Free The Ice People by Maggie Gee Page A

other as mothers’ (to quote from a thinly disguised account of her life that Sarah had so smilingly delivered on her new programme,
Modern Living,
as if it had happened to three other people, as if nobody real had been hurt, abandoned).
    Sylvie had wanted to have sex with her. That was the long and short of it. (Whereas Sarah, I suppose, preferred sex with her doctor.) In theory Sylvie respected Sarah’s refusal, but in practice she sulked a lot and left the washingup and sat at the kitchen table weeping, while her son beat Luke up in front of his mother in an eager, professional way.
    I’d learned my lesson. I listened to Sarah. It took a long time, with a lot of repetitions. Women do tend to repeat themselves, but of course a man must never say that. Her doctor, it turned out, had been ‘a control freak’. Well, naughty old him! But I held my tongue. I was kind and thoughtful, and suppressed my glee. I told Sarah she could always come back. In effect, as it happened, she already was back, nearly every evening when she wasn’t working, and when she was, she left Luke for the night. A new, muddled happiness descended on us.
    Luke hardly slept and was often ill, but he was a startlingly clever, fairylike child, laughing and crying at things we couldn’t see, beating his head on the walls, sometimes, his blue eyes suddenly filling with tears, running to either of us equally. Light as a mayfly, up into our arms. He had Sarah’s eyes, her mother’s blonde hair, my dense curls, Samuel’s long limbs, and his lips were full, my lips, our lips … I sometimes found myself hunting ghosts, searching Luke’s face as I had once searched my own, that long ago day, in the bathroom mirror, hunting the hidden lines of Ghana. But he was thin and pale as a child of glass, and his eyes were weak and slightly unfocused. His heart had a defective chamber, which the doctors had promised could be repaired later, and his asthma, alas, was more severe than most children’s. And he had allergies, because of all the drugs. But considering everything, he was pretty healthy.
    ‘It’s so wonderful to have you back,’ I said, lying beside Sarah, hardly believing it, stroking her beautiful chestnut mane, short and thick now as a glossy pony’s, pulling its tendrils across her jawline, stroking the long moist curve of her neck, then down to her belly, still soft from the baby, and lower to her tangle of dark red hair, warm and wet where we had just made love, though we’d used contraception, at her insistence. ‘My wife,’ I tried; I hardly ever said it. ‘My darling wife. I knew you’d come back. I think you just went mad with grief. Those bloody doctors, and Luke being so ill.’
    ‘I wasn’t mad,’ she said, lightly. ‘I just felt trapped. No one listened. I didn’t know how to get out of there.’
    ‘The window wasn’t a good idea,’ I said, unwisely. I felt her stiffen: I seemed to have lost my touch with humour.
    ‘This is only temporary, you know,’ she said. ‘Just till I can find somewhere for Luke and me.’
    ‘Oh,’ I said glumly. But I didn’t believe her. Melville Road was convenient for her work, and things were going pretty well between us. It felt right, the way life was meant to be, sharing our child, our food, our bed. After a few months she seemed to settle.
    There were days and nights of almost perfect bliss. She could not breastfeed, because of the long time when Luke had been too ill to be with her, so both of us shared the bottlefeeding that went on until he was nearly two. I liked to watch as Sarah fed him, the way the level of the milk slowly dropped, and as it dropped, his lids began to flicker, his blueish lids began to quiver and droop, and by the time she finished his transparent lashes were a faint fringe of silver on his sleeping cheek. I liked to hold the bottle myself, to imagine that as Luke sucked the milk my strength went into him, and my love.
    Because of his frailty, Luke slept in a cot