Quickly I scrawled an apology for Milo’s owners and left it with some money on the kitchen table. Then we set off for home.
Jaimie laughed when he heard about it all later.
“It wasn’t funny,” I told him. “It was awful. There were all these men with impassive faces shafting equally impassive women. And who knows whether they had anything else for their tea?”
“You mean the impassively shafting men and women?”
I gave his arm a whack. “No! Milo’s owners. Oh God, it’s so embarrassing! I moved the book, so they’ll know we were looking at it. I just hope I don’t run into them for a while.”
“Emily has a point, though, doesn’t she?” Jaimie said. “She does already know about making babies. Harriet and I told them both all about it when they were young. And they’ve been brought up to be relaxed about nudity.” He chucked my chin, kissing me on the lips. “She wasn’t embarrassed; you were.”
When I had made the decision to give up my job and move to Ely to be with Jaimie, I had decided to embrace my new life, heart and soul, which meant becoming a vegetarian, since Jaimie and his girls were vegetarian. Well, almost vegetarian. I did indulge in the occasional sneaky bacon sandwich during my lunch breaks and meat fests whenever I went back to London to visit Rosie. My move had also meant embracing naturism, although I didn’t really think you could call my approach to naturism an embrace. It was more like one of those awkward greetings when you go in for a kiss on the cheek and the recipient thinks you’re going in for a double, but you’ve already pulled back. Me and naturism were a bit like that. I had got better at it—I didn’t feel abject terror at the thought of stripping down in front of strangers the way I had at first. I just still didn’t understand the point of it.
Naturism made Jaimie feel liberated. It just made me feel self-conscious. I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to be sitting around having friendly drinks with people I didn’t know and may not have anything in common with anyway, let alone without any clothes on. Jaimie said you forgot about the no-clothes issue after a while, but then, if you forgot about it, what was the point? I’d rather have been cosy in a pair of dog-walking trackie bottoms or stylish in a button-through dress with a full, swingy hemline.
The only time I really enjoyed being naked was when we went on holiday to Greece, and that was because of the naked swimming. And despite Jaimie’s attempts to make me out as some kind of prude, I had swum naked before I met him. Rosie and I had often done it when we’d been on holiday somewhere hot, slipping down to the sea after dark. Only we’d called it skinny-dipping, and we’d done it for the luxury of the warm water on our bodies, not to parade our nakedness to all and sundry.
Jaimie pulled a fiver from his wallet. “Here,” he said. “Here’s your five pounds, although I imagine Olivia is the dog’s best friend now.”
I batted the five-pound note back in his direction, and he laid it down on the table. “Well, I doubt if Milo’s owners are. I only hope they had something else to cook for their dinner tonight.”
“Maybe they got fish and chips instead of cooking and had more time to try out positions from the Kama Sutra,” Jaimie suggested. “What were they doing in the illustrations you saw? This?” So saying, he flipped me over the arm of the chair and pretended to hump me from behind. “Or this?”
Laughing, I turned to see him attempting to balance on one leg with his back arched and an impassive expression on his face as he pretend thrusted.
“Careful,” I said. “You’ll fall over.”
The girls were fast asleep in bed. Very soon, Jaimie and I were making love on the sofa, the floor, and anywhere else we felt like, inventing Kama Sutra positions and giggling until desire took us over and we brought things to a sweaty, passionate conclusion.
“That was fun,” Jaimie panted, lying half-on, half-off the sofa. “Thank you, Milo’s owners. Come on, let’s go to bed.”
When we were under the covers, he turned to me, stroking my hair back from my face. “Try not to worry so much about the girls. I keep telling you, they’ll come round to you eventually.”
I hoped so. I’d thought at first that having the girls as part of my life would satisfy my maternal cravings, but if anything, my desire to have a family of my own had increased since I’d moved here. Jaimie and Harriet were Olivia and Emily’s parents, not me.
I’d put off speaking to Jaimie about how I felt so far, but now I said casually, “I can’t help thinking everything would work better if the girls had a new brother or sister. You know, if you and I had a child together.”
Jaimie’s reaction was dramatic, to say the least. His whole body stiffened, and he moved away from me in bed, as if I’d suddenly become radioactive. “Bloody hell,” he said. “I should think that would make things more difficult, not less.”
My own body felt suddenly hollow—my insides scooped out by his tone of voice. “Why?”
“Because they’d be jealous as hell. Besides, having kids is expensive. And a lot of work. As I thought you’d have realised by now.”
A minute ago, I’d been happy and laughing. Now, the bottom of my world had imploded. I should never have brought the subject up. And yet . . . I sort of had to, didn’t I? I’d moved here to make a life with Jaimie. I needed to know what that life was going to be. “So are you saying there’s no chance of my ever having a baby?”
Jaimie reached out to stroke my hair. “I just think things will get better for you with Emily and Olivia if you give it more time,” he said, not answering my question. “You’re doing so well.”
“Am I? Nothing I do for them is ever right.”
“Nothing I do for them is ever right either. They’re kids. That’s what being a parent is like.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said.
He sighed. “Look, it’s late, sweetheart. I’ve got to get up early in the morning. You haven’t lived here very long. How about we have this conversation again in six months’ time? Okay?” He moved close to kiss me. “Did you know you have glitter on the end of your nose? It looks very cute.”
“I’m not surprised,” I said, reaching up to wipe it off, remembering Olivia’s painting, which was still in the back of my car.
“Oh, by the way, you’re reprieved,” Jaimie said, settling back against the pillows and yawning widely. “Harriet called me today. She’s managed to change that work thing she had, so she can come to Olivia’s nativity play after all.”
“Oh,” I said, disappointed.
“You don’t mind not going, do you?” Jaimie said, opening one eye to look at me. “Take it from me, if you’ve seen one nativity play, you’ve seen them all.”
But I hadn’t seen one. Or at least not since I was actually in one myself.
“No,” I said bravely. “That’s okay. Olivia will be thrilled that Harriet can come.”
But I was speaking to myself. Jaimie was already asleep.
8
When we first got together, Jaimie and I saw each other every weekend he didn’t have the girls—I went up to Ely once a month, and he came down to London once a month. They were weekends of sex—lots of it—and laughter and talking. I learnt all about Jaimie’s childhood on the Kent coast, his time at university in London, his first teaching job in Cambridgeshire, and his meeting of Harriet through a friend of a friend. In turn, I told Jaimie all about myself and my bumpy start in life.