Loving Amélie (17 page)

Sara flounced her fiery mane,
and took an inelegant slurp of her tea, that was too hot so she spat it back:

“I actually asked him where he
thought we were going, where our relationship would finish up. And he had
nothing to say. Worse than that, he said he didn’t think it was going anywhere;
and then asked
me
where
I
thought
it was going.”

“I see.”

Chris suspected it would have
been a much more civil interaction than she was describing retrospectively:
Sara would no doubt have been in a smart business suit, which, despite the
demise of the eighties phenomenon, was still a powerful look for her: something
grey and domineering against her flame red hair. She would have been eloquently
demanding (and sober), whilst welling up inside like an unseen prima donna
about to beat down a dressing room door. He would have been precise, logical in
his replies. Perhaps a little sneering. He decided Rick would conjure the
perfect sneer, if pressed. He also doubted whether he had ever been privy to
the prima donna in her.

“I just don’t think it’s worth
it anymore.”

“Don’t you love him?”

“Madly,” she replied, and bit
back more tears.

“And he you?”

“I think so.” She raised her puffy
eyes to the ceiling. “I
know
so, babe; but he is inextricably linked to this Karen woman.
She’s the mother of his children; and you know what that’s all about.”

“Not really...”

“Oh, come on, you fucking
magical people who think that just by giving birth you’re doing something
extraordinary...” She clasped her hands to her face: the nails were newly
manicured and scarlet. “I’m sorry, that’s me being bitter and awful.”

“Yes, give the man a break,”
said Chris, dismayed by her unusual lack of generosity. “You knew the deal from
the outset. He’s a married man: he never pulled a fast one. It’s you that’s
changed the goalposts.”

“That sounds like one of his
shitty HR expressions,” she moped.

“But it’s true.”

“I know.” The tea went down
better this time; and Sara appeared to be sobering up. “But you can’t help who
you fall in love with, can you?”

She slumped on the sofa,
against him, and their heads cracked together.

“I wish we had more booze,” she
ventured, slyly.

“You’re joking,” he said.
“You’ve had quite enough, if you’re staying with me and my daughter tonight.
And I’ve drunk the best Chardonnay I’ve had in my life today and chucked most
of it up on Hampstead Heath.”

Sara started: “Oh my God, how
did the meeting go?”

“Oh, you know,” said Chris.
“They’re all French. They drive me nuts.”

“And your mum? Tell me all
about lovely Jean,” said Sara. “She was in such great spirits at Christmas. I’m
sure she drank most of Peter’s brandy.”

“Did she?” said Chris. “I
didn’t even notice. But she’s over the worst, I hope. Sends you her love.”

“She was in a bit of a state
about you and Amélie, mind.”

“Yes, I remember that bit.
Christ, don’t I just.”

“We were all a bit squiffy. I
think your dad was giving you the ‘we-don’t-have-to-talk-about-it-we’re-men’
treatment in the living room while your mum was getting merry with me in the
kitch!”

“I think I was an arse,” said
Chris. “They were pretty cut up; but I just wanted to get the hell out.”

“Come to think of it, she was
asking me why you and I had never, you know, got together.”

“Really? She knows about you
and Rick: I mean, not all the details, but she knows you are attached. And she
always loved Amélie: thought she was a real poppet.”

“She didn’t think she was a
poppet when she gave you the heave-ho,” snarled Sara. She allowed her head to
sink down onto his lap so she was looking up into his face. She twirled a thick
red ringlet of hair around her finger. “Haven’t
you
ever wondered why we never got
together?”

Chris looked down testily at
her smudged eyes and pouting lips, uncertain whether she was taking a rise.

“I know exactly why,” he said.
“Because we missed that boat hundreds of years ago; and we are now like a pair
of his and hers slippers. Made to be kicked off
before
we get into bed.”

“That’s a horrid thing to say
to a woman in a fragile state,” said Sara, sulkily.

“Just remember I’ve seen you
throwing up in your dinner. In Claridges,” said Chris; and they both giggled.
The recent sight of black silk and gold lace against the swelling of her
breasts punctured his resolve briefly, and then Amélie reminded them with a
rising holler that babysitting gave you only a temporary release.

Sara had showered and changed
into white cotton pyjamas in time to give the remainder of a bottle to the baby.
She had taken a few spoonfuls of baby rice: Chris felt he was getting attuned
to her needs. She was, after all, his flesh and blood. He was looking forward
to taking her to be weighed and measured at the baby clinic. He would text her
mother before he went, the following week, on the glorious off- chance she
would agree to go with him.

“She is kind of coming into her
own,” said Sara. “Such a change in such a short time. It’s amazing, isn’t it?
You must be over the moon.”

Amélie bounced on their knees and
talked her baby talk while they took turns in entertaining her and preparing
snacks for their supper. Chris succumbed to striding out for another bottle of
wine, which they drank at a steady pace to the peaceful soundtrack of a
classical CD. They swirled Amélie around the dance floor of her father’s
apartment, surrounded by the twinkling lights of a September sky mellowing from
dusk into darkness.

When she was finally laid back
down in her cot, Sara was on her knees raking through Chris’s ancient but reliable
collection of films for their evening’s entertainment, but he declared his need
for sleep.

“Oh, not yet!” Sara protested.
“I can’t go to bed at ten o’clock. It’s inhuman!”

“Not when you might be up two
or three times in the night,” Chris replied. He stifled a yawn at the prospect.
“Look, you sleep on the sofa, then, and watch a film. I’m done in.”

Sara scrabbled to her feet to
give him a goodnight hug. Her hair smelled of strawberries. When she released
him she said:

“Let me sleep with you –
just
sleep
with
you – tonight,” she pleaded, gently. “I’ve had a perfectly horrid day.
Until this evening.”

“I can’t believe you,” said
Chris, gruffly. “You have one minor bust up with Rick and you’re coming on to
me like a tart. Just behave yourself.”

He brushed his teeth and
scuttled about in his room for a while in quiet indignation, mindful that
Amélie had only recently been laid down.

He hoped his mum was resting
peacefully: preferably back next to his dad, who might have stopped fussing by
now. The thought of him snoring loudly next to her and waking up intermittently
to apologise made him smile. He thought of the tiny baby sister he never met -
knowing he mustn’t dwell on her brief passage through his life - feeling his
heart squeezed and released by an invisible callous hand.

He thought of Paul Bénard’s
genial face, swimming with wine; and he heard the dulcet voices of Sophie and
Cécile reading the allegorical story of
The Little Prince
for the benefit of him and
his sleepy child.

He resisted as best he could
the notion of the baby’s mother, somewhere in London without him, surely in a
state of confusion, lamenting the loss of her little girl.

Before sleep finally overcame
him, he was transported to the restaurant near Hampstead Heath where the lime
leaves above his head were breaking loose from their boughs and fluttering down
around him like Euro notes.

He was woken at three o’clock
by the creaking of his door, not by the stirring of the baby.

“Is that you, Sara?” he
whispered.

“Yes,” she said huskily. She had
watched
High
Noon
and
The
English Patient
.

In the darkness, she took off
her night things and slipped under his duvet. He felt her rise like a serpent
between his legs and secure her strong wet mouth around him with an instantly
seductive rhythm. His hands reached deep into the roots of her thick hair to
wrench her away, but gave in to driving her further on.

“You’re a bitch,” he hissed at
her.

“I know,” she hissed back,
rearing up and easing herself onto him with a deep, triumphant moan. “And I’ll
probably hate us both in the morning.”

Part
Two

Chapter Seventeen

“
There
are babies
all over London who are at much greater risk
than your daughter, Mr Skinner; but I wouldn’t be doing my job properly if I
wasn’t concerned.”

Chris had wanted to dislike
her. Her name was Eileen something. She rustled when she moved, rather stiffly,
on account of being layered in everything the latest Marks and Spencer season
had to offer the professional lady on an average budget. She had lank blonde
hair, false nails, high heels. There was that smell of old coffee he noticed on
women on the Tube, which was an unfortunate side effect of using fake tanning
products: along with the other unfortunate side effect of looking fake tanned.

“We have Amélie registered as living
with her mother in Queens Gardens, Paddington.”

“Well, she is spending some
time with me, her father, here. That can’t be an unusual arrangement.”

Eileen had placed her tea cup
down on the nearby speaker unit that was functioning as a table: hovering
briefly for the receptacle of a saucer that she quickly remembered hadn’t been
supplied, and placing it, instead, on the circular stain left by a past coffee
mug.

“So when will she be going back
to her mum?”

He wanted to dislike her, but
she was the embodiment of every person in authority he had ever encountered:
from the librarian who had once insisted it
was
possible to owe ten pounds for
over-borrowing a book that was only worth one fifty, to the series of officious
traffic wardens who fastened parking tickets on his car at regular intervals
until he decided to get shot of it. She was just doing her job. A job that not
everybody would want to do: like cleaning public toilets.

“I don’t know. We don’t know.
It’s all a bit new.”

“She’s not a pair of shoes, Mr
Skinner.”

“I
appreciate
that,” said Chris. Eileen’s
shoes were new: squeaky patent leather with just the beginnings of the wrinkles
of wear. “You do your checks, fill out your forms. Do what you are supposed to
do to make sure no more poor little bastards are drowned in their baths, or
whipped with the flexes of kettles…but Amélie is perfectly fine, as you can
see.”

Eileen’s eyes widened to
kohl-rimmed circles:

“I don’t think there’s any need
for language, Mr Skinner,” she said. “I am just doing my job.”

She turned her disgruntled
expression to the small red plastic booklet that Chris had taken to the health
visitor’s appointment the day before. It had been a deceptively pleasant event:
a jolly midwife had weighed and measured baby Amélie, and checked her reflexes.
She had laughed when he mentioned ‘topping up her oil’ and some of the other
things he thought dads might be forgiven for saying when they found themselves
in the mothers’ club of
 
the
midwives’ waiting room. She had plotted the baby’s progress on a pleasing
little graph, showing she was at seventy-five percent of her quartiles. What an
encouraging place to be! It inferred she wasn’t going to be last in the race;
and had every chance of getting on the medal table! But it had ended in this
betrayal: the arrival of bustling Eileen with her righteous notebook and dearth
of intuition.

She made a few notes in curly
handwriting, tilting her head at the end of each phrase. She paused and brushed
imaginary crumbs from the page. Chris hadn’t given her a biscuit with her tea.
He wasn’t a biscuit man; and the offer of a packet of crisps seemed
inappropriate. In retrospect, it could have been fatal.

“There are lots of foster
families around who can help out in difficult situations with new babies,”
Eileen continued in her estuary twang. “I will make Miss Bénoit aware of that,
too.”

“That would be out of the
question,” said Chris, quickly. “And, if I may say so, insulting. We are
perfectly capable of taking care of our child.”

“I hope so,” the woman replied,
without conviction. She had the box of matches and it appeared to be in her
power to light the touch paper. She looked meaningfully around Chris’s lounge.
“Your flat isn’t exactly ideal for bringing up a small child, Mr Skinner. Miss
Bénoit has a ground floor flat with a garden and I believe she has her mother
living with her? Before you say anything, I know that children are brought up
in much more unsuitable circumstances. But I need to make you aware of the
concerns the authorities will have about you and your ex partner’s casual
childcare arrangement; and to encourage you to think about the options that are
best for Amelia. OK?”