Free A Perfect Life by Raffaella Barker Page B

need some help if we are ever going to get lunch on the table.’
    Foss and Ruby are already in the kitchen stirring a bowl of lime-green liquid, both standing on the table and as usual wearing more or less no clothes. Why can no one else dress the children? Angel wonders with a stab of irritation, peering into their cauldron.
    â€˜Christ, what’s that?’
    Foss drops his spoon, Ruby raises her eyebrows and huffs, offended.
    â€˜It’s jelly and we’re going to put flowers in it and turn it upside down in the mould.’
    â€˜That’s lovely,’ Angel says guiltily, turning to crouch by the oven. She pulls the chickens on the roasting tin out and backs towards the table. The door from the hall swings open, Angel’s hand slips through a hole in the tea towel and her skin sticks to the hot metal of the tray. ‘Oh buggering bastard!’ she screams.
    Ruby glares at her, hugging Nick, who appears through the swinging door at this moment. ‘Daddeeeeee!!!!’ she coos, frowning at Angel and hissing, ‘Mummy. Don’t call Daddy that. You should be pleased to see him. I am.’
    Fierce defiance radiates from Ruby, stinging Angel like a small slap. Chastened and caught out, Angel wonders if leaving work is the catalyst for her to behave like a five year old, or if the osmosis has happened through exposure to the children. Nick moves round to hug Foss, and with both Foss and Ruby in his arms, clinging like small monkeys, he reaches across to kiss Angel’s cheek. All she can see are the whites of his eyes. His mouth on her cheek is cold and her heart flares for a moment then contracts with a hiss as though it is hot metal and has been immersed in cold water.
    â€˜Hi, Nick, how was your trip?’
    â€˜Mummy, why do you never talk to Daddy in your nice voice?’ Oh God, they miss nothing. Angel spins lettuce savagely, pulling the string of the salad spinner so hard that the lid flies off and the lettuce twirls across the room.
    â€˜Bollocks,’ says Angel. Ruby giggles, ‘Stressy’, and bats a bit back to her. Angel gathers up the salad and plonks it in a huge bowl. She would like to put the bowl on her head, to have some space between herself and the children, to redress the balance a bit. Maybe Nick being home will help. Ruby has her small palms flat across Nick’s face, pressing his skin, wrinkling his cheeks and fluffing his hair. With jet lag and coffee-stained teeth, Nick looks rough. Angel cannot find any part of herself that is pleased to see him, and an anaesthetic of cold fear begins to seep through her. Nick, in front of the kitchen window with Foss and Ruby loving him, is not what she wants any more. It has never occurred to her not to want it, or to even think about it before. Until now, this was life.
    Nick puts the children down and opens the fridge door, a reflex reaction he makes every time he comes into the kitchen. Angel cannot speak or look at him as a flame of irrational rage leaps through her.
    Nick drinks a can of Coke in greedy gulps, flips his sunglasses down on to his nose and says, ‘So, what’s the big lunch in aid of, or is it to welcome me home?’ Angel hears the defensive clip in her voice and despises herself as she rises to his challenge.
    â€˜My mother hasn’t seen the children for weeks and Nat Rosstein was in Cambridge for some accounting meetings so I thought I’d ask a few people to lunch. I invited Peter and Jeannie Gildoff. Oh, and Jake Driver.’
    Nick groans, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Angel, I’ve just got off a plane. I don’t want to do all this. Nat Rosstein.I mean I like him, but I do not want to track the accounts today, or even think about the business.’
    He stalks to the fridge and takes another can of Coke.
    â€˜Anyway, it’s a fucking charade,’ he adds. Tears spring in Angel’s eyes; she turns the tap on at the sink and blinks them away,