Page 75 of Days You Were Mine

We prop him up against the pillows and he reaches out for his bottle, snatching it rudely and shoving it into his mouth, a daily gesture we still find amusing. He guzzles with that fixated gaze of his, as if we starve him and this is his first bottle of milk in days.

‘Tea?’ Hannah says, kneeling up in my Cult T-shirt and looking heart-achingly lovely with her flushed, healthy skin, her smile, her wild bedhead hair.

‘Hannah?’ I say, full of the moment, and she looks at me, still smiling.

There are so many impulsive things I might say. ‘Marry me’ pops into my head on a regular basis, but Hannah has her own unswerving beliefs on that score. Marriage is more likely to lead to a break-up, she says, though she has no statistics to back this up. It’s just her hunch, her distrust of anything official; she, always, the Cornish hippy at heart.

I settle for ‘I couldn’t love you more,’ and she laughs and blows me a kiss.

‘Ditto, you ridiculous man. Luke?’

Her hesitation is enough; I know what she is going to say.

‘Are you feeling OK?’

I shrug. ‘Yes and no.’

Last night, when I recounted the shocking revelation that Rick isn’t my father, Hannah burst into tears. I think she is beginning to realise that I might have been right about Alice all along, and for once she is on my side, not hers.

‘But it’s the weekend,’ I say, accepting my mug of tea. ‘Let’s have a break from talking about Alice.’

We drink our tea reading Hannah’s review of a new play at the Donmar Warehouse; second reading for me, twentieth for her as she checks for any last-minute subbing catastrophes, that inveterate ability to exchange lyricism for flat, joyless accuracy.

When Samuel finishes his bottle, he flings it across the bed like a despot.

‘Looks like breakfast is over,’ Hannah says.

We plan our day while we shower, dress and pack up the despot’s essentials – more milk, a miniature pot of frozen puréed pear, the plastic set of keys he loves, his cross-eyed bear. Coffee first at the North St Deli, which has a little garden in the back, then a walk around the common, stopping off at theplayground for half an hour or so on the swings. We’ll buy lamb steaks from the butcher for dinner and a bottle of our favourite wine from Oddbins, and by the time we get home, Samuel will have fallen asleep and we’ll allow him to snooze in the buggy while we nip upstairs for a little siesta ourselves.

The thought of this siesta, which might last an hour and a half if we’re lucky, permission for the kind of slow, elongated sex of before, gives both of us a glow. I press my lips against the inside of Hannah’s wrist and she exhales in that way she has, telling me everything I need to know. I like the silent, shared programming of sex; it has its own eroticism. No, we can’t fall into bed whenever we want to, leaving theatres and catching cabs on nothing more than a shared glance or a whispered desire as in the old days. But we can look forward to it for several hours, allowing the moment between us to build and build.

Hand in hand we walk through our neighbourhood, where our long summer of heat has forced the trees into a premature burn of red and gold, with the occasional shock of canary yellow. When Samuel is older, he’ll leap in the air to catch a falling leaf, and we’ll tell him to make a wish. In Larkhall Rise, we admire, as always, the tall grandeur of the four terraced houses, each one three storeys with a generous slash of garden at the back. We notice how the last one, the shabbiest, which we had earmarked for our future, has a For Sale sign, and we forecast how there will soon be a couple of bankers in it, Farrow & Balling their front door, and putting out planters with miniatures trees like a couple of full stops.

By the time we reach the deli it’s almost eleven o’clock and my head is beginning to ache a little without its early-morning injection of coffee.

We never come to the North St Deli, although our friends rave about it. Hannah is a sucker for the vintage china, loose-leaftea and chocolate eclairs of the French Café on the high street. So it’s a surprise when the owner rushes forwards to greet us.

‘Ciao,’ he says. ‘You’ve brought my favourite baby. I don’t normally see him at the weekend.’

We’re both smiling, ready to explain, when the man crouches down to Samuel’s level.

‘Ciao, Charlie, where’s your beautiful mamma today?’

The moment stills, the air freezes; there are whole seconds before either of us reacts.

‘Did you call him Charlie?’ Hannah says, and her voice is harsh and un-Hannah-ish.

‘Yes, it’s Charlie, I know him very well.’

The man stands up and holds out a hand for us to shake.

‘I’m Stefano,’ he says. ‘His mamma Alice is a friend of mine; she comes here every day.’

What to do with this information? My beautiful trusting girl: I see first shock, then horror flashing into her eyes as she registers the full repercussions of this.

I say, ‘Alice is his au pair. I’m not sure why she’s allowed you to think she’s his mother.’ My voice doesn’t sound much like me either, gruff, macho, unfriendly. In any other circumstances I’d be ashamed of our rudeness.

‘There is some mistake?’ says Stefano, confused but wary. ‘Would you like some coffee? Some cake? We have a lovely little garden in the back.’

---