Baby Be Mine

again,’ he says with a grin.
    ‘Neither can I.’
    Dana emerges around lunchtime looking like a bear with a sore head. She’s wearing a white vest with a black bra underneath, skimpy white shorts and holey black tights. I wonder if she went out looking like that last night. Probably.
    Barney is trying to feed himself chicken pasta with a spoon. It’s not pretty.
    ‘Morning, Mary Poppins,’ she says drily as she goes to the fridge.
    I frown. ‘Mary Poppins was a nanny, not a mother.’
    ‘Technicalities.’ She opens up the fridge and looks inside before slamming the door in disgust. ‘Still no fucking cook?’ I flinch. ‘What the fuck has Lena been doing all week?’ she snaps.
    ‘Can you watch your language around my son, please?’ I ask tetchily. ‘We interviewed some new cooks on Friday.’
    ‘What do you mean by “we”?’ She pulls up a chair at the table and sits down. Not that I want company. Not hers, anyway.
    ‘“We” as in Lena and me.’
    ‘Why did you get involved?’ She looks confused.
    ‘Johnny asked me to.’
    She gives me a hard stare for a moment and then shrugs. ‘Guess you did use to work for him. And you haven’t got much else to do around here. Except for looking after this little dude.’ She peers at Barney too closely and then laughs when he glances at her indifferently and carries on eating.
    ‘Where’s Johnny?’ I ask.
    ‘In bed. Had a big one last night.’
    ‘Did you go out?’
    ‘No, we partied at home,’ she replies with a smug smile. ‘Drank the rest of your champagne.’ She raises her eyebrows at me disapprovingly and then tuts. ‘Leaving it outside on the terrace going flat . . . Didn’t figure you for the wasteful type.’
    ‘Were you just drinking?’ I find myself asking.
    ‘As opposed to doing hard drugs?’ She laughs. ‘You’re not going to lecture me, are you, chick?’ I open my mouth to speak, but she continues, ‘Because I don’t oppose this little guy being here, but I’m sure as hell not going to take any crap from you.’
    The way she says ‘you’ makes my mouth clamp shut again.
    She glares at me and then gets up and goes to the door. ‘I’m gonna shoot. Tell Johnny I’ll catch him later.’
    She walks out, not leaving me time to reply, even if I could come up with some suitably scathing words.
    I’m still in a foul mood when Johnny emerges an hour later. I can barely look at him.
    ‘What’s up with you?’ he asks, sensing the bad atmosphere. Barney is asleep in his cot.
    ‘Can you tell your fucking girlfriend to stop swearing?’
    ‘Christ, Nutmeg, pot calling the kettle black.’
    ‘I mean it, Johnny. I’m angry.’
    ‘I can see that,’ he says, scratching his head. He looks rough. He has clearly been burning the candle at both ends.
    ‘What was she swearing about?’
    ‘About the cook . . .’ I falter, not really knowing what else to add. ‘What do you want to do about that?’ I ask, leaving the Dana conversation alone for the moment. ‘Shall I get Eddie in tomorrow so you can meet him?’
    ‘No, I don’t need to meet him. If you like him, hire him.’
    ‘Are you sure?’ I’m surprised after his initial reservations. Now he doesn’t seem to care.
    ‘Yeah, yeah, go ahead. I’m gonna head down to Big Sur for a few days.’
    I went to Big Sur with him once. He’d gone there to do some writing and I’d joined him. I still remember being with him in the pool overlooking the ocean. That was the first time I felt a spark between us that wasn’t one-sided.
    ‘Is Dana going with you?’ I ask casually, and am stung when he replies.
    ‘Yeah, she could do with a break.’
    ‘Oh, right. I’ll get Eddie in, then, yes?’
    ‘Go for it.’

 
  Chapter 32  
    I’m standing in the studio – alone. It’s late at night and I don’t feel tired. I turned twenty-seven today, but there were no celebrations. Johnny has been gone for four days. I feel like I did in France: isolated and lonely. Only this time it’s Johnny who’s left and not Christian. I miss him. Christian, I mean. He was going to take me to Barcelona for my birthday. I wonder if he remembers. I wonder what he’s doing right now.
    I sit down on the chair and stare into the studio, remembering the first time I saw Johnny standing at the mic with his band behind him. He looked straight into my eyes and I felt like time stood still as he sang to me. Christian had invited me in to listen. What would he think now if he knew I was here?