Billie is sitting at our dining table when I enter. The baby’s basket is sitting on the table beside her. Surrounded by pens, watercolors, and crayons, she is bent over a large sketchpad in deep concentration. Hair is falling over her forehead and I feel a great surge of love for her. She looks up and smiles.
‘Wow! That’s a seriously cool hairstyle,’ she exclaims, and springing up comes to hold my hand and twirl me around.
‘So you like it?’ I probe, self-consciously touching my fringe.
‘Yeah,’ she says emphatically. ‘If he won’t have you, I will.’
I laugh and go towards the basket. ‘Is he asleep?’
‘Nope.’
Sorab is waving his little arms. I reach into the basket and lift him into my arms. He is wearing something Billie designed and made from scratch, a bright red and yellow romper suit with big blue cloth buttons that look like flowers.
‘Hello, darling,’ I say, my face creasing into the first joy-filled smile since I left the house.
He stares at me with his intense blue eyes for a few seconds before he breaks into one of his deliciously toothless grins.
Over my shoulder Billie says, ‘Shame he will have to grow up to be a man.’
I turn around and look at her meaningfully.
‘What?’ she asks.
‘Your dad’s a man.’
‘That remains to be seen,’ she says, and moving towards her drawings, says, ‘Come and see this.’ I follow her around the table. I put Sorab into the crook of my arm to get a better view of her work. She has drawn a girl’s dress. It is not in the usual pale pink normally reserved for baby girls, but banana yellow with green apples all over it. I have never seen anything like it in the shops. She truly has a unique talent.
‘Well, what do you think?’
‘It is so cute, I almost wish Sorab was a girl.’
Billie smiles. ‘You got time for a pot of tea?’
‘I do,’ I say. She puts the kettle on and we sit and talk. We never mention Blake. Until four thirty when I kiss Sorab and walk out of our front door. Tom gets out of the car and opens the back door when he sees me come down the stairs. I look up and Billie is standing at the balcony looking down at me. She shifts the baby to one hand and waves. I wave back, a feeling of dread in my stomach.
I do not let Tom carry my bags for me or take me upstairs. I know the way. Besides, I am dying to be alone with just my chaotic thoughts. I go through the glass door and Mr. Nair leaps to his feet from his position behind the reception counter like a startled meerkat. He comes towards me beaming.
‘Miss Bloom, Miss Bloom,’ he cries. ‘You are back in the penthouse. I saw all the cleaners and bags and new furniture going upstairs and I wondered who it would be.’
‘How nice to see you again, Mr. Nair.’
He holds out his hands. ‘Here, let me help you with your bags.’
I pull the bags out of his reach. ‘It’s OK, Mr. Nair. They are very light. I can manage. Why don’t you come up tomorrow morning for a coffee instead, and we can have a nice chat, then.’
‘Oh yes, Miss Bloom. That will be wonderful. It hasn’t been the same ever since you left.’
I smile. In truth I too have missed him and his fantastic stories of an India gone by. ‘I’ll call down tomorrow.’
‘Goodnight, Miss Bloom. It really is good to have you back.’
I bid him goodnight, enter the lift and slip my key card into its slot. The doors swish close and I am borne up. Strange, I never thought I would be coming back here again and yet here I am. The doors open and it is all the same. Nothing, but nothing has changed.
I unlock the front door and open it. The same faint fragrance of lilies that I always associate with this apartment wafts out. Such a feeling of nostalgia rushes over me that I feel my knees go weak. I close the door, put my packages on the side table, and walk down that long enameled corridor. I run my fingers along the cool smooth wall the way I had done more than a year ago.
I don’t go into the living room, but turn off and go into the bedroom. A sob rises in my throat. Nothing has changed even here. It is as if I was here yesterday and not more than a year ago. I go into the room next to it and, as Laura promised, it has been set up to function as a nursery. There is a beautiful white and blue cot, all kinds of toys, a very swanky-looking pram and tins of baby formula. I go to them. I recognize them. I have seen them advertised, all natural and made of goat’s milk, but I could not afford them. I pick one up and look at it and experience a shaft of guilt.
I have denied Sorab all this. Am I really doing the right thing by him? Will he thank me one day for depriving him of a life that 99.99 percent of people can only dream of? The answer is confusing and I don’t want to go there. I know I will go there, it is too important not to, but not yet. Not today. It is already six o’clock.
I close the door and go into the bathroom and switch on the lights. In the immaculate space I am a stranger with a beautiful hairdo. I stare at myself. The night stretches out in front of me. I am excited and fearful of what it will bring. I sit on the toilet seat for a moment to compose myself.
I take my dress out of the exclusive-looking bag Rêgine packed it in and hang it up in the bedroom. Then I run a bath, add lavender oil, step into it, and, lying back, close my eyes, but I am too nervous and excited to relax and after a few minutes I get out and, wrapping myself in a fluffy bathrobe that smells of squashed berries, I go into the kitchen.
In the fridge there I find two bottles of champagne lying on their sides. I remember the last time when I stood in the balcony and drank to my mother’s health. This time champagne doesn’t seem appropriate. I close the door restlessly and go to the liquor cabinet. There I pour myself a very large shot of vodka. Standing by the bar I knock it back. It runs like fire into my empty stomach, but it has the desired effect of almost immediately settling my nerves. I look at my hands. They have stopped shaking.
I go back into the bathroom and carefully apply my make-up. Two layers of mascara, a touch of blusher, and nude lip gloss. I move away from the mirror.
‘Not bad, Bloom. Good job.’
I go back to the alcohol counter and pour myself another large vodka, down it and, feeling decidedly light-headed and, devil may care, go to the bedroom. I take my beautiful white dress off the hanger and change into it. As I gently ease it over my head a hook catches on my hair and pulls a lock out of place. I stare in horror at the dangling lock. Cursing, I try to twist it and push it back into place. My efforts are somewhat successful and I sigh with relief. I zip up and step into my shoes and look at myself in the mirror.
A sophisticated woman with glittering eyes and high color stares back. Too much blusher. With cotton wool I remove it all. The heat and the alcohol have tinged my cheeks pink. No need for blusher. I dab my finger with perfume and touch it behind my ears.
There I am, ready for the great Barrington.