“Hey, look what Henry sent you, Rae,” Suzy says, poking her head round the sitting room door. She holds out the Disney DVD that Rae was watching in the hospital, and Rae limps forward to take it, grinning. Suzy bends down and takes Rae’s face between her hands. “You look better, hon,” she says. “Pink cheeks again. Good girl.”
“Thanks, Aunty Suzy,” she exclaims, and hobbles toward the DVD player.
I touch Suzy’s arm and lead her into the kitchen.
“What’s going on?”
She frowns and shakes her head, then pulls out a chair and sits on it. For a moment I think she’s going to tell me something, then she doesn’t. Then she looks round the kitchen.
“Wow, she really did tidy up, huh?”
“Hmm.” I smile. “Suze, tell me—what’s going on? I’ve never seen you like this.”
She leans over to grab some paper towels and blows her nose.
“I think Jez wants to send Henry to boarding school.”
“What?”
“Yeah. And then Otto and Peter, probably.”
“That’s ridiculous. Has he said so?”
“No—but he’s meeting the head teacher of his old school at his father’s club in a few weeks, and the other day he said that Henry wouldn’t be going to Palace Gates Infants for much longer.”
“That’s crazy. But that school sounded dreadful. It’ll turn them into repressed . . .”
My words hang in the air.
“Like Jez?” she answers.
“No. Sorry,” I say. “Look, just because he wants to send them there doesn’t mean he can. They’re your kids, too.”
“Have you met his father?” Suzy says ruefully. “I think he’s involved. He’s probably offered to pay the fees. Jez always pretends like he is an old fool, but his dad has such a hold over him. He’s never forgiven Jez for marrying me. I sometimes think Jez did it just to spite his dad.”
I stare. Suzy has never spoken to me like this about Jez, ever. In all the time I have known her, she has seemed blind to his faults, only ever harping on about how fantastic their relationship is, leaving me to hate myself for the little sting of jealousy it leaves.
She sits back with a long sniff and gives me such an intense stare with those incredible jade eyes that I have to look away on the pretense of checking to make sure I turned the kettle on.
“It just feels like I’m losing everyone . . .”
“No, you’re not,” I say, confused, struggling to find the right words.
She shakes her head. “Argh. I need to stop talking.”
Guilt envelops me as I think of my own part in this and the pain I might have caused her. I can’t help it. I have to know.
“Suze,” I say, taking her hand. “Is this something to do with me, too?”
“In what way?”
I hesitate. “Oh God. I don’t know.”
There is silence.
“OK . . .” I venture. “Um, in the way I have been pulling away a little recently . . .”
She looks at the floor.
“The thing is,” I try, “I’ve just been feeling really trapped at home and . . .” I see her face. No. This isn’t fair. I am not telling her the truth.
She looks up, curious. We lock eyes and I realize if I am not careful she will see the lies printed across my face.
The door opens and Rae limps in.
“Hey, Rae,” Suzy says, making an effort to sound cheerful again. “I’ve got something else for you, too. Hannah’s mum has invited you and Henry to an ice-skating party tomorrow afternoon at the palace.”
“Really?” Rae squeals, grabbing the invite from Suzy’s hand. “I love ice-skating!”
I make a face at Suzy. What is she doing?
“Rae,” I venture. “Darling, I’m sorry, but I don’t think you’re up to doing anything like that at the moment. The doctor said you had to rest till at least Monday.”
“Mummy! You said that, not the doctor. He said I was fine.”
I stare at her, speechless, caught out in my own lie.
“Please, Mummy?” she whines. “Please, please, please?”
Suzy doesn’t meet my eye. Inwardly, I groan. She has put me
in an impossible situation. She should have asked me first. I try to rationalize that she is justifiably upset about Jez’s behavior and not thinking straight. It is just going to be so difficult to tell Rae she can’t go.
“Well, what about if you go to the party and don’t ice-skate?” Suzy says, looking firmly at Rae, and not me. “You could bundle up warm and sit with Mommy, and watch the ice-skating this time, then go to the birthday tea afterward. Hannah’s mommy said she was real excited that you might be coming.”
I look at her, astonished.
“We’ll see how you are tomorrow,” I murmur, avoiding Suzy’s eyes.
“In fact, I could stay and look after you when I take Henry up, and let Mommy have a rest here. She must be tired after being at the hospital.”
Something is happening right here in my kitchen that I am losing control of and I can’t seem to stop it. I can’t let Rae go. It’s too soon. And Tom would kill me.
“Um . . .” I start, torn with not wanting to upset Suzy anymore.
“OK, that’s settled then—gotta go. I’ll come and get her tomorrow,” Suzy says, touching my shoulder.
And she smiles and winks at me, then walks out, leaving me with a gleeful Rae.
* * *
It’s lunchtime. I am so desperate to escape the flat, I ask Rae to bundle up and then I take her for a ten-minute walk down a side road to the corner shop.
The road is quiet. “Everyone else is at work; out having a life,” the empty pavements seem to say. Doors are shut and
locked for the day, trash cans closed, curtains at half-mast. Cats stroll across the road, looking like they have more purpose to their day than I do.
I don’t notice the three scaffolders at first. I am only aware of a clink of steel and a chummy, shouted conversation dropping away into an echo and then silence as we pass by. I bow my head, keeping my eyes on a red rubber band and old chewing gum wads stuck to the dirty, cracked pavement. But I know what is coming. In my peripheral vision, I sense the smiles as one makes an obscene gesture with his hands, and then sniggers.
What can I do? What power do I have to turn and ask them if they have not noticed I have a child with me? I have no power. Right now, I am nothing. Aimless, goalless, useless. Easy prey for the mean-hearted.
“Come on, darling,” I say, pulling Rae gently. Her fingers protest. They have been protesting since I took her hand as we turned out of the house. They lie stiffly in my palm, refusing to meet the embrace of my own. “Let me go. I am not a baby,” they say. Which just makes me hold her hand even tighter, squeezing the little bones a little harder than I should. To show me I have not won, she juts out her bottom lip, and drags her feet.
“Don’t, Rae,” I say. “You know why.”
But the sulk continues all the way to the shop, around the vegetable aisle, and all the way to the cashier, only stopping when the Turkish owner gives her a free lollipop.
“Hosça kal!”
she shouts haltingly, as he has taught her, waving.
“
Güle, güle
, darling,” he laughs, waving at her as we leave the shop.
I smile back at him as if I am grateful, when in fact I am annoyed
that he gave her a sweet when she was behaving badly. But he has already looked away. He doesn’t care what I think.
On days like this, I know that however deep my guilt runs about Suzy, I can’t give her up. Not yet. Because there are times when I crave her kindness like salve on cracked skin.
* * *
We arrive home, with bread and vegetables to make soup.
“Look, Mummy, a note,” Rae says, picking a white envelope up off the mat. “C-A-L-L-EE.”
She grins when I smile admiringly at her reading, and wanders off to watch Henry’s DVD for a second time, leaving me to unpack the carrots and onions in the kitchen.
Who is this from, then? The writing is unfamiliar: rounded and neat, as if written for a child.
I open the envelope, take out the sheet of paper. The perfect script continues.
Dear Callie,
I know you are probably very upset with me right now, and yet again I must apologize for any part I played in Rae’s accident the other night. . . .
I check the name at the end
Debs.
What the hell is this?
But I really need to protest my innocence. I am convinced your friend did not tell me to hold your little girl’s hand. And there’s something else.
I read on, hardly able to believe what she has written.
I was concerned about a comment your child made to me as we left school on Wednesday. She said, “When I see Mummy do I have to pretend to hate after-school club again?”
I was confused, as she had clearly had a lovely day with her friend Hannah. I asked her why she would pretend to you she had not. And she replied, “Because Aunty Suzy tells me to.”
“Oh, you bloody IDIOT,” I mutter under my breath. “She would have told Rae NOT to be upset in front of me.”
Please understand, I am not trying to escape my responsibility for your little girl being hurt in my care. I just wanted you to know that you may want to check again with your friend that everything is as it should be.
Debs
Is this woman insane?
I glance at the free newspaper on the kitchen table. There is a story in there about a man who was murdered by his mentally ill neighbor, who had stopped taking his medication. What if Debs has done the same? What if she’s dangerous? Biting my lip, I phone the number on my corkboard.
The police officer’s phone goes straight to voice mail.
“Hi, it’s Callie Roberts again,” I blurt out angrily. “I’m sorry, but that woman Debs is starting to scare me. She’s just put this crazy note through my door that basically accuses my friend Suzy across the road of lying to me. And also, last night, I didn’t mention it, but she was screaming at Suzy through her letterbox
in front of her kids. I need to know what is going on—please. I mean, she lives right opposite and she works at our school. Please call me back.”
I go to the window and look out. Debs is standing outside her house, peering, bewildered, from her front gate. She looks left, then right, then walks up to her recycling box and peers inside it.
“Crazy,” I whisper, hugging myself.
Jez had worked upstairs all morning with his door shut again. She knew he would be down around one o’clock for a sandwich, so she cooked some penne with mushrooms and set the table before he had any choice in the matter.
Almost on schedule, she heard his footsteps on the stairs.
“Hey,” she said quietly, keeping her back to him as she put out salad in a bowl and filled up the water jug.
“OK?” he replied. She felt his eyes behind her, glancing at the set table and the pot on the stove, trying to work out why she was cooking. Clearly deciding it was not worth asking, he sat down at the table, opened up the local newspaper she had brought in from the hall, and flicked through it.
Purposely, she didn’t smile. That would unnerve him. Normally she filled their silences with chatter directed at the kids, or questions to him about shirts that required ironing or how his train journey had been. Today, she would let him suffer. Out
of the corner of her eye, as she ladled out pasta, she saw him glance at her twice.
“Here you go,” she said, bringing over two plates of pasta, then returning for the water jug.
“What’s this in aid of?” he muttered.
She shrugged and sat opposite him, watching as he turned back to the newspaper, idly lifting a piece of pasta up to his mouth. Her cutlery remained untouched at the side of the plate.
“What?” he said, looking up from his newspaper to see what she was doing.
She shrugged.
“I was thinking,” she said, shaping each word firmly and slowly to ensure he heard her perfectly clearly, “how nice it would be for us to have a little girl.”
Jez paused as he lifted a second piece of pasta up to his mouth, then pushed it inside and carried on eating. His eyes went back to the newspaper.
“Well?” she said, trying to catch his eye again.
“Well, what?” he said.
“What do you think, Jez? About the idea of us having a little girl? I mean, is that something you think would be nice?”
He stuck his fork in one, then two, then five pieces of pasta and pushed them in his mouth. As he chewed, he picked up another five pieces, clearing roads through the pile of penne.
“I’m amazed you’re asking me,” he said quietly when he was finished. Even when Jez spoke quietly, his voice rumbled round the room. “You didn’t the first two times.”
The implication hung in the air, as he took another giant forkful of food and looked down at what was left. The accusation had finally been voiced. Her deception revealed.
“They were accidents . . .” she said, trying to keep her voice
calm. “Accidents happen. They happen quite a lot. Apparently, Rae was an accident, Callie said.”
He put down his fork and looked her straight in the eye.
“I won’t be having any more kids, Suzy. And I don’t want to talk about it again. Perhaps if you had to earn the money instead of just spending it at Brent Cross every day—the kids don’t need any more shoes, by the way—you’d think twice about it, too.”
“Well, perhaps if you weren’t planning to send all our kids to that stupid boarding school of yours, there’d be enough.”
“What?” he said.
“You heard.”
She stood up and slowly pulled herself up to her full height.
“Jez—you try to take my boys away and see what happens.”
Their eyes locked. It was finally said.
“The thing is, I think you’ve forgotten who I am, Jez,” she said. “The girl out on the lake who had no fear?”
He dropped his eyes back to the newspaper. “And I think you’ve forgotten that this is England, Suzy.”