Lifesaver (20 page)

Then I switched off my phone and dropped it to the bottom of my handbag.

‘Dad.’

‘Yes?’

‘Know what I saw on TV today?’

We were sitting at the table in the conservatory, which I’d wiped down with a frail, crispy J-cloth I found under the sink, and served up penne with my special tomato sauce. Outside, a row of six huge dying sunflowers drooped along the edge of a small, un-mowed lawn, their once-bright heads brown and defeated, like slain giants. Adam and I had our wine, Max had a plastic beaker full of watery Ribena. I felt as if I was in heaven.

Max was using his knife to scrape sauce off his penne. I tried not to look disappointed as he speared the cleaned pasta tube with his fork and raised it gingerly to his mouth. He’d eaten all the mange-touts I’d steamed to go with it, but hardly any of the pasta.

‘What did you see on TV, love?’ Thankfully, Adam was managing a lot better. He’d nearly finished his plateful. A small blob of sauce had dropped onto his t-shirt, but he hadn’t noticed and it seemed a little too personal to point it out.

‘I saw how lamp-posts is made.
Green
lamp-posts is made from leaf oil heated up; little bits of cloud, and metal.’

Adam grinned at me. ‘Really? Who’d have thought? Anna, did you know that’s what green lamp-posts were made of?’

‘Hmm, actually I didn’t have any idea, until Max told me. That’s amazing.’

Max nodded self-satisfactorily. He managed to find two more pasta tubes which were fairly unsullied by the sauce, but then ground to a halt. ‘I’m full,’ he announced, uncertainly. ‘Please may can I get down?’

‘You haven’t eaten much, are you sure you’re full?’

Max nodded.

‘So you won’t want any pudding?’

A disconsolate shake of the head.

Adam looked at his watch. ‘Oh well. Say thank you to Anna, then you can play on the computer for ten minutes while we finish our supper, then it’s bedtime. You can have a bath in the morning.’

‘Brilliant! On school nights I always have to have a bath,’ he said to me, as an aside. I immediately wondered if Max’s postponed bath-time had anything to do with my presence. If so, then that was a good sign—if Adam had wanted me to leave, he could have used bath-time as a good excuse.

‘Are you looking forward to going back to school, Max?’

‘Yes! I’m not going to be in Nursery anymore. I’m going to be in Reception, and I won’t have to play with Aaron White in the home corner anymore.’

‘Well, I think Aaron will still be in your class, Max,’ said Adam. ‘We must get your new winter uniform tomorrow. All those name tapes to sew in!’ He made a face at me, and it took every ounce of restraint I possessed not to offer to sew Max’s name tapes in myself.

‘Thanks for cooking dinner, Anna, it was absolutely delicious. We don’t get many meals like that outside of restaurants.’

Max turned to me then, casually resting his hand on my leg. I wanted to clamp my own hand over the top of his, press it down and iron it to me, to make his skin into my skin.

‘You’re very welcome,’ I replied faintly, the combination of Max’s touch and Adam’s words leaving me feeling that I had never enjoyed a simple compliment more. Max wandered off into the next room and we heard the electronic crescendo of the computer being switched on. I drained the dregs of my wineglass, and Adam held out the bottle to me.

‘Better not. I’ve got to drive home.’

‘Not yet, I hope. And you could always get a cab.’

I laughed, then stopped abruptly, worried that he’d think I was laughing at the ridiculousness of the idea of staying longer. I wondered what he’d think if I told him that a cab back to my real house would cost a hundred pounds at least. How was I going to get out of this one?

‘Well, maybe just a drop more.’ I’d only had one glass. I’d be fine to drive. If there had ever been a time I needed a drink, it was then.

‘Is there any more pasta?’ Adam asked, finished up his last mouthful.

‘Yes, in the pan.’ I wanted to laugh again at the strangeness of the situation. We were like an old married couple having a weekday supper together, as natural as breathing, our child playing in the background—and yet we’d only just met.

Nonetheless, I was loving it. It was the scene I’d dreamed of for years; the quiet pull of domesticity, the chattering of a child, the astonishingly potent comfort of gratitude, of being needed. Even if it was the wrong man, the wrong house and the wrong family, I still wanted to relish it, and make it last as long as possible. If Ken hadn’t always been travelling or out, or if he were perhaps less obviously the provider - then maybe I’d have felt closer to the idyll with him, even in the stillness of a child-free home. But I had never felt like this with him. Love didn’t come into it; it wasn’t about love.

Still, I was relieved that I’d labelled the situation the way I had: wrong man, wrong house and wrong family. It would have been worse if I’d thought that all those things were right, and it was
Ken
who was out of place.

It wasn’t the wrong child, though. Max was, somehow, the right child.

I wished I knew why Adam had let me stay and cook dinner. Had he felt sorry for me? Was he too embarrassed to say no? Or was he attracted to me, and saw it as some kind of come-on? I hoped not. It was tricky. I was genuinely glad I liked him so much—it would have been so much harder to bond with Max had I not—but it was of paramount importance that Adam didn’t think this was the start of a courtship. The last thing I wanted was for anybody to get hurt in this little charade of mine.

I was about to open my mouth and splurge out some lies along the lines of thinking about getting back, because my partner would be home soon, when I thought, no, how could I say that? He already thought I wasn’t married, but it wasn’t even an issue of actual marriage. It was how weird it would sound, for me in effect to announce, well, I’m off home to cook another supper for another man. Or woman. Would it have made things easier if I pretended to be a lesbian? At least that way he would know that I wasn’t coming on to him.

All of a sudden I realized that cooking supper for another man was really a very intimate gesture, unless that other man was a very old friend, or a family member. It was categorically not what one did when one was meant to be in a relationship with someone else. The bait of Max, wriggling right in front of my eyes on the line, had confused me and I’d risen to meet him, eyes shut, mouth open. I wouldn’t have dreamed of cooking for another man under any other circumstances. No wonder Adam had initially been hesitant.

And now—oh God, what was I getting into?—Adam was looking at me with, unless I was very much mistaken, a faintly dreamy warm expression, his eyes smiling and his mouth curving upwards. He might as well have had a speech bubble coming out of his mouth containing the words ‘I really like you, Anna.’ I may have been out of practise, but I still knew a smitten look when I saw one.

‘You will stay a bit longer, won’t you Anna? I need to get Max to bed soon, but it would be lovely to have more of a chat after that.’

A chat. A chat. He didn’t mean just a chat, did he? Look at those eyes, I thought frantically. He fancies me, and because I’ve cooked supper, he thinks it’s mutual. Once Max had gone to bed we’d be drinking more wine, he’d put on a mellow CD, and before I knew it we’d be rolling around together mussing up the Indian throw on the sofa and waiting to see who’d make the first tentative queries about birth control. Then, whoops, I’d be having an affair that I didn’t want, with a person I hardly knew, who lived a hundred miles away and who I didn’t even really fancy. Aargh.

If I’d left then, though, just when I was getting to know Max, how would I have been able to come back, having burned my bridges with his father? And I had an urge, almost physical in its intensity, to read Max a bedtime story. It might be my only chance to, I thought. I had to risk it. I could handle Adam; head him off at the pass. For heaven’s sake, I’d just tell him that I only wanted to be friends. Simple.

Strange electronic noises filtered through from the other room, reminding me of Ken and his Blackberry. ‘What’s Max playing?’ I asked abruptly.

‘Pinball, probably. He’s not very good at it yet, but give him a few more weeks and he’ll be expert.’

‘Pinball? How do you play pinball on a computer?’

‘Go and have a look, if you like. It’s really good.’

I didn’t need asking twice. Scraping back my chair in haste, I shot through the kitchen into the living room as if I were the silver ball in the pinball machine, kicked into action by a coiled spring. Max was sitting at the table clicking away, accompanied by a soundtrack of what sounded like digital stomach gurgles.

‘Yes! Wormhole!’ he crowed, after a particularly jubilant gurgle.

‘May I see?’ I asked, pulling up a chair next to him. He nodded, without taking his eyes off the screen.

The pinball was identical to the machines I’d played many times in pubs over the years, and I marvelled at the the way a complex three-dimensional game was rendered one-dimensional, whilst retaining a faithful impression of the clacking, moving handles, ramps, and those three mushroom-like structures at the top between which the ball noisily ricochetted. Max was controlling the two flapping gates at the bottom with deft pressure on two of the keys on his computer keyboard; a Z and a slash, as far as I could see, and it was the spacebar which pulled back the spring to release the ball, but apart from that, everything was the same as on the real thing. The ball careened erratically around, and I had to remind myself that it wasn’t even a real ball.

How was it possible, I thought, that somebody could design a computer program as complicated as virtual pinball, and yet nothing, from the vast field of medical knowledge, had been discovered on how to prevent a miscarriage? Not all miscarriages were due to birth defects in the foetus, they knew that much. It wasn’t even something as complicated as preventing the common cold or curing cancer. It made me angry to think of computer nerds spending years developing a way of getting one stupid imaginary silver ball to behave like a real ball in a pub machine when there were so many other, important discoveries to be made.

The machine gave a low, disappointed gurgle. ‘Game over. Terrible score,’ said Max. ‘Only six numbers.’

I squinted at the screen. ‘No, Max, your score was 104,492—that’s brilliant, isn’t it?’

‘Is that less than six million?’

‘Well, yes.’

He frowned. ‘That’s no good then. Dad can do six million. Do you want a go?’

‘Um…Ok, I’ll give it a shot. Although I’m sure your score will be higher than mine.’

‘Can I sit on your knee?’

My breath caught in my throat. ‘Of course.’

Max slid onto my lap, all gangly arms and legs, his bony bottom so different to Crystal’s solidity. I wanted to gather up his limbs and keep them together; keep him literally in one piece, for ever. He smelled of sawdust and shampoo, tomato sauce and pencil lead. I pressed my lips together in an effort to stop myself kissing his hair. His presence made it more difficult to see the screen—he didn’t seem to realize that his head was blocking my view—but I didn’t care.

My first attempt at pinball was a disaster. The ball just about limped to the top of the screen, flicked itself half-heartedly against the mushrooms, and plummeted down in the gap between the two flappy gates which I was trying to control. Score: fifteen thousand.

‘If you press them both together, it makes a bigger space for the ball to go through, so it’s better not to,’ said my coach earnestly.

‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘So I see.’

I tried again, and did slightly better, although this time I was distracted by Adam putting on a CD: Van Morrison,
Astral Weeks
. It wasn’t Marvin Gaye’s
Sexual Healing
or anything, but all the same, undeniably mood-setting and borderline smoochy. As my virtual ball disappeared into a hole, prompting a cacophony of whoops from the machine and a ‘yay, Anna!’ from Max, I found myself trying to remember what sort of underwear I had on. Even though I had absolutely
no
intention of allowing myself to be seduced. It was an oddly Pavlovian reaction, I thought. If he opens another bottle of wine, or, heaven forbid, lights any candles, then I’ll know I’m in trouble. A rogue part of me felt a small thrill of anticipation, which I tried to crush immediately. What the hell was wrong with me? Flirty Thirties, that’s what Vicky called them. Maybe I was just experiencing an attack of the Flirty Thirties; wanting to know that, even though I was happily married, I was still attractive to other men.

I sneaked a peek over my shoulder to see what Adam was doing. He was bending down, collecting up some Happy Family cards which had lain scattered on the floor. I couldn’t help but notice that his bottom in its faded Levis was rather appealing. Very appealing, in fact.

Not that that had anything to do with anything.

I was losing it. I really ought to leave now, I thought. But the warmth and weight of Max on my lap pinned me there, a happy captive. Just go with the flow, said the devil on my shoulder. Worry about the complexities of it all later.

‘Right, bedtime, Max,’ called Adam. He came over to us, holding a mug of milk.

‘Awww, Dad,’ said Max, but he slid off my lap immediately, taking his father’s hand. I was very impressed. Where were the tantrums, the pleading and bargaining, the histrionics which always accompanied that same announcement in Vicky’s house?

Vicky. Was she still pregnant, or not? Vicky and her problems seemed a million miles away from this shabby warm terraced house, and I felt grateful for it. Being there with Adam and Max was like an escape: I was exempt from real life when I was there; immune to it all except the immediate experience. It was as good as a holiday. I hadn’t realized how much I’d wanted a break from my life.

‘Say goodnight to Anna.’ Then he turned to me. ‘I’ll be about ten minutes, so do make yourself at home. Watch TV if you like—the remote’s on the armchair.’

‘Goodnight Anna,’ Max said dutifully, hovering at his father’s side. Then he let go of Adam’s hand, skipped forward and gave me a spontaneous and warm hug around my middle which left me dizzy with emotion. I hugged him back, unable to reply, thus losing my chance to ask to read him a bedtime story. There was just going to have to be a next time, that was all, I thought, waving at him as he and Adam turned to walk up the stairs. My vision was so blurred with tears that they looked as if they were floating away from me.