Ingrid and I were aware of the force field, I said, and it felt like it still existed sometimes but I knew it wouldn’t be the same once she was a mother and I wasn’t. ‘It’s why I’m not overburdened with female friends, because they all have children now and –’ I just said well and moved the sugar.
‘But it will evolve, don’t you think, once you do too.’
‘I don’t want children.’ I was suddenly thinking about Jonathan, front-running it, and I did not hear Patrick’s reply at the time; only later that night, replaying the conversation while I lay awake. He hadn’t asked why not. Only said, ‘That’s interesting. I’ve always imagined myself having children. But I guess just in the way everyone does.’
*
It had become Saturday night by the time we emerged from the gallery, and there was nowhere I wanted to go less than home. My parents had established some sort of salon and as she was in charge of the guest list, artists less important than my mother and writers more successful than my father would be packed into the living room, draining bottles of supermarket Prosecco and waiting for turns to talk about themselves. Because I couldn’t say where I did want to go when Patrick asked me, we crossed over the river and started walking along the Embankment until it became so crowded we kept being forced apart by the shoals of people coming the other way.
I could see Patrick was annoyed by the over and over of it – having to separate, having to find each other again a second later. For me it was so many tiny bursts, a salvo, of the Thank God feeling, which was why I wanted to keep walking. Finally, as a couple unready to give up their dream of rollerblading hand in hand down the Thames came towards us, he got my hand and pulled me to one side. He said, ‘Martha, we need an objective. I am worried we’re risking our lives only to end up at a Pizza Express that will make you sad if it’s empty and anxious if it’s full.’ I did not know how he knew that about me. ‘Can we go back to your house?’ He clarified – he meant, could he come with me on the Tube to Goldhawk Road in a protective capacity and leave me at the front door.
I thought about it, then said, ‘Do you know what’s funny? I’ve known you for however long, fifty years, and I’ve never been to your house.’
When Patrick pulled me out of their way, it had been so that my back was against the plinth of a statue and when the rollerbladers turned around and came back, uncoupled and both out of control, he was forced to step in so that we were face to face and close enough that breathing out, our bodies were barely separate. I wondered if Patrick was aware of it too, at all or as powerfully as I was, before he said, ‘This way, then,’ and led off in the direction of his flat.
*
Patrick promised me it was usually much tidier than this as he opened the door, then stood aside so I could go in first. It was on the third floor of a Victorian mansion block in Clapham, on a corner of the building so the living room overlooked a park from tall, perpendicular windows. He bought it after he graduated and lived there with a flatmate called Heather who was also a doctor. A mug on the arm of the sofa seemed to represent the total mess Patrick was talking about. Because it had lipstick on the rim, I assumed Heather was the sloven.
She came home while he was making me a bacon sandwich, wandered into the kitchen and went up behind him, picking a burned bit out of the pan he was holding. She ate it like it was a delicious little sweet, then wafted over to a cupboard and got something out like she knew where everything was and had agency in it being there in the first place. I felt like I had never hated another woman so much.
Once we had eaten, I watched him do the dishes. Patrick dried things. I told him if he just left them on the board, physics or whatever would dry them so he didn’t have to.
He said he wasn’t sure it was physics. ‘I don’t mind doing it. I have a bit of a completist mentality. I’ll be finished in a minute. Do you know how to play backgammon?’
I said no and conceded to being taught. We went into the living room and while he was setting up the suitcase thing, Patrick said, ‘I meant to tell you, I’m going to Uganda.’
I frowned and asked him why.
‘For work, a placement. I told you I was applying. A while ago I guess.’
‘I remember. I just didn’t think that you would still –’ I wasn’t sure what I meant, then I was and couldn’t say it.
‘Still what?’
I meant, I didn’t think you would still want to go because of me. I said, ‘I just didn’t realise it was still happening, that’s all.’