‘No no. I’m not scared, just surprised that I’m really married and I want to make Lou happy.’

  I nodded, incredibly slowly. I didn’t take away my hand and I said, ‘Hope it’s all okay tonight.’

  She nodded so that the skin moved and thus my lightly placed fingertips slid and caressed upon her bony shoulder. Then she stated in a voice devoid of eroticism, ‘I’ll tell you.’

  I took a strange and unsavoury hope in this promise.

  She suddenly added, ‘Shall we get a taxi together to this hotel, then? It’s so sweet of you and Abby to get us that.’

  I felt something celebratory sink away down inside me and wither. ‘Suppose so.’

  She looked thoughtful, then stated, ‘I am so drunk.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘I’ll go get the taxi,’ she volunteered.

  ‘That might be smarter than me in my kilt. Put on the jacket. It’ll keep you warm and make you harder to recognise. This is number thirty-five. See it written up there? You need to get the name of this street.’

  ‘I’ll hail one at the end of the street and come right back.’ She was buckling her shoes so when she stood up with the jacket round her shoulders she seemed enormous and intimidating as I remained helpless below, sat on the carpet.

  After she’d gone, I repeatedly punched one fist into the palm of my other hand as hard as I could.

  The taxi driver decided Aoife and I were married. That didn’t cheer me up much. She did the talking to him on the way over to Victoria, her voice climbing back into that excited pitch the closer we got. They talked about carpets. I tried my best to chip in the odd word and keep face as the upbeat Scot.

  In the wood-panelled bar of the Victoria Station Hotel, Abby sat. Alone. The free, still unopened bottle of cheap cava and some drinks placed on the table before her. She was carefully watched by businessmen in suits at the bar.

  In a bright, breathing voice, Aoife said, ‘Where’s Lou? That man is a loon.’

  ‘He went up to see the room about twenty minutes ago and bloody well hasn’t come back down.’ Abby shrugged, pointing to the half-drained pint of Guinness and the ashtray with two butts in it. I looked at Aoife out the corner of my eye. Did I see fear or disappointment?

  Aoife dropped her shoulders and in a cowed and quiet voice she said, ‘If he’s passed out, how will I get into the room?’ All three of us now envisaged a much less amorous wedding night.

  Abby stayed in hotels a lot and she told us, ‘Because you’re a couple, they should give you a second key.’

  I tried to change the subject. ‘That was all very mad at the restaurant.’

  Aoife brightened. ‘You won’t believe what Douglas did. He was so brave and wild.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ll see on the way home. He had to get the hall porters at the front door to keep it in with all the suitcases. Lou used to be a hall porter y’know?’

  I nodded politely.

  Abby glared. ‘You didn’t roll one of them huge urns out that place and off down the bloody street, did you? One of them’d look good in my front room. Or your front room, according to the dole.’

  ‘Come’n sit with me.’ Abby patted the chairs. ‘Those guys keep trying to buy me a drink even though they saw me here with Lou.’

  ‘I’ll ask about another key,’ Aoife said and she crossed over to the swing doors and round to reception.

  ‘He’s crashed out upstairs,’ I said.

  ‘Probably.’ Abby shrugged.

  ‘Not very nice on the wedding night.’

  ‘No. But that’s lush Llewellyn.’

  ‘They could both have ended up in separate police cells on their wedding night with that carry-on.’

  ‘Memorable, at least.’

  ‘Yeah, but. A bit unfair on Aoife.’

  Abby gave me a wry look. ‘What’s needling you, Macbeth? I thought you were enjoying yourself?’

  ‘I just think that was all a bit selfish. Involving people in a crime without their consent.’

  ‘Oh hark at you, Lord Hailsham. It was an overpriced dump anyway.’

  I said nothing more.

  Now she frowned. ‘Hey. How did you and Eeef hook up?’

  ‘We saw each other in the street and we hid up outside this office for twenty minutes.’

  ‘Oh,’ she plainly stated. ‘That was a good idea.’

  Aoife came back with a room key. ‘He’s not answering the phone.’

  ‘We’d better leave you.’

  I pointed to Abby. ‘I think you should go upstairs with Eeef just to make sure he’s in the room. Christ knows, he could be wrecking the room or crawling across the glass roof of Victoria Station making invocations to the moon.’

  They looked at each other; the image unlodged something responsive.

  Aoife turned to me but said, ‘All Lily’s bottles in the usual place and the sauce is in the fridge for tomorrow.’

  ‘I know. I know.’

  ‘Don’t bathe her. I trust you. I do, Douglas. It’s just that bloody hot water is so scalding. I’ll worry just a little if you’re bathing her.’

  ‘I’ll clean her with the flannel but I won’t bathe her, I promise.’ I stood up and embraced her and kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘Good night,’ she said.

  ‘Congratulations,’ I replied, taking her hands and gripping them both, then letting them go. I handed her the large dark bottle of cava from the restaurant then she and Abby both headed off upstairs.

  I sat alone, shivering. The businessmen up at the bar laughed. I dared not look over at them. Abby came back down about three minutes later and raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘He was awake, watching television. Just left me here like I didn’t exist. Something that interested him,’ she said. Then she muttered, ‘It was a colour telly was his excuse.’

  Cautiously, I looked down at Lou’s half-consumed Guinness on the table. ‘Is this paid for?’

  Abby laughed.

  I reached for the beer.

  12

  The next morning at Conrad Flats I didn’t even fully comprehend it was a Sunday until Abby said, ‘Right. I’m going to church. Coming?’ She sat in the front room, wearing a new dress of her own from among the many she’d disturbed in Aoife’s wardrobe. She’d done her hair different, wore the same high shoes as for the wedding, the same off-white stockings, because she had one long calf across her knee and was carefully prying a minute black disc of dirt off the silk with her fingernail.

  ‘You’re going to church?’

  ‘To Mass.’

  ‘Are you crazy? Aren’t you hungover?’

  ‘A little bit. Bring Lily – all the breeding mamas bring their brats to show Father Petrie.’

  ‘Lily’s settled and I don’t have a suit.’

  ‘Wear your lovely kilt.’

  ‘You liked the kilt?’

  ‘Of course. It’s great. You don’t need a suit. It’s not Protestant. People take Mass in T-shirts because it’s a holy sacrament.’

  ‘You look like something out of bloody Vogue. Vogue isn’t known for its overall obsession with spiritual matters.’

  ‘Leave Vogue out of this. We’re talking about God.’

  There was a line I must use, I thought. The phone rang and Abby rushed to it. Aoife and Lou once more. They were using pub payphones almost hourly and I was starting to wonder if we were monitoring their day in Brighton or they were checking up on Abby and me. ‘Yes. Lil’s fine. Douglas is a fantastic wet nurse. Never.’ Abby turned to me with a miraculous look. ‘You’re both going to Mass? I was just asking Douglas to come along with me. Isn’t that remarkable? Okay.’

  Abby and I walked to the Catholic church together – me pushing the pram – like two established parents. I’d drawn the line at the kilt. I wore a shirt and jacket from the night before with a pair of jeans. I was still trying to think up objections and I did. ‘I can’t come in the church.’

  ‘What is it now?’

  ‘Well, The Apple will be there. Granny Smith.’

  ‘Don’t be a silly sausage.’

  ‘But she will.’

  ‘She won’t. She always goes to the very early Mass.’

  Closer to the church, I suddenly asked, ‘Do you think Lou and Eeef had sex last night?’

  She didn’t blink. ‘Yes, I think I can hear it in Aoife’s voice.’

  ‘Good.’ I nodded. Abby nodded too – both of us quite aggressively.

  Inside the church – in case Lily started crying – I insisted we take the pew right at the back.

  She hissed, ‘You shrinking Protestant. That’s all the further for me to walk up the aisle to the altar in these heels, making this noise.’ Then she added in a real whisper, ‘They already think I’m enough of a whore here.’ She crossed herself.

  I’d watched Abby dip holy water from the font when we entered, with her high heels clicking on the lime flagstones, and I’d seen her curtsey – no, genuflect – in the aisle. I noticed how she never turned her back on the big Jesus Christ, crucified high up above the altar, without genuflecting to him first. Even when she slid out the row to leave that morning, she genuflected first before retreating a few paces backwards. Rather graceful in its way.

  I hadn’t been able to follow the leaping order of the Mass card, bits were skipped and overlooked and I didn’t listen to Father Petrie. I kept an eye on Lily and when they all went up to receive the Host, I watched Abby’s tight ass, its slow but responsive symmetry – sure enough her heels clicked on the way up and back. Old ladies glared at both of us from beneath their bushy eyebrows.

  When it had come time to make that sign of peace thing, I’d winced as usual; it’s like that moment at rock concerts: wave your hands in the air, everyone. We were so far from the next set of worshippers, Abby and I had to nod when they turned round. We shook hands only with each other and had a sly smile together.

  Throughout the whole Mass, I had generally thought about the previous night.

  It had been instructive, after we had left Victoria Station Hotel, to witness the increasing disillusion of the taxi driver who took Abby and me back to Acton. First he’d witnessed Abingdon descend the stairs in her vintage finery, with her Gatsby hat back on, but immediately after I followed in my kilt, stumbling with a rolled-up carpet which the driver probably suspected I’d torn from the floor of the hotel.

  Then the wait outside Granny Smith’s as we wrestled Lily free from Flo. Flo was obstructive, and I actually had to threaten to phone Aoife back at the Victoria Station Hotel – in the midst of her wedding night unspeakables – before Abby and I got to take Lily away with us.

  Then we had to load screaming Lily and her buggy into the back of the taxi, alongside that carpet, calling out the Bollo Lane council flat address. I caught the driver’s disillusioned look when Abby paid him. His entire fare had slowly metamorphosed from The Magnificent Ambersons into Steptoe and Son.

  Getting Lily, her buggy, drunk Abby in high heels and that carpet up the interior stairway of Almayer House took me two trips. I was surprised the carpet was still on the ground floor when I returned down to collect it.

  Back up in the flat I leaned the tube of fabric against the wall while Lily was screaming. Lamborghini the tortoise was nowhere to be seen and there were billows of steam in the corridor. Abby had run a bath. ‘Abby. I’d shut the tortoise in the kitchen and you’ve already let him out.’

  ‘I last saw it in the living room. It’s monstrous. It touched my toe when I wasn’t looking.’ I could not believe she had just left Lily strapped in her buggy, still in her anorak. It was way beyond the child’s bedtime. She’d been awakened and she was in a poor mood, with corrugated, angry skin round her eyes. I hoisted her high but the nappy smelled okay. I walked up and down, holding the crying baby.

  The phone rang and Abby had rushed through in just a smallish towel to answer; I knew immediately from Abby’s tone it was Lou and Aoife at that bloody hotel where they should have been concerned with other matters. I was given the handset whilst I rocked Lil in one arm. Into my ear, Lou’s voice sang, ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You,’ then he quoted something quite long. In Latin. Was it an invocation or spell? When he was finished, I said, ‘Congratulations, mad bastard. Thank you for a lovely dinner. Very relaxing.’

  ‘Very cheap. I hear you have enriched our home with an Axminster and I am wholly proud of you.’

  ‘Go forth. But don’t multiply,’ I shouted over Lily’s cries.

  Aoife’s voice suddenly came upon the line. Its tones and accent were intensified in my ear without her still and patient face before me. ‘Lil okay?’

  In a practical voice I replied, ‘She got woken up so she’s in a bad mood. Flo had let her sleep far too early. She’ll soon be fine.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Aoife. There was a fractional pause and I snapped, ‘Don’t worry. Have fun in Brighton tomorrow,’ then handed the phone back to Abby.

  I put Lily back in her buggy, which did convert the cries into snuffles, snorts, aggressive turnings of the head, then I pushed her up and down the hallway – a regime which would often calm her. But late at night it also made Mr and Mrs Langham from downstairs bang on their ceiling with – it turned out – the ends of their second-hand golf clubs, which, Mr Langham had explained to us once on the stairs, he kept not for sporting reasons but for self-defence.

  Abby was still mumbling secretly down the phone to Aoife. More last-minute sexual positions perhaps? I got changed.

  ‘You’ve got out of your kilt. Why do that?’ Abby tutted when I went back to the living room with Lily.

  ‘Hush. She’s settling.’

  ‘Is she? Oh goody. I’m going for a bath.’

  I needed to piss but I said nothing. I’d pee in a bottle if I had to.

  Later, when I rolled the carpet out along the corridor, I noted that the bathroom door wasn’t even locked, in fact it was three inches open. She wasn’t in the bath, Abby was moving around in there naked.

  ‘Are you laying your carpet, Douglas?’ I could see her slim white body turning through the opaque glass.

  ‘Watch you don’t trip coming out. It’s not a perfect fit.’ The carpet was too wide so it sloped up the skirting on each side and it didn’t stretch half the way down. I’d need to go back and steal another.

  Lily was restless in her buggy so I took her out of it. I cleaned her and changed her nappy, dressed her into a fresh Babygro; then we played with the plastic bricks and the old Fisher Price station on the living-room floor. I loved watching her eyes and sometimes I’d lie on my back very still, hold her on my chest and let her sit there looking around. After a while she forgot me and was concentrating across the room, wondering where I’d gone.

  I opened a can of Guinness from the fridge and in the living room touched it occasionally to my lips. It was instructive hearing Abby trying to summon me to the bath side, beginning, ‘Sausage,’ continuing softly, ‘Douglas,’ then a mystified, ‘Macbeth?’ and finally, aggressively, ‘Cunningham!’ The entire span of a relationship with her, demonstrated in moments.

  I completely ignored her.

  Lily’s eyes followed a movement with fascination. Lamborghini, slowly moving down the hallway on some kind of mission. I grabbed the tortoise, crawled down the carpet quietly and by turning him on his side in an undignified manner I managed to silently insert the tortoise through the gap in the door onto the bathroom linoleum. I could see the painted toenails of Abby’s foot resting up by the tap. I quietly retreated and the screams came a few minutes later.

  She came up the corridor with an even smaller towel around her waist and another wound up high in her hair but absolutely nothing else, so her perfect breasts were not just free but still shining wetly. Her stomach was flat – almost muscled – with one of those twirly, filled-in belly buttons which hardly exist. Her face was flushed from the hot water. Even half naked, she looked extraordinarily fresh and very English. Her cheeks like a Cox’s orange pippin.

  ‘That savage reptile forced its way into the bathroom. Can’t you lock it up?’

  ‘I need to get a book from the library to put it into hibernation.’

  ‘Book from the library. Book from the library. That’s your life. Do you need to get a book from the library for everything?’

  ‘Stop shouting; Lily’s almost asleep.’

  She went back down the hall. There were bangs and thumps from the bedroom. Abby was invading the wardrobes. I went to the toilet to pee and locked the door behind me. I soon realised the danger I was in. When I opened the toilet lid, the porcelain slopes were adhered with the squiggles, filings and curled scatterings of her black pubic hair snippings. I pissed them into the water at the bottom then flushed.

  Lily was asleep when I went back into the living room, so I just sat drinking Guinness until curiosity brought Abby up the corridor. She was wearing a pair of pyjamas which I had seen Aoife wearing. Owner undefined.

  ‘She’s sleeping.’

  ‘Awww. So adorable.’

  ‘They are when they sleep. Abby, if you wanted to go home you didn’t need to spend the night here.’

  ‘But I’m already in my jammies, sausage. It’s just— you never know. If something went wrong with Lily, at least you’ve got me here. It wouldn’t be all your fault.’

  ‘Yes. C’mon then. You put her in the cot and get her down.’

  ‘No. No. You do it. I’ll wake her.’

  When Lily was laid in the cot she stirred minutely but remained asleep in that steadfast manner.

  Inevitably, Abby and I were caught sitting together on the end of Aoife and Lou’s bed, staring at the cot. Abby was leaning forward, rubbing her hair madly with a towel; then, holding Aoife’s hairbrush, she yanked handfuls of the other woman’s hair out of the bristles, assembling a disturbing and growing clump of it upon the bed.

  ‘You know, it’s cold in here, for a baby.’

  ‘It’s late, we’ve been out all day and we need to keep the electric bills down.’