Lazlo moved quietly over to the wooden chair in the corner where he had hung his bath towel, lifted the towel up, and carried it across to drape carefully down Rosa’s torso. She didn’t stir. Then Lazlo stepped elaborately back across the carpet to where he had left his supper, and transferred it to a spot beside the small armchair, close to the head of the bed. He returned to the door to close it until only a narrow line of light fell into the room, and then he sat down in the chair, next to the sleeping Rosa, and began, as noiselessly as possible, to eat.

Chapter Fifteen

Barney’s parents sent so many lilies to the hospital after their grandson was born that Kate had to ask the nurse on duty to put them outside the door.

‘I can’t breathe, with them in here—’

The nurse, who came from Belfast, said she quite agreed and anyway they reminded her of funerals.

‘People get so overexcited about a baby. They just want to send the biggest thing they can find’.

Kate leaned cautiously sideways – they’d given her a rubber ring to sit on, to ease the discomfort of the stitches – and peered into the Perspex crib moored beside her bed. The baby, swaddled as neatly and tightly as a chrysalis, slept with newborn absorption.

‘I’m pretty overexcited myself’.

The nurse paused, holding the lilies.

‘You’ve every right to be. That’s a lovely baby’.

‘I’m in love,’ Kate said, ‘I know I am. I’ve never felt like this before in my life’.

‘Give me babies for love any time,’ the nurse said. ‘Babies don’t let you down. And you know they’re going to get smarter’.

‘You are amazing,’ Kate said to the baby. ‘You are the most amazing baby there ever was’.

He slept on, wholly committed to his own fierce agenda of survival.

‘Well,’ the nurse said, ‘I think you’ve a visitor’.

Kate turned awkwardly and looked over her shoulder. Rosa was standing in the doorway, holding a pineapple.

She gestured at the great vase of lilies in the nurse’s hands.

‘I thought you might have enough of those—’ Kate abruptly felt rather tearful. She put an unsteady hand out.

‘Rose—’

Rosa put the pineapple down on the end of Kate’s bed.

‘They’re supposed to symbolise hospitality. So I thought that might stretch to welcome’.

‘Oh Rose,’ Kate said, sniffing, ‘he’s so perfect—’

Rosa bent and kissed Kate. Then she moved round the bed and bent over the crib.

‘Oh my God,’ she said, ‘he is minute’.

‘No he’s not, he’s huge. He was almost eight pounds’.

Rosa flicked her a glance.

‘You poor girl. You don’t weigh much more yourself’. Kate put a finger out and touched the damp dark spikes of the baby’s hair. ‘Isn’t he wonderful?’

‘Yes’.

‘I can’t believe it. When I’m not snivelling, I just hang over him and breathe him in’.

Rosa reached down to touch his solid little mound of body.

‘Does he cry?’

‘Like anything,’ Kate said proudly. ‘And – um, feeding him?’

‘Getting better. It’s not very easy but I am so determined to do it’.

Rosa straightened up.

She said, ‘This is all a bit life-changing, isn’t it—’ ‘Telling me’.

‘One minute you’re a couple pleasing yourselves and the next minute—’ ‘Eleven hours, actually’. ‘Everything’s changed for ever’. Kate was still gazing at the baby. ‘I can’t believe he wasn’t ever not here’. ‘Is Barney moonstruck?’ ‘Completely,’ Kate said. ‘Bought me a ring—’

‘A ring?’

‘An eternity ring’.

‘Heavens,’ Rosa said, ‘how very – established’. She sat down on the edge of Kate’s bed and looked at her. ‘Are you OK?’

Kate pushed her hair behind one ear.

‘Apart from crying and worrying about feeding and being in agony in the sitting department, I am ecstatic, thank you’.

Rosa said seriously, ‘He’s very lovely, you know’.

Kate began to cry in earnest. She hunted about blindly behind her for a tissue.

‘Here,’ Rosa said, holding one out. ‘Sorry—’

‘What d’you mean, sorry?’ ‘All this crying—’

‘I thought you were supposed to cry’. Kate blew her nose.

‘Talk to me’. ‘What about?’

‘About the outside world. About something not to do with the baby, something that won’t make me cry’. Rosa looked back at the baby.

‘I thought one of the best things about a baby was that you didn’t have to think about the outside world’.

Kate blew again. She gave Rosa a nudge through the bedclothes.

‘Do as you’re told’.

Well,’ Rosa said, ‘Vivien and Max are playing Blind Date – she has very blonde new highlights – Dad has discovered work and I am – oh God, Kate, something so funny!’

Kate bent back towards the baby.

‘What?’

‘I went to sleep on Lazlo’s bed’. Kate’s head whipped round. ‘You what?’

‘Well, the house was empty and it is my bedroom after all, and I just lay on my bed for a second and next thing I knew it was three in the morning and I was still there and he was asleep beside me on the floor’.

Kate sat bolt upright and winced. ‘Ow. Ow! What did you do?’

‘Got up,’ Rosa said, ‘really stealthily. He’d put a towel over me—’

‘That was so sweet—’

‘So I put it over him and tiptoed downstairs’. ‘And next morning?’ Rosa looked away. She said, ‘I haven’t seen him since’. ‘Have you told your mother?’ Rosa turned her head back. ‘No. I haven’t told anyone. Why should I?’ Kate screwed her tissue up and put it on her bedside locker.

‘When you do see Lazlo again, what will you say?’ ‘Oh,’ Rosa said grandly, ‘I’ll say don’t get any ideas. What else would I say?’


Lazlo was in the bathroom. He had been in the bathroom, Matthew calculated, for twenty-eight minutes. What any man could find to do in a bathroom for twenty-eight minutes was beyond Matthew, especially a man whose life seemed dedicated, in a manner that was unfairly but unquestionably irritating, to being no trouble to anyone. If he was ill, there was a perfectly good second lavatory downstairs. If he was poncing himself up, he could do that all day while Matthew was at work and he, Lazlo, was doing whatever actors did or didn’t do while waiting to go to work. Matthew bent his head towards the hinge of the bathroom door. Silence. He raised his fist and thumped the panels. ‘Hey there!’

There was a pause, and then a slight scuffle and then Lazlo opened the door. He was fully dressed and his eyes looked pink.

He said at once, ‘Sorry’.

‘You OK?’

Lazlo nodded. He stepped aside so that Matthew could go past him. He didn’t even seem to be holding a towel.

Matthew wondered, fleetingly and awkwardly, if he’d been crying.

He said gruffly, ‘Got to get to work—’ ‘Yes,’ Lazlo said, ‘of course’.

He moved away from Matthew across the landing towards the stairs.

Matthew looked after him.

He called, ‘No big deal, you know!’

Lazlo turned briefly and gave a wan smile. Then he began to climb the stairs to the top floor. Matthew shut the bathroom door and locked it. Someone – Rosa probably – had left a towel on the floor and there were red hairs – Rosa definitely – plastered to the side of the basin. The shelf above the basin and the ledge around the bath were now crammed with bottles, so crammed that several had fallen into the bath and were lying there in the shallow pool of water left by the last person’s shower. The shower curtain – was this the last bathroom in civilisation to have a horrible plastic shower curtain still? – clung to the tiled wall in clammy folds, and the plug to the basin, which Matthew attached to its chain a dozen times since returning home, had become detached again and was lying in the soap dish.

Matthew took off his bathrobe and attempted to hang it behind the door. The hook on the door, never large enough, now bore his father’s bathrobe, his mother’s cotton kimono – that must be fifteen or twenty years old now – some peculiar oriental garment of Rosa’s and a large towel mounded on top. The cork-seated chair in the corner was piled with clean but unironed laundry, several newspapers and a telephone directory. The towel rail, never adequate for a family of five in the first place, was draped with a large, drying duvet cover.

Matthew let out an exasperated breath.

‘Nowhere in this whole bloody house even to put down a towel’.

He dropped his robe and towel on the floor and yanked the shower curtain rattling along the length of the bath. It was patterned with starfish. It had always been patterned with starfish but for some reason this morning, the starfish looked completely unbearable. He leaned down, turned the bath taps on and pressed the chrome button that would divert the water through the shower-head. The button sprang out again and ice-cold water deluged Matthew’s feet. He swore and pressed again and ice-cold water cascaded on to his back.

Someone thumped on the door.

‘Sod off!’ Matthew shouted.

‘I need a shower,’ Edie called.

Matthew turned the taps off and climbed out of the bath.

‘There’s no hot water—’ ‘Nonsense’.

Matthew bent and retrieved his towel. He wound it round his waist and unlocked the door. Edie was standing outside in her nightgown and a long purple cardigan.

He said distinctly, ‘There is no hot water’. Edie looked at his towel.

‘Why all this modesty? I’m your mother, for goodness’ sake. I’ve seen it all before, I’ve—’

‘I can’t have a shower,’ Matthew said. ‘You can’t have a shower. No one can, unless they want it stone cold’.