Piers whispered in Julius’s ear, ‘Well, got off lightly there!’ as he, too, started to pack away so that they might all vacate the neutral meeting room and be done with it.
Anna looked across the big polished table at Julius, who had pulled out his phone in a gesture of affected boredom as Claire had started to speak. Truculent as ever. He was avoiding her gaze, as he typically did when a truth was stinging him. As always, Anna felt a fleeting sympathy for him. Not for any of his awful decisions or behaviour, but for the pathetic wretch he’d become.
The Julius she’d fallen for was at least a substantial person; this husk of a man in front of her was not. She was racking her brains to remember the things she once loved about him. What were they?
Anna had loved that he confided in her back then, that he told her about the bullying he’d experienced at school, about the lack of a father in his life, and the scars that both of those unfairnesses left on him, as well as his actual scars from his childhood heart surgery. Anna had always felt that he was somehow emotionally stunted, stuck at a juvenile stage of his life, since he didn’t seem to be very mature or warmhearted. All the time she loved him, she had defended his actions to herself in this forgiving way. When the love dripped and finally dwindled away, the creeping surety that he was, in fact, a psychopath dawned on her. At the least, he was a sociopath, but he ticked more of the psychopath boxes. Sort of psychopath light.
Here today, though, she didn’t need to go to her default setting of forgiveness. The only real abiding affection she had for him was to do with the fact that they’d made Florence together, and she was beautiful, but she wasn’t here any more and neither was their love.
The lawyers both left the room, and as Anna walked around the table, heading for the door, he took her hand as she passed by. He pulled her gently down towards his face. For a horrific moment, she thought he was going to attempt to kiss her, but he didn’t.
He said, ‘I saw you looking at me. I still do it for you, don’t I?’
Yep, a psychopath, for sure. He couldn’t have been more insensitive. Or wrong.
‘Bye, Julius. I hope you find someone to love you as much as you love you. I couldn’t.’
Anna swept out of the door, leaving all her feelings of inadequacy and doubt in his lap.
Minnie Grows Up
When Minnie was ONE, she fixated on one word and applied it to everything. The word was ‘Wawa’. Hope was wawa. Nanna Doris was wawa. Food was wawa. All animals were wawa. Her body parts were wawa. She sounded like an ambulance on an emergency call. She once stuffed a small bead from a broken necklace of Hope’s in her mouth, and swallowed it before Hope could fish it out. Hope rushed her to A & E, where she was told there was nothing to do but wait for it to pop out the other end. When it did, and Hope showed it in her nappy to an amazed Minnie, she pointed at her bumhole and said, ‘Wawa.’ From then on, all bums were wawas in that small family.
When Minnie was TWO, she could walk and even run a little, and she loved fetching things for Hope. One day, Hope was in the front room with a cup of tea watching TV, and, feeling extra lazy, she thought she’d utilize Minnie’s new skills.
‘Minnie Moo! Can you get the sugar for Mummy’s tea please from the kitchen? Mummy has two sugars in tea, one … two, there’s a good girl.’
Minnie listened carefully and waddled off to the kitchen; she reappeared and placed one grain of sugar in Hope’s tea; then she repeated it, back to the kitchen for another grain, so that Mummy had the right number of sugars.
When Minnie was THREE, she loved climbing, and if Hope lost her anywhere in the flat, it was a surety that she’d be on top of a wardrobe, or dangerously high up a tree in the garden. She loved being taller than she actually was, so would strut about in Hope’s heeled shoes, which is why she fell when she was walking around in Hope’s red weekend wedges. To soothe her injured pride, Hope took Minnie to the charity shop and they bought two more pairs of high-heeled shoes, this time in as small a size as they could find, so that Minnie could strut around in them whenever she liked. One pair were ballroom-dancing-type shoes in silver, very fancy, and the other pair were old-lady beige comfies with a tiny heel. Minnie loved them so much that she slept in them on alternate nights.
When Minnie was FOUR, Nanna Doris gave her a yellow tricycle for her birthday and she hammered around the park on it, forcing Hope to run to keep up with her. She made up a song she sang over and over: ‘My yellow bike, it’s a trike, it’s got spikes, and I like … it.’
She started primary school in September, and spent more time with Nanna Doris while Hope took a couple of part-time cleaning jobs. By then, Hope could finally begin to trust
