brush that away with a ‘bonkers brother’ remark.
So he’d put his ex-wife between them and the light had died from Hannah’s eyes.
With only cabin baggage he cleared passport control and hurried down to take the tube to Holloway Road, using the time on his laptop. Then came the ten-minute walk from the station to his house. It was in darkness when he let himself quietly in. He went up to peep at Josie as she slept, letting the day’s stresses melt away at the sight of her blonde locks swirling over the pillow as if blown there. Maria’s bed being empty hit him unexpectedly below his breastbone and he hoped Loren was coping with her OK.
Emelie stuck her head out of her door to wave sleepily at him. He gave her a bar of Marabou chocolate he’d grabbed from the airport shop as she always appreciated a taste of home. She whispered her thanks gratefully. ‘Tack!’ Ripping open the packet, she withdrew.
Nico went to his own room, undressed and let his tired body plummet onto his bed, groaning with pleasure at the clean smell of the duvet and its coolness on his skin. Then he made the mistake of glancing at his phone. Red notification dots had attached themselves to app icons like ticks. Three missed calls and eight texts with a couple of WhatsApp messages for good measure. He debated switching the bloody thing off but, with a sigh, checked the texts.
All six were from Loren’s mum, though he felt less alarmed at the number when he saw she sent a message for every sentence. Spoke to Loren. She sounded down.
Are you likely to see her this weekend?
If so, could you ring me after?
Redfern’s out of hospital and needs help but I could dash down tomorrow afternoon if I had to.
We mustn’t let her get in a state again.
How’s Josie?
He sent back: Just home from biz trip to Stockholm but will telephone her tomorrow to see if I can take Josie to visit. Will contact you after. Josie seemed fine when we FaceTimed after school. He added: Is Maria OK?
The missed calls were from Vivvi too so he disregarded them, glad there was no apparent emergency behind the blizzard of notifications.
The WhatsApp messages were from Tilly, his nanny. The first said, Won’t be able to take Josie to school Monday or Wednesday but will be able to pick her up as usual.
The second contained an afterthought: Sorry. He was about to ask why she couldn’t stick to her agreed hours but he lost patience and simply told her what the financial effect would be.
She replied instantly. Thanks a lot. It was no doubt meant to be ironic but though she’d helped with Maria as well as Josie after school for the second week of Maria’s stay, it had been with a put-upon air, even when he’d been working from home and had shared the load. Their once-OK relationship was deteriorating by the day.
Wide awake now, he checked his work emails, glaring at his inbox in frustration because he’d got up to date at Arlanda airport but people worked from home on Fridays and wrote emails last thing about contract changes or tender requests to make it look as if they worked right up to the end of play.
In one email, Anders asked for a meeting early Monday about a concept rebranding and said the client wanted new promo material for all its thirteen leisure centres in four weeks. SLS must grab this opportunity with both hands meaning Nico will have to shoehorn this into his crazy schedule even though he has annual leave booked in the affected period.
He snapped shut his laptop and flopped back onto his pillows.
After an hour of lying sleepless, he got up to get the bloody emails out of the way so he could spend the weekend with Josie. At two a.m. he was about to close down when his eating plan and food diary on his desktop caught his eye. He hadn’t filled it in for over a week. Then he realised he hadn’t eaten since lunch. A gnawing stomach was so familiar he hadn’t noticed it. He should have bought himself a big bar of Marabou chocolate too. His mouth watered. Then he caught himself. No! Binging on sugar was behaviour he’d left behind because it triggered the feeling that he ought to get rid of it again. He had orange and chocolate chip protein bars in his laptop bag and ate one