Baby Be Mine

waiting for me to answer. ‘Barney, do you want to go for a swim? Barney?’
    He’s too engrossed in his truck to even look up.
    ‘You go,’ I say. ‘I’ll stay with him.’
    ‘No, we should go together as a family.’
    A wave of nausea passes through me. I’ve been feeling off colour ever since the other day, when I saw the picture of Johnny as a child. Luckily, Christian hasn’t noticed his magazine is missing. I don’t suppose a bandmate’s beach snaps are particularly crucial to research.
    ‘Come on, Mummy!’ Christian says. He’s scooped up a giggling Barney and is now holding his hand down to me. I take it and he pulls me to my feet. He turns and runs towards the water with Barney slung over his shoulder. I follow them, smiling.
    Together as a family . . .
    It occurs to me as I walk across the hot sand, that I’ve become very good at lying. What a despicable talent to have. It’s not something you can boast about, like being good at languages or playing the piano. I’m a good liar. My parents would be so proud.
    Christian runs with Barney into the clear blue water, white foam splashing in their wake and, at the same time, a small voice inside my head wonders if maybe I should lay off myself a little bit. It was an accident. A mistake. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. But if I let all these bad feelings continue to eat me up, that’s exactly what I’ll end up doing: hurting someone. I push these thoughts to the back of my head, unwilling to contemplate them any further at the moment.
    ‘It’s cold!’ I gasp, wading into the water.
    ‘Go under quickly,’ Christian urges, doing just that and ending up with Barney squealing in his ear.
    I duck in up to my neck and quickly burst out of the water again.
    ‘Better?’ Christian asks.
    ‘No!’
    ‘Go under again.’
    ‘I think I’ll stand here for a bit, thanks.’
    He casts his eyes heavenwards, then smiles. ‘I like your new bikini, by the way.’ It’s a gold-coloured one from H&M.
    ‘Thanks. Mum took me birthday shopping in Perpignan last week.’
    ‘You look fit. No one would ever be able to tell you’ve had a kid.’
    I laugh. ‘Breastfeeding hasn’t entirely killed my boobs, then?’
    He chuckles. ‘No. Unlike hers . . .’
    He discreetly nods towards a middle-aged woman nearby who is tanned a deep bronze and has her naked boobs swinging happily past her ribcage.
    I giggle and he pulls me down into the water, kissing me on the lips while I simultaneously breathe in sharply.
    ‘I wish you didn’t have to go away again,’ I say after a while.
    ‘I know.’ He changes the subject. ‘Do you want to swim to Mummy?’ Christian zooms Barney towards me and I catch him, laughing. He can’t talk yet, but he can understand quite a lot. I encircle my son’s small waist with my hands and bob him up and down in the water as he kicks furiously. Eventually his kicks subside. We rub our noses together.
    ‘You should do this more often,’ Christian says.
    ‘I know,’ I reply. ‘It didn’t take very long to get here, did it?’
    ‘Not with me driving,’ he replies. ‘You’d have to add at least fifteen minutes onto your time.’
    Christian loves cars. I still remember the time he borrowed . . . I sigh. I can’t even say his name inside my head without flinching.
    ‘What’s up?’ Christian asks.
    I don’t bother to lie. ‘I was just remembering the time you drove me to Santa Monica beach.’
    ‘In Johnny’s Bugatti?’
    If Christian notices me flinching again, this time he chooses to ignore it.
    ‘Yeah.’
    It was shortly after I’d started working for Johnny in Los Angeles. He told Christian and me to take the day off, so we borrowed his Bugatti Veyron – one of the fastest and most expensive cars in the world – and went out for the day. Christian was beside himself at getting to drive the car. Johnny has several supercars in his garage. At least, he used to. I assume he still does.
    I wonder if Christian caught up with him while he was in LA. I don’t ask. I never ask. Sometimes he offers up the information, but most of the time he keeps their catch-ups to himself. He knows about my history with Johnny. I think he prefers to pretend there is none.
    ‘Shall we go to the beach bar for lunch?’ Christian asks.
    ‘Sure.’
    We get back to Cucugnan in the early afternoon. Barney has fallen asleep in the car so I transfer him to his cot and then go to the bathroom with the intention of taking a shower. I open the