The Little Things (6 page)

He looks at me again. ‘I’ve enjoyed chatting.’

I nearly say ‘me too’ but stop myself. ‘Bye, then!’ I conclude, before turning my head to Ollie.

‘Oh . . . Hannah.’ I spin around. ‘I wasn’t sure how to mention this, but . . . well, if you’ve got an interview via video . . .’

‘Yes?’ I frown.

‘You’ve got something in your fringe. I think it might be a Rice Krispie.’

The interview goes well, I
think
. I won’t go any further than that, partly because I don’t believe in tempting fate, and partly because I’ll admit to
being slightly thrown by some of the questions.

My interviewers – whose faces gaze at me through the screen of my laptop – are both expats: Paula Cullen, an HR manager with long, wavy hair, dyed to the colour of a tangerine; and
her boss, Mike Morely, a balding, bespectacled gentleman whose face is as kindly and potato-shaped as I’ve ever come across.

It’s not just that the questions are incredibly basic that’s thrown me – we’ve barely progressed beyond ‘Tell me a bit about yourself.’ It’s that my
interviewers have veered onto a rather odd tangent.

‘If you were a biscuit, what type of biscuit would you be?’ asks Paula Cullen enthusiastically.

‘Oh, um . . . gosh, that’s something I’ve never been asked before,’ I say, shuffling in my seat.

‘I thought so!’ She grins, clearly considering this evidence of her superlative investigative skills.

I try to pick a biscuit that could, in some contrived way, highlight my marketing skills. ‘Okay. I’m a chocolate digestive,’ I conclude.

Paula flashes Mike a side glance, as if this choice were all she needs to hear to deduce that I’m a genius. ‘Why’s that?’ asks Mike.

‘Because I’m an
all-rounder
, I have a solid, traditional base – and I have a lot of good stuff up top.’ I glance down and realise I’m showing a bit too
much cleavage. ‘By which I mean my
brains
, not anything else,’ I say, leaping in, crossing my arms across my chest. ‘I just meant I’m very brainy. Immodest as that
sounds,’ I splutter, wishing we could’ve just stuck to discussing what I can do for their marketing department. ‘I should add that I’m exceptionally good at forward
planning.’

Mike hesitates. ‘What’s that got to do with a chocolate digestive?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I reply weakly. ‘I just thought it’d be relevant to the position.’

‘Do you know what I’d be?’ Paula Cullen interrupts, giggling. ‘I’d be a flapjack. Squidgy, sweet and just a little bit nuts!’

It’s amazing how much better life feels when you’ve got a spreadsheet or seven to help you out. Which by the way is restrained: there are so many elements of the
boys’ lives that need organising that I could fill an entire wall with graphs and charts, as if I were planning a WWII land attack.

I now have one master document, an enormous complex file that’s then broken into more easily manageable chunks. It’s organised by child and day of the week and features everything,
from which after-school activity they’re due to attend to what homework they have and which particular kit they need to have washed and ironed in advance.

‘This looks like the work of a psychopath,’ Suzy tells me as I flick through my file brandishing a highlighter pen.

‘Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,’ I tell her.

‘Oh, I’m not. As someone who’s always gone for the seat-of-pants approach I’m full of admiration,’ she says, sliding an omelette onto a plate and placing it in
front of Max, who’s only just back from swimming club.

‘Have you thought about what you’re going to do for your school art festival yet?’ she asks, placing his dinner in front of him. Max is so skinny you could play ‘Yankee
Doodle’ on his ribs – but his calorific intake per day could keep an entire rugby squad for a week: his plate is piled high with chips, a two-egg omelette lavished with cheese and the
bit he (oddly) likes best, a mountain of cucumber and carrot sticks.

‘I want to do that Henry VIII thing I told you about,’ he says, our conversation about the Dissolution of the Monasteries clearly having had a big impact on him, even if my only
contribution was to murmur and nod a lot.

‘Max, that would be ridiculously complicated,’ Suzy says.

‘It’d be good though,’ he argues, taking a bite of cucumber.

‘I can help him, if you like,’ I offer, approving wholeheartedly with my eldest nephew’s refusal to be defeatist.

The competition, it turns out, is being judged next Friday and he has to come up with a piece of art with the theme of ‘Kings and Queens’. Max wants to create a massive collage of
Henry VIII beheading Anne Boleyn, featuring – obviously given that he’s nine – the most gruesome detail possible.

‘I warn you, Hannah, these things are really competitive,’ Suzy tells me. ‘Some of the kids spend weeks on them. Max should’ve started it ages ago.’

‘Ah, we’ll be all right, won’t we, Max?’ I say conspiratorially as he grins back at me through a cucumber smile.

Max and I spend every evening for the next seven days working on his project. I say ‘Max and I’, but that might not give an entirely accurate impression of the
dynamic that develops as the week progresses.

Having agreed with him that bigger is probably better, I go out and buy a large artist’s canvas that I nearly have to hire a white van to transport home, along with a ton of new paints.
Then I start snaffling spare fabrics to create the collage bit, from anywhere I can find them: old dusters, handkerchiefs, tinfoil. Who’d have known that an old pair of opaque tights
would’ve made such a nifty royal codpiece! Once I hit on the genius idea of making Anne Boleyn’s head from a ping-pong ball, I become a woman possessed: it’s as if my flopped
artistic aspirations at school had had a second chance. It’s only on Day Three – when I’m encouraging the twins to shovel as many KitKats down them as possible so I can use the
wrappers to make armour for the guards – that I notice Max’s attention has started to wane. By which I mean he’s watching someone on YouTube play Minecraft and hasn’t
contributed to the picture all night.

‘Max, what are you doing?’ I ask, sounding unnervingly like Suzy.

‘Hmm? Oh, just watching a vlogger – Stampylongnose.’

I narrow my eyes. ‘I’m sure he can buy something over the counter for that.’

He ignores me. ‘Max, this isn’t meant to be
my
competition.’

‘But you’re doing brilliantly, Auntie Hannah,’ he replies, refusing to look up from his iPad.

I purse my lips. ‘Do not try to flatter me into doing this entire project for you,’ I reply, though he’s got a point: my picture is ! ‘Come on. Join in.’

He drags himself up and grabs a paintbrush. ‘My friends and I were talking about the facts of life today,’ he announces casually, dabbing the brush in some blue paint.

I freeze in panic, glancing around for Suzy, Justin, anyone. But the former is on bath duty and the latter is working late.

‘Oh . . . were you?’ I reply.

‘I know more than you probably think I do,’ he tells me proudly. I realise I’m holding my breath, feeling desperately unqualified for this conversation.

‘Maybe you should talk to your mum about this?’ I suggest, through strangled vocal cords.

‘Okay.’ He shrugs. ‘Do you want to know
one
of the facts of life I know, though? Just one?’

He is clearly dying to have a conversation about this. And, although it’s the last thing I want to discuss, I feel backed into a corner, unable to refuse in case for the rest of his life
he can think about sex only in a way that’s shrouded in repression and shame.

‘Okay,’ I say uneasily. ‘Just one fact of life then.’

He nods. ‘Rivers
never
flow uphill. That’s one of the most important facts of life there is.’

I decide to have an early night after that.

After a quick bath, I head to my room and log on to my laptop to see if I’ve had any response about my Skype interview the other day.

I’m not expecting one yet, if I’m honest – they said I wouldn’t hear from them until after they’d finished interviewing other candidates. But, to my surprise, there
is an email right at the top.

I close my eyes, my heart racing. This could be it: my direct route to James, that blue-sky lifestyle and a glitzy yacht party every other day. I open the email and begin scanning its
contents.

Telling James is such a humiliating affair I can’t even describe it. When he looks at me through the webcam, the only thing I can see is pity in his eyes. It makes my stomach clench.

‘Something’ll come up, Hannah. You’re a success – you always will be. Dubai is just your kind of place. It’ll be worth it once you get here. The hotels here are
amazing. The weather’s fantastic. Everything’s just so . . . top of the range. Seriously, you’ll love it. So don’t lose faith.’

I nod.

‘So what have you been up to?’ he continues.

‘Oh, just helping Max with this big art competition the school are running,’ I tell him. ‘Although, somehow, I seem to’ve ended up doing the entire thing
myself.’

‘Is that allowed?’ he asks.

‘I’m sure everyone does it. Besides, as I was telling Michael the other day, the idea was
all
Max’s.’

He pauses for a second. ‘Who’s Michael?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Michael. Who is he?’

‘Oh, just one of the school dads,’ I reply. ‘He’s a nice guy if . . . very short. And balding. A bit overweight, too.’ The more untruths I add to this description,
the hotter my skin becomes.

I have literally no idea why, not least because James has never looked more gorgeous than tonight. It’s not just that the tan has given the (admittedly false) impression that he’s
got those biceps by living some kind of Action Man existence, the type who’d hang out with Bear Grylls at weekends, catching fish with his bare hands. Being in Dubai has made him grow in
confidence, too. Okay, he still wants my opinion about every decision he seems to make out there, but he now has this appealingly well-travelled, capable air.

‘I love you, James,’ I tell him spontaneously.

He hesitates and looks as if he has something he wants to tell me. ‘I love you too.’

‘Is everything okay?’ I ask.

‘Of course,’ he replies, shifting in his seat. ‘Just . . . well, it’s been a long time since we’ve been . . .
together
.’ He looks at me meaningfully.
‘You know,
physically
together.’

It takes a moment for the words to filter into my brain, for said brain to compute them and work out that he’s basically reminding me that he hasn’t had a shag in months. The poor
guy probably has such a severe case of blue balls they’re a step away from flashing like the light on top of a police car.

‘I know,’ I agree awkwardly. ‘But there’s not a hell of a lot I can do about that.’

He chews his lip. ‘Well, I was reading the other day that when couples are a long way away from each other, and they can’t, ahem,
make love
,’ he says, ‘then they
have to make do with what they can. Via a webcam.’

My mind races to decode what he’s saying. Which is basically this: he wants to have webcam sex.
Oh, Laaawd Almighty!

I attempt to put my eyes back in their sockets and look relaxed about this suggestion. Which, in all honesty, I probably should be. Why wouldn’t he want this? He’s a red-blooded male
– and here I am, thousands of miles away, expecting him to
not
sleep with anyone else out there.

I realise as panic races through me that I need to step up to this. I need to be sexy and seductive and basically change the fact that our conversations via this medium have been about as
sexually charged as a WI meeting.

His eyes have softened and his lips parted. I can tell he’s thinking about sex and it’s up to me to get him going – that’s me, in my M&S flannel pyjamas patterned
with pink teddy bears.

‘You look incredibly sexy tonight, Hannah,’ he murmurs encouragingly. I am lost for words, unable to respond beyond twiddling with the pompoms on my slippers.

‘Um . . . you look incredibly sexy, too,’ I offer lamely, realising instantly that this is unlikely to have him burning with desire.

I try to think sexy thoughts.

‘Tell me what you’d like to do with me,’ he whispers, lust dripping from his eyes.

I swallow. ‘I’d like to . . . um . . . run my fingers through your hair.’ He replies with an underwhelming smile. ‘And, er . . . kiss your lovely lips,’ I add. Oh,
God! He must feel as if he’d bought
Debbie Does Dallas
and found the disc inside had been swapped for
Dumbo
.

He looks up and very clearly concludes that I’m not up to this. ‘AND,’ I add frantically before he decides to up and leave, ‘AND that’s not all.’

He leans forward in his seat as my mind goes blank. ‘I’d . . . I’d like to touch you.’ He raises an eyebrow, looking for embellishment. ‘In . . . private
places.’

He blinks. I know I need to be more specific. ‘You know . . . your . . . um . . .’ A multitude of pornographic possibilities shoots through my mind before I decide I might as well
get down to brass tacks. ‘
Penis
,’ I say queasily.

He doesn’t respond.