She took the mini cucumber from him and bit down on it, happily skipping along beside him. Her hair was in bunches that bounced as she moved.
“What was the best thing that happened today?” Tom asked, biting down on his own mini cucumber.
“Jack got a piece of Lego stuck up his nose,” she shouted. “He had to leave class.”
Tom nodded, his face serious. “That’s tough to beat.”
“Oh... and I got a star for good behavior,” she added casually as an afterthought.
“Yeah you did! What does that mean?”
She frowned up at him. “What do you mean?”
“Well what does a starmean?”
She shrugged. “It’s just a star.”
She ran ahead, catching up with a friend and forcing them to take an unwanted bite of her cucumber.Just a star.He was fairly sure that was an achievement worth shouting about, but perhaps at the age of six praise didn’t matter as much as someone with a piece of Lego in their nostril. There was a lesson in there somewhere. Probably.
They walked together to the dessert shop, conveniently placed at the end of the school road. Tom pretended to put up a fight about ordering the warm cookie dough with ice cream on top, then heroically conceded so long as he could share. He was trying really hard not to bring with him the negativity he’d developed throughout the day. It started off so well, after Daisy’s promise of help. For a few short minutes he’d been convinced he might get Sophie back, but then he’d found that photo of her and then listened to Ralph’s speech about Tina and he spiraled. Thankfully it put him in the right mood to take some very serious promo photos of Clive Owen clutching a bottle of Dior Homme as though it were the love of his life. Tom was thankful for that—that whatever was going on in his head, his work didn’t seem to suffer. He could still get the shots. He could, in fact, do it without even really thinking about it these days. He wasn’t sure that was good, long-term. He used to care about his work, in the same way he used to care about life.
“Why are you sad?” Martha asked as she sat opposite him, patiently waiting for her cookie dough. “Mummy says it’s impossible to be sad when the sun is shining.”
Tom stopped himself from rolling his eyes. “Your mummy is ever the optimist,” he said.
“What’s an opty-ist?”
“Optimist. It’s... probably the opposite of what your brother is right now. It’s someone who sees the good in everything.”
Martha scrunched up her face. “I don’t get it.”
“Exactly. Me neither.” Tom was pretty sure he used to be an optimist. He thought it was a permanent state of mind, but it turned out an optimist could very quickly become a pessimist when their life turned to shit.
“I saw a good thing today,” Martha said.
“Yeah? You mean the Lego nose?”
“No. Miss Knight wrote on the board and we saw the top of her underpants. They were white.”
Tom raised his eyebrows, raising them farther as the cookie dough was placed in front of them, with two spoons.
“Sounds like Miss Knight might need to invest in some high-waisted trousers. What are we doing after this? Pub... or monkey bars?”
“I did monkey bars with Mum and Sophie yesterday, so pub. Tom?”
“Yes,” he replied, swallowing down the mention of Sophie’s name. How close she’d been to him, only twenty-four hours earlier.
“Why don’t you and Sophie pick me up together anymore? Mummy told me not to ask. She said it might make you sad, but you’re already sad so I think I can ask.”
It was one of the many reasons he struggled with Laura. Fine she tiptoed around Martha—she was six years old and Laura had given birth to her, but she’d always tiptoed around him as well, ever since the first introduction when Tom had turned up expecting to meet someone very different. Someone more the age his mum would have been, if she hadn’t died. Back then it wasas though Laura tried to make up for being half his dad’s age by relentlessly proving how nice she was. Now she’d sort of given up on doing anything much at all when it came to him, leaving them to only really communicate when necessary, which suited Tom fine.
In the days after he saw Laura leaving their flat and then Sophie ended things, Tom had gone to stay at his dad’s place, not wanting to be there as Sophie moved herself out of both his flat and his life. As he lay in Martha’s top bunk, he could hear Laura whispering his name to his dad, while never once speaking to him directly. He understood it was awkward, because Laura had grown close to Sophie, but Tom resented her for that too. Like she chose a side before anyone knew there was a side to choose.
“Sophie has asked for a bit of time alone,” Tom explained. “But I’m working hard to change it.”
“Did you know, some animals live alone because it’s easier for them to survive and it keeps them more safe? Or sometimes they just prefer it that way. They like being alone. Like snakes. Ssssssss...” Martha waved her hand toward Tom’s face, stopping just in front of his nose. “Maybe Sophie is a snake.” She shrugged and walked off in the direction of the pub.
Chapter Seven
