Occasionally, Nia looked after the boys, and when Anna and Edward returned, they were always high on sugar and doing something borderline dangerous, like playing a game where youcouldn’t touch the floor and had to go from sofa to coffee table to armchair by any means possible. They loved Nia, because she never said no to them and she never had to deal with the consequences.
Anna shrugged. ‘No plans,’ she said. ‘I don’t even know whether he’s remembered.’
‘Well,’ Nia said, raising her glass. ‘Here’s to you.’
After a beat of silence, she pulled a face.
‘Did I tell you that Ellen and the boss are a thing now?’
‘No!’
‘Yes, after all those formal warnings and what have you. I try not to think about whether they incorporate office roleplay into their bedroom activities. I only found out a couple of weeks ago but I think it’s been going on for a while.’
‘Do they know that you know?’
‘Yes, it’s common knowledge now. Sometimes he gives her a bit of a grope when he passes her at the photocopier. And then he has a quick look around to see if anyone’s noticed, and I bury my head in my keyboard and wish I was dead. Anyway, she’s floating around the place now and I think I preferred it when she hated men and was furious all the time. The other day I came out of one of the toilet cubicles and she was there in front of the mirror, redoing her lipstick. I don’t even want to think about why. And she turned to me and asked me if I’d noticed the colour in the sky that morning, the pink clouds. I didn’t know what to say. You know what I’m like in the morning, I barely open my eyes before I’ve had three coffees. I just washed my hands a bit hastily and rushed out of there.’
‘Love,’ Anna said. ‘Who’d have thought it? I’d have put money on you being the one most likely to meet someone in your office.’
‘Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? You never can tell.’
When Nia went back to her office, Anna headed home. She let herself in and revelled in the quietness of the house. She had a long bath, reading a book that was nothing to do with work, and then she moisturised her body from head to toe. It was the kind of thing she never had time to do. When it was time for school to finish, she thought, briefly, that she could have cancelled after-school club and picked up the boys, but it was so rare for her to have a day to herself that she tried not to feel guilty about taking it. Soon enough, it was time to collect the boys and hear about their days and then Edward was home and all four of them were in the bathroom, chatting as the boys took it in turns to shower and clean their teeth.
‘Reuben’s tooth fell out in assembly,’ Sam said.
Anna looked at him. ‘That’s exciting,’ she said. ‘Did he keep hold of it?’
Sam shrugged. Some days, he came home with endless stories and other days, this sort of minor detail was as much as she got out of him.
‘Did you know that half the parents don’t know what digraphs and trigraphs are and they’re going to invite you all in to learn about them?’ Thomas asked.
Edward and Anna shared a look. Hers said ‘you’re going to that’ and his said ‘no, you’re going’, and it made her laugh, the way they could have a conversation without words.
After stories and kisses, they left the boys to go to sleep.
‘You go through to the living room and sit down,’ Edward said. ‘I’m doing dinner tonight.’
It felt nice, being cared for like that. She turned on the TV and watched something mindless about a family who were trying to lose weight. Sam came into the living room after about twenty minutes, sucking on his snuggly and holding his bear beneath his arm.
‘I think there’s something in my room,’ he said sadly.
‘What kind of something?’ Anna asked, standing up.
‘Something a bit scary.’
‘It’s probably sleep,’ Anna said, steering him back up the stairs.
Sam looked up at her, puzzled. They were in the doorway to his bedroom. Anna could hear soft snores coming from Thomas’s room, next door.
‘At night, sleep comes into your room. It’s dark and it’s mostly invisible, and then when you’re ready, it gobbles you up for the night. Didn’t you know that?’
Sam shook his head, and Anna lifted him into her arms and kissed his forehead.
‘Just let it come,’ she said. ‘If we fight it, that’s when things get difficult. We need sleep to be able to play and go to school and do all the things we like to do the next day.’
She laid him down in his bed and he turned on his side and pulled the cover up to his chin.
‘Night night, baby.’
