”
“He’s out.”
There’s a lengthy pause in which one of us ought to say something, but neither of us does. She, possibly because she is half-asleep and dazed. Me, because by this point I’m totally brain dead. The girl yawns and stretches, and I feel I must say something before she’s tempted to close the door.
“I wonder if I could possibly wait for him?” I say. “If it’s not inconvenient.”
Her look says, Of course it’s inconvenient, it’s one o’clock in the fucking morning! She comes out of her sleepy state, folds her arms across her chest and eyes me suspiciously.
Well, would you let me into your house in the dead of night looking like this? “It’s important.”
“Are you his mother?”
“No.” I look bad, but not that bad! “I’m a friend. He may not have mentioned me,” I say with studied patience. Why should he? “My name’s Ali. Alicia.”
The sex kitten looks horrorstruck, and her eyes travel from my hair to my shoes and back again in slow motion. “You’re Ali?”
“Yes.”
“Shit,” she mutters, and stands aside. “You’d better come in.”
I do. I step inside this rather grand house in this rather posh street and, as I follow her through to the hall, try not to drip on what looks like expensive carpet. The sex kitten pads in her bare feet through to a huge kitchen, which in my disorientated state looks the size of ten football pitches. And I wonder who on earth she might be.
I put my case down on the tiles, which won’t matter too much if they get wet, and sidle self-consciously across to the kitchen table. I can’t believe I’m sitting here. I know so little about Christian. Who is this? She can’t be his sister, even if he has one, because she’d have recognized her own mother on her doorstep even in the dead of the night. Does he share the house with other people? Why hadn’t I considered that? What on earth did we talk about all day? Did I slip into typical doting mother mode and rattle on about my kids for hours?
“Tea?” she asks, picking up the kettle.
“If it’s not too much trouble.”
She says nothing, but I gather that it is rather a lot of trouble and that her hospitality is somewhat forced. But I try to put myself in her position. She’ll probably kill Christian tomorrow. I sit in silence while the kettle takes an age to boil and she makes just one mug of tea.
The girl puts the steaming hot mug on the stripped pine table in front of me, seemingly unaware or uncaring of the fact that it will leave a white scorch mark in the wood. “Thank you.”
Never in all my life have I been so grateful to see a cup of tea. I nurse my hands round it and realize that they’re as cold as ice. A towel would be nice to dry myself down, but I’m not offered one, and as I’ve already intruded so much, I wouldn’t dare to ask.
“I’m Rebecca,” the girl says. “Christian and I share this place.” She looks dismissively at the grand kitchen. “We’re…old friends.”
It’s a loaded statement and contains a warning. And if I hadn’t left my sense of humor back at home in my handbag too, I might have found it amusing that this perfectly formed sylph could feel threatened by someone who currently looks like something the cat dragged in.
Rebecca doesn’t sit down with me, but leans against the Aga and scrutinizes me. “You’re not what I expected.”
How am I supposed to answer that? I have no idea what, if anything, Christian has said about me, but presumably, from the look on her face, she expected some little glamour puss, not someone she’d consider ready to collect her bus pass. I have a horrible thought. I was probably at the very peak of my groovy hot-pants phase somewhere around the time that Christian and this young miss were born. I say nothing and concern myself with the job of drinking tea in an effort to thaw out my frozen insides.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, glancing at the clock to make sure I’m aware what time it is.
“I’m not really sure,” I answer, truthfully. I don’t want to tell this stranger about my row with Ed and how I’ve been tramping the streets because he’s being childish and unreasonable. Mainly due to the fact I’m about to cry.
She rubs her bare arms against the chill of the night air, and I can feel myself start to shiver inside.
“What time do you think Christian will be home?” I ask timidly.
Rebecca snorts. “Who knows? Christian is a law unto himself—but then I expect you know that.” I see a slight smile curl on her lips when my face clearly registers that I don’t. “He’s gone out on the razz with Robbie, the other guy who lives here. They may not come back at all.” There is a challenge in her eyes. My mother would call her a “little madam.”
“I’ll drink this and be out of your way,” I say, swallowing the tea without tasting it.
“Stay,” she says with a shrug. “If that’s what you want. If you’re not in a rush to get home.”
&
nbsp; “Would you mind?” Again the indifferent shrug.
“I’m off to bed.” She stifles a yawn. “You can have Chris’s bed, I guess. Or camp down on the sofa. It’s up to you.”
“I’ll just wait here,” I say.
“Suit yourself.”
“Thanks, Rebecca.” I smile at her. “You’ve been very kind.” And she has, in her own way. She has taken me into her home despite not knowing me from Adam, and obviously convinced I’m far too old and gnarled for Christian. And I’m inside in the dry and the warm, although the atmosphere has a decidedly chilly edge. If this is the alternative to a cardboard box, I’ll take it.
“If you decide to leave,” she adds as she walks out of the room, “don’t bang the door. I’m a light sleeper.”
I smile at her retreating back, her rigidly set shoulders and her pert little bottom. Wriggling down in the hard-backed chair, I try to make myself more comfortable for what could be a long wait.
She glances back one more time. “I hear everything.”
And I’m quite sure she makes it her job to.
CHAPTER 27
The hammering at the front door took several minutes to permeate through the fug of Ed’s subconscious and rouse him into waking. He sat bolt upright and realized that Elliott had long since departed the bed. Thomas, still pale and interesting, slept on. Pulling on his dressing gown, Ed briefly entertained the thought that the insistent pounding might be Ali come home without her key, but he would recognize the thud of that fist anywhere. Ed peered out of the window and, sure enough, Neil’s motorbike was haphazardly abandoned in the drive in the style that his brother termed “parking.”
“Oh shit,” Ed mumbled, and headed downstairs.