"Stop it," she said, not looking up.
"What?"
"Looking at ."
"I’m not."
"You are."
"All right. I am."
"Why."
"Because you just spent two hours calling a monster and you’re still sat on my sofa. I find that very encouraging."
She put the laptop down on the coffee table, calmly, the way she does when she has decided sothing. She lifted the wine. Long sip. Set it down on the coaster. Clink. She turned her head.
"Get off the sofa."
"What."
"Bed."
"Em."
"Daniel."
"It is half past eleven."
"I know what ti it is, Daniel. I have been on this sofa with the ti."
"I have got to be up early."
"You are always up early. Get off the sofa."
Brrr. Brrr. The phone.
It was on the cushion next to . I picked it up to put it on Do Not Disturb without looking.
It was Mum.
I picked up.
"Mum."
"You’ve not rung ." Straight in. No hello. I get that off the pair of them, her and Emma, the two won who cannot be doing with hello. "I’ve had to find out my own son’s carry-on off Margaret. She co hamring the door at nine about so video. I thought you’d had a crash on that motorway."
"Sorry, Mum. It’s been mad."
"I’ve seen the mad. I’ve got a telly."
I held one finger up at Emma.
She did the eye-roll that says fine, but you owe . Got up off the sofa. Walked across the living room toward the bedroom in the T-shirt and nothing else I could see. The lamp light moved with her. She turned at the bedroom door, pointed at the floor next to her, said with her mouth, silently, here, and went in. Left the door open six inches.
Christ.
Click of the kettle going on at Mum’s end. Eight hundred miles up the road. Sa kitchen. Sa kettle since I was a lad.
"I watched your little film," she said. "The one with the cups."
I waited for the needle. They’ll bring you down a peg, you’ve got too big for your boots, your nan would have had sothing to say about you being cheeky on the internet. I was ready for it. Would have taken it grinning.
"You’ve gone thin."
That was not it.
"Are you eating, or is it all them coffees down there."
"I’m eating, Mum."
"Mm."
I leant my head against the cool of the hallway wall.
"Mum."
"Mm."
"When I co up Monday. I’ll be bringing her with ."
"Aye, you said. Bring her."
"I an. I’ll be bringing her as my fiancée."
The line went quiet.
The kettle click off. A chair scraping on lino. The fridge motor at her end that has been making the sa wrong noise since 2009.
When she spoke she said it small.
"Tomorrow."
"In the morning."
"Right."
"Mum, you can’t, "
"Daniel."
"Mm."
"I’ve known for three months."
I did not say anything.
"Your Jessica rung . In April. Said her piece. Said you’d asked her to find the right one and she wasn’t going to settle on it without running it past your mother first. Lovely girl. We were on the phone the best part of an hour. She wanted the lass inside out before she set foot in a shop. What she wears. How she keeps it all plain. That watch her dad got her for Cambridge, the old Cartier one. Jessica had it all in a notebook."
"She, "
"She walked the lot of it. Hatton Garden, Bond Street, so little places she swears by. Took her weeks, she wouldn’t be rushed. Then she rung back in May with a photo of the one she’d settled on, an old understated thing, no fuss to it, exactly the lass, and she did the courtesy of asking what I thought before you ever clapped eyes on it. I told her. She had it sorted the next day. I have known about that ring since the seventeenth of May, Daniel Walsh, and I have not breathed one word of it to a living soul. Not to Margaret. Not to anybody."
"Mum."
"I had to sit self down on the stairs about that an’ all."
I shut my eyes.
"That’s what the film was, in a way. I were already sat down. The film were just the second ti tonight."
"Mum."
"Tomorrow morning."
"Right. Well." A breath. "Good."
"And she’s saying yes."
"I hope so."
"She is, Daniel. I have watched her with you on the telly. She is."
"Mum."
"Mm."
"Cheers."
"Don’t thank , you soft sod. Thank that Jessica. She’s the one who walked round every jeweller in the West End. She’s the one who showed the photo. I just told her she’d got it right."
I laughed. Quiet. Into the wall.
"Right, I’m off, our kid." She did the gear-change. "So of us are up in the morning. And so are you. Don’t make a ss of it. And eat."
Click. Gone. No goodbye. She never could be doing with them.
I stood in the hall a second with the phone still warm in my hand.
Tomorrow.
This room. The light the way she likes it. The kitchen. Jessica’s lot in the building by half five. Then Monday I drive Emma up the M6 and I tell my mum, to her face, that the lad off Princess Road is getting married.
Four things on the calendar. I had done two. The one that scared had not happened yet.
I went through to the bedroom. Creak of the door on the half-hinge I keep aning to fix.
Lamp on her side. Duvet off. The long T-shirt was on the chair by the door where she had thrown it.
Emma was in bed, propped on one elbow, the green eyes warm and patient and not patient at all, the small private smile she does only at this hour and only at .
"You took your ti."
"I love you."
"I know. Get in, Daniel."
I shut the door. Click. The light went off.
The rest is ours.
I will tell you that at so point near the end she did the laugh I had been doing a count of since the second weekend. That she said my na into the side of my neck the way she has been saying it for three years. That we did not sleep until past one. That the country was still going to war about on a laptop on the coffee table eight feet away and neither of us looked at it once.
She fell asleep on my chest with her hand over my sternum and her bare leg over mine and her breath slow on my collarbone.
I lay there in the dark and watched the ceiling and thought about a kitchen up the M6 with a kettle in it and a woman who had carried one secret for three months and not let it slip, not to Margaret, not to anybody, just so she would not be the one to ruin a Sunday morning she would not even be in the room for.
Our kid.
She had not called that since I was a boy.
Buzz. The phone on the bedside table. I did not look. Buzz, buzz. Did not look. The video passed five million in the night. I would have enjoyed that. I did not check.
I had one thing left to do in the morning. It was the only thing I have ever been frightened of. The small heavy weight of it was zipped into the side pocket of a bag by the front door, where the woman asleep on my chest never goes.
She turned her head on my chest. Made a soft sound in her sleep. Said sothing I could not catch.
I closed my eyes.
Six hours, give or take.
Tick. Tick. Tick from the clock on the dresser.
I had run out of things to be brave about except the one.
***
Thank you to Sir nayelus for the support.
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