Little Bee

“I told Linda I was going on a management course,” he said. “Birmingham. Three days. Leadership.”

“You think she believed you?”

“I just thought you might need some support.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ve got some.”

He looked over my shoulder at Little Bee, standing in the hallway. “That’s her, is it?”

“She’s staying for as long as she wants.”

Lawrence lowered his voice. “Is she legal?”

“I don’t think I give a shit. Do you?”

“I work for the Home Office, Sarah. I could lose my job if I knew you were harboring an illegal and I didn’t do anything about it. Technically, if I have the slightest doubt, I could be sacked if I even stepped through this door.”

“So…um…don’t.”

Lawrence blushed, took a step back, and ran his hand through his hair.

“This isn’t comfortable for me either, Sarah. I don’t like the way I feel about you. It’d be nice if I loved my wife and it’d be super if I didn’t work for the forces of darkness. I wish I could be idealistic like you. But that’s not me, Sarah. I can’t afford to act as if I’m someone. I’m nothing. Even my cover story is nothing. Three days in Birmingham-Birmingham, fuck! On a course to learn something everyone accepts I’m hopeless at. It’s so plausible it’s tragic, don’t you think? That’s what I was thinking, even while I was making it up. I’m not ashamed of my adultery, Sarah. I’m ashamed of my fucking cover story.”

I smiled.

“I sort of remember why I like you. No one could ever accuse you of being full of yourself, could they?”

Lawrence puffed up his cheeks and blew air through his mouth, sadly. “Not in the full light of the evidence,” he said.

I hesitated. He reached up and held my hand. I closed my eyes and felt the resolve draining out of me into the cold smoothness of his skin. I took a step back into the house. I almost staggered, really.

“Are you letting me in then?”

“Don’t get used to it,” I said.

Lawrence grinned, but then he hesitated on the threshold. He looked at Little Bee. She came up and stood just behind my shoulder.

“Do not worry about me,” she said. “Officially you cannot even see me. You are in Birmingham and I am in Nigeria.”

Lawrence gave a quick little smile. “I wonder which of us will get found out first,” he said.

We went in through the hall and into the living room. Batman was T-boning his red fire engine into the side of a defenseless family saloon. (In Charlie’s world, I think, the emergency services are staffed by rogue elements.) He looked up when we came in.

“Batman, this is Lawrence. Lawrence is Mummy’s friend.”

Batman stood and walked up to Lawrence. He stared at him. His bat senses must have told him something. “Is you mine new daddy?” he said.

“No, no, no,” I said.

Charlie looked confused. Lawrence knelt so that his face was at Charlie’s level. “No, Batman, I’m just your mummy’s friend.”

Batman tilted his head to one side. The ears on his bat hood flopped over. “Is you a goody or a baddy?” he said slowly.

Lawrence grinned and stood up.

“Honestly, Batman? I think I’m one of those innocent bystanders you see in the background in the comics. I’m just a man from a crowd scene.”

“But is you a goody or a baddy?”

“He’s a goody of course,” I said. “Come on, Charlie. Do you really think I’d let someone into our house who wasn’t?”

Batman folded his arms and set his lips in a grim line. No one spoke. From outside came the evening sounds of mothers calling normal children in from gardens for tea.

Later, after I’d got Charlie to bed, I made supper while Lawrence and Little Bee sat at the kitchen table. Digging at the back of the cupboard for a refill of pepper, I found a half-full packet of the Amaretto biscuits that Andrew used to love. I smelled them, secretly, holding the packet up to my nose, with my back to Lawrence and Little Bee. That sickly, sharp smell of apricot and almond-it made me think of the way Andrew used to wander around the house on his insomniac nights. He would return to bed in the small hours with that smell on his breath. Toward the end, the only thing keeping my husband going was six Amaretto biscuits and one tablet of Cipralex a day.

I held Andrew’s biscuits in my hand. I thought about throwing them away, and I found that I couldn’t. How duplicitous grief is, I thought. Here I am, too sentimental to throw away something that gave Andrew slight comfort, even as I cook supper for Lawrence. I felt horribly traitorous, suddenly. This is exactly why one shouldn’t let one’s lover into one’s home, I thought.

When the supper was ready-a mushroom omelet, slightly burned while I was thinking of Andrew-I sat down to eat with Lawrence and Little Bee. It was dreadful-they wouldn’t talk to each other, and I realized that they hadn’t spoken the whole time I’d been making supper. We ate in silence, with just the sound of the cutlery. Finally Little Bee sighed, and rubbed her eyes, and went upstairs to the bed I’d made up for her in the guest room.

I crashed the plates into the dishwasher and dumped the frying pan into the sink.

“What?” said Lawrence. “What did I do?”