Mr. In-Between Read Online Free PDF Page B

toddled into the room, on the edge of balance, stubby arms stretched horizontally, massive head lolling, her sticky face radiant with the joy of her achievement. In one fist she clasped a lollipop, which had smeared sugar around her mouth. There were even sticky bits of it in her hair. Jon was discomfited by the confidence with which Cathy scooped her up and into her arms. ‘Say “hello”.’
    The child gurgled. ‘Lo,’ she said, and buried her face in her mother’s breast.
    Absurdly Jon found himself wanting the child to like him. He wished he knew how to make it happen. He imagined some simple conjuring trick might be appropriate, such as producing a fifty-pence piece from behind her ear. Instead he smiled a rictal smile and gave a single, staccato wave. ‘Hello,’ he said.
    â€˜Lo,’ said the child.
    â€˜Hello,’ repeated Jon. He felt frozen in a moment he could not escape. He sensed that something was required. ‘She’s lovely,’ he said. He could scarcely believe that he had voiced the word ‘lovely’ without caustic intent. His voice sounded comical and clumsy, as if the words were the wrong shape for his lips.
    Cathy laughed. ‘She’s a little terror.’ She nuzzled her daughter’s face. ‘Aren’t you? Aren’t you a little bloody terror?’ She set the child on the floor and Kirsty staggered precariously behind her father’s legs. Andy made a neat manoeuvre and scooted behind her, took her beneath her chubby arms and swung her in an arc above his head. Jon caught Cathy’s eye as the child yelled her delight: the danger of falling, the safety of her father’s arms. The exquisite uncertainties of childhood.
    â€˜I know,’ Cathy said. ‘He’s an idiot.’
    The child showed Jon her dolls, all of which were unclothed, and only some of which had heads. Andy sat across from him and they talked. Cathy produced a pot of tea on a tray and sat, largely in silence until Andy related the circumstances of their meeting, when she contradicted him and once slapped him on the arm in mock outrage.
    â€˜He thinks I fancied him when we were at school,’ she told Jon, ‘but I thought he was a poser and a big-head.’
    Jon confirmed that Andy had been just that.
    â€˜He used to have these shoes,’ she said. ‘These blue shoes with buckles on them.’
    â€˜They were good shoes,’ protested Andy.
    â€˜They were bloody horrible ,’Cathy corrected him. ‘They were like something out of Star Wars. ’
    â€˜Hang on a minute,’ Andy answered. ‘If you didn’t fancy me, how did you come to notice my shoes, for God’s sake? Do you always pay such attention to people’s footwear?’ He looked at Jon for confirmation of this minor victory.
    â€˜I wasn’t looking, especially,’ Cathy pointed out. ‘You just couldn’t miss them. They were that horrible. People laughed at you on the street.’
    Jon agreed that this was not an unreasonable point.
    Andy protested with further circumstantial evidence: ‘She wrote my name on her biology book,’ he told Jon.
    â€˜I did not. ’This was when she slapped his arm.
    â€˜He probably hasn’t told you this,’ Jon told her, ‘but one night I spent a whole evening watching him get drunk so he could find the courage to phone you. In the end he passed out.’
    She seemed unsurprised, indeed vaguely affronted. ‘He used to follow me around school as well,’ she shuddered. ‘It was a bit creepy.’
    â€˜Christ,’ said Andy. ‘Who’s full of herself tonight?’ He looked very pleased.
    Presently she left to bathe the child, and put her to bed before preparing the dinner. She declined Jon’s offer of some help, which he had assumed would be expected and welcome. She was, according to Andy, ‘funny about the kitchen’.
    They drank