Katie has a sweet face, Sergio thought. He was going through the applications, deciding who to offer a job. She had seemed nice. He hadn’t placed her until he saw the address on the application. ‘You live upstairs,’ he’d said. ‘I’ve seen you with your friend. The Black girl.’
‘Angel,’ Katie had nodded. ‘She’s my flatmate.’
Katie didn’t have much experience, but that didn’t concern Sergio. Mateo always told him that choosing which girls to hire—and it was always girls—was not a complicated matter. ‘Hire the ones you fancy, son,’ he said. ‘It’s that simple.’
He thought of Katie’s big eyes, her rosy cheeks, the faded blue dye in her bleached blonde hair. He asked himself whether he fancied her. He wasn’t sure. But he was sure he fancied her flatmate. He put her application in the small pile to his left.
*
As the rest of the class filed out, Angel went to the front of the lecture hall to talk to Dr. Tavish.
‘How are things, Ms. Ugwu?’ he asked, shuffling papers into his leather satchel.
‘I’d rather you didn’t touch my hair,’ she said. Dr. Tavish looked up, surprised. ‘It’s not easy for me on this course,’ Angel continued. ‘There’s not many other girls. And there’s no other Black girls. So I’d rather you didn’t objectify me.’
‘Good grief, Angel, I wasn’t objectifying you,’ Dr. Tavish said. ‘I’m sorry if you felt that I was.’ He went back to shuffling his papers. ‘The language you young people use,’ he said, with a wry smile. Then, in a distracted tone, he murmured, ‘It’s just that your curls are so beautiful. I couldn’t help myself.’ Angel felt blood rushing in her ears. ‘Now,’ Dr. Tavish said, as if that were that. ‘I have a favour to ask.’
‘Yes?’ Angel managed to say.
‘I’m writing a textbook. I hoped you might read a chapter or two and give me your thoughts.’
*
‘I don’t know what to do about that.’ Holly’s words dogged Jemma as she climbed Blackford Hill. At the top, she tried to take photos, but the city seemed dull and grey.
She ambled down the hill, and up through the Grange towards home. There, she wandered the flat’s rooms, imagining them with no Holly. No Holly making coffee. No Holly singing along to the radio. No Holly kissing her first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Jemma knew she would be bereft without Holly. So if Holly needed her to be serious about a baby, she’d be serious.
Feeling restless, she scrolled through her phone. A face she hadn’t seen for a long time popped up on her feed.
When Holly got home, Jemma was making dinner. ‘I’ve found him,’ she said, as Holly came into the kitchen.
‘Who?’ Holly asked.
‘Our sperm donor.’
*
While Erin put dinner on the table, Andy got himself a wineglass and opened the fridge.
‘Started without me, I see,’ he said, pulling out the bottle Erin had opened late in the afternoon. One small glass had turned into two, then three.
Erin didn’t respond to Andy’s comment and he didn’t push the point. They often danced around the topic of her drinking, neither of them prepared to talk about it more directly.
While they ate, Andy complained, at length. Someone in the office had done something objectionable.
‘I want to go back to work,’ Erin said, by way of changing the subject.
‘You do?’ Andy put down his fork, as if Erin had ruined the taste of his dinner.
‘Yes. I think it would be good for me.’
‘But it’s not about what’s good for you, sweetheart. It’s about what’s good for the twins.’
‘They’re two, Andy. Most children their age are in nursery.’
‘Most children their age are…’
‘Completely fine,’ Erin interrupted. ‘You don’t know how hard it is looking after them on my own.’
‘Harder than abandoning them with strangers?’
‘Trained professionals,’ Erin corrected. ‘And it would only be part-time.’
‘The money you’d earn working part-time would barely be enough to pay nursery fees,’ Andy said. ‘We agreed you’d stay at home while they were little,’ he added, in a reasonable tone that was hard to argue with.
I had no idea what I was signing up for, Erin thought, the wine making her resentful.
‘I think it would be unfair to rob Annie and Archie of your dedicated attention,’ Andy said. ‘I think their development would suffer. I think their wellbeing would suffer.’
You’ve got a lot of opinions about those children, Erin thought bitterly. Considering they’re not yours.
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