Mark Billingham: Lazybones

Holland smiled sympathetically as they stepped through into the living room. A blue three-piece suite sat on a carpet of pink and purple swirls, and a glass-topped coffee table stood square on to the fireplace. A squashed corduroy cushion, covered in tufts of white dog-hair, was the only thing in the room that didn't look spotless. Holland took a step towards a beechwood cabinet that ran along the back wall. Its doors were mirrored, and its top covered in framed photographs of children.

Mrs. Noble walked across and picked up a picture. 'Mark and Sarah aren't here,' she said. 'I couldn't bear looking at them and not knowing. I put them away once I felt sure they weren't coming back. Put them away and bloody well forgot where.' She must have seen concern pass across Holland's face, and reached out a hand to touch his arm. 'Don't worry, you haven't had a wasted journey. I finally found pictures of them tucked away inside our old wedding album…'

Holland nodded his understanding. She turned the photo she was holding, so that he could see the picture. 'David's a stockbroker, doing really well.' She put the frame back and began pointing to others. 'Susan, s a nurse up at the Royal Free, Gary went into the army and now he's training to become a printer, Claire's about to have her third baby…'

'There's a lot of them,' Holland said.

'We fostered long-term mostly, which was the way I wanted it. I couldn't stand to see them go, you know, just when they were starting to belong. Still, we had more than twenty kids, before and after Mark and Sarah. I know what most of them are doing…'

She smiled, sadly, not needing to say any more. Holland smiled back, thinking of those twenty other kids, and the man who was once their foster father, and wondering…

'I didn't know whether you'd have eaten,' she said. 'So after you phoned I took a lasagne out of the freezer. It won't be five minutes…'

'Oh, right…'

'I presume you can have a drink?'

In spite of what he'd previously thought of her, Holland was suddenly filled with something like affection for this woman. He thought about all the children she'd lost in one way or another, and her simple belief in a man whose heart was too full of darkness to go on beating any longer. He' felt comfortable…

'Let's both have a drink,' he said. 'I've got a nice bottle of wine in the car.'

'You have to let me pay you for the mattress,' Thorne said.

'It's fine, really. You can get dinner…'

'How much was it?'

'It's a late birthday present,' Eve said. 'To replace the first one.' She smiled. 'I don't remember seeing the plant anywhere at the flat, so I presume you've managed to kill it.'

'Oh, right. I was going to tell you about that,' Thorne said. A waiter brought over their wine, and at the same time the manager came across to the table and laid down a platter of poppadoms. 'On the house,' he said. He put a hand on Thorne's shoulder and winked at Eve. 'One of my very best 'customers,' he said. 'But tonight is the first time he has been here with a young lady…'

When the manager had moved away, Eve poured herself and Thorne a large glass of wine each. 'I'm not sure how to take that,' she said. 'Does he mean that you normally come here with young men?'

Thorne nodded, guiltily. 'That was another thing I was going to tell you…

She laughed. 'So you come in here on your own a lot then?'

'Not a lot.' He nodded towards the manager. 'He's talking about the number of takeaways…'

'I've got this image of you now, sitting in here on your own like Billy No-Mates, eating chicken tikka massala…'

'Hang on.' Thorne tried to look hurt. 'I do have one or two friends.'

Eve chopped the pile of poppadoms into pieces. She picked up a big bit, ladled onions and chutney on to it. 'Tell me about them. What do they do?'

Thorne shrugged. 'They're all connected to work in one way or another, I suppose.' He reached for a piece of poppadom, took a bite.

'Phil's a pathologist…'

She nodded, like it meant something.

'What?' Thorne said.

'You never really switch off, do you?'

'Actually, me and Phil talk about football most of the time…'

'Seriously.'

Thorne took a gulp of wine, feeling it swill the bits from the surface of his teeth, thinking about what Eve was saying. 'I don't believe that anybody ever leaves what they do behind completely,' he said. 'We all talk shop, don't we? Everyone gets.., reminded of things.' She stared back at him, rubbing the rim of her wineglass across her chin. 'Come on, if you're out somewhere and you see some amazing display of flowers…'

'Flowers aren't bodies, are they?'

Thorne was disturbed to feel himself growing slightly irritated. He fought to keep it out of his voice as he picked up the bottle and topped up both their glasses. 'Well, some people might say that they're dying from the moment they're picked.'

Eve nodded slowly. 'Everything's dying,' she said. 'What's the bloody point of anything at all? We may as well just ask the waiter to put ground glass in the biryani.'

Thorne looked at her, saw her eyes widen and the corners of her mouth begin to twitch. They began to laugh at almost the same moment.

'I never know when you're winding me up,' he said. She slid her hand across the table, took hold of his. 'Can you leave it behind just for a while, Tom?' she said. 'Tonight, I want you to switch off…'

'Kids are a bloody handful,' Irene Noble said. 'They change things beyond all recognition.' She stared across at Holland. 'But you'll still be glad you did it…'

Holland had supposed that if they talked at all, they might well talk about kids. He never imagined that they might end up talking about his.

'Just feel so guilty,' he said. 'For resenting what might happen to me. For even thinking about walking away from it.'

'You'll feel stuff that's a whole lot stranger and more painful than that. You'll feel like you would die for them and the next minute you'd happily murder them. You'll worry about where they are and then you'll wish you could have a second to yourself. Every emotion is unconditional…'

'You're talking about afterwards, when the baby's there. What about feeling like this now?'

'It's normal. It's not just the woman's emotions that get messed around with. Mind you, you can't use hormones as an excuse…'

Holland laughed, the two glasses of wine he'd put away helping him to feel relaxed. An hour or so earlier, he'd felt far less sure of himself. He'd thought, when they'd started to eat and he'd suddenly begun pouring it all out, that there might be more waterworks on the way, but Irene had helped him stay calm, convinced him that everything would work out for the best…

'I'll take these out.' She stood up, lifting the tray from the empty seat on the sofa next to her.

Holland passed over his empty plate. 'Thanks, that was great.' He was talking about more than just a lasagne that had been cold in the middle.

He sat back down and listened as she pottered around in the kitchen. He could hear her talking softly to the dog, loading the dishes into the washing machine.

It had been a conversation that Holland would never have had with his mother. Irene Noble, give or take a year or two, was the same age as his mother – a woman who'd been buying baby clothes for the last six months. A woman who refused to admit that anything could go wrong ever, and remained blissfully unaware that things were less than hunky-dory between her eldest son and his pregnant girlfriend.

Irene came back in brandishing choc-ices. 'I always keep a stock of these in the freezer. Bloody marvelous in this weather…'

For a minute they said nothing. They sat and ate their ice creams, and listened to the noise of the dog's claws skittering across the lino as she scrabbled about in the kitchen.