Lazybones

at almost the same moment.

'I never know when you're winding me up,' he said. She slid her hand across the table, took hold of his. 'Can you leave it behind just for a while, Tom?' she said. 'Tonight, I want you to switch off…'

'Kids are a bloody handful,' Irene Noble said. 'They change things beyond all recognition.' She stared across at Holland. 'But you'll still be glad you did it…'

Holland had supposed that if they talked at all, they might well talk about kids. He never imagined that they might end up talking about his.

'Just feel so guilty,' he said. 'For resenting what might happen to me. For even thinking about walking away from it.'

'You'll feel stuff that's a whole lot stranger and more painful than that. You'll feel like you would die for them and the next minute you'd happily murder them. You'll worry about where they are and then you'll wish you could have a second to yourself. Every emotion is unconditional…'

'You're talking about afterwards, when the baby's there. What about feeling like this now?'

'It's normal. It's not just the woman's emotions that get messed around with. Mind you, you can't use hormones as an excuse…'

Holland laughed, the two glasses of wine he'd put away helping him to feel relaxed. An hour or so earlier, he'd felt far less sure of himself. He'd thought, when they'd started to eat and he'd suddenly begun pouring it all out, that there might be more waterworks on the way, but Irene had helped him stay calm, convinced him that everything would work out for the best…

'I'll take these out.' She stood up, lifting the tray from the empty seat on the sofa next to her.

Holland passed over his empty plate. 'Thanks, that was great.' He was talking about more than just a lasagne that had been cold in the middle.

He sat back down and listened as she pottered around in the kitchen. He could hear her talking softly to the dog, loading the dishes into the washing machine.

It had been a conversation that Holland would never have had with his mother. Irene Noble, give or take a year or two, was the same age as his mother – a woman who'd been buying baby clothes for the last six months. A woman who refused to admit that anything could go wrong ever, and remained blissfully unaware that things were less than hunky-dory between her eldest son and his pregnant girlfriend.

Irene came back in brandishing choc-ices. 'I always keep a stock of these in the freezer. Bloody marvelous in this weather…'

For a minute they said nothing. They sat and ate their ice creams, and listened to the noise of the dog's claws skittering across the lino as she scrabbled about in the kitchen.

As Irene Noble started to speak, pulling her feet up on to the sofa like a teenager, Holland watched her face shift and settle, until every one of her years was clearly visible on it.

'Whatever problems you have, I hope you work them out together, all three of you. But they won't be in the same league as some of the things that kids have brought with them through my front door. You pass them on, you know. Hand them down, like baldness or diabetes or the colour of your eyes…'

'You're talking about Mark and Sarah…'

'The other day I was very harsh about the two sets of caters who had the children before we did. About their inability to cope. The truth is that we weren't really coping any better than they had.'

'You adopted them.'

'I think it was our last effort at making them feel part of something bigger. Two parents and two children. We wanted them to come out of themselves, to engage with the rest of the world a bit more.'

'It's understandable though,' Holland said. 'That they'd be tight knit. That the two of them would be very close, after what happened.'

He looked away from her, down to the floor, thinking, And what was still happening…

'They were too close,' she said. 'That was the problem. When they disappeared, Sarah was pregnant, and the baby she was carrying was Mark's.'

TWENTY-NINE

They walked slowly back down Kentish Town Road towards Thorne's flat. At not much after nine o'clock, it was just starting to darken but was still warm enough to walk without a jacket. The road was as busy and noisy as ever. Cars moved past them constantly, those which could had their tops down, most had sidelights on. Despite what Eve had said earlier, they had both tucked a fair amount of food away, though Thorne put the feeling in his stomach down to something else entirely. Before they'd left the flat, Eve had helped him make the bed, laying a clean white sheet across the new mattress she'd brought with her. Thorne knew very well that when they got back there, she was going to help him unmake it again.

There were some things in his life which he counted as certainties: there was always another body, somewhere; you could never get rid of blood completely; people who killed without motive tended to do it again. But this was the sort of promise that Thorne hadn't been on for a very long time…

Eve grabbed his hand suddenly, and raised it up, bringing their bare forearms together. 'You'd look a lot better with a decent tan,' she said.

'Is that an invitation?'

'When was the last time you had a proper holiday?'

Even after thinking about it for a minute, Thorne couldn't provide anything as specific as a year. Lack of time was not so much the problem as lack of inclination and anybody to go away with. 'It's been a while,' he said.

'Are you a lying-on-the-beach kind of guy, or do you prefer to do stuff?.'

'Both, really. Or neither. I think lying on the beach gets a bit boring, but probably-not quite as boring as walking round a museum…'

'Not easily pleased, are you?'

'Sorry…'

'All right, where would you like to go, if you could go anywhere?'

'I've always fancied Nashville.'

She nodded. 'Right. The country-and-western thing…'

'Another one of my dark secrets…'

'I quite liked it.'

'Really?'

'You're not going to get kinky later on though, are you? Dress up in leather chaps? Bring out the bullwhip and spurs…?'

They turned right on to Prince of Wales Road, the sound of live jazz coming from the Pizza Express on the corner. Thorne wondered if a pizza might not have been a better idea. The combination of curry and humidity meant that beads of perspiration were popping all over him.

Still hand in hand, Thorne could feel the moisture between their palms. He wasn't sure whether it was her sweat or his own. The bike weaved effortlessly through the traffic. Occasionally, where it got really heavy, or the road narrowed, he would have to sit and wait.

Idling, in line among the dispatch riders and trainee cabbies on mopeds. Soon enough, there would be a gap and he would be away, the rucksack bouncing against his back as he drove across sleeping policemen and holes in the road…

He pulled up at traffic lights and checked his watch. He was probably going to get there a bit early, but it wouldn't matter. He would park up, stroll off somewhere and wait. Keeping out of sight, until it was time.

Next to him, a big Kawasaki revved up, ready for the off. A girl in cut-off jeans rode pillion, squeezing her boyfriend tighter with each growl he twisted from the engine. On amber, the Jap bike was gone, and he watched it go, easing his own machine slowly away from the lights.

Picking up no more speed than was necessary… He had plenty of time, and the last thing he wanted was to be pulled over.

It wasn't so much a question of the ticket, or the points on his licence. He was so excited, so full of what he