Free The Other Child by Lucy Atkins

be kind to each other in front of Joe, and that feels especially important now, with all the disruption Joe is going through.
    ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, Tess, you look knackered.’ He takes a gulp of espresso. ‘Everything OK?’
    ‘Everything’s fine, thanks.’
    He glances at her belly. ‘Are you as sick with this one as you were with Joe?’
    ‘I really wasn’t that sick with Joe.’ It feels too intimate to talk to David about the pregnancy. She doesn’t want him to have a connection to her body anymore.
    ‘You just look a bit pallid and pasty, sort of Bride of Frankenstein, in your own blonde, beautiful way.’
    ‘Thanks.’ She scrapes her hair off her face and ties it at the base of her neck with a band from her wrist. ‘I’m just a bit tired, that’s all.’
    ‘Why?’
    It really isn’t his fault. How would David know what it feels like to be five months pregnant in a new country with a dispossessed child, to make a blinding leap across the Atlantic after someone who is away so much that at times he feels almost imaginary? David travels with a passport, a holdall, and a multi-pocket gilet stuffed with gadgets and dollars. He spends his time being tear-gassed and shot at. He is blacklisted in China and banned from Bahrain, and will – nominally – be living in a fully furnished apartment somewhere in Brooklyn with a stack of takeaway menus, a fridge containing microbrewery beer, and not a single cushion.
    David puts down his empty cup. ‘Nice coffee.’
    ‘Gourmet beans. Greg’s a bit of a coffee snob.’
    ‘Is he around?’ He looks behind him, as if Greg might pop out of one of the kitchen cabinets making jazz hands.
    ‘No.’ Their eyes meet, and she suddenly feels disloyal, as if she is siding with David against Greg. ‘He’s away right now. He’s receiving an award – I’m about to watch it streaming live from Chicago. He’ll be back this afternoon.’
    ‘Blimey, Tess, that man travels almost as much as I do.’ She hears the tension in his voice. He has had so little time to get used to Greg. He handled the announcement of the marriage and move with equanimity because it meant that he would be on the same continent as Joe. He has been civil to Greg whenever they’ve met, but they have nothing in common and it can’t be easy to see another man step into Joe’s life like this. It helps that David is an optimist, unfazed by change, that he thrives on the unexpected and believes, unfailingly, that everything will work out for the best. Despite his flaws, she is lucky that David is Joe’s father and not someone more conventional or sensible – or someone with more time on their hands.
    ‘Are you ready, Joey?’ She gets up and calls through the archway. ‘Don’t forget to do your teeth, OK?’
    The phone is ringing. She glances over at it. The stack of paperwork that is usually in the wire tray – bills, leaflets and Greg’s unopened mail – has been lifted onto the marble countertop and placed by the phone. She is sure that the previous evening, when she tidied the kitchen before she went to bed, it was in the tray. She tries to think whether she touched it this morning, but she can’t remember. Maybe Joe was looking for something.
    ‘You want me to get that for you?’ David raises his eyebrows at the phone.
    ‘Oh? No, no, don’t bother. Nobody’s ever there. Greg thinks it’s an automated marketing thing. I keep forgetting to call the phone company and sort it out.’ The answerphone kicks in, there is the pause, then the flat burr as the call cuts out.
    ‘You can dial star, six, nine to find out who’s calling.’
    ‘I know. I tried that but it just says number unavailable.’
    David looks around the kitchen. ‘It’s all very
American Beaut
y here, isn’t it?’
    ‘Is it?’
    ‘Well, it’s spookily quiet. Like Armageddon’s happened and nobody’s told us.’
    ‘People work long hours here, that’s all.’
    ‘It’s Saturday, Tess.’
    ‘Well