He’s still wearing lounge pants, the waistband low on his hips. The rest of his body is bare.
“I woke up and he wasn’t there. I panicked.” Mentally, I’m kicking myself for not taking advantage of the sleep. How long have I been saying I’d kill for more than three hours at once?
“You panicked?” Alex smiles, taking a step closer. His hair is still rumpled from where he’s sl
ept on it, and I can’t help but reach out to touch it.
“I thought he might’ve escaped.”
“He’s six months old, sweetheart. What did you think he was gonna do, hail a cab?” He laughs as he pulls me towards him, wrapping his arms around my shoulders. I bury my face in his chest, breathing him in, loving the sensation of skin on skin. “You’re a fucking nutter, you know that?” Alex cups my cheek, the smirk still pulling at his lips. When he presses them on mine I can feel them curl.
“I’m your nutter,” I whisper into his lips.
“Bloody right you are.”
We spend the morning in some kind of sleep-deprived haze. Alex practices on his guitar while I make a half-hearted attempt to clean the kitchen. After Max's nap, we play with him on the floor, laughing and clapping as he rolls over and again. It seems an awkward way of travelling, but it works for him, and he has this self-satisfied expression that fills my heart with love.
Sunday afternoons are family time. As in Alex’s family. We get dressed, fill a bag up with supplies for Max, and make our way down the stairs. Alex carries all our stuff while I hold on to Max. When we pass the door to the downstairs flat, I suddenly remember the new tenant.
“Did you know we had a new neighbour?” I ask. “Some guy called David. From Australia.”
“What happened to Nancy?”
Nancy was the previous tenant. Though she was well into her seventies, she dressed as though she was twenty, and had a glorious array of wigs.
“No idea, I forgot to ask.”
We’re outside and making our way to Shoreditch High Street station. I used to have a car—a rusted, beaten-up Mini I loved—but when Max came along we had to choose between nappies or car insurance, and the former won out. Today, though, it’s a pain. We have to take the Overground train to Whitechapel and change to the District Line. It would be enough of a palaver on our own, but with a baby, a buggy, and an enormous bag, it’s like going on a bloody trek.
Still, at the end of it is a pot of gold. Or what I prefer to call, Sunday lunch.
On the train, Alex holds Max in his lap, and starts talking to him in gibberish, making Max laugh. A couple of teenage girls sitting on the other side of the carriage eye him up, smiling when the baby giggles and batting their eyelashes whenever Alex kisses him. He doesn’t notice though—he’s too busy playing with his son—and his indifference makes me grin.
Alex’s mum still lives in his childhood home, on one of the nicer council housing estates in Plaistow. The three-bedroom terrace is well-maintained, mostly thanks to Alex. He keeps a toolbox here now, sick of having to carry it from Shoreditch every time a job needs doing, and I’ve come to terms with the fact that whenever we come here he’ll disappear for a few hours with only a screwdriver and hammer for company. He’s still the man of the house, even though he hasn’t lived here for years.
I sometimes wonder what it must have been like for Alex growing up here. The middle of three children, he was the only boy in a sea of girls. That’s probably why he finds it so easy to talk to women; it comes naturally. He’s a born flirt, of course. It was the first thing I noticed about him, after the tattoos and the sculpted cheekbones. He smiles and the women come flocking.
It’s a blessing and a curse.
The other side effect of growing up in a houseful of women is he’s spoiled rotten. Though he does all the jobs that need doing with a screwdriver, I don’t think his mum has ever let him load the dishwasher. It’s all “sit down, darling, you work hard enough” and “let us girls get you a drink, you deserve a break”. Every time she says it, I try to bite down a smile, knowing he’d never get away with that sort of thing at our flat.
“You’re here!” Tina—his mum—opens the door, a huge smile spreading across her face. Before either of us can say a word she’s whipped Max out of my arms and is cradling him close. Max nuzzles into her chest, delighted at the soft landing, while I lower my arms, unsure whether to be peeved or delighted at her love for my son.
“Come on in. Put the kettle on, will you, Lara? Alex, can you take a look at the upstairs toilet, I think there’s something wrong with the flush?” Though she has her back to us as she walks into the living room, we can still hear every word.
Alex starts to laugh at my appalled expression. “Go and put the kettle on, there’s a good wife.”
“Piss off, plumber boy.” My voice is low. His yelp when I pinch his arm isn’t.
“Are you all right?” Tina seems naturally attuned to her son’s cries, even though he’s twenty-nine. I wonder if I’ll end up that way when Max is older.
“Where’re the girls?” Alex asks, opening the cupboard under the stairs and pulling out his toolbox.
“Andrea’s on her way. She needed to get some petrol. And Amy’s upstairs on the laptop.”
Tina had the novel idea of naming all her kids with the letter ‘A’. That was fine for Andrea, and even for Alex. Poor Amy drew the short straw, having spent most of her life trying to escape from her colourful name, ‘Amethyst’. She hasn’t let Tina forget about it.
“Is she doing coursework?” I ask. At twenty-two, Amy is the youngest of the three. The brightest, too, at least academically. Though she left school at sixteen and messed around for three years, she ended up going back to college, taking her ‘A’ levels a couple of years late. Now she’s at the local University in Stratford, studying Business. To say the whole family is proud of her is an understatement.