Goodnight, Beautiful: A Novel by Dorothy Koomson Read Free Book Online Page B

here; we wouldn’t dream of sitting in the other’s seat, just like at home we wouldn’t sleep on the other’s side of the bed. It would feel like an invasion, trespassing on someone else’s sacred space.
    “Does he take after him?” Keith asks, tearing his eyes away from our boy to focus on me. “Does he take after his father?”
    He’s never asked me this before, and it’s not something we ever talk about. When we got back together for the final time after the breakup of five years, I told him that I had a son and that he was four years old. Keith knew immediately whose son he was. It had been the reason he left me that last time: when I told him what I was going to do, Keith had thrown in the towel. It was not something he could understand, and he couldn’t watch me carry a child only to give it away, so he left me.
    “Yeah,” I say to Keith, “I suppose he does.”
    He never questioned why I ended up with the child when we got back together. He assumed that keeping Leo was a choice I made; that I had come to my senses and realized what he suspected about all women who agreed to have a baby for someone else: that you could never live with yourself afterwards; the guiltand the loss would be too much, so you would almost always choose to keep the baby. I never felt compelled enough to enlighten him as to what really happened.
    Keith shrugs. “I suppose that’s no bad thing,” he says. “Leo could do worse than take after him. He’s a good man.”
    I nod.
You can believe that
, I think at Keith,
because you don’t know what he did.

They’re ready for launch.
    He was sitting in his special seat, so he could see everything.
    Moving forward, slowly. Three … two … one!
    The water splashed all over their subm’ine. Everywhere! It was all over them, all around them. They were underwater and they both cheered as it happened.
    CRASH! Captain Leo jumped as a big wave hit the top of their subm’ine. They both cheered again.
    “
Go forward!” Captain Leo shouted, as another big white foam wave hit them.
    “
Aye, aye, Cap’n,” she shouted back. “Going forward.
”
    “
Dive!” Captain Leo shouted over the sound of the water. “Dive! We need to dive!
”
    “
I cannae change the laws of physics, Cap’n,” she said.
    “
You can!” Captain Leo replied. “Dive!
”
    “
OK, here we go …” she said. “Three … two … one!
”
    They both screamed as more water splashed over them, and then they laughed. And screamed. And laughed. And screamed. Even as they came out of the water, and then they were being dried off, they continued to laugh and scream. And at the end, they were free. They were on dry land again and their subm’ine could work on the ground. And he wasn’t a captain, and she didn’t have a silly voice.
    “
Can we go again?” he asked her.
    “
No, sweetheart. We can go again next week.
”
    “
OK,” he said, staring out of the window at the other people who wanted to go play subm’ines as well. None of theirs was as good as theirs. And no one was as good a captain as he was. Ever.

    Leo, age 4 years

PART TWO

CHAPTER 6
    I
hate leaving him.
    Every night, when Keith can convince me to go home and get some sleep, I always linger over his bed, saying goodnight, looking for change, wondering if I should stay a little bit longer. But I need to be there during the day, and sleeping on the bed that folds down from one of the panels in the wall of his hospital room is not viable every night. Every night, when I kiss him goodnight and wish silently for him to wake up, I leave the hospital with a deep, throbbing ache in the center of my soul that only Leo can soothe by getting better.
    I sit in my car in the dark, partially empty car park, with the doors locked—Keith would murder me himself if he thought I didn’t first check the car was empty before I got in and didn’t immediately lock the doors—but I don’t reach for the ignition. I leave my keys in my lap and rest my