LITMIR.BIZ

      ONE

       6 March 2008

       Williamson’s Park, Lancaster

      Mia put the brake on the buggy, walked around the front and checked on Billy. Thank God for that, finally he was asleep. His fat little cheeks red with cold, a puddle of drool collected in his chin.

      With any luck, she might have time for a cheeky half outside the Sun on the way back home. It was her best friend’s birthday after all and, ‘be rude not to, Woodhouse, be rude not to …’ She knew what her best friend would have to say about that.

      ‘Hi, Liv.’

      Mia took off her rucksack, sat down on the bench and took in the view for a second, once again congratulating herself on finding this corker of a spot, Ashton Memorial white and gleaming in the sun, like a provincial version of the Taj Mahal. The whole of the city laid out below; the River Lune a snaking, silver ribbon through the middle of it all and, in the distance, the Lakeland hills. She often thought they looked like big hairy mammoths from some ancient land.

      She took the pint glass and bottle of water out of the rucksack and the tulips from the Morrisons bag. She set the glass down on the floor, poured in the water and tried to arrange the yellow flowers. She tutted at herself for not thinking to bring scissors, since the stalks were too long and so they didn’t sit in the glass at all, but splayed all over the place, most of them toppling out onto the grass.

      She leant back on the bench and looked at them.

      ‘Well that looks shit, doesn’t it?’ Then she laughed, mainly at the predictability of it all. Where was Olivia Jenkins when you needed flowers arranging?

      Mia moved right to the other end of the bench so she was nowhere near the buggy and took the packet of Golden Virginia and the Rizlas out of her jacket pocket. She pulled her hoodie over her knees – bloody hell it was freezing, why hadn’t she worn a coat?

      She was often doing this of late, already being out somewhere before realizing she was wearing completely inappropriate clothes for the weather. Last week, she’d looked down in the Post Office to see she was wearing odd shoes.

      She rolled a cigarette, glanced at the back of the buggy, felt a slight tug of guilt but pressed on. ‘Must press on!’ as Olivia would say. Frankly, what with Billy’s fascist policy regarding sleep lately (i.e. allowing her to have none, ever), it was either the odd fag to keep her sane, or adoption. Put like that, she felt much better and lit it.

      ‘So it’s your birthday today, Olivia Jenkins. Happy bloody Birthday.’

      She blew the smoke up into the clear March sky, which seemed to hum, it was so cold.

      ‘Now, I know what you’re going to say. You should be ashamed of yourself, Mia Woodhouse, smoking now you’re supposed to be a responsible mother. But honestly, Liv, after the week I’ve had with David Blaine over there – the baby that resists sleep for so long, he should do a show so people could come and watch – you’d let me off. And actually I can now inform you with confidence …’ she inhaled enthusiastically … ‘this is what you would, at one time, have called a twenty-quid fag.’

      She laughed, then began to cry when with no warning whatsoever – this was also happening more often of late – she had a sudden memory: Liv, lying on Fraser on the beach in Ibiza, topped by that ridiculous visor she’d insisted on wearing for the whole fortnight, so she looked like an OAP from Florida, coming out with just that: ‘Twenty-quid fag, this.’ A fag so good she’d pay twenty quid for it.

      Everyone had laughed and laughed.

      ‘D’you remember how you always used to say that, Liv?

      ‘Anyway, I’ve got news on that front.’ She pulled herself together. It could easily go one of two ways up here, especially when she was suffering from acute sleep deprivation and she wanted to keep it light and entertaining. It was Liv’s birthday, after all. ‘Fraser’s given up! Would you believe it? I’d be happy for him if he wasn’t so smug. Honestly, it’s killing me. The other day, he called me at seven a.m. – just as Billy had gone back off to sleep; I could have murdered him had he not been two hundred and fifty miles away – to say, “Guess where I am? Go on, guess, guess!”

      ‘I was like, “Dunno, a police station? The zoo? Buckingham Palace?” And he was like, “No. Hampstead Heath.”

      ‘And so I said, “Oh, well done. So clearly you haven’t been to bed yet after some brilliant night out and are just ringing to nauseate me. That’s not very nice.” But he said, “No. I’m at Hampstead Heath Running Track.” Then he said it again, just in case I hadn’t heard: “RUN-NING TRACK. I’ve just been for a RUN.”

      ‘He didn’t sound very out of breath, which I pointed out, and then he hit me with it: “Ah, but then I wouldn’t be, would I? Because I’ve given up smoking. Three weeks, and five days!”

      ‘Which turned out to be the real reason he was calling me at that hour.’

      ‘Like I said, just unbearable. Horribly, horribly smug. It was all I could do not to be sick in a bag.’

      ‘So that’s Fraser.’

      She looked around just to check she was alone. She had to admit, she did feel moronic on occasions, sitting here, talking to herself. But it was the only real place she had to come – a place that was Liv’s (unless she wanted to traipse all the way to the cemetery in Peterborough every month. She knew what Liv would have to say about that too.) She also knew, if this were the

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