“She does take time, some two hours every week.”
“That’s hardly taking time, is it. She can’t keep going along this way. If she tries that, she’ll be dead before she’s fifty and then where will Lilybet be? Where will you be?”
“I know.”
“You have to insist, Boyko.”
As if he hadn’t, Mark thought. As if he hadn’t and hadn’t and hadn’t till the words were rote and their meaning long robbed of importance. He said, “Pete wants to do right by her.”
“Well, of course she does. And so do you. But you must also want to do right by yourselves, eh?” She stirred Eileen’s concoction and then turned back to him, wooden spoon in hand. She observed him in the way only a mother observes: a silent comparison of the boy he’d been and the man he’d become. Clearly, she didn’t like what she saw. She said, “When was the last time you two had relations?”
She’d never gone in this direction before. Mark was taken aback. He said, “Jesus . . . Mum . . .”
She said, “You tell me, Boyko.”
His gaze slid away from her to the open window upon which a line of terracotta pots grew the fresh herbs she liked to have on hand. He wanted to ask when they’d been last watered. The basil was looking a bit limp. He said, “Last week,” and prepared himself for the moment when she accused him of lying, which indeed he was. He didn’t know the last time they’d had relations. He only knew it could be measured in years, not in weeks. For this, he couldn’t possibly blame Pete. Even when she was there, she wasn’t there, so what was the point? Every sense she possessed was tuned into Lilybet’s small bedroom and the noises emanating from it on the baby monitor: the hiss of oxygen, the puff that indicated the rise and fall of Lilybet’s chest. One couldn’t make love to a woman who isn’t there, he wanted to tell his mother. It’s more than mere friction, two bodies rubbing together in a growing frenzy of pleasure that would lead to release. If that’s what it was, anyone would do. An anonymous foreign “masseuse” would do. Hell, a blow-up doll would suffice. But that wasn’t what it was. Or at least that wasn’t what he wanted. If nothing else, his interlude this day at Massage Dreams had demonstrated that. Orgasm? Yes. Connection? No.
Floss regarded him with sadness in her eyes. But all she said was, “Oh, lad.”
“It’s fine, Mum,” he replied.
KINGSLAND HIGH STREET
DALSTON
NORTH-EAST LONDON
Adaku Obiaka had dressed to blend in, and she blended in well. Where she stood, she was anonymous, forgettable, and largely out of sight. She’d taken up a position in the recessed entry of Rio Cinema from where the smell of popcorn and coffee—what a strange combination, she thought—fought for neighbourhood dominance with odours wafting from across the street. There, Taste of Tennessee was belching forth a mixed miasma of scents: cooking oil, fried chicken, ribs, and burgers. The very air felt greasy with the smell.
She had been there coming up to three hours, watching the action along the street in general, watching the lack of action in one set of disreputable-looking flats in particular. These were positioned above what once had been Kingsland Toys, Games, and Books, an establishment announcing itself with a garish violet sign wearing equally garish letters of twelve different colours. The business was no more, and nothing had taken its place although the coming soon sign lent a hopeful air to the empty storefront.
The defunct shop stood directly between Taste of Tennessee and Vape Superstore, and like most of the businesses along the street, it possessed two doors. One of them gave customers access to the shop. The other, always locked unless one possessed a key, gave inhabitants access to the flats above. Six decrepit windows marked the position of these flats. There were two on each floor. The top-floor windows showed bright lights behind dingy curtains. The middle floor seemed dark behind Venetian blinds. The first floor stared blankly out at Rio Cinema, reflecting its marquee, which promised yet another tired, dystopian universe that had to be restored to decency by a cinematic adolescent heroine, preferably one with white skin and blond hair.
During her three hours on watch, no one had entered or left through the locked door giving access to the flats. But Adaku had been told confidentially that someone would, and it was that prospect that had kept her there past the rumbling of her stomach longing for dinner. It had taken her far too long expending far too much energy in order to dig up Women’s Health of Hackney. Although she could easily have come back another day to position herself in the cinema’s entry, the lights in the uppermost flat told her someone was there. All she had to do was to wait them out, even if it took till morning.