it would mean starting again. Plus he’d only learn that he could get up whenever he liked, if he yelled loud enough.
“Special occasion, though,” Miles said winningly. “You could show him his present.” He caught the look on my face. “Or maybe not. Best leave them to cry. Your parenting style and all that.”
“Actually, we don’t just leave him,” I began, but then Miles snapped his fingers.
“I’m being dim. Theo doesn’t need a nursery. You can share our nanny.”
Maddie and I exchanged glances. “Are you sure?” Maddie asked.
Miles nodded. “Of course. It’s the perfect solution. Theo and David will get to spend time together, and it’ll be good for David to be around another kid—it might even help him catch up a bit.”
“We should talk about the cost,” I began, but Miles waved the objection away.
“Forget it. We’ll settle up when the compensation comes through. It’ll be a pleasure to have Theo at ours.”
“And we’d need to work out a few ground rules.”
“Like what?”
“Well…How much time the nanny spends in each house, for example.”
“Really?” Miles looked around, clearly puzzled. “I mean, you want to work, don’t you? You couldn’t really share this room with a nanny and a couple of two-year-olds and expect to get any writing done. But listen, anything you want to change about the setup, just say. That’s how this whole thing works, isn’t it? Like you said in your article—the original one, I mean. Dialogue and compromise.”
“It does sound like a pretty good solution to me,” Maddie said. Which was slightly disloyal of her, because she must have realized that, for reasons I couldn’t altogether articulate, I was feeling slightly uneasy about this proposal and was trying to think of ways to get out of it, or at least not to commit to it before I’d thought it through.
“And you’ll get to see more of David,” Miles added. He looked from one to the other of us. “That is what you want, isn’t it?”
“Of course,” I said, surprised.
“It’s just that…” Miles gestured at his feet. “Here I am. Making an effort to see my birth son. Whereas I can’t help noticing that you…” His voice trailed off.
“It isn’t like that!” Maddie exclaimed, just as I protested, “Of course we want to see David.”
There was a silence, broken only by a renewed shout from the baby monitor. “I suppose we were waiting for another invitation,” I added.
“Well, don’t,” Miles said. “Just turn up. Mi casa es su casa. Anyway, you’ll be able to see him when you drop Theo off now, won’t you? I’ll tell Lucy to expect you tomorrow.”
37
PETE
“YOU NEVER HAD THAT conversation, did you?” Maddie whispered.
We were in bed. In the next room Theo was still grizzling, despite the fact he was now exhausted and we’d repeated the whole bedtime routine from milky drink onward. Or rather, I had. Maddie had opened another bottle of red wine and talked to Miles downstairs, while I was upstairs trying to make Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy sound as boring and soporific as possible. When Miles finally left—which took me pointedly putting the empty bottle next to the recycling bin, where it joined the two Maddie had already polished off that week, and saying firmly, “I’m going to bed. Theo’ll be awake again by six, and it’s been a long day”—we were too tired to do anything except hit the sack.
“Which conversation?” I whispered back.
“The one about boundaries.”
“Yes I did. At the church. I said this could only work if we respected each other’s parenting styles. And he completely agreed.”
“I’m not sure Miles is sensitive enough to realize that means please don’t turn up on our doorstep anytime you feel like it.”
“You were the one who opened more wine.”
“I couldn’t really stand there with a glass in my hand and not offer him one.”
“Maddie…” I said.
“Oh God. Serious voice. What have I done now?”
“You’re drinking quite a lot.”
“I know. It relaxes me.” Her voice had tightened.
“It’s not because you’re…unhappy?”
“Jesus. No. It’s because I have a high-stress job and wine helps me switch off.”
“Okay. But you will tell me—”
“Don’t lecture me, Daddy Pete. Not now. Cuddle me. We haven’t made love for ages.”
That’s because you never want to, I almost said. Not unless you’re drunk. But of course I didn’t say that, because it would be a passion killer, and one of the consequences of not making love for ages is that you take it when it’s offered. Even though you know it’s only being offered