Free Missing You by Louise Douglas Page A

it gets.’
    It’s only as the words leave his lips that he realizes they are true.
    ‘My treat.’
    She shakes her head.
    ‘Go on. I’ll put it on my expenses. I’ll pretend you were clients, you and Connor. I’ll pretend you had a restoration project you wanted me to look at.’
    Fen looks down at Connor, who is looking up at her, pleading with his eyes.
    ‘If you’re sure . . .’
    ‘I’m sure.’
    ‘OK,’ says Fen, ‘thank you.’
    They eat in Amy’s favourite restaurant, pricey but classy with its high, ornate ceilings and rococo walls, big mirrors and tea-lights on the tables. Amy sits next to Fen and tells her about her life. Fen picks slivers of artichoke and olive from the surface of her pizza. Connor listens, but is too hungry to join in. Sean, temporarily relieved from having to worry about whether or not Amy is having a good time, slips back into his thoughts. He drinks his wine and watches Fen and how she smiles at Amy with her pale brown eyes.
    ‘And Lewis, who is Mummy’s partner, well, I’m supposed to call him Uncle Lewis, but he’s not my real uncle, but Lewis is his real name, which is not as funny as Daddy’s name, which is Sean,’ says Amy.
    ‘I know,’ says Fen.
    ‘Like Sean the Sheep!’
    ‘That is funny.’
    Amy leans forward conspiratorially. ‘Daddy and me call Lewis “Pooey Lewey”.’
    Fen raises her eyebrows.
    ‘But only when nobody else can hear. Anyway he’s moving into our house today. He’s going to share Mummy’s bedroom. Mummy says Daddy will get used to it but he shouted at her yesterday when he came to pick me up.’
    Amy stares at Fen with round, serious eyes. Sean holds his wine in his mouth.
    ‘I expect he did,’ says Fen in a matter-of-fact voice. Sean relaxes, swallows, tugs at his ear lobes.
    ‘But he shouldn’t shout at Mummy,’ says Amy quietly, shaking her head to emphasize the point. ‘I really don’t like it.’
    ‘No, I’m sure you don’t. But I don’t suppose he shouts very often and I’m sure he says he’s sorry afterwards.’
    ‘Mmm,’ Amy agrees grudgingly.
    She looks over at her father to see if he’s paying attention, and he pretends that he is not. He is glad that Amy is talking about what’s going on in her life. He supposes that she can’t talk about Lewis and her mother to him, because she knows it would hurt him, and out of loyalty to Belle. He is grateful to Fen for acting as confidante, and for her calm impartiality. He hears Amy whisper to Fen: ‘Mummy told me there’s going to be a special present for me when I get back, to celebrate.’
    ‘Oh,’ says Fen. ‘What do you hope it will be?’
    Amy shrugs. ‘I don’t care. It won’t be as good as the fairy things Daddy got me today.’
    Amy is bathed and asleep by nine, lying on the dry side of the bed, her infant-red lips slightly ajar, her silky hair drifting across her cheeks, and her eyes moving charmingly backwards and forwards beneath her closed, delicately veined lids. Sean had forgotten how little she was. He could cup the top of her skull in the palm of his hand. He had forgotten details about his daughter. Now he sits on the bed and watches her sleep, while the sky darkens to black beyond the window and, far below, the lights of Bath twinkle as the air grows colder. And he thinks of Belle, and how tonight she will be lying in the Other’s arms, between sheets that she and Sean used to share. He remembers the pattern of the curtain fabric in their bedroom: lemon flowers and leaves. He remembers the shape of the yellow spill of light on the pale carpet from the landing lamp, left on for Amy’s sake. He remembers the silky texture of the padded headboard and the apricot colour of Belle’s dressing gown hanging on the hook on the back of the door. And his loneliness cracks and forms a chasm inside him. He slides down into the space between the bed and the wall, and tries to lose himself in music but it doesn’t work any more. All he can think of is