Free The Ice People by Maggie Gee Page B

at the foot of our bed till he was nearly three. I loved to wake up and hear him cooing to himself, and later singing nursery songs in a remarkably clear, steady voice, talking to himself, or counting his toes. Then there was the morning when he managed to climb out, to scale the bars and get on to our bed, a triumphant day because it had once seemed that his arms would always be too thin for climbing, his large heavy head too much for his neck.
    ‘Time for a room of your own,’ said Sarah, ‘My big strong boy,’ and put her head on my shoulder. And the three of us hugged, wordless, proud. She grew her hair again; it may have meant nothing.
    Luke made us laugh with his invented words, his invented friends, his bubbly farts, the way he plastered avocado on his eyebrows or used Sarah’s makeup bag as a hat. Each new word he learned entered our secret language, became a secret joke and source of pride for a precious few months, till it faded, forgotten. I took so many photographs the camera died.
    I wanted this happiness to go on forever. I tried my best; perhaps I tried too hard. I put her work before my own. It was Sarah who gave Luke his regular medicine, sighing, sometimes, as she ticked the chart with its long row of columns every morning. But when Luke was ill it was I who stayed home and cared for our child, fretful, whiney, speckled with fever and frighteningly hot. I stroked the eggshell dome of his forehead, and poured the medicine that cooled him down.
    Sometimes she thanked me, more often not. Perhaps I needed her to be grateful. Sometimes she seemed almost angry with me, as if the mere fact of my dogged presence excluded her, or pointed to her absence. Sometimes she swept home from the studio in the middle of the night to find me and Luke fast asleep on our double bed, with the screen still on, ‘as it has been all day, I bet it has’, though how she knew that was a mystery, the floor scattered with crumpled clothes and toys and halfeaten plates of nursery food, and she’d order me to carry Luke through to his room ‘so he can go to bed
properly,
for heaven’s sake’, while she set about grimly cleaning the flat.
    ‘I mean, do you have to mess everything up?’
    ‘I was looking after Luke. I mean, someone has to.’
    ‘You’re trying to say I’m not a good mother.’
    ‘You’re trying to say I’m a dirty scumbag.’
    ‘No –’ She crumpled, looked ashamed, let me put my arms around her.
    ‘Okay, then. But I’m doing my best.’
    ‘I’d like to look after him. The
sodding
screens …’
    I saw her resentment, sensed the danger.
    She said she didn’t want another woman in our flat, so I hired a manny, with her approval, one of the new breed of male nannies Riswan had been so sniffy about.
    Ash Vijay was a great success with us both, for I had been getting behind with my work, and now Luke was older variety was good for him. He adored our manny from the first, partly because Ash always brought with him the other child he was caring for, a little girl called Polly, slightly older than Luke. Polly couldn’t have looked more different. She was dark and rosy with shining skin, unusually sturdy, glowing, lively.
    I saw Sarah looking at Polly one morning from our bedroom doorway, her expression thoughtful. There was something avid in her blue eyes.
    ‘A tenner for them,’ I said, walking past her. Ash was in the kitchen, making two banana toasts.
    ‘Oh, nothing … What a goodlooking child Polly is. I bet – well, I bet she wasn’t techfix.’
    ‘Lucky them,’ I said. ‘We weren’t so lucky.’
    ‘I sometimes think I’d like another child.’
    My heart lifted. ‘I’m ready when you are!’
    But she twisted her watchstrap, avoiding my eyes. ‘It would just be the same old story with us,’ she said quietly.
    ‘You can’t be sure.’
    ‘You’re a dreamer, Saul.’
    Lying awake at two am, I thought about the conversation. I realised she’d given up on me. If Sarah tried to get