‘You go,’ said her mum. Louis looked like he might work himself up into a state if they hung about while he had to lie quietly in the corner. ‘I’ll see him off.’
‘I’ve got a T-shirt in my bag,’ said Ben. ‘Or I could just go like this.’
‘You can’t just go hot and cold on me all the time. And I have other options, you know!’
‘I know,’ said Ben. ‘Put that red dress on. The one that makes your hips sway.’
‘I will not,’ said Pearl. The last time she’d worn that dress out with Ben … well, she already had one extra mouth to feed.
He offered her his arm when they left the little flat. Pearl’s mother’s eyes were on them all the way, Louis vocalizing very loudly and clearly why he didn’t think his parents should be going out without him. Pearl didn’t take any notice.
‘What’s up, princess?’ said Graeme, as Issy got home. Issy looked at the ground.
‘Oh, girl stuff,’ she said.
‘Oh,’ said Graeme, who didn’t have the faintest idea what to do about girl stuff, and didn’t really care either. ‘Don’t worry about it. Come to bed for some boy stuff.’
‘OK,’ said Issy, although she hated to think of her friend going back to her house and the two of them having fallen out. Graeme stroked her dark curly hair.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Oh, and I thought … now we’re shacking up and everything … want to come and meet my mum some time?’
And those were Issy’s last thoughts before she fell asleep: he did love her. He did care for her. She lived with him, she was meeting his family. Helena was wrong about him.
Graeme lay awake a little longer. He had meant to tell her about the development tonight – he’d pitched it in the office and they’d gone mad for it. A keen landlord with an eye for a sound deal, apparently, and no problem tenants – the whole thing was going to be perfect. Too easy.
This is too easy, thought Pearl, as Ben’s hand brushed hers on the short walk back from the pub. Too easy. And it was what had got her into too much trouble before.
‘Let me stay,’ said Ben, wheedlingly.
‘No,’ said Pearl. ‘We’ve only got one bedroom, and that’s Nan’s. It’s not right.’
‘Well, come to my place. Or we could get a hotel.’
Pearl looked at him. In the light of the streetlamp, he was even handsomer than she remembered. His broad shoulders, his beautiful curly hair, his handsome face. Louis was going to be so like him. He was the father of her child; he should be the centre of their family. He leaned forward, very gently under the streetlights, and kissed her, and she closed her eyes and let him. It felt so familiar and yet so strange at the same time; it had been a while since she’d been touched by a man.
Issy rolled out of bed with the sun the next morning, confusedly pulling clothes out of bags.
‘What’s the rush, babes?’ said Graeme, sleepily.
Issy squinted at him. ‘I’m going to work,’ she said. ‘Those cupcakes don’t bake themselves.’
She stifled a yawn.
‘Well, come give me a cuddle anyway.’
Issy nestled into his hairless chest comfortably. ‘Mm,’ she said, mentally ticking down how much time she had, now she needed to cross north London to get to the café.
‘Why don’t you skip work today?’ said Graeme. ‘You work too hard.’
Issy smiled. ‘You of all people, saying that!’
‘Yes, but wouldn’t you like to slow down a bit? Work a bit less? Go back to a nice cosy office with sick pay and lunch breaks and office parties and someone else doing all the paperwork?’
Issy rolled on to her stomach and clasped her hands under her chin.
‘You know,’ she said. ‘You know, I really don’t think I would. I don’t think I could go back to working for someone else for all the tea in China. Not even you!’
Graeme looked at her in consternation. He would tell her later, he thought. Again.
Pearl was actually humming coming in the doorway.
‘What’s with you?’ said Caroline suspiciously. ‘You seem oddly cheerful.’
‘Can’t I be cheerful?’ said Pearl, getting out her broom as Caroline polished the temperamental cappuccino machine. ‘Are only middle-class people allowed to be cheerful?’
‘Quite the opposite,’ said Caroline, who had received a particularly nasty solicitor’s letter in the post that morning.
‘Quite the opposite to what?’ said Issy, coming up the stairs to greet Pearl and grab a coffee, with her eyebrows covered in flour.
‘Pearl thinks middle-class people are jolly.’
‘Not now I don’t,’ said Pearl, reaching out her finger to dip it in Issy’s bowl.
‘Stop that!’ said Issy. ‘If the health inspector saw you he’d have a fit!’
‘I have my plastic gloves on!’ said Pearl, showing her. ‘Anyway, all chefs taste their own produce. Otherwise how would you know?’
Pearl tasted Issy’s concoction. It was an orange and coconut cream sponge, soft, mellow and not too sweet.
‘This tastes like a pina colada,’ she said. ‘It’s wonderful. Amazing.’
Issy stared at her, then glanced at Caroline.
‘Caroline’s right,’ she said. ‘What’s up with you? Yesterday you were miserable, and today you’re Rebecca from Sunnybrook Farm.’
‘Can’t I be happy once in a while?’ said Pearl. ‘Just because I don’t live in your neighbourhood and have to take the bus?’
‘That’s not fair,’ said Issy. ‘I am a bus connoisseur.’
‘And I’m going to have to move out of the neighbourhood,’ said Caroline. She sounded so gloomy, the other girls looked at her in some amazement as she too dipped her finger in Issy’s bowl.
‘Fine,’ said Issy, exasperated. ‘I’ll throw this lot out and make a new batch, shall I?’
Pearl and Caroline took this as an invitation to get stuck into the batter in earnest, and with a sigh Issy put down the bowl, pulled up a chair and joined them.
‘What’s up?’ said Pearl.
‘Oh, my evil bloody ex-husband,’ said Caroline. ‘He wants me to move out of the home. The home that, by the way, I renovated almost all by myself; furnished all eleven rooms including his study, managed the building of the all-glass back wall and oversaw the construction of a fifty-thousand-quid kitchen, which by the way is no picnic.’