“Jesus, Terry, how long’s she been sat there?” Simone asks, lifting Jasmine into her arms and having a go at the dried crisps with a wet wipe.
“Well you wouldn’t know, would you? You’ve been off fannying around, haven’t you?” Decisively, Terry takes Jasmine back from her. “Your mum just left you all day, didn’t she Jas? What’s that?”
Terry has spotted the box sticking out of Simone’s bag.
“I dunno. Chocolates apparently. That new woman next door gave them to us.”
“What for?”
“To say sorry for the builders’ noise, she reckons.”
Terry takes the box out of Simone’s bag and opens it, Jasmine tugging at the wrapping. “Truffles!” he exclaims, dumping them on the floor, and Jasmine next to them. Jasmine promptly opens the box and helps herself. “Well la-di-da.”
Simone says nothing. She lets Jasmine take a handful of the chocolates and then scoops up the rest from the floor. There’s a bowl on the table and she fills this with what’s left of the sweets to save for Dominic.
“You’ve taken a bit of a shine to them, haven’t you?” Terry asks. “That couple? I saw you watching them.”
“I was just having a cig,” Simone answers.
“Yeah I saw. Having a cig while I’m up here with this.” He points at Jasmine. “What do you think I am? A mug?”
Simone says nothing. She knows he doesn’t mean it. Terry’s not perfect, but he’s wonderful with Jasmine, with both the kids. She notices other parents smiling admiringly when he’s kicking a ball with Dominic, or carrying Jasmine on his shoulders. If he’s not going anywhere, he doesn’t normally mind an hour or two at home with Jas. It’s the street that has rattled him.
“I see the way you look at all these rich idiots,” Terry continues. “Are you in love with them?”
“Course not,” Simone says.
It’s the street. With the move, he’d done something at last that she’d never seen before – he’d stepped outside. Not only of the estate, but of his comfort zone, his world that though minimal, was reliable. Predictable. You can make that kind of thing work for you if you have to. This was one of the first things Terry had impressed upon her when he was sorting her out. There’s a certain vibe you need, he’d explained, a don’t-mess-with-me aura. You have to live in a state of readiness. But once you’ve learned that, a kind of security emerges, because yes you’re living on the edge, but you know you are, and so you navigate it with that knowledge, like a goat on a cliff top, or a fish in shark-infested water. He’d used these metaphors. He’s been poetic and enchanting. What you don’t do though, he’d told her, what you mustn’t do, is attempt to shift course, or change things. You could fail that way, slip, fall, be knocked down by something you were unprepared for. You don’t risk that. You don’t try to make things different. You don’t try to be or do anything.
Except now they had.
From the floor, Simone picks up Jasmine who has a mouthful of chocolate. “Come on. Let’s sort that nappy.”
Terry stays in the kitchen looking with partial interest at a documentary on TV he has saved, while Simone takes Jasmine off to the bedroom. Unlike their flat on the estate, there are three bedrooms here, so Jasmine has a room of her own. She hasn’t gotten used to it yet. She screams like hell at bedtime, but at least they can shut the door, and at least Terry’s paraphernalia is no longer scattered about a few inches from the cot. Even to herself, Simone calls these items Terry’s, but she’ll still have a hit sometimes. Jasmine laughs as Simone undoes her nappy. It should have been changed ages ago.
“You need to start going potty,” Simone tells Jasmine, poking her gently in the stomach.
Jasmine laughs again, but doesn’t say anything. Simone’s sure Dominic was talking more by age two. Jasmine used to babble a lot as a baby, but these days she’s usually either crying, or quiet.
“When are you gonna start answering Mummy?” Simone says, poking her again.
Jasmine still says nothing. Nappy changed, Simone lets her play with the box of plastic princesses in her room. The carpet’s old and worn, a dark beige colour that she can’t imagine was ever fashionable but hides the dirt. Simone sits on the edge of the windowsill. The room is small, but the whole house is festooned with sweeping great windows and high ceilings, so it feels airy. Luxurious even. The style is very much akin to the flat in Kentish Town where she grew up, and she finds herself spending time looking at it, although she is not so stupid as to entertain illusions of grandeur. She’s aware that the flat isn’t even theirs. They’ve only been in it a couple of months, and the lease still names Milly – one of Terry’s ex-girlfriends who moved down South with a new man. Simone has all sorts of questions as to why Milly felt so indebted to Terry as to gift him the key – not strictly allowed, but who was going to tell – but she has resisted asking. Because Milly’s flat is not in a tower block or a sprawling concrete rabbit warren. Instead, it occupies the top two floors of a white-fronted Victorian terrace a short walk from Regent’s Park and slap bang in the middle of exclusive Primrose Hill. It is one of a spattering of council properties on the street – easily discernible in their lack of fancy doorstep tiles – so the flat isn’t even Milly’s, really. And Simone knows that the geography she happens to find herself in doesn’t manifest itself under her skin. But it almost feels as though it does. Almost. Like the walls in the estate. For the first time in years, instead of feeling trapped in, she’s looking out.
An abrupt noise of something smashing suspends Simone’s brooding. It has come from the kitchen, and, “Clever place to put a bowl!” Terry shouts.
Simone stays where she is. She shakes her head at Jasmine as if to say ‘Silly Daddy’, and takes out a cigarette.
Dominic hates her smoking. He’s eleven now and says less about it, but she can picture him aged seven or eight, eyes frightened like a rabbit, pleading with her to stop, thrusting a flyer he’d found in the doctor’s office into her yellowed hands. Back then she’d thought that his panic was hilarious. Terry did too. They’d both been high on something and had laughed on that for hours.
Simone flaps her hand now as though this might drive the memory away, but all it does is make her drop ash over herself. With the cigarette she is still smoking. Despite her son.
It wasn’t for Dominic that Terry gave in to the idea of moving. It wasn’t even for her. In the end it seemed only that he was trying to spite something. But Simone took it running.
“What’s the point of my giving you a proper kitchen?” his voice comes again. “Can’t cook, and now you can’t even find the intellect to put a bowl away right. You are a dense one, Simone, aren’t you? Jesus. Look at this.”
Again, Simone shakes her head at her daughter, and notices that Jasmine has stopped playing with her princesses. Not as in she has put them away or moved onto something else, but as in she has frozen, one doll still grasped by the hair in her left hand. She did this a few days ago too when she cracked her head on the kitchen table. Simone noticed it then because it was eerie to look at. The child had entirely stopped moving, stopped blinking even – from shock, she’d reasoned. But this time there is no head injury. Simone looks at her daughter intently. “What’s up Jassy?” she says. The girl still doesn’t move. Balancing her cigarette on an ashtray, Simone kneels right next to her and clicks her fingers in front of her face. Jasmine barely blinks. A little roughly, Simone takes the princess out of Jasmine’s hand, but there is still no movement. She is about to pick Jasmine up when Terry appears at the bedroom door.