I came home to a candlelit dinner – which was unexpected.
Beverley had cleared all her coursework off the gateleg table in the living room and laid it out with napkins, two types of knife and fork, the china plates that Tyburn had given her for her birthday and had stayed in their box since then and, of course, a pair of candles mounted in carved wooden candlesticks.
Beverley hustled out of the kitchen with her hair wrapped in a scarf and wearing one of my barbecue aprons over the bulge. She shooed me back into the living room – claiming that she didn’t want to spoil the surprise. More likely, she didn’t want me to see that she’d managed to use every single pot and pan we owned, as well as spreading a fine layer of ingredients over every single flat surface. Including the pages of whatever cookery book she happened to be using.
‘It occurred to me,’ she said as she thrust a bottle of Special Brew into my hands, ‘that I hadn’t cooked you a dinner for a while.’
‘You did beans on toast last week,’ I said, and then wished I hadn’t when Beverley scowled at me. ‘It was very nice beans on toast – you added butter to the beans and everything.’
Which went down as well you might expect.
I went to have a shower and change. As soon as word got around that Bev was pregnant I’d received a lot of unasked-for advice – much of it from people who’d only ever experienced the process from the inside. But amongst all the things I’d been warned to expect – food cravings, mood swings and visits from earlier incarnations – dinner for two had not featured.
Since Bev was making an effort, I dressed smart casual and stayed calm when the kitchen smoke alarm sounded. I heard Bev swearing, the back door opening and then the smoke alarm’s ear-splitting pips doppler down the length of the garden, followed by a crack as it hit a planter and went silent.
Beverley once extinguished a five-appliance fire at Covent Garden. She did it in under sixty seconds while me and a terrified German family watched. Apparently she got a bollocking from her older sisters Tyburn and Fleet, but I always got the impression they were secretly proud of her.
She still gets Christmas cards from the German family.
I didn’t know what she was cooking but it smelt good.
It was good, cajun steak with butter, and much better than I would have made. I’m a utilitarian cook, bish-bash-bosh meals made with minimum fuss. And presentation … what’s that?
Beverley had taken the opportunity to slice the steak, rare enough to send to a vet, rub in spices and then marinated it in a butter peppercorn sauce. It was hot enough that neither of us felt the need to break out the Tan Rosie’s hot sauce – actually I wouldn’t have suggested that anyway, because I don’t have a death wish.
‘We should go,’ I said after I’d chased the last slice around the plate.
‘Go where?’ asked Beverley, and burped loudly. She leant back in her chair and folded her hands on the bulge.
‘New Orleans,’ I said and belched back. ‘Go pay our respects to the Mississippi – see if anyone’s at home. Sample some cooking – listen to some jazz.’
‘You don’t like jazz,’ said Beverley.
‘I don’t mind the old-fashioned stuff – in the right venue.’
‘What if the twins don’t like jazz?’
‘We could take Abigail to help with the twins.’
‘Oh yeah, because that’s not a recipe for disaster in any way whatsoever.’
‘Or something,’ I said.
‘You know I appreciate you don’t bring your work home,’ she said. ‘But what the fuck is going on?’
I sighed and cleared the plates. We were having fruit for pudding – which was just as well because I didn’t think the kitchen could have survived anything more complicated. I brought out the fruit bowl, another Special Brew for me, and the jug of tomato juice that had been chilling in the fridge for Bev.
‘It’s not work,’ I said. ‘Not exactly anyway. It’s about aliens.’
Beverley gave me an incredulous look and started to laugh.
‘You think aliens are funny?’
‘Yes, no, maybe,’ she said. ‘But that’s not why I’m laughing. I was expecting a different conversation, that’s all. Aliens, right. What about them?’
‘If we define “alien” as something that has evolved separately from earth’s biosphere,’ I said, ‘rather than grey guys in flying saucers, do you think it’s possible something like that might be active here, right now?’
‘“Here” meaning London?’
‘“Here” meaning the world.’
‘What brought this on?’
Standing in a room where a mechanical computer did weird shit to the fabric of space-time and thinking, just for a moment, that something huge and alien was looking at me.
Before we blew it up.
And today a little girl was adamant she’d seen an alien visiting David Moore’s house and I’d dismissed it as a modern interpretation of the ordinary supernatural. But should I have?
And when did the supernatural become so ordinary?
‘The whales think there’s something living in the North Sea,’ said Beverley. ‘But it might be a giant squid.’
I’d seen Beverley talking to whales before, or rather shouting at them in an attempt to warn a pair of bottlenose whales from swimming too far up the Thames and getting themselves stranded. When I asked why the pair wanted to swim up the river, Bev said they were looking to launch a social media career. But I don’t think she was serious.
‘Aren’t they sure about whatever it is in the North Sea?’ I asked, because I figured if anyone would know what was lurking under the sea it would be the whales.
‘They might be,’ said Beverley. ‘But my spoken whale is not that brilliant. I’m mostly limited to basic noun–verb combinations – “food here” “danger there”. Abstract concepts like “alien” and “non-alien” are a bit beyond me. And that’s assuming a non-tool-using aquatic mammal is going to have the same language equivalencies as we do.’
I love it when Beverley talks science – it gets me all hot and bothered.
‘Giant squids are pretty alien,’ I said.
‘Not to another giant squid,’ said Beverley.
I helped Beverley up the stairs to the bathroom and made sure she had her tea and her waterproof Kindle on the bath table and then sat on the footstool to watch her. You could see the water rippling as she altered its temperature to suit herself. Her bulge rising like a mythical island from the surface of the water.
‘What do you see when you look at me like that?’ she asked.
I didn’t have a good answer, so I went for honesty instead.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Everything. That’s what I see – everything.’
‘You think I’m that huge, then?’ she said. ‘I am woman, I contain multitudes. All shall look upon me and despair.’
‘Shall I compare thee to a giant squid,’ I said. ‘Thou art more lovely and less tentacled.’
Bev smiled and shook her head.
‘Go and do the washing-up.’ And when I hesitated, she said, ‘I cooked, you wash up.’
So downstairs I went, leaving my beloved with Gravitational Systems of Groundwater Flow by József Tóth, to tackle the kitchen. Which was even worse than I’d imagined.
I mean, how do you get an egg whisk covered in grease while making butter sauce? After all, it’s not a butter whisk.
I’d just got the surfaces regulated and the small stuff in the dishwasher when I heard scratching at the kitchen door. I opened it to find a talking fox waiting for me on the patio with an envelope in its mouth. When it saw me, it trotted forwards and dropped the envelope at my feet.
‘Special delivery,’ it said. ‘Handed in at the Seven Sisters dead drop.’