The Other Hand

Charlie! Please! If I have to pick up that spoon one more time I will take away your Batman figure —apparently if we can get you temporary resident status, I can arrange for you to take a British Citizenship Exam, which is just simple stuff, really— Charlie! For god’s sake! Right, that’s it. Get out. Now! Out of the kitchen and come back when you’ve decided to be good —just simple stuff about the kings and queens and the English civil war and so on, and I’ll help you withthe revision, and then— oh Charlie, oh goodness, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry. I’m sorry, Batman. I’m so sorry. Come here. ”
    Batman flinched away from my arms. His lip wobbled and his face went red and he howled, abandoning himself utterly to grief in that way only infants and superheroes have—that way that knows misery is bottomless and insatiable—that honest way. Little Bee rubbed Batman’s head, and he buried his masked face in her leg. I watched his little bat cape shaking as he sobbed.
    “Oh god, Bee,” I said. “I’m sorry, I’m just a mess at the moment.”
    Little Bee smiled. “It’s okay, Sarah, it’s okay.”
    The kitchen tap dripped. For something to do I got up and tightened it, but the drips kept coming. I couldn’t understand why that upset me so much.
    “Oh Bee,” I said. “We’ve got to get a grip, both of us. We can’t let ourselves be the people things happen to.”
    Later, there was a knock at the front door. I pulled myself together and went in through the house. I opened the door to Lawrence, suited, travel bag slung over his shoulder. I saw his relief, his involuntary smile when he saw me.
    “I didn’t know if I’d got the right address,” he said.
    “I’m not sure you have.”
    His smile disappeared. “I thought you’d be pleased.”
    “I’ve only just put my husband in the ground. We can’t do this. What about your wife?”
    Lawrence shrugged.
    “I told Linda I was going on a management course,” he said. “Birmingham. Three days. Leadership.”
    “You think she believed you?”
    “I just thought you might need some support.”
    “Thanks,” I said. “I’ve got some.”
    He looked over my shoulder at Little Bee, standing in the hallway. “That’s her, is it?”
    “She’s staying for as long as she wants.”
    Lawrence lowered his voice. “Is she legal?”
    “I don’t think I give a shit. Do you?”
    “I work for the Home Office, Sarah. I could lose my job if I knew you were harboring an illegal and I didn’t do anything about it. Technically, if I have the slightest doubt, I could be sacked if I even stepped through this door.”
    “So…um…don’t.”
    Lawrence blushed, took a step back, and ran his hand through his hair.
    “This isn’t comfortable for me either, Sarah. I don’t like the way I feel about you. It’d be nice if I loved my wife and it’d be super if I didn’t work for the forces of darkness. I wish I could be idealistic like you. But that’s not me, Sarah. I can’t afford to act as if I’m someone. I’m nothing. Even my cover story is nothing. Three days in Birmingham— Birmingham, fuck! On a course to learn something everyone accepts I’m hopeless at. It’s so plausible it’s tragic, don’t you think? That’s what I was thinking, even while I was making it up. I’m not ashamed of my adultery, Sarah. I’m ashamed of my fucking cover story.”
    I smiled.
    “I sort of remember why I like you. No one could ever accuse you of being full of yourself, could they?”
    Lawrence puffed up his cheeks and blew air through his mouth, sadly. “Not in the full light of the evidence,” he said.
    I hesitated. He reached up and held my hand. I closed my eyes and felt the resolve draining out of me into the cold smoothness of his skin. I took a step back into the house. I almost staggered, really.
    “Are you letting me in then?”
    “Don’t get used to it,” I said.
    Lawrence grinned, but then he hesitated on the threshold. He looked at Little Bee. She came up and stood just behind my shoulder.
    “Do not worry about me,” she said. “Officially you cannot even see me. You are in Birmingham and I am in Nigeria.”
    Lawrence gave a quick little smile. “I wonder which of us will get found out first,” he said.
    We went in through the hall and into the living room. Batman was T-boning his red fire engine into the side of a defenseless family saloon. (In Charlie’s world, I think, the emergency services are staffed