Baby on Board

13

Hence the move back into his own space. 

"Well, I think this is a positive step in the right direction," Sam's brother, Daniel, noted. He sent his brother a warm smile of reassurance, ignoring the deathly glare I sent him. "You need your own space and Charlotte will need hers. Let's not forget about the baby, too. If it doesn't have a room in Charlotte's house then it'll have to live on the houseboat with Isaac. Nobody deserves that."

Sophie snorted out her tea as it projectile towards Sam. She spluttered before looking between her husband and myself in horror. "A houseboat? Isaac lives on a houseboat? Like a boat that is a house?"

"Exactly like that," I nod in confirmation. Sensing that Sophie would go on a rant about how she has always known that Isaac is irresponsible, I hold my hand up to stop the oncoming stream of insults. "It's not that bad. It's actually quite nice and he has great views of the London skyline."

Despite my shock at seeing where Isaac lived, he and I had spent a rather enjoyable evening on the deck of the boat as I quizzed him on every detail of his life. I'd learnt a lot about his family- including how his mother's full name is Aphrodite, he has an aunt named Demeter and his grandmother is Athena- but I'd also learnt a lot about him that I don't think I'd ever have known had it not been for me asking. 

He plays the guitar and he started taking lessons from his next door neighbour when he was four years old. His next door neighbour, by the way, is an international rock star who is very famous. I forget his name but I remember being suitably impressed at the time. Isaac collects shot glasses. Whenever he goes abroad on his travels, he'll purchase a shot glass as a souvenir for himself. He seemed embarrassed by that revelation until I confided that I have a vast amount of snow globes that have come as far as Patagonia and Tokyo. Admittedly, the one from Tokyo took me ages to find but I was determined.

Oh, Isaac can also roll his tongue and when he was seventeen, he pierced his ear. It was cool at the time, he defended his choice. I still protested that it really wasn't cool and it never will be. Thank God that he'd let the hole close. He's also a really good cook and had taken lessons from his great-grandmother who hailed from Greece. She died when Isaac was in his early twenties but he still remembers how to make her famous baklava. 

"You know," Sophie's voice breaks through my memories of last week. "You could live in an apartment and still have great views of the London skyline. I don't see how living on a boat is going to work out with a baby. What if it gets seasick?"

I frown at my sister's words. "Ok, first of all, you two-" I point between Sophie and Daniel. "-My baby is not an 'it' so stop referring to it as 'it'-"

"Oh, the irony when you yourself refer to it as 'it' while lecturing us on not calling it 'it'," Daniel smirks. I pick up the nearest thing at hand and throw it at him, watching as the salt shaker hits the wall instead of its intended target. "I could have you arrested for attempted murder."

"The judge would acquit me because I was simply doing a public service," I counter. Sophie laughed at my comeback, pointing a finger at her husband's shocked face and insisting that she takes a photo to commemorate the occasion. While she's doing that, I turn back to Sam and put on my best puppy-dog look. "You sure that I can't persuade you to not move out?"

He shakes his head at me. "Nope. I think this will be good for me. Now that Jasmine and I are over, I can move on. Plenty of fish in the sea, and all that business. Enough about me, what are you doing for the rest of the day?"

The rest of my day involved going over to see Isaac and trying to persuade him to come to Easter Sunday Mass at St. Patrick's with my family and I. My father insists that I attend, even though I know that I'm going to earn the stares of everyone else there, and he's gently asked that Isaac attend alongside me. I was pretty sure that it wouldn't be his scene but I was still going to ask, just in case.