Like This, for Ever

with my car and house keys.’
    No, this was not going well at all. And since when had his dad got so blinking organized?
    ‘By the way,’ said his dad, over his shoulder again, ‘the kitchen knives are getting blunt again. Want to sharpen them for me?’

19
    LACEY SPENT A long time in the shower. Only when the water was starting to cool did she step out. Seven o’clock on a Friday evening. Less than a year ago, Fridays were the nights she went out, when she dressed carefully, drove across London and spent the evening around the Camden Stables Market. She’d liked to think of it as her hunting ground. A place where no one knew her, where so many people gathered you never saw the same faces from one week to the next. She’d take her time, spot her target, make sure he was alone before moving in. She’d had her stock-lines, some funny, some a bit weird; getting the initial conversation going was always the hard part. After that, no problem. Only rarely did she have to cut her losses and move on.
    A few months ago, her life had consisted of hard work during the day, and casual, uncomplicated sex on Friday evenings. Now, she couldn’t work and the very thought of sex was revolting. She hadn’t had much in her life, and now she’d lost what little there’d been. How on earth was she going to get through the next—
    No, don’t think about the future. Just concentrate on getting through another Friday evening.
    She pulled on her robe and walked through into the living space with its small galley kitchen. For the first time, it struck her that her flat was too plain, too white, too cold. The minimum of furniture, nothing decorative, nothing that was really hers. Nothing in thefridge either – a perfectly normal state of affairs these days. Somehow supermarkets were just too much of an effort.
    The Wandsworth Road was busy, people in cars driving home from work, buses offloading, early-evening drinkers making their way to and from the pubs and bars. The Chinese restaurant was quiet, though, she could see through the glass. It was the sort of place that didn’t normally fill till later. The door made a chinging sound and Trevor, the middle-aged Chinese owner with the northern accent, appeared a second later.
    ‘Alright, Lacey?’ Over the last few months she’d become something of a regular.
    ‘How you doing, Trev?’
    ‘Not so bad. Usual?’
    ‘Please.’
    The restaurant was almost empty. A table of students. A couple of men eating alone. In the furthest booth, half hidden by the intricately carved screen, sat a man with his back to Lacey, a man she knew immediately, with broad shoulders and short dark hair. Joesbury.
    He wasn’t alone. Directly opposite him sat a child. A boy, around nine or ten years old, with short, dark hair that grew vertically up from his forehead and a heart-shaped face. It was the eyes that gave him away, though. Large and oval-shaped, and even from a distance she could see they were the exact shade of turquoise blue as his father’s. This was Huck. Joesbury had invited her out to dinner this evening. He’d wanted her to meet his son.
    Lacey pedalled hard, heading for the river, away from the traffic, hardly aware of how she’d made the decision not to go home, only knowing that four walls around her right now might make her scream.
    Trevor would have heard the door chimes as she’d left. All the same, she’d go back later and pay, when she could be sure the two Joesburys had gone. She’d make up some excuse about feeling ill or an urgent phone call. She couldn’t fall out with Trevor. What would she eat?
    She rode beneath the underpass, garish with graffiti, where kids were gliding around on skateboards and roller blades, weaving in and out of each other like a strange street-ballet.
    Huck? Such a funny name for a child. Why would he call his son Huck? The hair and the eyes had been Joesbury’s but the face was nothing like his dad’s. The boy’s face had been pretty with small features and very fair skin. His mother’s face. Joesbury had fallen in love, married and had a child with a woman whom Lacey had never even thought about before. A woman who would be slim with dark hair and a delicate, heart-shaped face.
    Even in the dark, even in the cold, the embankment was busy with pedestrians. Everywhere around her the life of the city was going on. People were crossing the Millennium Bridge, travelling up and down the river on passenger ferries, crossing the water on