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      Chapter Thirty-Nine

      ‘So how were things at handover this morning?’ Harvey asks Kerry as she makes coffee after his lesson.

      ‘Quick and straightforward,’ she replies, ‘which is about the best I can hope for. It’s better than the painful, sheepish-faced lingering thing he does sometimes.’

      He chuckles, and she takes the seat opposite him, feeling the tension starting to ease after a particularly trying couple of days: the hospital visit, then blundering through yesterday, managing only a short dog walk in between catching up on an entire night’s lost sleep. (The children were so exhausted she’d kept them off school. Last day of term, too – the fun day, with nothing but games).

      ‘I don’t know what’s going on with Rob, though,’ she adds. ‘He says his mum’s being really peculiar with him – keeps asking if he has something personal he’d like to discuss.’

      ‘What could that be?’

      ‘No idea. I just wish he’d get over this urge to share every little detail of his life with me.’

      ‘Well,’ Harvey ventures, ‘he obviously still feels pretty tied to you.’

      Kerry nods. ‘And I suppose we always will be, at least until the children are grown-up. But he also can’t help being disapproving, either, which is a bit bloody cheeky seeing as the sweetcorn thing happened when Freddie was in his care.’

      ‘Really? He implied it was your fault?’

      ‘Not exactly. But he did suggest that perhaps I should have checked sooner, just in case Freddie might have slotted something in there at some point …’

      Harvey snorts. ‘So what happened at the hospital?’

      ‘Three hour wait in A&E. Mia curled up and slept on a plastic chair, and Freddie described the rotting mess in his ear to anyone who’d listen. And of course all the parents of children with fractured limbs were glaring at me as if to say, “Call yourself a mother?”’ Harvey laughs, fixing her with his clear blue eyes. ‘Then he was given a light anaesthetic,’ she continues, ‘and they managed to get it all out with tiny tweezers. Now he’s on antibiotics to zap any lingering infection.’ She stops herself. With no kids of his own, and clearly being a few years younger than she is, Harvey really doesn’t need to be bombarded all this child-related info. ‘Anyway, I’m being a mummy-bore,’ she says quickly.

      ‘No, you’re not, and I work with children, remember. I’m not completely allergic to them.’

      Kerry smiles. ‘Still okay for Mia’s party next Saturday? We’ll have to miss your lesson that day, I’m afraid …’

      ‘Yeah, probably a good idea. Might be a bit challenging doing our improv session with fifteen children charging around the house.’

      ‘I do feel better, knowing you’re going to be there,’ she adds. ‘Mia’s given out the invitations but hardly anyone’s RSVP’d to say they’ll come.’

      ‘Oh, I’m sure they will …’

      ‘Will they, though?’ She gets up to refill Harvey’s mug from the percolator jug. ‘What if there’s only Mia, Freddie and my friend Brigid’s little boy Joe, and acres of untouched food? Hiring you will seem completely over the top …’

      ‘Kerry,’ he says firmly, ‘it’ll be fine.’

      She exhales loudly. ‘This probably isn’t even about the party, not really. It’s just … I feel guilty, I guess, uprooting them from all their old friends just before their dad and I split up. It’s all been too much for them …’

      ‘But you had no idea that was going to happen,’ Harvey insists. ‘You moved down here for the best possible reasons …’

      ‘Yeah.’ She laughs mirthlessly. ‘The “great schools” issue. God …’ She gets up and swills out her mug at the sink. ‘Anyway, Harvey, I have to say I still can’t quite imagine you in the full clown outfit.’

      He chuckles. ‘I know it sounds a bit crap to say I’m just doing this to tide me over. I’m an actor really – at least, that’s what I was trained to do. Things just went a bit quiet last year … well, silent actually.’

      She turns and smiles at him. ‘I guess being pelted with barley sugars is slightly preferable to eviction and starvation.’

      He nods. ‘Yes, just about.’

      ‘Anyway,’ she adds, ‘you mean it’s not the way you planned things.’

      ‘Definitely not.’ He laughs ruefully.

      Getting up from his basket to perform an extravagant stretch, Buddy pads to the front door and whines insistently. ‘Sorry, Harvey, but I need to take him out.’ She lifts her jacket from the hook on the door.

      ‘Mind if I come with you?’

      Kerry smiles, suprised but pleased. ‘No, not at all. I’d like the company.’ And so they set out along the beach. As they walk, she learns about his flatmate Ethan who, at the ripe old age of thirty-three, finds it hilarious to leave sinister teeth marks in Harvey’s cheese, and how he’s having a hard time convincing his parents – churchy, conservative types up in Cumbria – that Ethan isn’t his boyfriend.

      ‘What about your parents?’ he asks. ‘Where are they?’

      ‘Oh, they died when I was seventeen. Car crash on holiday in France.’

      ‘That’s terrible,’ he exclaims. ‘I’m sorry I asked …’

      ‘It’s fine,’ she assures him. ‘It’s twenty years ago now. I do miss them of course but, you know … it’s as if another life has happened since then. It’s weird. They didn’t even know me as a proper adult, not really, and they never met Rob.’ Harvey nods, and although she has vowed to herself that she won’t launch into a despicable-ex rant, she can’t help blurting out, ‘You know what, Harvey? The one part I still can’t get my head around is that Rob says he can’t remember a thing about it.’

      ‘You mean sleeping with her?’ He looks incredulous.

      ‘Yes, the sex bit. The impregnation. Is that possible, d’you think?’

      ‘Um … can’t say it’s ever happened to me, but maybe, I don’t know – is there some kind of condition that makes people black out, y’know, mid-act?’

      She frowns, considering this. ‘I’m not sure. Doesn’t petite mort mean orgasm? A little death, like a black-out …’

      ‘Yes, well, I suppose that could explain it …’ He gives her a quizzical look.

      ‘… Or maybe that’s her modus – inviting men to stay over and, when they’ve fallen asleep, she gets out her patented baby-making machine and syphons off their sperm …’

      Harvey sniggers. ‘In that case, he should have called the police to report a theft.’ He checks his watch. ‘D’you have any more pupils today, Kerry? I fancy a drink, don’t you?’

      ‘Love one,’ she says firmly. ‘I’m free the rest of the day but we’ll have to sit outside, I’m afraid, freezing our arses off. Buddy doesn’t like being left on his own.’

      *

      The day has panned out better than Kerry could have hoped. She has enjoyed her lessons today – a sparky nine-year-old who’s hurtling towards grade three, followed by a pair of earnest teenage sisters who share a lesson; then Harvey,