‘Hang on a sec. Marisa, sorry but do you know where my trainers are?’
Kate wasn’t sure why she was always apologising to her. She was so worried about putting a foot wrong.
‘Yes, I kept tripping over them so I put them in the cupboard under the stairs.’
‘Oh, OK.’
Marisa smiled at her, guilelessly. Her golden hair was lit from the landing window behind her, the sun encircling her head, halo-like. Marisa stood like this for several seconds, smiling at Kate, her eyes wide, her feet planted firmly, hip-width apart. Kate got the distinct impression that she was being challenged, but wasn’t sure why.
‘Thanks,’ Kate said, eventually, hating herself for her own cowardice. I could have just said I like having my trainers there, she thought as she took her coat off. Why didn’t I do that? But for all her hippyish appearance and unbrushed hair and baggy artists’ overalls, Marisa could be intimidating. It wasn’t that she was scary, exactly. It was more that you could never predict what she was thinking or how she would react.
Time passed. Kate didn’t talk to Jake about it because, after all, it had been her idea for Marisa to move in and she felt she was making too much of relatively trivial things. She blamed her heightened sensitivity on the situation, and was sure that her own thinking was clouded by the stress of this unconventional triangulation. So Kate stayed quiet, admonished herself for being unreasonable and simply fished out her trainers from under the stairs and her favourite coffee cup from the back of the cupboard each morning until it became an automatic reflex.
Then Marisa started to cook for them. Kate had tried to dissuade her because, as much as she liked Marisa’s company, she didn’t particularly want her there every single mealtime. Marisa said it was no trouble and when Jake mentioned in passing that he used to like his mother’s macaroni cheese, Marisa took it upon herself to make it.
‘My macaroni cheese is legendary,’ she said airily. ‘Trust me.’
When they had first met, Kate had been attracted to Marisa’s sense of self. Now she wondered whether there wasn’t a degree of over-confidence there. Occasionally, when talking about her work, she would refer to herself in grandiose terms as ‘an artist who works in paint and other media’, and Kate felt this was a bit of an exaggeration given that she illustrated twee little children’s books and got most of her orders from parents sliding into her Instagram DMs. Kate had seen a couple of them, and the fairytales consisted of simple pictures and plot lines. To Kate’s untrained eye, all the children looked similar. Jake had been more polite, asking Marisa questions about how she painted hair and what colours would she mix to get this particular skin tone and so on.
‘You’ll have to do one for our baby, when it arrives!’ he said, cheerily.
‘I’d love that,’ Marisa replied.
The macaroni cheese, when it came, was very good. This was another thing that irked her: Kate thought of cooking as her domain and Jake complimented her on her ability to rustle up a delicious meal from any random leftovers, but now Marisa was stealing her thunder.
‘Mmm, this is so good,’ Jake said, eating laden forkfuls of the pasta.
‘It’s the lardons,’ Marisa said. ‘That, and four different types of cheese.’
Kate noticed that Marisa directed all of her comments exclusively towards Jake, as if Kate wasn’t there. Again, she told herself she was reading too much into it. It was a delicate situation, after all. Kate was having to hand over the conception of her own child to this younger, more fertile woman. It made sense that she sought to stake a claim to the things she could achieve; to own the tasks she was good at.
‘It’s yummy,’ Kate said, even though she thought the macaroni cheese was overly rich for her tastes. ‘Thank you.’
Marisa smiled.
Jake, his plate now empty, leaned back in his chair and happily surveyed the scene in front of him.
‘I can’t wait to have a baby,’ he said out of the blue. ‘I know that sounds weird.’
Kate met his eye and winked at him. Under the table, she reached for his knee.
‘It doesn’t,’ Marisa said. ‘Why would it?’
‘Blokes aren’t meant to say stuff like that.’
‘That’s silly.’
Marisa propped her elbows up on the table, resting her head in her hands. The V-neck of her T-shirt gaped open, revealing the top of her cleavage. Kate was so close she could see Marisa’s tan line left over from holiday sunbathing, the flesh turning white just above where her nipple would be.
‘I can’t wait either,’ Marisa said, ‘and I don’t care if that makes me sound weird.’
She giggled. Kate looked at her. The way Marisa had spoken felt so possessive, so nonchalant, as if this experience were hers to own, when it wasn’t. It was theirs.
‘We appreciate what you’re doing for us, Marisa,’ Kate said, making the point.
Marisa, who had been turned towards Jake, acknowledged Kate with a slight tilt of the head in her direction. The atmosphere was heavy and Kate, feeling the oppressive weight of all that was happening between the three of them, said briskly, ‘It’s going to be great,’ and got up to start clearing the plates.
In bed that night, Kate rolled across the mattress and slotted herself against Jake’s back, wrapping her arms around his waist. He placed his hand over hers and they twisted their legs together. She pressed her face into the nape of his neck, feeling the softest part of his hair tickle her mouth.
