Free Missing You by Louise Douglas

Bath come here on Saturdays,’ she says.
    ‘We always do. I tried to persuade Amy that rugby was more fun, but she wasn’t having it.’
    Fen laughs. ‘Bath’s nice in the summer,’ she says. ‘She’ll like it better then. There are more things to do. Loads of things for children.’
    They are silent again for a moment. Sean is thinking that he won’t be here in the summer. He’ll be back home by then.
    ‘You know,’ she says, ‘you don’t have to be out of the house all weekend. I don’t mind if you want to take over the living room or the kitchen. It’s your home too.’
    Sean winces. He didn’t mean to and he hopes she didn’t notice, but she’s wrong. Lilyvale is not his home.
    ‘OK,’ he says, ‘thanks.’
    A little later he says: ‘You’re not local, are you?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You told me you grew up in Taffy-land.’
    She laughs. ‘That’s right.’
    ‘What brought you to Bath, then?’
    She gazes over towards the giant gas tanks across the road. They are catching the falling sunlight, magnificent in their enormous ugliness.
    ‘I was sort of passing through and I bumped into Lina. I needed somewhere to live and she had a house to rent.’
    Sean glances at her. Her eyes are pale brown, almost yellow, glassy in the sun’s rays.
    ‘That’s not much of an answer,’ he says.
    She smiles, but not at him; she smiles at Connor, who is methodically piling sand around the base of the climbing frame.
    ‘Is that where Connor’s father is?’ Sean persists. ‘In Wales?’
    Fen picks at the dying grass and narrows her eyes as if she’s trying to remember and then she says: ‘I don’t know where Connor’s father is.’
    There’s a pause.
    ‘Doesn’t he help you out at all?’ asks Sean.
    She shakes her head. ‘It’s not his fault,’ she says. ‘He doesn’t know about Connor. I’m sure he’d help if he could.’
    ‘Why can’t you contact him?’
    She looks into the distance. ‘We were only together for one night. He was very nice, but I don’t know anything about him. I didn’t expect to fall pregnant.’
    Sean can think of nothing to say to this.
    She looks at him sideways.
    ‘Do you think that’s awful?’ she asks.
    He shakes his head and smiles. ‘It’s kind of romantic.’
    She looks away again. ‘I was a bit fucked-up,’ she says, ‘at the time.’
    Amy comes over to the adults. She looks anxious, shy.
    ‘Fen,’ she says, ‘has Connor hurt his leg?’
    ‘Not exactly. He has a problem with his muscles, that’s why he looks a bit strange when he walks.’
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘It’s just the way he was born.’
    Amy thinks about this for a moment.
    ‘Does it hurt him?’
    ‘No, not at all.’
    ‘Can I ask him if he wants to play with me?’
    ‘Of course you can.’
    Sean is touched by the way Amy plays with Connor. The two get on very well. If Amy can’t understand something Connor says, they work it out between them with signs. She enjoys mothering him; he is grateful for the attention and does everything he’s told to do.
    They are enjoying one another’s company so much that the normally impeccably placid Connor refuses to get back into his pushchair even though the sun is so low that it has disappeared behind the gas tanks and the air is turning cold and the grass is already wet.
    ‘Why does he have to go in the buggy?’ asks Amy.
    ‘Because his legs are tired and it’s a long walk home.’
    Amy hangs on Sean’s hand to pull his head down towards hers. She stands on tiptoe and whispers: ‘Can Connor come with us for a pizza?’ Her breath is hot and moist in her father’s ear. She smells of damp grass and sand, discarded lollipop sticks and fallen leaves.
    Sean glances at Fen.
    ‘Well, why not?’ he says. ‘Why don’t you come and eat with us?’
    ‘Thanks,’ says Fen, ‘but I don’t want to intrude on your time with Amy.’
    ‘You won’t be intruding.’
    ‘No, really.’
    ‘Please come,’ says Sean, ‘you don’t know how lonely