How We Met. Katy Regan

      ‘OK, pinch your nose at the bridge and put your head back and I’ll clean you up a bit. I once did St John Ambulance, I know what I’m doing …’ Karen roots in her handbag and comes up with a packet of handy wet wipes. ‘Might sting a bit.’

      ‘Thanks, Karen, thanks. I’m sorry about this …’ says Fraser, practically gurgling on the blood that’s now running down his throat.

      Karen takes his face in her hands and he tries not to say ‘Ow’ because his whole head kind of hurts right now. She dabs at him with her wet wipe. ‘Now you listen to me, Fraser Morgan, you have nothing to be sorry for. Nothing at all, OK? In fact …’ She stops.

      Oh, God, here it comes again, that look.

      ‘I should be thanking you.’

      She looks straight into his eyes

      ‘You know it really meant a lot to me what happened there, it really showed me something, you know?’

      ‘No,’ says Fraser. ‘No, I don’t know.’

      ‘Well, you took a punch for me back there, didn’t you? You nearly bloody broke your nose for me! Maybe you have actually broken your nose!’

      Fraser smiles, weakly. Great, he thinks. What a hero. ‘And I appreciate it, hun, that’s all I’m saying. I was touched, Fraser, like, really touched.’ She pauses for a minute, for her words to sink in, then she says, ‘Right, let’s get you home.’ And yet another little part of Fraser dies, right there on the pavement, because he realizes he has just spent one of the most humiliating hours of his life (and that was just the dance class) and probably broken his nose, all for someone he really is not sure about. He didn’t bargain for this.

      SIX

       The next morning

       Lancaster

      Careful to hold in her post-baby belly, Mia rolls off Eduardo, reaches for the water on her bedside table, downs the glass and flops back down on the pillow.

      ‘Ow! Cramp!’ Then she sits bolt upright, clutching her right thigh, which has gone into involuntary spasm.

      Eduardo laughs his low, maddening laugh.

      ‘You always do this, you always get the cramp,’ he says, yawning, as if it’s some sort of personality flaw, like always picking a fight when drunk.

      ‘That’s because I’ve been straddling you for the last ten minutes and in case you’d forgotten, I had a baby nine months ago,’ she says, trying desperately to keep an air of humour. ‘My hip flexors aren’t what they used to be, you know.’

      He rubs her back, then places a lingering kiss on her shoulder. ‘I’m going for a smoke,’ he says, pulling back the covers, and Mia watches as his tiny, brown Brazilian bum – like a hazelnut she always thinks – disappears around the bedroom door, and she is left clutching her rounded, white one.

      The pain eases and she lies back down, feeling that familiar dread wash over her: he will come back up, get dressed, perhaps stay for a polite cup of coffee and then leave, and it will be just her and Billy again, till bedtime. Oh, Lord, roll on bedtime.

      It’s the second time she and Eduardo have had sex this week and the sixth since Billy was born. Mia knows this because she keeps tabs. It’s a bit like notches on the bedpost, although she’s painfully aware it doesn’t quite hold the same air of bragging arrogance as the teenage version.

      This tab – at least at first – was more for herself. Somehow by writing down when they had sex, she could pretend it didn’t mean anything, that he was just ‘servicing’ her – and what woman living in 2008 shouldn’t be serviced, if she so desired? It kept things clinical, like a nurse keeping medical notes: frequency of urination, blood pressure, that sort of thing.

      Lately, however, there’s been a shift. The tab she keeps is no longer so she can tell herself it means nothing, as it means something. Twice in one week – this is starting to become a habit – and part of her hopes it will become more than a habit for Eduardo, that he will find it in him to love her, properly, like she deserves to be loved. The other part of her, of course, wishes he’d fuck off and die, and it’s a constant source of fascination to Mia how the two can exist in unison.

      He is at least starting to make an effort, she thinks. Historically, he would turn up drunk, at midnight, with no consideration for the fact she had to go to work, or now, get up with their son.

      Since Liv’s birthday reunion, however, and leaving her in the lurch, he has actually turned up at the designated time to have Billy, and last night they had fun – proper, actual fun. They drank wine and talked about movies. She modelled her new Primark sundress for him, then they drank more wine and – when they ran out of that – some more, because woo-hoo! there was someone to go to the off-licence!

      Then they snogged and danced to the Buena Vista Social Club in her kitchen, occasionally breaking to smoke out of the window, the view of Lancaster Castle high up on its hill, floodlit, like something out of a child’s dream.

      Now, of course, hungover and with the prospect of looking after a baby all day, Mia regrets it. In fact she despises him for coming over here on a Tuesday night, taking her away from Holby City and a macaroni-cheese-for-one and corrupting her with his heady, Latino ways.

      But she also needed it like a person needs air.

      Last night, pressed close to him, dancing barefoot in her new summer dress, albeit one probably made in a sweatshop in Latin America, she felt alive; she felt primitive and sexual.

      And she needs to feel primitive and sexual, she thinks, looking at their clothes strewn all over her laminated bedroom floor, otherwise she will go mad and life will feel like one big washing machine cycle. She needs to know she can do things with her body other than feeding a child, or hauling him up on her hip a thousand times a day, and if, right now, it is only the often flaky, unreliable father of her child that can give her that, then she is going to take it.

      Also, sex with Eduardo is doubly exciting, because it is forbidden, after all. If any of her friends found out, they would go mad – wouldn’t they? Now she thinks about it, she wonders if they aren’t too wrapped up in their own lives to give a toss about who she’s sleeping with these days. Except Liv. Oh, Liv. It makes her suck air through her teeth just thinking about it. ‘He wears sunglasses inside, darling, he’ll bring you nothing but grief.’ And look at her now. Liv would have her guts for garters.

      Then there’s Fraser … he already knows something’s afoot; if he knew the whole truth. God. It didn’t bear thinking about.

      Fraser can’t stand Eduardo. He has tolerated him in the past – just, the effort etched on his face, but ever since he walked out when Mia was pregnant, she can’t mention his name without Fraser practically spitting on the floor, something she feels is slightly over the top. After all, it’s not his life, is it? And anyway, what does he care now since he’s seeing ‘Karen’? Mia has to try really, really hard not to make a face when she says the word ‘Karen’. It’s just, even the name has a desperate, over-the-hill air to it, and she suspects Fraser is using Karen as a crutch, that she’s not making him happy or vice versa. Which would be a terrible thing to do. Terrible.

      She listens to Eduardo clattering around downstairs, probably making the polite coffee that he will drink whilst sitting on the side of the bed, before announcing he is leaving – stuff to do/mates to see/a shift to get ready for. She has no idea what he does with his day and has given up asking – and anyway, even though her friends would be shocked to hear it, deep down she wonders if this whole situation is partly her fault.

      She went batty when she was pregnant. Batty. Did she drive Eduardo away? Did her hormones warp everything so that she demonized him, made him out to be worse than he actually is? As she lies in bed listening to the kettle, the clinking of china, the comforting sounds of another body in the