Sally had begun to peel off a splitting fingernail with her teeth, but Steph thought she might still be listening. ‘Like if I earn a bit I can surprise her, you know? Make a little contribution. Get her a bunch of flowers now and then, something like that. It’s the independence.’
‘Independence,’ Sally said distantly, dropping her fingernail on the floor. She snorted. She looked directly at Steph. ‘I’m independent. Not all it’s cracked up to be, let me tell you.’
She was doing it again. What was Steph supposed to say to a remark like that? She gave what she hoped was an interested murmur and hoped Sally was not taking them completely off the point.
‘I’m a solicitor,’ Sally said, wanly.
‘Oh, right. So, what I mean is, I don’t want you thinking I’d be unreliable, just ’cause I’m not, like, living on the money.’
‘Unreliable?’ Sally gave another uneasy smile. ‘Oh, no, I wasn’t thinking that. No, I can spot unreliable. I know all about unreliable. I might not even be going back full-time if Charlie’s father wasn’t world class unreliable.’ She turned to tip the last of her coffee down the sink. ‘He was training to qualify too. Was. As a solicitor, I mean.’
Steph knew that Sally was waiting for her to ask more.
‘So… do you mean… he isn’t any more?’
Sally sighed so dramatically that Steph felt in some way responsible for whatever might be coming next. ‘Oh, no, no,’ she said with slow sarcasm, ‘Oh no, he decided being a solicitor wasn’t enough for him.’ She sighed again. ‘He’s tried lots of things. He was going to be a priest, then he decided no, that would just be trying to live up to his dad. So he gave that up, tried other things, travelled a lot. Oh, he wants to save the world, basically. Law was just the latest thing, the thing he thought he should be doing while he went through his husband and father phase. But he’s given up on that, too, by the look of it.’
‘You mean he’s not here?’
‘Nope. No, he’s gone to Nepal. I don’t mean he walked out, oh no, my dear husband never does anything he could be blamed for. He only does things he feels he ought to do, never admits it’s what he wants. So then he can’t be criticised, can he, because he’s only doing what his conscience tells him is right.’
‘Oh.’
‘Don’t get talked into having kids, Stephanie, that’s what I did.’
‘Oh. Oh well. No, I won’t.’
‘He was the desperate one. Gets me to agree, gets me pregnant, and just when I thought this time he means it, he’s growing up finally, he gets another fit of conscience about privilege, east and west, all that. So practically the minute Charlie’s born he gives up law and wants us all to go off and live in Nepal and work for some leprosy charity. I said no.’
‘But he went?’
‘Yep. Now he’s out there working for this bloody charity, principles all intact and all for bloody nothing of course, so I’ve got no option. And oh, not only is he not providing a penny but I’m the one holding us back. He’s still waiting for us to join him, you see, thinks I’ll give in and go. And know what? I won’t. The main thing about it is, and you should listen to this, Stephanie, because it’s amazing how often this happens, the thing is he thinks because I’ve got the baby I shouldn’t mind where I go or what I do. Because I’m a mother now, aren’t I. He thinks I’m selfish, staying in a rich country and being a lawyer when I could be making a contribution. I’m perpetuating global inequality, apparently, going back to conveyancing and wills in Chippenham. Me. Me, selfish.’
Sally’s voice as she spoke had been getting louder to drown out bad-tempered wailing from another room. Practically shouting now, she said, ‘Well, global bollocks. But it’s amazing the number of other people that think I should have gone. His dad, for instance, he comes out with all the “for better for worse” stuff. Oh shit, he’s awake. Well, you might as well meet him.’
Charlie squirmed in a nest of covers on the padded floor of a playpen in the dining room. A carrycot stood on the table in the middle of the room. Sally pulled him out kicking. ‘He settles better in the playpen,’ she said wearily. ‘Dunno why. Doesn’t like the cot.’
Steph looked round. A smell of salt and pepper and old meat still rose from the dark green carpet, but in all other respects Charlie had taken over. Both the mantelpiece and a high, polished sideboard that was too large for the room were littered with baby paraphernalia. A baby changing mat, nappies and a heap of unironed baby clothes filled one end of the table. Dozens of baby books and plastic toys covered the sideboard and the four upright chairs, and a bank of soft toy animals formed a colony against the wall on one side of the cold, green-tiled fireplace. Steph caught sight of a teddy identical to one that had been in Miranda’s nursery, and felt something kick suddenly in her throat. She opened her mouth, but did not speak and managed not to gasp, and then the moment had gone, supplanted by a sense of safety. Because absolutely nothing else in this chaotic house- not Charlie’s bewildering mother with her aloof but embarrassing way of telling her too much, certainly not the streaked and bawling face of Charlie himself- sounded even the thinnest chord of memory, painful or otherwise. Steph simply did not recognise it, this bulging, crammed and messy place that so many things had been spilled into, as if the house were a repository for the thoughts, ideas, plans, all the stuff in Sally’s head. It was a place where myriad fragments and layers that made up her life had substantiated somehow into wave after wave of bits of beached rubbish, which Sally then used, abandoned, dropped, broke, lost or cherished, without explanation, apology or, it seemed, particular concern. Charlie was perhaps just another item in her collection. The very idea that one person’s life could so casually produce such rich and overwhelming disorder was unknown to Steph.
Sally had Charlie on the changing mat and had wrestled him out of his wet nappy. The sight of him insulated Steph further from any link with Miranda. Charlie had a standard pouting, apelike baby face, quite unlike Miranda’s ladylike and slightly worried one. And he never stopped moving. His flailing limbs creased into their own peculiar folds and bends like a badly stuffed toy, while Miranda had now and then waved her spindly arms and legs without conviction, and they had been what Jean called finely made. Steph darted forward and handed Sally a baby wipe from the carton, and deftly took the sodden clump from Sally. ‘Bin under the sink,’ Sally said flatly. When Steph came back Sally was walking round the room jiggling the angry bundle on one shoulder. For the first time since she had arrived Steph saw on Sally’s face not only impatience and distaste, but complete exhaustion.
‘I’m supposed to be going in for a meeting this afternoon. They keep doing it, I’m not due back till next week but oh, will I pop in to discuss this or that. I said okay but I’d have to bring him with me and they said oh really, well, with a bit of luck he’ll be asleep.’ She shifted him onto the other shoulder and blew gently in his ear, to no effect. ‘He probably would go back to sleep if I gave him his bottle now but he fights it and takes ages over it, so if I do that I’ll be incredibly late and that won’t go down very well.’
‘Tell you what, you go,’ Steph said, ‘why don’t you go to your meeting, and leave him with me? I’ll see to the bottle and everything. Just to help you out.’