A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon [47]
She sat on the bed and pulled him onto her lap. “I’m sorry I got angry.” She felt him soften as his little arms reached around her. “You get angry sometimes, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, “I get angry with you.”
“But I still love you.”
“I love you, too, Mummy.”
They held each other for a few seconds.
“Where did Daddy Ray go?” asked Jacob.
“He went out. He doesn’t like arguments very much.”
“I don’t like arguments.”
“I know,” said Katie.
She slid the hood from his head, brushed a few flakes of cradle cap from his hair, then kissed him.
“I love you, little squirrel. I love you more than anything in the whole wide world.”
He squiddled free. “I want to play with my truck.”
35
George took a bus into Peterborough and checked into the Cathedral Hotel.
He had never liked expensive hotels. On account of the tipping, mostly. Who did you tip, on what occasions, and how much? Rich people either knew instinctively or didn’t give a damn if they offended the lower orders. Ordinary people like George got it wrong and doubtless ended up with spit in their scrambled eggs.
This time, however, he felt none of that niggling anxiety. He was in shock. There was going to be unpleasantness later. He was in no doubt about that. But, for the moment, it was rather comforting to be in shock.
“Your credit card, sir.”
George took his card back and slid it into his wallet.
“And your room key.” The receptionist turned to a hovering porter. “John, can you show Mr. Hall to his room?”
“I think I can find my own way,” said George.
“Third floor. Turn left.”
Upstairs, he emptied his rucksack onto the bed. He hung the shirts, sweaters and trousers in the wardrobe and folded his underwear in the drawer below. He unpacked the smaller items and arranged them neatly on the table.
He relieved himself, washed his hands, dried them on a ridiculously fluffy towel then rehung it squarely on the heated rail.
He was coping really very well in the circumstances.
He removed a plastic tumbler from its sanitary covering and filled it with whiskey from a small bottle in the minibar. He removed a bag of KP peanuts and consumed both standing at the window looking across the jumbled gray roofscape.
It could not be simpler. A few days in a hotel. Then he would arrange to rent somewhere. A flat in the city, perhaps, or a small village property.
He finished the whiskey and put a further six peanuts into his mouth.
After that his life would be his own. He would be able to decide what to do, who to see, how to spend his time.
Looked at objectively, one could see it as a positive thing.
He crimped the top of the half-eaten peanuts and laid them on the table, then rinsed the tumbler, dried it using one of the complimentary tissues and replaced it beside the sink.
Twelve fifty-two.
A spot of lunch and then a constitutional.
36
When David had gone Jean wandered down to the kitchen in her dressing gown.
Everything glowed a little. The flowers in the wallpaper. The clouds piled in the sky at the end of the garden like snowdrifts.
She made a coffee and a ham sandwich and took a couple of paracetamol for her knee.
And the glow began to fade a little.
Upstairs, when David was holding her, it seemed possible. Putting all of this behind her. Starting a new life. But now that he was gone it seemed preposterous. A wicked idea. Something people did on television.
She looked at the wall clock. She looked at the bills in the toast rack and the cheese plate with the ivy pattern.
She suddenly saw her whole life laid out, like pictures in a photo album. Her and George standing outside the church in Daventry, the wind blowing the leaves off the trees like orange confetti, the real celebration only starting when they left their families behind the following morning and drove to Devon in George’s bottle-green Austin.
Stuck in hospital for a month after Katie was born. George coming in every day