Page 71 of We All Live Here
And then, just like that, things are fine between them. She thanks him again for the trip, and climbs out.
“I’ll charge your car battery Monday when I come,” he calls through the window, one arm lifted in salute. And then he drives away.
Hey Bella. Hopeyour day is going well x
Not bad thanks! Usual chaos. How are you? X
So-so. Lennie struggling a bit this week. Missing her mum and can’t remember her lines for the school play so that’s my job in the evenings. But we’re basically doing okay x
Glad to hear it. Do you fancy another drink some time? X
Love to, Bellissima. Missed you at the school gates x
She cannot work out whether Gabriel Mallory is chaotic, a bit vague, or just still grieving his late wife to a debilitating degree. He is charming and attentive, but frustratingly hard to pin down to actual dates. When they had finally agreed on one, he canceled at the last minute due to a work meeting. On the flip side he calls her every other evening or so, and they usually talk for a delicious half-hour, or until Lennie summons him from upstairs and he has to go. The conversations are lovely, full of tales of his work, his difficult clients, what he is watching on television, and sometimes how he is feeling. He is always careful to ask after her, how she is, what is happening in her world. He is drily funny, his voice soft and intimate, tells her that nobody makes him laugh as much as she does. He is the absolute opposite of Dan: when he’s talking to her he makes her feel that nobody in the world is more important. She confides in him when she’s feeling sad, when she’s frustrated by the girls, her fury at her dealings with her ex-husband, and he always knows the right thing to say to make her feel better (usually something along the lines of Dan is an idiot, he’ll regret what he did, she’s better off without him, she’s doing amazingly). She comes off the phone glowing, his compliments ringing in her ears.
Sometimes she thinks about his dead wife, how awful it would have been to lose a partner. If you had been wounded that badly you wouldn’t want to jump straight into a different relationship, would you? You’d be cautious, a little wary. Lila tries to be accommodating of this state of mind and doesn’t push for clarification. Things will pan out as they pan out, she tells herself. And tries not to check her phone twenty-nine times an hour.
One afternoon, the previous week, he had called her, flustered, and said his mother was stuck on the other side of London and his babysitter couldn’t pick Lennie up: could she possibly help him out? She had collected Lennie with quiet pleasure, noting how the gaggle of school mums registered with pointed glances the extra child in her care, and whom she belonged to. She’s pretty sure Lennie has never been to any oftheirhouses. When they had arrived home, and once the girls were settled in front of the television, she had raced upstairs to check her makeup and tried to work out whether there was enough food to invite him to stay for supper. She had gone twice around the living room and kitchen, trying to make it look a little more stylish, a little less of an insane mismatch between two determinedly different old men and two young girls. She had shut Truant into her bedroom, so that Gabriel wouldn’t be put off by a swivel-eyed barking dog. She had squirted room spray in every corner, hoping to make her house feel pleasant and welcoming. But he had arrived at the door at a quarter past six, told her, distractedly, that he had to race off for a Zoom meeting, and after effusive thanks—You’re a lifesaver. Thank you so, so much—had kissed her cheek and left her standing on the doorstep as he and his daughter jogged down the road with barely a backward wave.
•••
Gene is anxiousabout filming tomorrow, his anxiety manifesting itself in an almost manic need to recite his lines repeatedly, talk, tell jokes, or just be in front of an audience. Even Truant has slunk off to bed, exhausted by the attention. So Lila takes Gene on the school run. Her motivation is not entirely altruistic: since her last conversation with Dan she has felt slightly nervous about the possibility of him turning up, or whether Marja will have reported what happened between them to the other mothers. The school playground can feel gladiatorial at the best of times and it helps to go in armed with another person. Plus Geneloves a potential audience: she feels him straighten up slightly as soon as he spots the clusters of women, his eyes already scanning their faces to see who might have recognized him.
“So this is where you come every day, huh?”
“Yup.” Lila briefly catches Marja’s eye as they pass her, and both women look away.
A small part of her knows she might have been a little childish and mean to throw away the baby things, but another part of her is still yelling silently that it’s utterly unfair to have to give the items you bought for your precious family to your husband’s mistress for his new baby. This is what she keeps telling herself in the moments when she feels uncomfortable about it.
Gene, she notes, as they settle into Gabriel’s corner, has already been spotted. She had been spared this experience for most of her life having grown up on a different continent from her father, but since he has been living with her she has become aware of the little frisson that passes through a certain age demographic when he passes—a sort of double-take, followed by a frown, or a smile, a mutteredIs that the guy from…Eyebrows furrow, little flickers of recognition…Gene, for whom this is his lifeblood, loves it. He seems to feel that any day in which he is not recognized is a day wasted.
It takes all of three minutes before one of them sidles up, a mousy-haired woman whose name Lila can never remember. She is always accompanied by a buggy with a mute, bottle-sucking child inside, almost obscured by the hood of a padded anorak. “Hi, Lila,” she says, looking straight past Lila. “Um…I’m sorry to interrupt but I have to ask, were you the actor in…” The woman is gazing at Gene, her smile half hopeful. “I mean you just look so like—”
Gene steps forward, cutting her off. “Star Squadron Zero. Yes, ma’am. Captain Troy Strang, reporting for intergalactic duty.” He salutes, then holds out a hand for her to shake.
As she takes it, her face lights up. “Oh, my goodness! It is you! I loved watching your show when I was little. My mum had such a crush on you!”
Gene beams. “How about that! Please give her my best.”
“Oh, could you sign something for her? It would make her day.” She starts rummaging in the back of the buggy and eventually pulls out an envelope. “Honestly, we even had one of your calendars up in our kitchen. She used to say she had a different Captain Strang for every month!” Gene, it turns out, despite his chaotic habits, is never without an autographing pen. He scribbles a message, checking the spelling of the woman’s name, asking polite questions about her, her health, how she’s doing. As they pose for a selfie together—“Oh, my goodness, she is not going to believe this! Captain Troy Strang in our playground!”—a few other mothers, emboldened, trickle over, bearing phones or bits of paper. Lila notes with mild irritation that Marja is among them. She is walking with the gait of a heavily pregnant woman now, her pelvis rocking slightly as she moves, one hand unconsciously supporting herself as she approaches.
“It’s Troy Strang! Captain Troy!” the woman is saying, and suddenly Gene is in the midst of a hubbub, Lila pushed gradually to its edge, watching as her father signs and poses, his manner garrulous and charismatic, his smile as wide as a mile. “No,” he is saying. “No plans to bring it back just now. But we’re working on it!” and “Yes, Lila’s my daughter. You didn’t know? Well, I had to spend a lot of time away filming…We’re just loving hanging out again.” It’s all Lila can do not to roll her eyes.
“And who are you?” he says, readying his pen as Philippa Graham rummages through her handbag. “Oh, I can’t find any paper. Do Marja first,” Philippa says, her head down as she searches. Marja steps forward, cautiously, holding out a tiny notebook.
“Marja?” says Gene, becoming suddenly still. He glances at Lila, searching her out above the other heads. “TheMarja?”
There is a sudden hush. A few mothers exchange glances.
There is nothing for it. Lila nods.
Gene looks her up and down. “So you’re Marja. Huh. I guess you guys have worked your stuff out, if you have to see each other here every day.” His smile has vanished, and he keeps his eyes on Marja as if assessing her.
Lila and Marja exchange quick, embarrassed glances. “Um. Not really,” says Lila, after a beat.
“What do you mean, not really?”
A couple of mothers drift away awkwardly. “We—we haven’t actually spoken. Since Dan…” Lila feels herself color, unsure why this is making her so uncomfortable. She stares at the school door, willing the children to be let out. Willing this to end.
