‘We’ll have three large vegetarian pizzas, please.’ I can hear my voice ringing loud and high in the packed waiting area of the local pizzeria. I lift Tommy off my shoulders and put him on the floor. There’s no sign of Marco, only that surly daughter of his, who looks as if she’d rather be anywhere other than here. I see my younger self and have to suck down an urge to slap her. The girl ignores me, busying herself at the till. My voice goes an octave higher: ‘I said three large vegetarian pizzas.’ Tommy is tugging at my sleeve. ‘Say “please”， Yaya.’ How dare he chastise me like this in public? Make a show of me? My hand reaches out to cuff him around the ear. The room falls silent, heat rises in my cheeks, the palm of my hand is trembling and hot. A man’s voice: ‘No need for that.’ My tongue feels too big for my mouth. A dyed-blonde girl checks her phone obsessively, swiping the screen with her thumb, an older woman with a high starched collar looks down at the floor, two others look out the window, but the man who just spoke stares straight at me, quizzing every inch of me. Steady, steady. I flick my hair out of my eyes, square my shoulders, suck in my tummy. The daughter says loudly, ‘Two large pepperonis’， and hands the bag to the man, who is slight and wearing shorts and socks pulled up, giving him the appearance of an overgrown schoolboy. He hands the money to the girl and says to me, ‘Do you have a licence to own that dog?’
‘As it so happens, I do. Adopted.’
‘What about the poor child? Do you have a licence there?’
I walked right into that one. Tommy reaches his small hand towards me and I take it, encircling it in my own. He looks at me with his serious face, his ancient barn-owl expression, and shakes his head at me. ‘It’s ok, Yaya.’ The man bends over and speaks in Tommy’s face: ‘If your mother does anything like that again you tell your teacher, yes?’ Tommy nods, deflecting attention away. The man leaves, looking back over his shoulder, his overdeveloped sense of responsibility leaving him struggling with all sorts of stuff that’s not his to carry. How I intuit this is beyond me, but it always served me well as an actress, that flash of insight into other people’s psyches. How much easier it is to inhabit someone else.
‘I’m going to have to ask you to leave,’ the girl says.
How old is she to adopt that tone with me? What does she know about rearing children? It wasn’t so long ago that it was perfectly acceptable to give your offspring a wee smack. I know, I was at the receiving end of many, and I know: too the humiliation, how it doesn’t achieve anything. Even still, my palm is tingling at the thought of making contact with the little madam’s cheek, knocking that smug expression from her. But my boys need to eat, so I open my mouth to speak in what I think is a reasonable manner: ‘I’m sorry about that. Just had a stressful day. Your dad knows me, I’m a regular.’
‘I know you too.’
‘So you know this is a one-off and I’m a repeat customer.’
‘You owe thirty euros.’
The daughter hands a box of steaming contents to the woman wearing the perfectly ironed, crisp shirt, whose eyes have not left the ground until this point. She says thank you and leaves.
‘Seriously? I’ll tell your father about this.’
‘Dad is the one who told me not to serve you unless you pay your debt.’
I place my hand in my pocket and get the fifty euros, waving it triumphantly in the girl’s face.
‘That’s not enough.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ One of the two men that were staring out the window, pretending not to notice anything, suddenly breaks his charade. ‘Serve the poor woman and her kid, and I’ll pay any shortfall.’
I think I might be about to cry, so I twist the skin on the back of my hand and force my mouth into a bright smile that accentuates my one dimple. ‘No need, no need at all.’
The man doesn’t look at me. ‘Just feed the little fella, will you?’
Heat rushes through me and my skin becomes red and blotchy.
‘How much does she owe?’ the man says to the girl.
‘I don’t want your charity—’ My helium-high voice escapes me.
‘It’s not for you,’ the man says.
Tommy is petting Herbie on the same spot on his head over and over, so it looks as if he might rub away the hair. I take Tommy’s hand in mine and bend to kiss his fingers. ‘Ok, thank you,’ I say.
‘You’re welcome,’ the man says in a gentler tone. ‘Here.’ He hands me a business card with his name and number: ‘David Smythe, McManus Smythe solicitors’。 This has to be the most perplexing mating strategy I’ve ever encountered. ‘I’ve been there too.’ The man is speaking low. ‘It’s not fair on him.’ He gestures to Tommy. ‘There’s a meeting later.’