LITMIR.BIZ

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never seems to be the time.

      ‘Are you worried?’ her friend Megan had asked her last week. They had been sitting outside Colours café, taking a break from their waitressing duties, huddled against the cold with a pair of creamy hot chocolates.

      ‘Am I worried?’ Ashley had repeated the question out loud, the words misting the January air.

      Megan had nodded, pushed her strawberry blonde hair behind her ears, tucked the ends underneath her purple wool hat.

      ‘About what?’ Ashley knew what her friend meant, had pretended not to.

      ‘Well, you know.’ To her credit, Megan had had the grace to look slightly uncomfortable. ‘Why do you think he’s staying late so much?’

      ‘He’s working, Megan,’ Ashley had told her, and they had finished their drinks in silence, drunk them too fast so that the cocoa burned the top of Ashley’s mouth and scorched the taste buds off her tongue. Megan had apologised later, put her arm around Ashley as they stood behind the counter together.

      ‘Ignore me,’ she said, ‘I haven’t had any faith in men since Simon left. James is one of the good ones. Don’t worry.’

      Ashley had squeezed her friend back, allowed herself the warm flood of relief. The feeling hadn’t lasted. The hot chocolate she’d had coated her mouth, she felt the thick sweetness of it on her tongue, looked down at herself in shame and felt the bulge of her stomach, the way it pressed against her jeans since having Holly. It never used to.

      In the kitchen, Ashley sets Holly down in her high chair, humming to her until she begins to quieten down. Holly’s chubby hands reach out for the wooden spoon on the work surface and Ashley hands it to her obligingly, closes her ears to the noise of the daily drumbeat beginning, the sound of her baby hitting the spoon on the table. She begins to sift through the pile of mail, catches the edge of her finger on an envelope and closes her eyes briefly as a slit appears in her flesh. She is so tired; as she squeezes her hand she thinks momentarily how nice it would be to sink onto the sofa and blot everything out, just for an hour, just for five minutes. Three children have knocked the wind completely out of her sails. She thinks of herself as a child, and wonders at how well behaved she was. She and Corinne were good as gold, would spend hours sitting cross-legged in front of the big doll house their dad had made, playing endless games of families in the light of the big French windows that overlooked their garden, the sprawling green jungle that was home for so many years.

      At fifteen, Ashley would never have spoken to her dad the way Lucy sometimes talks to James. She would never have wanted to let him down – the disappointment in his eyes if she came home with a less than perfect grade was always heartbreaking, though he’d always pull her into his arms and tell her it didn’t matter. By contrast, Lucy can be so insolent, the harsh words fly out of her mouth like bullets. She apologises, of course, most of the time. Ashley has seen her curl up next to James, rest her head against his shoulder, put on her pink piggy socks so that she looks like a ten-year-old again. With Ashley she is closed off, on guard. Perhaps it’s just a phase. Her friend Aoife’s daughter had come home the other night with a shoe missing, vomiting up vodka in horrible swirls of sick. At least they are not there yet.

      Ashley checks her watch. Ten to five. Her eyes meet Holly’s, as though her daughter will speak to her, will offer some advice. Instead she smiles, a big, round-cheeked smile that makes Ashley’s heart melt. Neither of them blink and the moment stretches out, and, just for a second, Ashley feels the rush of love, the energy she used to have. It is all worth it, the exhaustion, it is worth it for this. These moments. Then Holly’s eyelids swoop down to cover her eyes and the moment is gone, lost. The kitchen is humming with everything still to do. Ashley has to pick Lucy up from the school bus in ten minutes, which leaves her about forty-five seconds to spoon some coffee granules into her mouth. She doesn’t bother with the kettle and water ritual any more, there never seems to be time. Still, she’d never eat granules in front of James; it feels shameful, like a dirty secret. As she unscrews the jar of the coffee, the phone begins to ring; Ashley reaches for it automatically, using her other hand to dip a spoon into the brown granules.

      ‘Hello?’

      There is a silence on the other end of the line. Ashley listens, straining to hear. Being a mother always gives telephone calls a new level of anxiety: the children, the children, the children.

      ‘This is Ashley?’ she tries again but there is still nothing, just the steady sound of the house around her, the receiver pressed to her ear. Behind her, Holly gurgles, she hears the sound of a spoon hitting the floor. Ashley thinks of her husband, wonders where he is, who he is with, what he is doing right this second. There was a time when the only place he’d ever be was right next to her. She puts the phone down, crunches the coffee between her teeth. The taste is bitter in her mouth.

3

       London

       Corinne

      ‘Are you sure you’re going to be all right?’ Dominic calls from the kitchen. He is standing at the sink, eating a plum for breakfast. The juice drips down his fingers, yellow rivulets running into the silver basin. I reach for my hand cream, rub it into the crevices of my palms, inhale the soft sweet smell of it.

      ‘Yes. Yes, Dom, of course.’

      ‘And you’re going to the gallery today? D’you feel up to it?’

      ‘Of course. Dominic, I’m not ill.’

      He turns on the tap, rinses his fingers and shakes them dry. ‘OK. Sorry. So we’ll meet after work at the clinic, yes?’

      I nod, he reaches for me and I lean forward to kiss him. He’s dressed for work and he smells lovely; clean and fresh.

      ‘Yes, sounds good. What are you working on at the paper today?’

      He sighs. ‘Alison’s really on my case at the moment. She’s insisting I get on with the Carlington House piece, says she’s being hassled a lot by the owner. Cool place though, didn’t you think?’

      I stare at him. ‘I thought it was kind of scary.’

      Dominic smiles. ‘Maybe a bit creepy. Weird to think of it abandoned for so long. I’m hoping there’ll be time to start writing it up today. I’ve got a bit of a backlog at the moment, what with . . .’ He tails off.

      I feel a flash of guilt. ‘I know, time off. I’m sorry, I’m OK today. Promise!’

      He shakes his head, folds his arms around me again, even though the clock is now showing nearly a quarter to eight and he’s going to be late.

      ‘Don’t ever apologise to me, Corinne,’ he says, the words urgent in my ear, his breath warm on my cheek.

      We straighten up. There is a loud banging sound upstairs, the familiar noise of an electric drill gearing up. The people above us are extending their flat, I don’t know what they’re doing up there, they’ve been messing around for weeks.

      ‘The fun continues,’ Dominic says, rolling his eyes at me. ‘I wonder whether they’ll ever actually complete?’

      ‘Go, go!’ I say, and I adjust his blue tie, touch his chest. I don’t really want him to, I don’t want him to leave me on my own. He picks up a cooling cup of coffee from the counter, drains it and leaves the flat; the door bounces noisily on the hinges behind him as it always does, far too loud. The neighbours have complained several times, we ought to fix it.

      After he’s gone, I go back into our bedroom. I’ve got to get better at being by myself. My dad used to say being able to be alone is a skill; he told me his alone time was precious to him, something he cultivated in spite of all the parties and the attention, the people who wanted to know his name, where he got his ideas from, what project he was working on next. We used to have a photo of him propped up on the windowsill in the dining room – in it he’s surrounded by people, his dark eyes flashing. He looks like he’s in his

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