‘Mummy,’ he says, wiping his hands on his top and twinkling evilly. I resist the urge to kick him like he kicked the beach ball – a feat of inner strength that might not last for much longer. Tutting, lanyard woman picks up the big book and takes it back to the deck chair while I look around in search of his true parent. There’s literally no one else here apart from a teenage girl with pink hair who’s dancing in the entrance to the shell.
‘What’s your name?’ I ask, even though I don’t care.
‘Lucifer,’ he says. He doesn’t; he says ‘Lucas,’ which is near as dammit.
‘Is that your . . . nanny?’ I point at the pink-haired girl and he shakes his head.
Five minutes ago, I was having a fanciful, fancy-free artistic moment; now I’m in charge of a demonic child. Indulging in my own tut, I take his hand.
‘Where is your mummy or daddy?’
He jerks his head towards the next room, and together we go onwards. His palm is sand-rough and disgustingly sticky, covered in a substance I don’t want to think about. It’s definitely not art. The second room is so dimly lit it takes my eyes a while to adjust, peering in the gloom. There are paintings on the walls, but the images aren’t distinguishable, and a rope prevents onlookers getting up close. Five minutes ago, I would have enjoyed this hugely, but now it’s not ideal, groping my way through the dark with a small child in tow. There’s a sort of lump in the middle of the room, possibly another artwork, but as we get nearer, the boy points down.
‘Daddy,’ he says, dropping my hand.
Up close, the lump is a man lying prone on the floor, with headphones on. He must be listening to one of the audio descriptions. As I gaze down at him lying there without a care in the world, I feel a rising . . . what is it? Whatever it is, it’s dampened down, like the sounds in the swimming pool. Hiding from Ethan’s friend Archie in the bathroom, I’d felt angry, but it was a hopeless, impotent fury. There was nothing I could do – or at least, it felt that way at the time. But now I feel more purposeful and . . . enterprising. Lucifer’s daddy is otherwise engaged; he expects his son to be contained and entertained elsewhere. And I remember the picture I saw in the paper when I was reading about this exhibition – the photo of a huge fibreglass baby, and beyond, a whole playroom. Just what this little Prince of Darkness needs.
‘Come with me,’ I say, taking his hand again.
In the next room, the giant baby dominates, and I pause by the enormous screwed-up face. There’s some sort of liquid drooling out of its mouth, and the eyes are squeezed shut, but not in sleep. I take a moment to remember that phase of my life – two angry, spewing newborns, sucking me dry. It’s not a stage I would care to revisit. There were nights when I would have to put a wash on at two in the morning because we’d run out of muslins. Days I would spend in a kind of despairing stasis, jerking awake to feed every forty minutes and then slipping back into an uneasy twilight, a body nestled into each elbow. When Robbie came home at the end of the day, I would hand them to him wordlessly and head upstairs to sink, sink, sink into bed. I couldn’t sink far enough, would have let it swallow me whole if I could. That time broke me, though of course, in many ways, I was already broken. So many people to satisfy. Was I ever really fixed?
‘Bored,’ whines the boy.
‘Only boring people are bored,’ I reply, echoing my mother, and pull him onwards. The baby is just the beginning. There’s also an enormous rattle, and a big giraffe teether. It makes me feel as though I’ve been shrunk, belittled by this massive infant and its detritus. Which is effective, definitely art. But we’re heading to the corner, the biggest structure in the room looming ahead. It’s a gigantic playpen, its mesh walls as high as my shoulders. Inside are various enlarged toys – wooden blocks, a bulky xylophone, a blankie the size of a duvet. It’s perfect. Heaving the boy up, I propel him in. He lands with a little bounce on the blankie, and looks up at me, devil eyes alight with mischief.
‘Knock yourself out, kiddo.’ He launches himself at the xylophone.
Wandering to the next room, I congratulate myself. I’ve created more art out of art – possibly ruined it, but Robbie would say that ruins are often more interesting than the original. In the final room, I sit for ten minutes looking at a video loop of bees mating, watching the drone die over and over again. Then my tummy rumbles, reminding me of the next thing on my list. My delicious burrito. But as I exit the gallery, shading my eyes against the sun, there’s someone waiting for me outside.
9
‘What in John Logie Baird’s name are you doing?’ Petroc says.
My colleague and fellow executive producer at Red Eye. He’s holding his cockapoo, Lafayette, the world’s worst dog. A vicious, yapping minibeast with separation anxiety, Lafayette is a lockdown pet who, having finally been introduced to the world, decided he hated it. I have some sympathy with this, but he’s a pain in the arse. Petroc has to bring him into work, and he craps everywhere, glaring at you with his mean little coal eyes. In many ways, he reminds me of Vince.
‘Why are you here?’
Petroc sets the dog down on the pavement; he immediately starts yapping in a frenzy. Petroc picks him up again.
‘Why do you think I’m here? Looking for you! Monty’s gone crazy, says if you don’t come back to the office, he’s going to have you killed.’
‘He’ll have to call in the hitmen then. How did you find me?’
He smooths one eyebrow with a finger. ‘I’ve had Finian the runner following you since you left the office.’
‘Isn’t that a misappropriation of company resources?’
‘I had reason to fear for your health and safety.’
‘I’m fine. I’m just going for a burrito.’
‘Like that?’
‘Like what?’ I look down at myself. I look great.
He spins me round, and marches me back up the hill, pushing me towards a shop window. Reflected in it is a blurred version of me, and for a second it’s clear what the problem is. I catch sight of it; a glimpse of what’s really going on inside that tousled head . . . Nails leading to lost kingdoms, a candle burned at both ends until it’s just a pool of wax on the floor like the dead jellyfish, an endless to-do list that morphs into a guest list, names scrolling and scrolling in a crazed credit sequence. But then it’s gone, the water is smooth again and I can only see the outside of me. There’s nothing wrong.
‘I look incredible.’
‘No, you don’t. What’s with these rats’ tails?’ He lifts crisp sections of my chlorine-desiccated hair.
‘Went for a swim.’ My bra is still damp, making patches on my shirt, but who cares?
‘I know you did. It’s on Instagram. Finian showed me. I tagged you, you’ll be viral by lunchtime.’
‘Fame at last.’ Getting out my phone to have a look, I see I have thirty-four missed calls. Mostly Vince. I can’t be bothered with that, so put it away again.
‘Come with me,’ says Petroc. ‘If we’re bunking off, we may as well do it properly.’
‘Where are we going? I want my lunch.’
‘It’s not even quarter to twelve, greedy-guts. Plenty of time.’
‘What for?’
‘Sorting you out.’
He heads up the hill towards Regent Street, dragging me with him, and I follow because I don’t really care, as long as he’s not going towards the office and Vince and emails and lists.
‘You’re walking really fast. I’m not doing fast today.’
‘There’s a Great Dane behind us. If Lafayette sees it, he’ll try to fight it.’
Two minutes of outrunning the Dane later, we’re there, wherever it is – the sign above the shop says ‘Locks Are Everything’. Petroc pushes me inside, singing ‘Ta-da!’ as I study the row of chairs and mirrors. Annoyed at him for derailing my day, I now wonder if this isn’t exactly what I need. Stillness and abstraction were my primary aims; where better to find them than a hairdressing salon, a temple of tranquillity?
Whenever I go to the hairdressers, I’m often exhausted by the inane chat – ‘Going anywhere nice on your holidays?’ – then vaguely appalled by the finished result, which inevitably leads me to over-tip out of confusion and embarrassment, but today will be different. Today, I will sit in silence, majestic like a Sphinx, while someone makes me beautiful.
‘Sasha, darling, are you free? I’ve got a challenge for you.’
Of course, Petroc knows her; he knows everyone. He’s always chatting to people in case they’d make good TV. This Sasha might make good TV but she doesn’t look like she wants to. She’s quite forbidding, and shaven-headed, which isn’t a great advert for a hairdresser, as if she attempted a self-style that went wrong, and had to start again.
Sasha looks at her watch. ‘I’ve only got half an hour before my next client.’
‘That’ll have to do. Make her look half-decent so we can go for lunch.’
She sits me down in one of the chairs and dead-eyes me in the mirror. ‘What’ll it be?’
Usually cowed by hairdressers, their superior knowledge of undercuts and feathering, I tend to resist asking for what I really want, leaving them to make the style choices for me. Gearing up to keep it simple – ‘Just a wash and blow-dry please’ – my gaze is snagged by a photo on the wall behind me. ‘That,’ I say, pointing. That’s what I really want.
