Free Sleepless Nights by Sarah Bilston

“I will, but frankly I think I’ve seen what there is to see.”
    It was starting to feel like something out of a bad farce—or, worse, a porn movie, according to whose script I should suddenly appear, for no clear reason, to be overwhelmed by the need to drop to my knees and—well, you get the point. Obviously I wasn’t anything of the sort, although there was a look in his eye that suggested he might be familiar with the script, and ever so slightly wondering if the fantasy of a dark moment was about to be realized. Pah. I waved Samuel in front of his face to remind him of the baby’s presence, since I have long observed that infants are a reliable passion-killer. It might have been the waving, or it might have been Samuel’s hysterical efforts on my behalf, but either way Paul silently handed me my pajamas, which were mixed up with a damp towel on an armchair, then turned his dark head and presented his back. I put the hysterical Samuel down in his bassinet for two seconds, hastily pulled on the pajamas, then began the long, long business of calming him down.
    When, eventually, he had hiccoughed and burped himself into a state of relative calm, I looked up to find that Tom’s ghastly friend had vanished. Thank God, I thought to myself, relieved; with any luck he’s gone to bed. Or, even better, gone out. To kiss his boat good-night, or whatever it is rich people like him do. I was trying cautiously to loop my hair out of my eyes without waking Samuel when I heard the sound of voices in the kitchen: Q and Tom were back.
    Q rushed into the sitting room in a vast, clucky panic. “Samuel—is he okay? Jeanie? How did you get on?” she asked hurriedly, peering down at the moist bundle in my arms.
    I conjured up my most confident smile. “He was—um, ah—fine,” I told her, passing the baby off as gently as possible. “He slept a bit, cried a bit, you know, the usual stuff, nothing to worry about.”
    “Really?” she asked, relief lightening her eyes as she looked down at the baby, “he was okay?”
    “Of course—” I began, but then I stopped because the horrible man suddenly appeared in the hallway, bowing his head slightly to fit through the door. Q and Tom turned in surprise at the sound of his footfall. “Paul!” cried Tom. “We didn’t expect you for hours!”
    Paul, who had now changed out of his work clothes and into a pair of black jogging pants and a black T-shirt, strode forward and shook hands with Tom and Q. “I met my deadline early, so I got a head start on the Friday-night traffic leaving Manhattan,” he explained sweetly, scratching at his emerging stubble. “I arrived to find your friend—oh, sister-in-law, I see—tending a peacefully sleeping kid,” he went on calmly. “Quiet as a mouse.”
    Q beamed at me, Tom threw me a look of purest gratitude. Behind their backs, Paul looked over at me, brown eyes alight with amusement, and grinned a slow, fiendish grin.
    No embarrassment at his earlier behavior, my God! He should clearly have backed out of the room as soon as he saw me in my buck nakedness, then kicked over a few buckets before clunking up the front steps, swearing loudly. He should have sworn blind, if asked, that he didn’t see a thing. Abject dishonesty was the only honorable course available to him. What an awful man! Of course it made me miss Dave even more.
    11
    Q
    T om and I were on our very best behavior the night of our first post-Samuel date. We avoided the topic of parents entirely, concentrating on less contentious subjects: holidays of the past, for instance, and Samuel’s undoubted superiority to all other children. We licked butter from oysters and gorged ourselves on hot, plump fries while gazing across the expanse of the Sound, which glittered like a pale opal in the fuchsia lights of the setting sun. We drank cold white Chilean wine, purchased from Sam’s Package Store, in plastic water cups until the sea seemed somehow to becomea part of my head. We