In last week’s instalment Annie is left holding the baby! Now read on …
There’s nothing in the house that I can tempt Noé with for breakfast. Not even pizza is an option or my offer to make cinnamon whirls. I found the recipe online in my desperation to tempt him to eat. It’s pretty obvious he’s missing Reef though he hasn’t said as much. He’s said very little apart from, No, I don’t like it or No, I don’t want it.
Nothing in the whole of this sprawling kitchen is of any use to Noé and I’m losing the plot because I haven’t had a shot of coffee, I have appointments I need to cancel and I’m supposed to let Anton in to start work on the house. I quickly shoot him a text and try to put him off until Tuesday saying that I’ll pay for his hours. He replies saying Tuesday it is and don’t worry about the money.
‘I’ve got it,’ I say at last to the hangry child who has his forehead against the patio windows. He turns and leaves a greasy smudge there. ‘If there’s absolutely nothing here you fancy how about we go and pay a visit to Rhiannon? Remember her? She was my friend you met last Sunday.’
‘The lady with cookies?’
‘That’s the one. She has a café full of cookies and lovely things to eat. We can go there now.’
He shrugs an “okay then”. His mouth turns down while I zip up his padded jacket, pull the door closed and lead the way to my car. At the end of the drive and on the other side of the tall gate I see a cluster of cars and people chatting away casually. Noé is bolstered up on a cushion in the passenger seat, he has a seatbelt around him but I’m probably violating child car seat laws. I slow down when I get to the security keypad but I don’t open the gate because whoever these people are, they are so close to the iron rails, they’re bound to lose teeth if I tap in the code. I get out and walk up to the gate.
‘Excuse me,’ I say to the two people closest. I see they have cameras and I realise they are hoping to snap photos of Reef, possibly Noé. ‘I need to get out so I’ll have to ask you to move.’
‘S’all right love. We were told Reef Mayer has a new girlfriend from around here so …’
‘So you want her picture?’
They look into the car at Noé who is peering out at them with big eyes. They barely look at me in my thick coat, no make up and hair piled into a tall haystack on my head.
‘S’all right,’ the same guy says to the others. ‘It’s just the nanny. Move back.’
‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘Really kind of you.’
‘No worries mate.’
Now it’s clear that I’m not paparazzi worthy I drive away. I am Reef’s girlfriend, I want to say to the photographers who have their backs to me and are lighting cigarettes. I can’t fight the feeling that Reef’s urgency to have me as his girlfriend could be because I’m not flashy, glamorous or famous and probably useful because I won’t draw media attention. I’m feeling decidedly plain and decidedly uninteresting. I look in the car mirror and attempt to make my hair sit better but I’ll hit a pothole if I carry on. I glance quickly at Noé to make sure he didn’t slide off the cushion after the last bend in the windy road to town. He stares up at me curiously with a finger wedged up his nose. He promptly pulls it out and says, ‘Eugh. What do I do with this?’
Having a child wave a slimy bogey in your face when you’re not your most confident self and you’ve never been asked to deal with a bogey crisis in you life, is not easy. I don’t want him to think I’m disgusted, though I’m trying not to wretch.
‘Put it out the window,’ I say calmly as I wind along a wet country road. ‘I’ll open it.’ But Noé has already attempted to put it out of the window while the window is closed and the bogey, still on his finger, smears its way upwards as the window lowers. He leans forward trying to free his finger of it, depositing the remainder on the top of the open window. He sits back with a satisfied smile. Who would think that a small, babyish button nose could contain the snot of a group of grown men?
‘Well done,’ I say, patting his head. ‘Here.’ I lean down to grab a tissue from the well at the foot of the gear box, eyes on the road. We begin to near the town centre and I park as far from the practice as possible and hurry Noé down to Rhiannon’s so I can start to cancel my clients. It’s such short notice everyone will be angry with me.
It’s fairly busy at Rhiannon’s and she’s serving a customer as we arrive. It doesn’t stop her being welcoming and cheery.
‘This is a lovely surprise. Sit yourselves down my lovelies I’ll be there just now.’ She turns back to her customer as Noé and I make our way to a table near the back. Someone is humming in the kitchen. The tables are laid with menus, salt and pepper shakers and tiny vases of primroses. Classic FM is playing in the background and the smell of breakfast cooking makes me light headed.
‘What do you think you’d like?’ I ask Noé as we sit down and I hand him a menu. ‘You can have anything that is breakfast and isn’t too sugary.’
Noé looks at the man opposite us reading his phone while devouring a sausage sandwich that leaks tomato sauce onto his knuckles and then back at me. We make a telepathic pact. This is the breakfast we both want.
Just then Rhiannon comes over to give us an official welcome, which means a squeeze of my shoulders and a patting down of my hair before grabbing Noé’s cheeks with both hands.
‘You are just so precious, I could eat you.’
He pulls a face at me and we both giggle.
‘What brings you here this morning?’ Rhiannon asks me.
‘We had a hard time choosing something from the breakfast menu at home so we thought we’d do something different. The sausage buttie looks good so we’ll have two please.’ I wink at Noé and he concurs with a rapid nod of the head, sending his unkempt curls into orbit around the crown of his head.
‘Coming up, my lovelies.’ Rhiannon can’t resist giving Noé an extra tweak of his cheeks and a kiss of his curls. She looks at me curiously so that Noé can’t see.
‘I’ll tell all at knitting later,’ I say.
I get on with the business of cancelling my clients and trying to rearrange bookings while Noé happily creates a scene involving a dog and a little boy, using the salt and pepper cellars from the table. The little boy, who is the salt cellar, is so pleased to have got a dog, the pepper grinder, for his birthday and is allowed to take him to all the places he stays with his mum and dad in the various parts of the globe that his parents have houses. I pretend not to listen in on his conversation but I recognise this as his story. Next I text Amira to say I won’t be in and then I text Reef to tell him that Noé and I will be hanging out at my place after breakfast. He doesn’t reply but whenever he turns up I hope it’s before knitting club as I have a lot to discuss with the ladies.