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Blackheath

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She feels nothing. There is an absence where love should be. A long, flat greyness. Another absence: guilt. For this is her daughter she is looking at. This pale, thin girl shovelling Cheerios, gabbing on about Mrs Friel and after-school club. Violin. Yet she feels no guilt at all for this lack of love, feels nothing in fact except relief. She stares as the girl finishes the startled little shapes and begins to spoon milk.

— Come on, she says. Someone says. Her. We'll be late.

— It's not even eight. We've got, like, an hour.

She doesn't reply. Just gazes at the slim, naked-looking spoon her daughter leaves on the side of the bowl until the girl is standing there with her coat on.

— Mum! You're not even dressed. What's the matter with you?

In the enclosed, high-walled playground she looks around as though she's never been there before. The children whirl like windblown litter. The adults cling in twos and threes, knots she's been tangled in so often but shivers at today. Why? She frowns, watching as children touch base, remind, cajole, ask permission, while her daughter is lost amid the mêlée. She doesn't care about this. She just wants to leave and she starts to do that but the crowd's too thick, a last flood pouring through the playground gate as if getting to school is not something they do five days out of seven. She could push through but another thing stops her, the past like a raised sheet of glass. Reception. The very small ones, whom she hardly notices any more. They look like wind-up toys and their parents too are different. More focused, their energy heading down as they apply kisses like hats or scarves, faces riven with smiles, voices cut with chipper bonhomie. Did she feel like this with Niamh? Or, before, with Michael? That a piece of her flesh was about to be dragged off into some giant mincer? She turns, disconcerted, wanting now to see her own daughter and look inside for some echo. But the girl, in deep with the most tedious of her friends, is just hair, hands, too many limbs. Someone else's child. The relief she feels now is total and she tries to leave again, though again she doesn't make it.

She's pushed back by a man. Another Reception father, late, blowing his cheeks out as he presses his child into the joggling line. And something happens, something light and startling ... happens before she has even taken him in properly. She does that as the feeling grows, takes shape, firms itself inside her until she cannot pretend it is anything other than what it is.

She wants to fuck him.

It's a simple thought. Clear and shiny, almost making her laugh. This man, two seconds old, she wants to fuck him or, more accurately, let him fuck her. He's not tall – her height, though he's handsome. Blond, cross-looking, leaping blue eyes and three-day stubble she can feel on the insides of her thighs. She stares at him, not worried he'll see because he's homed in on his kid, kneeling, making the boy laugh. When he stands she finds herself moving, doing so without thinking, which is so odd because she's a person who, she knows, thinks far too much. She cuts through the Year One line as if it isn't there.

— His bag, she says.

A moment. Face turning. He looks at her. Some grey in the stubble. Lips plump, a little like a woman's. Saved by a jaw that's firm and tight.

— I'm sorry?

— His bag. You're holding it.

And he is. The green school bag he's obviously carried there is still slung over his shoulder.

— Thanks. He laughs.

— My husband still does that. He gets home and I have to send him back if it's book-change day.

— Thanks, the man repeats, and hands it down. Then the bell goes and the mess begins to straighten.

— What's your name? she asks, pulling the man's eyes back from his son. He's reluctant, not wanting to miss a second of his boy. But he's too polite not to turn to her.

— I'm James. Jim.

Her first disappointment. A dull name. Jim at uni, so swept by love of her he could barely move, three thrusts and come filling up her navel. But she smiles.

— Hello, James. Amelia. He's new?

— Dom? This term. He tries to turn and look at the boy again but she fixes him, cool and casual, pretending not to notice his discomfort. Second intake. He was born in April ...

— Michael was the same.

— Your son? He smiles now, relaxing. What year's ...?

— Now? He left – at real school now, as he calls it.

— So ...?

— What am I doing here? She laughs. My daughter. She ...

But for a second she cannot remember what year her daughter is in. Or, in fact, her name. She begins to stutter, about to make something up when the lines begin to move, as though a Dyson has started up. Reception is first and he does it, so un-English, just rips his eyes away from her. He shouts and waves until the line is out of sight, shifts to let another late child in, after which another woman takes him. Rachel Green, parent rep, hands waving like tethered birds as she talks to him about something they have clearly spoken of before. School clothes. PE kit. All of which spikes a sudden jealousy that swarms over her like a virus. It grips her belly with nausea, so lurching she can't stop herself.

— I've got some, she says.

Their shoulders are turned from her. They're in their own talk-configuration which they have to realign. It's awkward but Rachel beams even brighter.

— Amelia! Niamh okay?

Niamh.

— Fine. Judith alright?

— Great, Rachel says, about to expand. Before she can, however, Amelia snaps her head back to James.

— Old school clothes. If you're looking. Quite a lot. Michael's old stuff.

— Oh.

— If you'd like it?

— If I'd ...?

— Like it? Been meaning to bring it in for ages. Lots of sizes.

— Right. I mean yes. I'll buy it from you, naturally.

— Nonsense. You may not even want it. Boys. They go through stuff. But some of it'll be okay.

— Then thanks.

She smiles and nods but doesn't go on. She wants Rachel Green away. She turns right back to her and grins into her over-made-up face until, awkward, she moves off to her dumpy daughter. When Amelia turns back to the man he looks uncertain. She ignores this and asks if he's busy. Busy now. It startles him until she calms him with one of Rachel's smiles, so full of wholesome mumminess he's put right back at ease.

— Unless you're running off to work. We're just across the Heath. You could come and get them.

— I'm working at home today. Great, he says.

And they leave. She flashes another bright smile and receives one in return. As they exit the playground a voice calls out Mum! but she doesn't look back.

Instead she leads the man up the Vale towards the flat expanse of grass that is Blackheath, where her children have had playtimes and sports days, Saturday football or cricket for as long as she can remember. Her house is on the far edge and she heads towards the windows, black as skull sockets, still chatting about clothes, the expense of them, what a waste it would be to buy them new. Again he protests that he wants to pay but again she tells him no, that a lot were given by other parents; that's the way it works. She also insists that if there are any he feels are too worn he needn't take them. All the while she is filled with astonishment at what she is doing, bringing this man back to her home. To fuck him. Astonishment too to hear the words coming out of her mouth, this talk of Heath trainers for summer and windcheaters with the logo on. For there are no clothes. She took them to the summer fair last year, something she is sure Rachel Green remembered.

— Coffee? she asks.

He's standing in her kitchen. This man. James. He's looking around and the first thing she can tell is that his house is not as big as hers. Something in the way he checks it out, not with overt jealousy, just the way he seems to notice and assess it. Unless he's an estate agent. But he's not, and it's not the work-at-home comment that tells her. She couldn't want to fuck an estate agent. After fifteen years of not wanting to fuck anyone but her husband. She wouldn't have found herself wanting this with such certainty, before she'd even seen him properly.

— So what do you do ... James?

— I'm an academic.

She looks for irony. Finds none.

— Right. What in?

— English.

— A professor?

— One day. Doctor.

— Doctor Jim. Like a picture book.

— Ha. Not sure three-year-olds would be interested in a character who spends half his life in the British Library.

He has spoken. Opened a small flap of himself, like the ones Michael and Niamh used to piggle open with tiny fingers. The picture beneath is one she likes. Funny, self-deprecating. Confident though, getting over her big house. She sticks a bullet in the Nespresso machine but instantly regrets it. Just as she knew he was not an estate agent, she knows he's not a Nespresso man. He's got one of those cinchwaisted stovetop things with burn marks up the side. She knows this like she knows her own name.

— They're upstairs, she says, brightly.

Not her room. Can't be. Not hers and Richard's. She's been taken out of her life, something that happened before she set eyes on this man. In the night perhaps, her moorings cut by some demon? She doesn't know, just woke up like this as if from a dream. Or into one. She'll think about it later, do the wondering, though she knows it's a fact, a done thing she can't deny. Not this nor any of the emotions ganging up to get inside her. But she hasn't drifted away completely. Not in their bed, her novel spined, Richard's pyjamas stuffed beneath the pillow. The spare room will be fine, though the mattress is springy. Will he mind, when he's going over it in his head as she knows men do, replaying her tits, her arse? Will it occur to him that, as well as her two-kid belly, the bed could have been a touch firmer?

— A spare room, he says. What I'd give. Though my in-laws would be in it all the time.

— Tell me. Not that I don't like them. Sometimes wish we'd never told them about it, though. Pretended it's a cupboard.

— A loft conversion, he says, somewhat randomly. But we're in a conservation area.

She begins to rummage in the built-in wardrobes.

After a decent interval on all fours, pushing boxes around, taking things out, putting them back, she emerges. Stands and winces.

— I'm really sorry.

— For ...?

And she nearly comes out with this phrase: I haven't shaved my armpits. She nearly says that right out, just throws it into the air, which would be it, wouldn't it? Bridges burned. He's looking at her quizzically and she nearly does it, but instead she explains that she thought the clothes would be there.

— Richard.

— I thought you said Michael.

— My husband. He was clearing out. I just remembered. He could have put them in the garage. He probably has but where they'll be ...? I could call and ask him but he has meetings in the mornings and never answers his phone so ...

— It doesn't matter. Another time. Just let me know.

And then they're just standing there. Two people in a room. Looking at each other. The bed to the left of them, so wide and still and empty. So indecent as beds always seem to her, glimpsed through the doors of other people's houses. Does he know? Has he guessed? Less than a second has gone by but she thinks he must have. He's still got his coat on. Only then does she realise that. A Barbour, but one of the trendy ones in black. Keep it on, she thinks. While you fuck me.

His phone rings.

It is, of course, his wife. He pulls the phone out and she feels her lips part, aware that this is when she'll find out if he knows what this is. What's happening here. He smiles and turns a little in on himself. The smile grows as he chats with a casual openness that tells her that he does not know, that he has no idea, that the sign please fuck me that's pinned to her forehead is invisible to him. She watches as he answers questions about a doctor's appointment, then a nursery, recognising the name. Which tells her where he lives. She pictures the woman on the other end and can only know for certain one thing: she's younger. Nothing else.

— Getting clothes for Dom. She's ... the needle jumps and she knows he's forgotten her name ... a woman from St Saviour's, only she can't find them. Really kind. I have but she won't take anything. I'll tell her. Bye.

And he hangs up. She smiles and walks past him, back down the stairs, feeling his eyes on her back as she follows, knowing, actually, that she's almost certainly imagining that. He's probably looking at the landing space. She fires up the Nespresso machine and they drink the coffee, on which he makes no comment, though he does talk about his wife and his children, his house and his work, doing so because she asks him detailed questions. Not that she cares about or even listens to the answers. She just wants him to be there. Not leave, though he does that eventually, extricating himself from her like a silent but very determined escapologist. She closes the door behind him and then runs upstairs to the spare room window, wondering if she was right. And she was. That nursery is in Greenwich and he said he walked there in the morning. She watches him stride that way across the grass until the distance scrubs him out.

Downstairs again she picks up his coffee mug. Stares at the place his lips have touched. She shakes her head and then notices her daughter's bowl which, for some reason, is still on the table. She cleared the rest away that morning but not that. The spoon is still there, bowed upward, a few drops of yellowing milk collected in it. She leaves it, goes over to the sink. She washes his mug up and then dries it, before putting it away in the cupboard.

She's back. Time has passed, though not a day. A day is something you can expand into, a space in which to set out. Not the shrivelled zone between nine and three-thirty, the room with no windows, the ceiling always moving down to crush her. She walks into the playground, early for the first time in years. Self-conscious as she heads to one of the chess tables near the back wall, as if everyone who sees her will know what she is doing there.

Which one will be his? Earlier, she paid no attention to the kid. Will she be able to guess? When Mrs Mason leads Reception out she looks at the first and the boy would fit. She begins to think she's right but then comes one so blond, with such utter blue eyes, that there can't be any mistake. She blinks, unable to pull her gaze from him, just as she wasn't able earlier, with his father. The demeanour is similar: a little set apart, a little too serious for that age. Or any. She pushes herself up and moves forward, wanting a clearer glimpse, to see the moment they reconnect. But a greater surprise is waiting for her. The space fills and she edges through, relief and recognition lighting the faces of the children whose parents are already there. She turns, looking for him, amazed when the blond boy laughs and launches himself from the wall into the arms of a woman. Nanny? Not if he's an academic and anyway the glee is far too great, wrenching open even this considered child. So this is her. The phone person. It has to be, though her hair is wrong. Dark, nearly black. When did you ever see a blond man like that with a woman with curly black hair? She wears glasses too, something so wrong she wants to pull them off. Pretty? No. Beautiful. A late beauty, finding her in her twenties, perhaps even later. Something secretive about her. Withheld. And no yummy mummy here, the scuffed poacher's bag over the shoulder and the general rush speaking unequivocally of work. A teacher? No. But what? She turns and moves closer, honing in on the mac. It's Jaeger – classic, expensive – and she's thrown by this, made horribly insecure until ting: charity shop. The high street clothes beneath tell her this and, rather than soothing her, it actually makes her feel worse. No one she knows buys clothes from charity shops any more. Most of them probably never did. For some reason the Nespresso machine pops into her mind and she wants to break it into a thousand pieces, crush it until it's unrecognisable. As for the mac, she wants to touch it, ask its price, if she can try it on.

— Wait. The word juts out of her lips.

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Excerpted from Blackheath by Adam Baron. Copyright © 2016 Adam Baron. Excerpted by permission of Myriad Editions.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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