‘Care for me enough to banish me to the kitchen for the whole of Christmas Day?’ said Issy.
‘OK,’ said Helena. ‘Was just an idea. What were you planning on doing?’
‘At the moment,’ said Issy. ‘I couldn’t feel less in a goodwill-to-all-men state of mind.’
Pearl was on a half-day the next day, and she felt like she desperately needed it. She left early, rather guiltily ignoring Issy’s red-rimmed eyes, a combination of jet lag, crying and an ill advised nightcap. She needed the time off and could make it back before Louis got out of school.
Doti caught up with her at the bus stop.
‘Well, hello there,’ he said, with his customary twinkle. ‘How are things with you?’
‘Not bad,’ said Pearl. She was pleased, but still a bit cross with him for slavering all over Maya. It had felt insensitive.
‘Christmas shopping?’
‘I might be.’
‘I was just heading into town myself. Maybe I’ll wait for the bus with you.’
‘If you like,’ said Pearl.
‘So, Maya’s worked out well for you? I thought she might.’
‘She is a hard worker,’ agreed Pearl.
‘Have you met Rachida? They’re a lovely couple.’
‘You knew she lived with a woman?’
‘Of course I did; they’re on my round. Don’t get much past the postman, you know.’
‘Why were you all over her, then?’
Doti looked confused. ‘What do you mean? I really wanted her to get that job, she needed it desperately.’
‘I thought you … I thought you fancied her,’ mumbled Pearl, feeling her face grow hot. Where the hell was that bloody bus?
Doti burst out laughing. ‘A skinny little thing like that? Not likely,’ he said. He looked slyly up at Pearl under his thick black eyelashes. ‘I like something a bit more … womanly,’ he said.
There was a silence.
‘There,’ he said, finally, kicking the heel of his black postman boot against the pavement. ‘I said it.’
Pearl’s heart was fluttering in her chest and she found it hard to get her breath. Her emotions fought with each other inside herself; she had an almost overwhelming desire – and it would be so, so terribly simple – to extend her right hand, just a few centimetres, to meet his left, just there, his large, strong, worker’s hand, holding on fiercely to the uncomfortable bus shelter bench. She gazed at his hand, and then her own, and his eyes followed her gaze.
Then she remembered the sound of a little boy crying, triumphantly, ‘DADDY!’ Ben parading Louis round the sitting room on his shoulders like he was a football trophy or a crown; the two of them playing kung fu and breaking her mother’s prized horse statuette; Louis laughing, laughing, laughing.
Her knuckles tightened involuntarily, and she froze.
‘I can’t,’ she said, in a voice barely above a whisper. ‘It’s … it’s complicated.’
Doti nodded. ‘Sure is,’ he said.
Then he stood up, just as the 73 rounded the corner.
‘I am actually going into town,’ he said, in a much more conversational tone of voice. ‘I wasn’t just looking for an excuse. So can I still come … just as a friend? As a normal person?’
Pearl smiled at him, touched. ‘You will never be a normal person to me.’
It was fun, in the end. Pearl hadn’t realised it would be; pottering around John Lewis, buying a cheap little horse statuette for her mother to replace the one the boys had broken; and walking up to Primark to buy some underpants with monsters on them so hopefully they would appear to Louis more of a gift and less of a basic necessity. All the way they looked at the beautifully dressed windows of the posh shops, filled with expensive goods, but Pearl, watching the sullen faces of the thin blondes passing in and out of them, wasn’t sure they were having as good a time as she was, and she could barely afford anything. Doti asked her advice on buying make-up for his grown-up daughter – he and his wife had separated years before, when she had taken a job in a nightclub almost comically unsuited to his hours and ended up having an affair with a bouncer, for which Doti did his very best not to blame her, which Pearl appreciated, even if she thought his ex-wife patently mad. Then he insisted on treating her to coffee at Patisserie Valerie, down on Regent Street, having once overheard her say how much she liked it. Pearl was as touched by the fact that he had remembered as she was by the treat itself.
They walked down past Hamleys, the huge toy shop. As usual, there was an enormous crowd of people, children and adults alike, gathered to see the wonderful window display – this year it was a huge snowy fair-ground scene, with a real rotating wheel and carousel rides for the toys below. Outside a Santa Claus was ringing a bell, and several pirates and princesses were blowing bubbles to attract passers-by.
It was the first time Pearl had felt a pang all afternoon. Right by the main door, under a seasonal coating of white cotton wool, all lit up with fairy lights – there it was. The monster garage, with the monster mechanics and the monster trucks going up and down the special lift. She smiled at it and shook her head.
‘Are you thinking about that for the little man?’ asked Doti.
‘Oh, no, no, he gets far too many treats,’ said Pearl, fiercely and quickly. She was never, ever going to admit to anyone what she could and couldn’t afford.
Doti stayed in town, and Pearl just made it back in time to hide all the little parcels before the door of the café flew open and Louis ran in.
‘MAMMA! Oh, no.’ He stopped himself. ‘MUM!’
‘You don’t call me Mum,’ said Pearl indignantly. ‘I’m your mamma.’
‘Noooo,’ said Louis, shaking his head crossly. ‘That’s what babies say. I’m not a baby. You’re my mum.’
Behind him Big Louis stood nodding gravely at this sad fact of the world.
‘I don’t want to be Mum. I want to be Mamma. Or Mummy, at a pinch, if you want to sound like those namby-pamby kids you go to school with.’
‘Whatever,’ said Louis.
‘Louis Kmbota McGregor, don’t you ever say whatever to me ever again!’ said Pearl, horrified. Issy looked up and laughed. It was the first thing that had made her smile all day.
Louis looked half terrified, half proud of himself for inducing such a reaction. He glanced at Issy, who beckoned him over.