Never Mind Miss Fox by Olivia Glazebrook Page A

knows how to do this. Everyone finds parenting difficult. Even Mum says the first year is hard.”
    Once she shouted at him, all on one note like the blast of an oncoming truck, “Don’t mention your fucking mother again!”
    And once she said in a whisper, “You don’t find it hard.” It was an accusation, and it was true. Clive was wonderful with Eliza; everyone said so.
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    This evening he gave Eliza her bath, kneeling beside the tub and sprinkling water from a toy watering can over her head and her tummy to make her laugh.
    Martha spoke from the doorway. “I don’t understand her,” she said. “I don’t understand what she’s saying, but you do.” She had been watching them.
    Her voice startled Clive, who had thought she was upstairs, but he turned around and gave her a careful smile. She did not return it, saying only, “I thought I was supposed to be the one with language skills.”
    â€œCome and join in?” pleaded Clive, wet arms dangling in the tub and shirt sleeves rolled over his elbows.
    â€œNo,” said Martha. Then again, more quietly, “No.” She shouldered herself off the wall and turned away.
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    After putting Eliza to bed Clive showered and then, weary, climbed the stairs to the kitchen. When she heard his footsteps Martha said, “You’ll be wanting your dinner now, I expect?”
    In the days when she had worked and he had been taking exams this had been a joke: “Where’s my tea?” He had worked at the kitchen table every day—books spread out all round him and his head full of the law—and in the evenings he had been roused by the front door’s slam, Martha’s feet in the hall and her key in the lock. Into the room she would blow like a summer wind, dropping her bag on the floor and her hands on his shoulders, leaning down to kiss him. Her cold, fresh, outdoor face would be pressed against his—he could feel it now, the push of her grin—and she would growl, “Where’s my tea?”
    Now she was chopping an onion with a controlled but visible fury that quaked the air around her.
    â€œWe could get a takeaway, if you like?” He said it in a cautious voice.
    â€œIt’s a bit late for that,” she said. “I’ve been chopping onions for a fucking hour.” She clashed the saucepan onto the hob and sparked the gas, over and over. “Come on, you little bastard,” she murmured at the cooker.
    Clive breathed, in and out. “Let’s have a glass of wine.”
    When they had eaten in front of the television, Martha lifted the sash of the window and sat beside it to smoke a cigarette. Clive looked at her profile, staring out into the dark. Only one half of her face—that face he loved so much—was visible to him. Hesitant, nervous, he began, “I’ve got to go to New York.”
    She turned her head, unblinking, like an owl on a branch. “What?”
    â€œJust for a day or so. It’s an American client. We’ve got to go through some documents…I’m just going as an assistant, really, to help the woman in charge of the case.”
    Martha turned back to the window and inhaled a drag on her cigarette. “When?”
    â€œThe day after tomorrow. For two nights.”
    â€œLucky you,” she said. “Hotel, business-class flights, room service, pretty ladies bringing you things on trays…It’ll be a real holiday.”
    Clive said nothing. It was better not to; her calm tone did not deceive him. “When I get back,” he said, “let’s go away for the weekend. We’ll leave Eliza with Mum and Dad.”
    â€œAnd give your mum another opportunity to tell me what a shit parent I am? No thanks.”
    â€œShe’s never said that.” Clive kept his tone neutral. “All she said was that since you hadn’t known your own mother it was bound to be more