He sounds cold. Distant. I stroke Spud, look out of the window; anything to suggest I’m not listening or interested in their domestic life.
‘Can we not argue about this right now?’ Ward is tapping one foot on the floor repeatedly. ‘Later, OK?’ He’s fighting to keep his voice calm.
After the call ends, I say, ‘I’m so sorry, I forgot to…’
‘It’s fine.’
‘What with…’
‘January, it’s fine.’ Ward chucks his mobile into his briefcase, snapping the lid shut with unnecessary force. ‘By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask how that weekend went, meeting the new girlfriend?’ he says, his mind clearly still on Marina. I imagine they are going to have an enormous row when he gets home. Has he had an affair? I picture her cutting up his suits and flinging his belongings out of a window.
‘It was fine.’ That weekend was over two weeks ago.
He looks at me, almost smiles. ‘Fine never means fine, does it?’
‘She was lovely,’ I concede.
Isla had come home saying she’d had the best time ever. ‘She’s so much fun, Mummy, you’d really like her.’ They had experimented with hairstyles on one another, Isla showing me the evidence on her mobile. After swimming they’d baked some custard tarts and Fiona had packaged the remaining uneaten ones beautifully in a lined box for Isla to take home. Isla had discovered she’d been seeing Dad for over a year. Dan has told me that he’s going to ask Fiona to move in with him, assuring me that it won’t make any difference to our routine. He still wants Isla every other weekend.
‘Must be hard,’ Ward says, reading my mind. ‘You want Isla to get on with her, but at the same time there’s this part of you that hopes she looks like Shrek.’
I sigh with relief. ‘Exactly. Silly, really.’
‘Human.’
‘Pull in anywhere here, thanks,’ I say to the cab driver.
‘It’s been a good day,’ Ward says, reaching across me to open the door, and I catch the scent of lemon and basil mixed with beer, strangely seductive. I stop when I see her face at the window.
‘That must be Isla,’ Ward says.
She waves at us. ‘Here,’ I say, offering Ward some money and wanting to get inside quickly. He refuses my change. Just as the taxi is about to pull away the front door swings open and Isla sways towards us carrying a plate laden with cupcakes. I glance at Ward aware he has noticed the way she walks.
‘Look, Mum.’ Ruki follows, her blonde hair pinned up and she’s wearing a miniskirt with wedge espadrilles. She tells Isla to be careful not to trip, ‘We’ve already had one disaster today.’
‘I fell over in the kitchen, Mum,’ Isla says, ‘when I was pulling the cakes out of the oven.’ She laughs and taps Ward’s window, offering him a cake. Surprised, Ward opens the door. I introduce them. Isla hunches her shoulders, tilts her head to one side. ‘You’re the bossy boss.’ She giggles.
‘Isla!’ Ruki and I say at the same time.
Ward, clearly intrigued by her, says, ‘That’s probably a polite way of putting it.’
Isla thrusts the plate at him. ‘They dropped on the floor but they still taste fine.’
‘Fine never means fine, does it?’ I mutter his way. Trying not to laugh he makes delicious sounding noises before he watches Isla stagger round to the driver’s window, offering him one too. ‘They’re lemon and cream.’
‘That’s your tip,’ Ward tells the driver, still watching Isla carefully before his gaze returns to me as if to say, ‘You didn’t tell me…?’
As Isla and I walk back inside, I sense Ward watching us as the cab pulls away. I feel as if he has peeled off a layer of my private life, a layer I wasn’t ready to show him yet, if at all. I don’t want him to feel sorry for me; think of me as this single mum raising a child with a disability. I don’t want to imagine him going home and saying to his wife, ‘Poor woman, her parents died, she was raised by her flower-mad grannyandher kid can’t walk properly. Our problems don’t seem nearly so bad anymore.’ I used to hate that. Nursery mothers saying that whenever they had a bad day they only had to think of Isla and me. I told Lizzie that if she ever said that I’d slap her. I’ve never sought pity; I don’t need any. Isla makes me so happy. Islaishappy.
‘She made them all on her own,’ says Ruki. ‘Isla is the next Mary Berry.’
‘Are you proud of me, Mum?’ Isla may be eleven but she hasn’t lost that yearning to seek approval. Do we ever lose it?
‘Very proud.’ I wrap an arm around her shoulder, before grabbing the biggest cake off the plate and taking an enormous mouthful, making all of us laugh.
Late that night I’m still tossing and turning, sleep seeming an impossible goal to reach. I’m thinking about Ward’s surprised face as he said hello to Isla. Next my mind is taking me back to when I was twenty-seven. Isla was three. ‘What are you doing?’ I’d asked Lizzie. I was going out on a date that night and we were in my sitting room, Lizzie piling bags and a rucksack on to my back and shoulders. ‘Feel all this weight, right?’
‘I can’t move.’
