Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 2

help. Sometimes, before the restaurant opened, Jules would leave Nicole with Mark, give instructions to Carrie and go upstairs to grab a couple of hours' sleep.
    When Jules was working, everything seemed straightforward. If Nicole wasn't sleeping or attached to a bottle, she would lie contentedly in her cot, watching the mobile that Mark had fixed above it. She squealed and chirped as if she was trying to sing to herself but didn't know how to make a tune. Mark said it was like having a canary in the office. They called her Baby Bird.
    She was happy in the restaurant. She seemed to like the noise and the bustle, the clatter of pans, the voices, the staff coming in and out of the office. Of course she would cry if she was hungry, but in the restaurant she didn't wail and grizzle for no reason as she often did alone with Jules upstairs, driving him crazy with exhaustion.
    Jules was happier in the restaurant too. There, he never had time to worry. It was when he was home alone with her that his fears caught up with him. Even when neither his worries nor Nicole herself were keeping him awake, he would sometimes dream that she was crying. Automatically he would get out of bed and stumble to her cot only to find her fast asleep.
    At the end of one of those almost sleepless nights he called Mark to complain that Nicole wouldn't eat anything. Jules was in the kitchen of his flat, surrounded by fresh fruit and vegetables.
    "She what?" Mark's voice was muffled, sleepy.
    "She doesn't eat." Jules looked at his watch. "Oh, it's not even eight. I can call later. Maybe you have someone there."
    "No, it's okay." Mark sounded more alert now, and worried. "Do you think she's sick? How long has this been going on?"
    "Since always. She never has ate nothing." Jules knew there was something wrong with that sentence but it was no time to be worrying about English grammar. "I tried carrots, pumpkins, cucumber—"
    "Jules."
    "—and I have some red peppers, too, but that's a solanum plant and many people are allergic, so I didn't give her that yet. Do you think I should try that?"
    "No. Jules, listen to me. Is she taking her bottle?"
    "Of course, that's what I mean, she wants nothing but her bottle. Everything I give her on a spoon, she spits and turns away her face, until I give milk and then drink drink drink."
    "But that's okay."
    "Always milk! A child needs a mixed diet."
    "Jules, she's not even two months old. They don't start eating real food until their teeth begin to grow."
    "I make purée for her. She doesn't need teeth."
    "All the same, she's too young."
    "Lucy, the first nanny, she told me six weeks."
    There was silence for a moment. Then Mark said, "Are you sure she didn't say six months?"
    "Six months?"
    "I think it's more likely."
    "It's not possible. Only milk for six months?"
    Mark sighed. "Let me talk to my sister-in-law."
    Mark's sister-in-law said yes, six months or thereabouts, and sent a book called Baby's First Year which Mark tried to give to Jules. Jules waved it away. "It's in English. You read it first, then I'll look at it and if I don't understand something, I can ask you."
    He didn't like being proved wrong. Still, it was lucky, he thought, that he had called Mark and not the doctor, or there might have been some questions about his suitability as a parent.
    But he was relying on Mark too much. Very soon after that, disaster struck.
    ****
    It started with an accident that happened, like most accidents, at the end of the day. It was December. A gay couple, friends of Mark's, had been celebrating their anniversary over dinner in the restaurant. Jules had gone out to say hello. They were only average-looking guys but they looked so happy together, Jules could tell they thought the world of each other.
    It made him long for something like that himself. Yes, he was missing sex, but he was missing much more than that, and had been for a long time. He could see now that he'd been using other men to cover up his real needs. He wanted a relationship and he wanted it to be with Mark.
    He couldn't stop thinking about it and it made him clumsy. Alone in the kitchen after most of the staff had gone home, Jules dropped a glass and cut his right hand picking up the pieces. The cut went deep and there was a lot of blood.
    He stuck his hand under the cold tap and shouted for Mark, who checked it for shards and applied skin adhesive and gauze. As Jules watched his manager's freckled face frowning over the wound, the sure but