Barefoot in the Dark by Lynne Barrett-Lee Page B

bow.
    ‘This one’s you, then, is it?’
    Ollie’s expression was one of derision. ‘ No .’
    ‘Oh.’ He pointed again. ‘That one over there, then?’
    ‘NO.’ Ollie stopped stabbing at the keyboard and turned to face Jack. ‘Look, Dad, can we, like, just leave this? Like, you know, leave me alone?’
    For a second or two Jack considered bringing to bear the absolute and unquestioning authority he’d enjoyed over Oliver this time last year, but which seemed, by some process that had occurred entirely without him realising, to have evaporated quicker than the bone-men Ollie was now so busy vaporising. At about the time when their time together became finite. Too precious to be spent in acrimony and sulks. So he didn’t.
    ‘Oh, OK. When you’ve finished, then,’ he said.
    It was a cloud, this thing with Ollie. This fact that some mindless technological blood-fest was so much more alluring than talking to him. He’d come to the flat, he’d grunt, he’d go to bed, he’d get up, he’d grunt a bit more, he’d go off to school. But not a heavy cloud today. Just a mere wisp of cirrus. In what was, for the first time since he’d taken to noticing again, a decidedly sunny blue sky.

Chapter 6
    ‘Well, I think it’s absolutely lovely,’ said Hope’s mother, as she blanket-bombed the kitchen table with germ-busting spray.
    Hope sidestepped the mist, frowning. ‘I do wish you’d shut up, Mum. It’s just work. That’s all.’
    Her mother paused to scrutinise her, which made her feel self-conscious and therefore cross with herself. She really had no business with all this make-up and frock lark. She was not seventeen. And tonight was not a date.
    ‘Nonsense. He’s taking you out to dinner, which means it’s a date.’
    ‘No, it doesn’t. People do have meetings over dinner, you know. And breakfast, come to that.’ Which was entirely the wrong thing to say. Why had she said that? She was thirty-nine. Was it really necessary to justify herself to her mother? Or anyone else for that matter? No. Yet this was what she did all the time these days: let people dispense wisdom and advice like prescriptions, as if anxious to fill the gaping hole in guidance that had opened now Iain wasn’t around to provide it. As if she had an L plate affixed to her bosom. Or ‘PDP’ plate perhaps. Post-Divorce-Person. In need of help. Dozy. Still a great deal to learn.
    Yet she had got a great deal to learn. Like not daydreaming. Therein lay demons. But she had been daydreaming. Endlessly. Compulsively. Madly. And as her daydreams gained clarity and substance, so did the anxiety, the ever-present, unbidden, unsettling anxiety, like a sprouting of strong weeds around a newly planted shrub.
    ‘Everyone feels like that starting out again,’ Madeleine had told her. Hope had believed her. Of course they did. But everyone feeling like that – like this – lent no practical support, and offered no comfort. She just wished she didn’t. It wasn’t her.
    ‘Pssh! You read the wrong sorts of magazines,’ her mother said now. But didn’t qualify as to which wrong sort she meant. Essentials ? Marie Claire ? The Cefn Melin Newsletter ? ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter what you choose to call it,’ her mother added, returning to her labours, circling the table with an aggressively wielded J-cloth. ‘Work or date. It’s high time you got yourself out and about a bit more. Where is he taking you? Somewhere nice, I don’t doubt.’
    ‘I don’t know. A restaurant I haven’t heard of. I’m meeting him outside the Hilton again.’
    Her mother sniffed. ‘He could have picked you up.’
    ‘I told you, it’s not a date. Do you think Tony Blair offers to pick Gordon Brown up when they get together to discuss the Trade Deficit?’
    He had offered to pick her up, in fact, but she had declined. Way too date-like. Her mother tutted now. ‘That’s different. They live next door to each other. Anyway, there’s no point you taking your