LITMIR.BIZ

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become convinced Eduardo was having an affair and decided to catch him out. She knew he’d be at the MOTHER bar – oh, yes, the MOTHER bar – and she burst through those doors, bump first, practically fighting the bouncers to the ground, a force of nature in maternity jeans. She stampeded around, Billy kicking inside her, alarmed at the sudden onslaught of hardcore techno. When she finally located him in a darkened corner, he was topless, wearing sunglasses and writhing around with another man who was also topless.

      So he was gay! That was what all this was about. She had almost felt a rush of relief that it wasn’t just because he was a complete bastard.

      But no, he was not gay, he said; he was just off his face, and apparently this was what one does when off one’s face. He was also scared and overwhelmed by the prospect of being a father and he just wanted some fun whilst he still could – was that so bad?

      It seemed so at the time, but now she’s not sure, and when she pictures that scene now – him, bare-chested in Ray-Bans, chewing the inside of his cheek whilst she stood before him, a mountain of a woman, bicycle clips around the bottom of her maternity jeans, shouting ‘I hate you; I fucking hate your guts!’ – she starts to giggle, then really laugh, until she is doubled over in a fit of hysterics.

      ‘What are you laughing at?’ Eduardo stands in the doorway of her bedroom, naked, a mug in each hand, laughing at her laughing.

      ‘Oh, nothing, nothing … come to bed,’ she says, stretching out a hand. He bends down, puts the two mugs on the floor and almost jumps down beside her.

      ‘Eduardo! Bloody hell! About four of the slats in this bed are broken, you’ll break it even more if you’re not careful.’

      ‘Have you still not got round to getting a new bed?’ he says, snuggling up to her.

      WELL I WOULD IF I HAD A MAN IN THE HOUSE TO ERECT ONE. She fights the urge to shout, but it’s so very hard.

      ‘No, I have still not got a new bed.’ She smiles, inhaling his smoky, musky scent. ‘But perhaps you could buy one for me. It’s the least you could do.’

      Eduardo ignores that comment and tidies a strand of hair behind her ear. Here it comes, she thinks, the ‘better be going’. But he doesn’t. Instead he starts to kiss her tenderly, ever so gently, so she thinks she might cry, and she once more becomes aware of how much she needs this to stay alive, to feel alive. Mia Woodhouse – you’re still in there, aren’t you?

      He softly pushes her hair back. ‘Hello, beautiful,’ he whispers and she doesn’t say anything but she smiles and looks up at him. ‘I want to make love again. Can we make love again?’ If an English man said that I’d be laughing my head off by now, thinks Mia. But somehow a Brazilian gets away with it. Somehow from him, it’s irresistible. It’s 6.45 a.m., the early morning sunshine is turning the room golden, and Mia closes her eyes, throws her arms behind her in abandon as Eduardo presses his pelvis down onto hers.

      Then ‘waaaaaaaahhhhhhh!’ Nine months on and it still rips right through her. Still feels like an assault.

      ‘Billy,’ she sighs, staring up at the ceiling.

      ‘He’ll stop, he’ll stop,’ says Eduardo, kissing her neck. ‘He’ll go back to sleep, come on, relaaax.’

      She tries, she does, but it’s no use.

      ‘No, he won’t, unfortunately.’ She gently pushes Eduardo off her and drags herself out of the bed. ‘Believe me, that’s Billy for the day now.’

      When Mia comes back from the kitchen where she has been preparing Billy’s breakfast, leaving him fastened to the high chair in the lounge, she half expects Eduardo to have gone. It’s the sort of shitty thing he does all the time, after all. But as she approaches the lounge door, she can hear talking.

      For a moment she’s confused – whose is the other adult voice she can hear? – and then she realizes, it’s Eduardo’s. She freezes, the dish of porridge in her hand. Then, spying through the crack in the door, holding her breath, she watches them.

      Eduardo has pulled up a chair and is leaning on the tray of Billy’s highchair, playing with his small plastic animals – Billy’s all-time favourite toys.

      ‘And this is a sheep,’ he’s saying. ‘In Portuguese we say “ovelha” … Can you say “ovelha”, Billy? That’s pretty cool, ha? Which is your favourite, Billy?’

      Billy’s transfixed: wide-eyed, perfectly still, a string of drool hanging from his mouth, and Mia has to bite her lip to stifle a giggle. Poor baby. Never known a man in the house to talk to him like this, let alone his own father. Well this is a turn-up for the books, she imagines him thinking, I could get used to this.

       She could get used to this.

      This is how it should be, too. This is how she imagined family life: her wandering about of a morning in Eduardo’s shirt, sexy and yet homely at the same time, with tanned bare limbs (in her case, pale ones with a huge bruise up the side where she continually bangs into the coffee table, but never mind), and daddy, handsome and bare-chested, playing with his son, the smell of coffee wafting through the house.

      Then her mobile goes on the sofa and she nearly jumps out of her skin.

      ‘Ooh, I’ll get that!’ she says chirpily, trying to make it look as though she literally arrived at the door just then, that she wasn’t spying.

      ‘Hello?’

      Eduardo is still playing with the animals – perhaps even more enthusiastically now he knows he’s being watched, and Billy has started to do hiccupping giggles.

      ‘Mia, it’s me, Fraser.’

      ‘Fraser!’ Eduardo turns around and looks at her and she doesn’t know why but she smiles and waves at him. ‘How are you? OK? Actually you don’t sound OK.’

      ‘No, I’ve been better. I got punched in the face last night.’

      ‘What? Why?’

      Mia takes herself off into the kitchen to talk.

      ‘Oh, God, long story, involving ex-boyfriends and salsa classes and Karen.’

      ‘My God, Karen didn’t punch you, did she?’

      ‘No, no, GOD no …’

      ‘Oh.’

      She should really try to sound less disappointed to learn that he hasn’t been punched by his new girlfriend.

      ‘It was her ex-boyfriend.’

      ‘Really? Gosh. You are quite the threat then?’

      She shakes her head. Why did she say that?

      Silence. Mia turns round and looks out of her kitchen window.

      ‘Frase, are you OK?’

      ‘Yeah, I’m OK. Just look a bit like an old alky at the moment, bright red, fat nose …’

      She closes her eyes. Poor Frase.

      On the other end of the phone, Fraser is examining his face in Karen’s bathroom mirror. He looks dreadful; the bridge of his nose is so swollen that it’s closing up his eyes, so they’re piss holes in the snow, and he’s got a fat top lip.

      Karen is at the shop getting milk and more frozen peas. She has taken to her role as Florence Nightingale with gusto and has woken him up several times in the night to check for signs of concussion and to clear his nasal passages of dried blood, so that he is now exhausted, as well as injured.

      ‘I take it Karen is looking after you?’ says Mia.

      ‘Oh, yeah, not wanting on that front. Karen is looking after me.’

      ‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it? That’s really, really good. So um, what was the salsa class like?’

      ‘Yeah, great,’ says Fraser.

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