And then she’d refused to change.
It was inevitable really.
ShewasAngel Donkey.
He was no longer a costume.
Unwilling to ruin the last day of term for her, or her undoubted success in the play, Ben had gone along with the pretence and allowed her to wear Angel Donkey home—beAngel Donkey all the way home. She hadn’t been able to sit down in the car but had stood in the footwell behind the front seats, Angel Donkey’s head stuck out between them, still grinning, still suspiciously and disingenuously innocent. Ben, not especially imaginative himself, had been losing patience with the whole thing after watching Molly stand to eat her tea, so when she’d trotted (literally) to the TV room to watch a film standing up, he’d declared he’d had enough and had got up to sort it. This confrontation hadn’t gone well.
By the following morning, Angel Donkey had come to dominate the entire household. According to Molly, angel donkeys didn’t bathe or sleep and only ate carrots, although Sarah had insisted they did at least lie down on their sides at night—propped up with pillows if need be. Molly was four, so ablutions were done behind a locked door anyway, and no one could confirm one way or the other whether angel donkeys ever had such human frailties as needing to pee. But getting the donkey to wash was beyond any of them. Jenna had not helped the family attempts to normalise the situation, as the kitten had discovered a new and very convenient perch behind Molly on Angel Donkey’s rump. The little trio had become inseparable—Molly, Donkey and cat.
Needless to say,he’dfound all this so funny that Angel Donkey had quickly realised he had a fan, a supporter, a co-conspirator. Aleksey did not think it a good time to tell Ben about the knight’s helmet he’d fashioned for his suit of armour when he was eight. He’d found a tin bucket that fit over his head and had hammered out some eyeholes. But every time he’d got Nikolas to bash it with his sword, it had fallen off. Finally, he’d turned the handle into a closely fitting chin strap and after experimenting unsuccessfully and painfully with his welding equipment to get it to stay on, he’d finally used pop rivets, and this had worked magnificently. Except he’d forgotten to make a hole for his mouth, so he couldn’t eat. Which would have been fine on normal days, as Nina never fed him anyway, but she had just entered one of her manic cycles and had been baking all day. It was one of their worst battles, but he was a knight and he needed to be armoured. At the time, being only eight, he hadn’t worked out that he was arming himself against her. But perhaps she had, which is why she’d tried so hard to pull the bucket off him.
Either way, he wasn’t about to physically part Molly from Angel Donkey, despite that separation probably not requiring her to need stitches in her neck, which his tussle with Nina had done.
So, here they were, Christmas Eve, almost a week later, and still Molly had not washed, sat down comfortably, been picked up, or otherwise given up on her belief that she was now a donkey. And a divine one at that. She’d eaten nothing but carrots, despite Miles telling her, clearly with gritted teeth, that they didn’t have carrots in heaven andeveryoneknew angels ate sandwiches. It was a particularly bad time for Squeezy to have volunteered Tim for Molly duty, as Ben had pointed out to him the previous night. Neither a doctorate in philosophy nor a passion for animal rights had helped when it came to reasoning with Angel Donkey. Donkey had God on his side. Tim was now slumped in one of the armchairs which had been pulled around the fire, ignoring his boyfriend’s glee at his abject failure.
Jennifer did not strike Aleksey as the sort of woman who put up with nonsense from children. Or men, come to that. She didn’t have much imagination. And the reception of her gift of the dress obviously annoyed her. Clearly, little girls, in her opinion, should do as they were told.Hewas enjoying himself immensely now, although he suspected he would get it in the neck later from Ben, who had some justification for his belief that if they’d been consistent in their demands for Molly to lay Angel Donkey to rest for a while, she’d have wilted under their combined adult force. But, no, he had egged her on. Secretly, obviously. He wasn’t stupid.
But Jennifer turned out to be a more worthy opponent than he gave her credit for. Leaving the dress lying over the arm of the sofa next to her, she produced the next present from her bag. Angel Donkey took this and peeled off the pretty paper.
‘A book! Can I read it now?’
‘It’s not a book for reading, darling.’
Intrigued, Donkey opened the cover to the first page. Brows immediately creased very low, and Aleksey recognised a familiar chin wobble. This turned into a distressed pout with many glances between the dress and the picture. ‘Did you put it on me when I was asleep?’
Jennifer laughed. Ben slid off the sofa and knelt beside her. Donkey showed him the picture. Ben held it sohecould see as well. It was Molly, but obviously not her, as the little girl in the photo album was wearing the exquisite hand-embroidered dress. Suddenly, Ben’s breath caught, and he exclaimed with real wonder in his voice, ‘Kate? That’s Katie?’
Aleksey swivelled his eyes from the picture to Ben. He’d never heard Ben call her that before. It sounded shockingly intimate. For the first time ever it occurred to him that Ben had shared more with Kate than just sperm. It was ridiculous—he’d obviously known they’d dated. It was expressly why he’d broken them up in the first place: they had had a relationship, and he and Ben had not. Heknewthis. But he’d not given any consideration to whatrelationshipmeant, not really ever having experienced one of those. Now he knew the reality of that word—the little private things you shared with another person that defined intimacy.
Even during that last fateful night of exchanging bodily fluids, Ben andKatiehad possibly shared real intimacy—talk, laughter, thoughts…
Ben was holding the book so Molly could see once more.
Jennifer smiled at her granddaughter’s expression. ‘That’s Mummy, darling. It was her fifth birthday. We bought the dress in Venice. That’s a lovely place I will take you to one day.’
Ben was looking between the picture and his daughter. ‘Everyone says she looks just like me. But she doesn’t. She’s all Kate, isn’t she?’
Jennifer replied a little wistfully, ‘Well, she’s got your eyes, Ben.’
Molly suddenly jumped as if Angel Donkey had received an unfortunate cattle prod somewhere unmentionable. ‘Can I put the dress on, Grandma? Please? Emmy, come and help me. Will you take my photo, Daddy, so I look just like Mummy?’
And so Angel Donkey got his just deserts for the havoc he’d caused.
Aleksey picked him up from the floor and sat him on the sofa. He wasn’t looking so mischievous now. He too appeared to realise that being naughty for attention got you little more than stitches and tears.
Molly came back into the room transformed. Emilia had freed the little girl’s long dark tresses from their usual plaits, and she was carefully gliding along in her new dress. She sat next to Jennifer, Ben on the other side, and for the next hour or so they were all engrossed in the photo album of Kate’s childhood. Molly studied every picture with the intensity of one far older than her years. Every detail of her mother’s expressions or gestures she tried to copy. And then they came to the final picture. Suddenly, Ben leaned forward and cried, ‘Oh, my, God, that’s my Kawasaki.’
‘It’syou and Katherinetogether. The only one I’ve got of you both. She’d just met you.’ Jennifer sounded a little peeved.
‘Yeah, it was before we started officially dating. She liked the bike. I took her for a ride.’
Aleksey leaned a little closer as the thoughtI bet you didcrossed his mind, for although no one was bothering to show him the album, he was curious despite his better intentions not to be interested at all. Ben was sitting astride a green motorbike in familiar black leathers. Kate, also in black leather trousers, but with a white T-shirt, was leaning against the bike in front of him, her ankles casually crossed. They both looked incredibly young, only in their early twenties. They were both exceptionally good-looking.
‘MummyandDaddy.’ Molly seemed unable to compute the fact that her father had actually known her mother. Perhaps this was the first time it had occurred to her. Ben never talked about Kate with her except to tell her she was dead—in heaven, according to Molly’s version of this conversation. Given the guilt and self-recrimination Ben felt for the way Molly had been conceived, Aleksey thought it unlikely he would ever talk more to his daughter about her mother.
Staring morosely into the fire once more, missing his old recreational habits more acutely than he had done for many months, Aleksey’s phone buzzed with an incoming text. Ben, perhaps having felt his builders’ agony at being separated from their phones, and possibly realising being so cut off wasn’t very fatherly, had avowed he was going to sort the coverage issue, and apparently whatever had been done had worked. He heaved it out of his back pocket and frowned when he saw the name. He’d expected Phillipa, possibly Peyton. It was from the moron. He jerked his head back and glanced over at the idiot who was a few feet away, idly swinging his phone between two fingers.
