14. Sarah
14. Sarah
Cherub is standing in front of their stove, wearing a novelty apron featuring a man with a well-defined hairy six-pack. He’s brandishing a can of lager in one hand, a wooden spoon in the other.
He’s just told me that Carl is due here any minute.
‘How is he?’ I ask as nonchalantly as possible.
‘All right, I think,’ Cherub says. ‘But then, you know Carl …’ He pauses to take a swig of beer. ‘He’s not one to talk about his feelings.’
I think back to Camp Bastion, to Carl’s signature silence, his outward show of supposed invulnerability and toughness. But I paid attention to the details when he was around others, saw the way he showed his love through his actions.
The way he’d shut down sometimes, when the lads’ teasing went too far, rather than be cruel, or get drawn into a fight. How he cleared up after them. In the canteen I watched him picking up their forgotten plates, discarded forks, empty cartons. Towels in the gym.
Saw how protective he was of Danny.
How kind he was to Assami, how much he trusted him. How kind he was to Caroline.
Suddenly I feel agitated, nervous at the thought of seeing him. What if he doesn’t care that I’m here? Or doesn’t want to see me?
‘You look hot,’ Jenni says, walking into the kitchen clutching Toby’s hand. She settles him in his booster chair at the table with a book.
I’m sitting next to the fire, opposite a slightly terrifying stuffed effigy of a man with his head hanging alarmingly to one side.
‘For Bonfire Night,’ Jenni says, seeing me staring at it. ‘It’s meant to be for the kids, but Cherub spent hours making that guy. Honestly, it’s his favourite night of the year, any excuse to set fire to something and let off some rockets.’ She suddenly swings her head back to look at it again. ‘For pity’s sake! They’re my good pyjamas! Cherub, why is the guy wearing my good pyjamas?’
Sheepishly, he turns to look at her. ‘You’ve still got the ones I bought you for Christmas.’
Jenni snorts. ‘Firstly, they are not pyjamas,’ she says scornfully. ‘Secondly, those not-pyjamas are at least three sizes too small. I’m not an Ann Summers model. Disappointing, I know, but something you should probably make your peace with before we get married. And thirdly, I would die of hypothermia if I wore that ridiculous wisp of lace in this cottage. Now take my pyjamas off Worzel Gummidge over here before I cancel the wedding.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he says, saluting her.
I watch as he dutifully undresses the guy.
He still looks exactly like he did the night Jenni and I met him in the camp bar – as if he has stepped straight out of the pages of a 1930s Boy’s Own annual. Smooth skinned and ruddy cheeked, with a permanent expression of innocence on his face.
The only difference now is his blond hair – which is longer than the army’s regulation length, hanging below his shirt collar.
Jenni opens the door of the tumble dryer and pulls out a bundle of laundry. She dumps the knotted spaghetti of socks, vests, pyjamas and multicoloured, teeny-tiny pairs of pants covered in cartoon characters into a basket, and heads towards the table.
‘Here, let me,’ I say, standing up to take the basket of clothes off her.
I plant myself in a chair in front of the table. Not that any inch of the table’s surface is visible beneath the clutter that spills across it.
Wedding magazines, old newspapers, a Hulk figurine with a missing arm, a game of Operation abandoned mid-appendectomy, a Batman lunchbox filled with stale Hula Hoops and orange peel, a hairbrush, a toothbrush, and an enormous box of Pedigree Daily Oral Care Dentastix.
I sit the basket on my lap and start smoothing out the clothes before folding them up.
‘Bless you,’ says Jenni as she appears by my side with a bottle of wine and three glasses.
She clears a space on the table by sweeping a pile of detritus unceremoniously on to the floor. Then she plants the wine and the glasses in front of us and collapses into the chair next to me.
She sighs. ‘I spend my life picking up laundry or loading it into the washing machine. Or drying it, folding it, or putting it away,’ she says. ‘Or cutting up carrots or wiping bottoms.’
‘She loves it.’ Cherub appears behind her.
He kisses the top of her head and pours a glass of wine. He takes a large gulp and walks back to the oven, the dog following behind.
‘The kids’ pasta is ready,’ he says, then yells, ‘ Dinner! ’
‘Could you grate some cheese, love?’
‘Sheese, sheese, sheese,’ chants Toby, kicking his legs out excitedly.
Noah toddles into the kitchen clutching an enormous stripy tiger.
‘Nice dress!’ I tell him.
Noah gives me a radiant smile. He is dressed as Princess Jasmine from Aladdin .
Jenni looks at him indulgently, ruffling the hair on top of his head.
He beams at her, then holds the toy tiger out to show me. ‘Rajah,’ he says seriously.
My eyes meet Jenni’s. He’s adorable.
‘Not so fast!’ Cherub says, scooping him up and sitting him on a chair. ‘Dinner first, and then you can show her Rajah. Okay?’
‘Kay,’ says Noah, helping himself to a carrot stick.
Cherub brushes his son’s blond, unevenly cut fringe out of his eyes and hands him a bowl.
He and Jenni move from child to child, sprinkling cheese on top of the pasta, and spooning mouthfuls of food into them. Jenni collects plastic beakers from the drying rack, and as she does so Cherub takes a jug from the cupboard and fills it with water. They glide in and out of each other’s way as if performing a well-choreographed dance. I watch Cherub laugh at something Toby does and then wink at Jenni. See him touch her waist as she walks past him to pour water into Noah’s cup. He starts to say something and she finishes his sentence for him.
I think of Danny staring at the mute TV, oblivious to my presence, and I long to be enfolded in the cosy cloak of love and domestic chaos that so effortlessly shields these two. The secret world that only they inhabit.
The dog starts to bark, and a moment later the doorbell rings. Noah shuffles down from the table and runs into the hall, with the dog and Cherub hot on his heels.
I hear Carl’s voice, and then there he is, standing in the kitchen doorway, holding Noah in his arms. Jenni leaps up to greet him. Toby starts crying at the interruption in being fed his yoghurt.
The dog is still barking, and Cherub is talking to Carl, and the TV is blasting from the living room. And then Toby’s crying gets even louder.
But my world is silent – as if Carl and I were the only two people in it.