Hart started to grizzle, growing bored of burying his hands in the sand, and Madeleine picked him up, standing and bouncing him gently on her hip, glad for the interruption to what had somehow become an uncomfortably personal conversation.
‘Shall we walk for a bit?’ she asked Finn, smiling at Hart as he quietened with her and made grabs at her hair and her earrings.
‘So we’re just calling it quits on that conversation?’ Finn asked, looking at her sceptically.
‘We are,’ she confirmed. Though she had her suspicions that this chemistry wasn’t going to fade helpfully into the background and allow her to concentrate on—say—her childcare responsibilities or job-hunting o
r finding somewhere to live.
‘I’m feeling restless,’ she announced, lifting Hart into the air and then planting a kiss on his forehead, pulling faces at him before parking him higher on her hip. ‘Can we walk? Please?’
‘We can go for a walk,’ Finn confirmed, standing so that he could look her in the eye. ‘But we started this conversation last night. And it feels like leaving it unfinished is adding to the tension here. If we keep walking away from it, it’s going to become a thing.’
It was her turn to crease her brow, because he was making a lot of assumptions here. Ones that she didn’t particularly care for. ‘How do you know that talking about it is going to make it go away?’
‘Because I’m sure that we’ve both got very good reasons why we want to make it go away.’
He thought it was just that easy? If it turned out to be, great. She would be delighted. But she couldn’t help thinking he was being a little naïve here.
‘So we just reason our way out of it?’ she asked.
‘Exactly.’
She envied his supreme confidence. But she didn’t share an ounce of it. ‘Not to play devil’s advocate here—and I’m not talking about us specifically—but don’t you think that if it were that easy to talk your way out of feelings like this, more people would do it? Like, there wouldn’t be affairs, or star-crossed lovers. Or, I don’t know, inappropriate workplace relationships.’
He rolled his eyes and she knew that he wasn’t taking her seriously. ‘I’m not talking about other people. I’m talking about us.’
‘I noticed,’ she said, voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘Fine. Let’s stop. You’re right, it’s not getting us anywhere anyway.’
‘Good. We’ll call a truce,’ Finn said to her relief. ‘We will ignore everything that we’ve been talking about this morning because we are grown-ups who know better. But I’m telling you, I can’t live with an atmosphere. And if I feel like there is one, we’re going to talk about this again.’
Madeleine nodded. ‘Fine. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. We’ve acknowledged it. We’ve established that neither of us is interested in pursuing it. We’re moving on. Now,’ she said, strapping Hart into the pushchair and making moves to fold up the picnic blanket, ‘let’s go for a walk. I’m not used to lazing in the sunshine.’
He laughed at that. ‘As if there’s such a thing as lazing with these two around.’
They walked along the South Bank, past the squealing pre-schoolers who were running in and out of the fountains and past pained-looking tourists on the terraces of bars and restaurants, trying to look as if the incessant noise wasn’t bothering them. At the foot of the London Eye she stopped and looked up at the pods, rotating so slowly around the centre that it hardly seemed as if they were moving. In her ten years in London, she’d never been up there. Never seen London from a different angle, a different perspective than being stuck right in the middle of it, just trying to get through the day.
‘What is it?’ Finn asked as she continued to stare up at the giant Ferris wheel.
‘Do you think the babies would like it up there, or would they be scared?’ she asked Finn, wondering whether she was really asking for the twins or for herself.
‘You want to go up?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s a beautiful day. I’ve been wanting perspective. But this seems a little literal, don’t you think?’
He stuck his hands in his pockets and leaned back as he looked at her, his expression thoughtful. ‘Perspective is a good thing, however you get it.’
‘I’m not sure that going up there is going to find me a new job or a place to live.’
‘No, maybe not,’ he agreed, ‘but I’m pretty sure it’s not going to hurt either. So let’s go,’ he said, pushing the pram towards the Fast Track queue.
‘You’re just going to queue up?’ she asked, laughing with surprise. ‘Don’t your sort arrange to hire the whole thing, or put on a special event or something?’
He stopped and looked at her, frowning. ‘My sort? I practically grew up in your kitchen. How is my sort not your sort?’
She caught up with him, picking up the sunhat that Bella had thrown to the ground as a convenient distraction. ‘Um, I don’t know. Maybe because when we all left you went off and became a genius and a millionaire?’
‘I was always a genius, you know.’