‘I didn’t know it was optional,’ he said.
She walked away. Picked up a plate and helped herself to some food. Had another glass of wine. In the kitchen, Nia was standing by the fridge with Aidan right beside her, and they were holding Theo between them and he had a hand on each of their faces. And they looked so happy, Anna felt herself starting to cry. She put her glass and her plate down and went off to the toilet, looking down to avoid meeting anyone’s eye on the way, and when she heard Nia calling her name, she pretended she hadn’t.
There was only one toilet in the flat, and Anna knew that she couldn’t feasibly spend more than a couple of minutes in there. She stood in front of the mirror, watching the tears form and pool in her eyes. And then when she thought a minute hadpassed, she got some toilet roll and dabbed at her eyes carefully, trying to repair the damage.
Was she unhappy? Right now, she was. But what about when they were all watching a film together, pizza boxes on the coffee table and Sam snuggled into her? Or when she and Edward were alone, and he was making her laugh and touching her like it was the first time, after all these years? There was less and less of that, she thought. And it wasn’t so much the sex she missed but the connection. They were drifting in opposite directions, Anna thought, and she needed to do something about it. She needed to do everything she could to reverse it, or at least to halt it. Because in a few years, the boys would be gone and it would just be the two of them, and what if they’d drifted too far, by then? What if they could no longer see one another?
When she unlocked the door, Anna hoped there wouldn’t be a queue of people outside. And there wasn’t. There was just Thomas.
‘Hey,’ he said.
‘Are you waiting to use the loo?’
‘No. I saw you come past. You looked upset.’
Anna met her son’s eye. He was several inches taller than her, more man than boy.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked. He looked uncomfortable asking, but she was grateful that he had.
‘I’m okay,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry if I…’
Anna waited, in case he picked the sentence up again, but he didn’t.
‘It’s not you,’ she said.
‘Okay. I wasn’t sure.’
‘I’m sorry I made you come here,’ Anna said.
‘It’s all right. The food’s good.’
Anna laughed then, and she wanted to pull him in for a hug but she couldn’t remember the last time he’d let her hold him, and she didn’t want to spoil the moment.
‘Did you eat anything?’ Thomas asked.
Anna shook her head. ‘I left my plate in the kitchen. I’ll get it.’
He nodded, and they moved in the direction of the kitchen together. Anna wished he was young enough that she could squeeze his hand. Moments like this, she felt like her life had been worth something real. She’d brought up this boy who would soon be a man and be out in the world. And she’d done it well. Without her, he wouldn’t have existed. There were gaps inside her, there were things she ached for, and sometimes she thought they’d been caused by motherhood, and sometimes she felt like motherhood filled and soothed them.
Nia and Aidan were still in the kitchen, but Theo was on the floor, a little circle of people around him. He’d been walking for a few days and everyone was keen to see it. Anna picked up her plate and took a bite of sourdough and when she looked across to the corner of the room, she saw Steve. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might be here, that he might still be with Nia’s colleague. Chloe, was it? When he saw her, he smiled, and Anna smiled back and put a hand up in a sort of wave. The last time she’d properly seen him, at Nia’s fortieth, she’d been drunk and made a fool of herself. She wondered whether he and Chloe were married now. She felt oddly nostalgic for the days she had spent with Steve when the children were young. The way he’d made her feel. Understood. Important.
‘I was just thinking about the day he was born,’ Nia said.
Anna hadn’t noticed her approaching. She thought back. Nia had been so scared about him coming early. And now here theywere, a year later, and Theo was a perfectly healthy little boy, walking and climbing and making train sounds.
‘I’m so glad you were there,’ Nia said.
‘Me too. But I’m glad Aidan arrived when he did, too.’
‘Agreed,’ Nia said. ‘But listen, I don’t know whether I ever really thanked you for that.’
Anna batted a hand. ‘For what? I didn’t do anything.’
‘You always do that,’ Nia said. ‘But you were there, just when I needed you. And you can’t pretend that’s nothing.’
Nia walked away, scooped Theo up and patted his padded bum, and Anna thought about what Nia had said. She did have a tendency to minimise things, she thought. To think the things she did weren’t very much. She cast her eye around, found Thomas, who’d wandered off and was now chatting to Sam. She spotted Edward, talking to a friend of Aidan’s and drinking a beer. Her family didn’t look like Nia’s, but they were still her family.
