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He smiled at me with heavy-lidded eyes, put a glass of red wine in one of my hands, the TV remote in the other then disappeared back into the kitchen. If that wasn’t my most intense sexual fantasy, I didn’t know what was.
‘Her and me both,’ I said, setting down the remote and following him into the other room. ‘You were all right today, though? I’m sorry I didn’t text as much as I said I would. My phone wouldn’t turn on so I had to text from my laptop and—’
‘You sent thirty-seven texts,’ he replied, taking a sip from his own fingerprint-smudged glass. ‘How many times were you planning on sending?’
I shrugged, peering into a bubbling saucepan. Ooh, pasta. The deal for now was I would go to the office Monday to Thursday and work from home on Fridays. While he wasn’t away on tour, Alex would be home with Al Mondays and Tuesdays and the part-time nanny we shared with Sasha and Banks, a couple from my antenatal group, came by Wednesday and Thursdays so he could, in theory, get on with writing his new album.
In theory.
‘Did Graham come over?’
Alex shook his head and snatched his fingers back from the spitting pan.
‘He and Craig are gonna swing by tomorrow. We’ve gotta figure out the set, make more time to rehearse. It’s creeping up on us real fast, we’ve only got three weeks.’
In an attempt to get themselves back into the creative flow of things, the band had announced a hometown show, their first in more than a year, supposedly to try out new material. Only there was no new material. And the show was in less than three weeks. Unless Alex was planning on rocking out some adult-oriented rock covers of ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’, he definitely had an uphill struggle in front of him.
‘You look so good today.’ Alex tossed a tea towel over his shoulder and looked back at me. ‘Did you get your hair done or something?’
‘I washed it,’ I whispered brazenly. ‘And then I brushed it.’
‘That is so hot,’ he replied, leaning over to press his mouth against mine in a decadent red wine kiss. ‘You want to blow off dinner and go straight to bed?’
‘What’s for dinner?’ I asked, breathless from the kiss.
‘My celebrated spaghetti in sauce from a jar and pre-shredded cheese.’
It really was a difficult choice.
‘Will you still love me if I say dinner first and then bed?’
Alex took the spaghetti off the stove and dumped it into the colander that waited in the sink.
‘I would love you even more than ever,’ he replied, clearly relieved. ‘I didn’t sleep last night at all and with Al not taking a nap all day, I’m exhausted. I’m so tired I don’t even think I could get it up.’
‘Oh good,’ I muttered as I remembered I hadn’t shaved my legs in over a week. Because we hadn’t had sex in over a week. Or was it two weeks? Maybe more.
‘What’s up?’ Alex asked.
‘Nothing,’ I replied, replacing my frown with a grateful smile. ‘Hey, do you know what normcore means?’
Even though I’d always thought of myself as someone who prized sleep above almost everything else in life, ever since Alice came along, I had found myself awake at two thirty in the morning, right on the dot. Almost every night, I found myself lying in bed wide awake, even when Al slept straight through. Always looking for a silver lining, I tried to fill these weird little moments of me time with useful tasks, like watching YouTube videos and eating.
‘And then she called me normcore,’ I whispered into my headphones as I prowled around the kitchen, looking for snacks.
‘Well, I don’t know what that is but it doesn’t sound very nice,’ Louisa said, her lovely face looming large on my iPhone screen. ‘Tell her to sod off.’
My absolute favourite thing to do with this unwanted gift of useless time was to call one of my best humans in the UK and interrupt her breakfast routine. I watched over Louisa’s shoulder as my six-year-old goddaughter, Grace, merrily poured herself a red Le Creuset mixing bowl full of cereal behind her mother’s back.
‘Do you think my life has got boring?’ I asked, dreading the answer to my question. Louisa had known me forever and she wasn’t terribly good at sugarcoating.
‘If your life is boring, I should take myself down to the glue factory right now,’ she replied. ‘Listen to yourself, woman.’
‘I suppose you’re right.’ I opened the fridge and pouted at the miserable contents. I would not be reduced to eating a pouch of pureed baby food. Again. ‘My life is amazing. This is the first week I’ve felt like I’m getting myself back, you know? I actually feel like myself again.’
‘I remember trying to renew my passport when Grace was six months and Tim came home to find me sobbing on the settee,’ Lou replied. ‘I was so broken I couldn’t remember my middle name. You’re definitely doing better than me.’
‘I’m not completely on top of it,’ I admitted. ‘I’m knackered all the time and I can’t get through a full set of adverts without crying and I have to unfasten the top button on my jeans by lunchtime every day, but other than that, yeah, I think I’m there.’
‘I thought you said you’d lost all the baby weight?’
‘This body grew a baby and I will not be fat-shamed by you or anyone,’ I replied, trying to look as indignant as possible for someone who had already eaten three Penguin biscuits before calling. ‘And for your information, I did get rid of all the baby weight but I replaced it with Christmas weight and the pastries-from-the-new-coffee-shop-that-just-opened-round-the-corner weight. Plus, I feel like everything has moved. Pregnancy is rude, why couldn’t it put everything back where it found it?’
‘It’s all a matter of discipline, Ange,’ replied the woman who still weighed exactly the same as she did on her wedding day and tried on her wedding dress once a month, every month, to confirm it. ‘Just eat less and move more. Dead simple.’
I was about to give her my best snappy comeback when Gracie splashed an entire four pints of milk into her mixing bowl.
‘Does Gracie always make her own breakfast?’ I asked innocently.
Louisa glanced over her shoulder then immediately did a double take.
‘Oh, fuck,’ she grunted, dropping her phone on the kitchen table. I smiled happily at her faux gabled ceiling as the wailing started across the room.
‘I’m going to have to call you back,’ Lou said, her face sweeping across the screen. ‘There’s bloody Coco Pops everywhere.’
‘Wait, you said you wanted to ask me something,’ I reminded her. I’d woken up to several WhatsApp messages, which usually required me to find some bizarre toy like a WTF doll or some such shite that was already sold out in England – but such were the responsibilities of Cool Aunt Angela in America.
‘Honestly, I’d forget my head if it wasn’t screwed on,’ Louisa said while Gracie continued to wail in the background. ‘I’m coming to see you!’
‘You are?’ I opened the fridge and grabbed the pouch of baby food. ‘All of you?’
‘No, just me,’ she explained. ‘Tim and I were supposed to be off on a dirty weekend but he’s been pulled into a work conference. Figured I’d abuse his air miles and get some quality BFF time in.’
‘Sounds lovely,’ I replied. ‘Clearly Gracie can be left alone to look after herself.’
‘Grace is going on a pony camp with her friend Lily and her mummy,’