In last week’s instalment Annie reveals to her family in Australia the latest on her love life.
Now read on . . .
As if it were the whistle for kick off at the FA Cup final, Reef knocks the door promptly at 5.00pm. He kisses me gently on the cheek while Noé squeezes my hips and I pat the soft curls of his hair. He lets go and shouts Rosie before hot footing it down the corridor to the kitchen.
‘Rosie won’t be out today,’ I say to Reef as we follow behind. ‘It’s too cold for her and too dark.’
Reef’s fingers find mine and we hold hands, watching Noé’s head bob up and down, jumping to see out of the kitchen door window into the shadows.
‘What happened to your kitchen?’ he exclaims after deciding Rosie isn’t worth all the effort.
‘I’m having the house decorated,’ I say. ‘Let me take your coats.’
Noé waits long enough for the sleeves of his puffa jacket to peel away before he scoots out of the kitchen and charges up the corridor to the coat hooks by the front door. Reef hands me his and I hook them next to my padded coat where they hang in a row looking like a family of three out holding hands.
‘Okay!’ I clap my hands together. ‘Let’s get this pizza party going.’
‘I didn’t know it was a party,’ Noé exclaims.
Reef takes in the cemented kitchen floor and the work Anton has done trying to level the walls. If this was Reef’s house he’d probably stay in a hotel or go on a long holiday somewhere fabulous while the work was done. I can’t imagine he’d have lived in any place where the walls were stripped bare and everything was coated in dust. It had taken me ages to clear it and to clean the kitchen table for us to make pizzas. The bases are already rolled out and I’ve made a tomato sauce. I reckoned it would have been a recipe for disaster to ask Noé to help me with that.
‘Let’s all wash our hands then,’ I say and help Noé wash his. He reaches his hands as far forward towards the running water for us to at least manage to get his fingertips clean.
‘I’m just going to watch,’ says Reef and puts his hands behind his back. I beckon him over to the sink.
‘If you’re going to eat you have to help.’
Noé jets between the sink and the kitchen table singing Daddy has to help. I lean my hip against the sink, watching Reef. He pretends to be hard done by as he washes his hands and I pull a face at him. As our smiles grow wider I’m halted by the image of Anton and me by the kitchen sink, his face drawing closer to mine, his lips parted. I hand the dish towel to Reef and rush to grab Noé and carry him by his underarms back to the kitchen table where the bowl of homemade tomato sauce waits to be spread over the pizza bases.
‘Let’s start.’
Standing on a kitchen chair, Noé manages to get tomato sauce on the table, his nose and the floor. Some of it lands on the bases and I spread the rest over the thick, elastic textured dough.
‘Right, yes,’ I say. ‘So, next the toppings. Who likes ham?’
We weigh down three thick crust pizzas with tomato slices, olives, ham, cooked beef and chorizo. Next is the grated cheese. I look at an excited Noé and wonder how much of it will land on the floor, along with some of the toppings, and how much of it will end up on the pizza.
‘Maybe we’ll ask Daddy to do the cheese,’ I say. I don’t want to be sweeping cheddar off a rough cement floor for the rest of the evening after they’ve gone.
‘I’m an expert with grated cheese.’ Reef chuckles and begins layering it onto the pizzas. I look away from his face and to his hands as I’m remembering again how close I came to kissing Anton and I don’t want Reef to see this on my face. He’d sounded jealous yesterday evening when he’d thought I was alone in the house with a builder. I made sure I’d ushered Anton out by four o’clock just so there’d be no chance of them meeting. I tell myself once more that I haven’t done a thing wrong. Nothing physical, just thoughts. Thoughts I might have mentioned to Mum had Cat and her kids not been around when I’d spoken to her last night. I suppose I can talk to the ladies from the knitting circle. I’m pretty sure Bea would advise that I date them both. Rhiannon would sit me down with some thick cut sandwiches and cream cake to contemplate my feelings over a pot of tea. Maybe I’ll talk to Judith separately. Surely she’d be able to guilt trip me back to having purer thoughts about my builder. Maybe it would be better if Anton and I were bickering again.
I look at Reef standing back to admire his handiwork, forgetting that this is a millionaire celebrity I have in my broken down kitchen making pizza with me. He’s taking me to the one party I’ve been to in centuries and I’m only a physiotherapist. No one special, not famous, not anybody. I’m actually very lucky and I should remember that. That glitzy invitation would have ended up in the bin eventually. I would have stayed at home eating muesli in my thick socks watching Prime Videos when Becs, Zarina and all their friends were out partying the night away. Now I’ll be the one in the Instagram feeds. I just need to keep my focus on Reef.
I realise he is speaking and Noé is patting my shoulder saying wake up Annie.
I gather my thoughts and place one pizza directly onto the shelf in the oven.
‘Can I look for Rosie while it’s cooking?’ asks Noé.
‘I think we should go in the living room and stay warm. That’s probably what Rosie’s doing now.’
‘Can we do painting instead?’ Noé asks. He opens his chocolate coloured eyes wide and, despite my insecurities of what I’ve got set up on the easel, I give in to him. He leaps into my arms and I stumble back.
‘Easy, big man,’ says Reef. ‘No rough stuff in here.’
‘It’s fine,’ I say, carrying Noé who is clinging so tightly I can only just breathe. ‘We have to remember the pizza. We’ve only got ten minutes to get started on a painting.’
Reef reaches around me to open the studio door. With the picture of Noé facing us as we enter, Reef inhales in shock and Noé swings around to see what the fuss is about.
‘It’s me!’ he shouts and peels away from me, landing to the floor as if he’d jumped from a speeding car. He almost knocks down the easel as he gathers his balance to look up at the painting. Reef strolls over to it with his hands in his pockets.
The painted Noé smiles back at us, his dimple took me several attempts to recreate. I look down at real Noé now and see I’ve just about captured it. He looks up at me, delighted.
‘Can I have this?’ he asks, shyly.
‘You hold on a minute,’ says Reef. ‘It’s up to Annie who she gives it to and she might want to keep it.’
‘I would like to,’ I say. I take a step back to see, after about a million times of staring at it, if I have the proportions accurate in relation to his background. As I made the sketch by memory with a little help from the photos I took of him when I was babysitting. I had to improvise the background, placing Noé in front of the old oak in the garden. I have painted that tree a hundred times so it was easy to fill in the detail by looking at sketches of the tree I’ve already made. It’s a summer picture with Noé in a T-shirt, jeans and his Converse trainers standing on rich green blades of grass, white daisies growing near the roots of the tree the way they do in actual summer. My picture Noé smiles as though he is happy to see me and I’d love to keep the picture because I know one day he will go back to his mother’s house and I won’t see him often, or at all, depending on where things go with Reef. The thought of not seeing Noé, to watch his gappy smile fill out and to watch him grow taller than my hip makes me homesick.
‘Maybe I’ll paint you a different one,’ I say. ‘A smaller one you can have in your room.’
‘Paint it with Rosie in,’ he pleads.
‘Well I sketched a picture from the photo of you with Rosie on your lap. Perhaps I could turn that into a painting.’
‘You don’t have to do this, Annie,’ says Reef. ‘Noé you have to ask Mum first if you can have a painting.’
I remember how exacting Natalia is when it comes to her son. She might not want my amateur artwork on walls that I can only imagine are filled with pictures by famous artists and if she wants one of Noé there’s no chance she’ll ask me to paint it.
‘I know,’ I say bending down to talk to Noé. ‘Why don’t we have a go at painting portraits of each other. I’ve got a folding table stacked up in that corner, I could set it up right here. I’ve got lots of paper. Afterwards you can keep yours at Daddy’s house so you can see them whenever you want.’
‘And you’re Daddy’s girlfriend now so I can see you whenever I want.’
This seems to please Reef, who grins at me like the cat who got the cream. I, on the other hand, feel as though someone has turned up the heat dial and my cheeks are the hotplate it’s connected to. Since meeting Reef all I’ve thought about are the “What ifs”. What if he is as serious about me as he says he is? What if this is it and finally I have a relationship worthy of an Instagram profile? And then there have been the “I wonder when” times when I wonder when we’ll get a chance to kiss again, to sleep together, to take photos for my Instagram feed.
‘Okay,’ I say snapping a finger and shifting my thoughts back to the here and now. Noé is looking up at me with expectant eyes.
‘Reef, could you move those canvasses to the wall next to the door and I’ll get the table. Noé, you stand over by the window and make sure I don’t bump into anything while I get the table out of the corner.’
I lift the table over my head and Reef takes it from me and rests it on its side in the small space by the door that moving the old paintings has created. It’s a tight squeeze when we open it and Noé has to sit on a cushion while Reef and I stand and I get to mixing some old powder paints that were deep inside a cupboard. With Noé’s help we mix the only three powder paints I have left; yellow, blue and black. Next I find us all some paper and we’re ready to go.
‘I think we’ve forgotten something,’ Reef says suddenly. ‘The pizza.’
‘Pizza!’ Noé and I shout, looking at each other open mouthed.
I rush out of the room with the two of them close behind. I fling open the kitchen door to find no signs of smoke floating out of the oven and no smell of burnt pizza. We’ve been lucky.
‘Hang on,’ says Reef. ‘Was the oven actually on?’
With the oven gloves at the ready I open the oven door.
‘Um, no. I forgot about that bit.’
Noé, in fits of giggles asks if we can still eat it.
‘I’ll put the oven on now,’ I say. ‘It’ll taste better cooked.’
Noé skips out of the room, still giggling and shouting Okay over his shoulder. As I go to follow, Reef takes my hand and spins me to face him.
‘I’m off to Paris tomorrow.’
‘For work?’
‘Natalia wants me to bring Noé back to her. She’s missing him.’
‘Oh, I see. That makes sense. So you’ll miss the party next Saturday.’
‘I’ll be back in time for that. I’m not staying out there.’
I pull my bottom lip in and try not to pull a face.
‘I know,’ says Reef. ‘I’m sorry but I’ll literally be taking him to see his Mum and more or less coming straight back. Only problem, in true Natalia style, is she wants to rethink the plans for the holidays that she only just made. We’d already decided she was having him for Christmas and he’d spend New Year with me. Now she wants to discuss with Noé what he wants to do and where he wants to be.’
‘Of course,’ I say but inside I wonder why she would leave such a big decision to a child.
‘But I’ll definitely be back for the party.’
And “what if” she misses you too and wants you back? And “what if” I never get to see Noé again?
Reef touches my chin and bends closer to kiss my lips. I don’t have to wonder about this anymore. A kiss. At last. And I don’t want it to end. The thought that I might lose him before we’ve really begun makes me realise I really do feel for him and the Anton thing was just a stupid slip up. I put my arms around Reef’s shoulders and he pulls me closer. We stop when a little voice from the corridor is coughing and spluttering and saying Yuck, over and over again.
We find Noé rubbing his mouth with the back of his sleeve.
‘What happened?’ I ask but I can see right away what he’s done.
‘You’re not supposed to drink the paint, kid.’ Reef picks him up and carries him over to the sink. Cupping his hand as he holds Noé around his middle he tries to get Noé to gargle and spit but all that happens is that Noé throws up in the sink.
‘Better out than in, right?’ Reef tries to make light of it as I hand him a dishcloth. I know what he’s thinking – Natalia will kill him. But Noé seems to be all right, his eyes were glassy and now they are clear and smiling.
‘Paint tastes horrible.’ His voice is a whimper but he smiles up at me. ‘There’s still some left for painting.’
‘That’s good,’ I say but I can’t help wondering if we should take him to Accidents and Emergencies.
‘He’ll be fine,’ Reef says, seeing my concern.
We do the best job we can of cleaning Noé up, cleaning his vomit out of the sink before we head back to the studio. Minutes after starting our paintings I remember the pizza. Well actually, I smell the pizza and it’s burning.
I pull open the oven door, fanning the heat away from my face.
‘Anyone like burnt cheese?’ I ask and Noé throws up on the kitchen floor.
More Next Monday!