Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [72]
They’d had the best day. Tom had been brilliant. He’d driven them all to Longleat, despite the drizzly, grey March weather and they’d spent their time exploring happily. Bella was so grown-up, suddenly. Not that Natalie saw her often, but she was a changed kid from the one she had been, say, last year. She was in that phase where she badly wanted to be sensible and listened to, and ten years older. She had told them she wanted to be a vet, and stood for ages reading the information posted around the park about the various animals. But, really, she still wanted to be mucking about with Ed and Tom, pulling faces at them, and talking endlessly about the size, texture, colour and smell of their respective waste products. She had spent the whole day battling with herself and her age-related schizophrenia.
Natalie knew she was fascinated by her, because she remembered feeling like that when she was young. Anna and Nicholas had had some friends with a grown-up daughter, who had taken Bridget and Natalie into town once, years ago, when Natalie was about eleven, she supposed. She remembered this girl – Chloë had been her name – buying perfume, for herself, with a cheque and a cheque card, and thinking how impossibly glamorous that was, and aspiring madly to get to that point herself, when she could buy perfume for herself, which wasn’t Charlie. Bella kept saying things to her – she liked Natalie’s scarf and hat, she liked her hair, she liked her bag. Natalie was tickled. ‘Are you Uncle Tom’s girlfriend?’ Bella asked.
‘Well,’ Natalie had been unsure how to answer, ‘I’m Uncle Tom’s friend and I’m a girl…’
Bella had smiled coyly. ‘You know what I mean.’
Natalie had bent down conspiratorially. ‘I do know, Bella, yes. I’m not really. Sorry.’
‘I think you should be.’
God, Natalie thought. Out of the mouths of babes.
‘Because then you could marry him, and you’d be my auntie.’
Tom had appeared at her elbow. ‘I agree, Bella. Auntie Natalie. It has a lovely ring, hasn’t it? How about it?’
‘How about you buy us an ice-cream?’ Natalie retorted.
‘But it’s freezing.’
‘All right, then, a hot chocolate would do, wouldn’t it, Bella?’
Bella wasn’t to be dissuaded. On their way to the cafeteria, she tugged at Natalie’s sleeve, and said, ‘And if you did marry my Uncle Tom, could I be your bridesmaid? I’ve never been one, and I’m afraid time’s running out for me.’
Jesus. Natalie stifled a giggle. If time was running out for Bella, that certainly explained why she sometimes felt a rising tide of panic.
Ed was not so complicated, and pretty adorable. At four, he was still enough part baby to make you want to pick him up and blow raspberries on his stomach, and enough part boy to find that distinctly embarrassing. He looked a lot like Tom had as a kid, and as she and Bella sat, finishing their hot chocolate, watching them rugby-tackle each other on the lawn, she realised that they could almost have been father and son. It struck her, in that moment, that Tom might have children, one day, with someone else, and that felt a little strange. Tom was hers, wasn’t he?
Tom picked up Ed under one arm, and walked towards her holding him like a rugby ball. When he got near, he hoicked him up on to his shoulder, and said, ‘You and me, Nat. This could be the future! Say the word!!’
That was when Ed threw up his hot chocolate down the back of Tom’s jacket.
She went out for a takeaway curry, and when she returned, Bella had gone to bed with her book, and Ed had fallen instantly, utterly asleep. They ate the curry on their laps, with a bottle of beer and vacuous Saturday night television.
‘I’m absolutely knackered,’ Tom complained. ‘Bloody hell, Nat, I’m never going to volunteer for that again.’
‘You loved it. You were the biggest kid of the day.’
‘I loved it – I love