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16

Abigail

It was vital to behave perfectly normally, not to alert Mel in any way to whatever it was that was bubbling. Because something certainly was bubbling. Was it in her imagination? Was it one way? She watched him carefully. When he smiled at Mel it was an oblique, faintly perplexed smile. When he smiled at the girls or Tanya it was uncomplicated, amenable. When he caught her eye, he didn’t smile at all. He looked like he wanted to lick her. Taste her. So, she was almost certain.

While Mel tidied away after lunch and put the kitchen to rights, something about having to iron the school uniforms too, Abi spent the afternoon playing Barbie with the girls. They sat on the floor in the middle of the sitting room, surrounded by tiny plastic shoes, handbags and semi-clad dolls with tangled hair. If she had daughters she would not buy them Barbies. To be fair to Mel, the girls had Doctor Barbie and NASA Barbie, but even so, her physical proportions were crazy and were probably the root cause of all sorts of unrealistic body expectations. Ben, Liam, and Tanya were sprawled out on the two sofas watching sport with varying degrees of enthusiasm. There wasn’t much room for six people. She was just centimetres away from his feet. She was aware of him. His proximity. If she moved just a couple of centimetres to the left, she could bump up against him. What would he do? Move away?

The girls were forever getting up, walking in front of the TV, causing everyone to move around them to get a view, stumbling as they sat down again. On one occasion Abi took advantage. She reached for the box of Barbie accessories and allowed her shoulder to bang up against his knee. He didn’t flinch; if anything she thought he moved towards her. An infinitesimal transfer of energy and focus but she was sure of it. She waited a few more moments to see if he would yet move away. He didn’t. The heat from his leg could be felt through her shirt. She became emboldened. She spilled out the Barbie accessories onto the floor and under the cover of all the mess she ran her hand over his foot, tentatively. A move that she could deny, could be dismissed as an accidental brush. Or not. She dared to glance at his face. He continued to stare at the television; he did not say, ‘Oh sorry, am I in your way?’ and move. She was pleased. Professional. Unfazed. She squeezed his foot deliberately. Boldly. It had begun.

Abi liked being part of a family. She had imagined it often enough. Back in America she found herself looking at other people’s babies. Not just babies, their children too, and wondering what it was like to have such a mass of noisy energy living in close proximity all the time. If a woman pushed a stroller past her in the street, she’d strain her neck, as surreptitiously as possible, to see if the baby was asleep or gurgling; did it have a pacifier in or thumb? She’d gotten into the habit of sitting near mothers and children in coffee shops. That was almost certifiable – the chances of spillages increased tenfold. What was wrong with her? She lingered outside playparks (she’d told herself she had to stop, it was only a matter of time before someone made a complaint). She thought her adult-only gym sleek and stylish – with state-of-the-art Olympic-size pool, divided into neat columns to allow the most efficient length swimming – was soulless because she wanted to see kids splash around, to make noise and play on inflatables. It wasn’t just the cute and smiley ones she liked. If she heard a baby scream she didn’t want to run in the opposite direction, she wanted to pick it up and comfort it. Once she had gone so far as to swap seats with a passenger on a flight from LA to NY to move closer to a mum with a toddler in tow.