But I couldn’t keep my daughter safe. My daughter was with Jason, with Ben.
I ate half a croissant in the garden and scattered the rest for the finches.
I opened my laptop to write more reports, Kadijah has been a pleasure to have in the class… closed it again.
I picked up my mobile to call Jason and then put it down, remembering his face. He hated me. How long had he hated me?
I thought of calling Aidan. Then I remembered his words. You need to sort things out and yourself out. And he was right. I did. But I didn’t know how.
I wandered into Poppy’s room and sat on the bed. I looked at the pyjamas tucked under the pillow, the absurd Easter bonnet we had made together for school still perched on top of the wardrobe, the little crate of toys with the chunky green caterpillar on top, the pile of clean clothes on the top of the chest – miniature tee shirts, trousers and knickers.
I picked up the little cardigan that was draped over the chair and held it to my face, breathing in the smell of my daughter.
Tears came into my eyes as I remembered bringing Poppy home from the hospital and lying in bed with her, staring at the scrunched face and blue eyelids, the tiny stork mark on her forehead. Heavy with milk and dreamy with love, I had whispered a promise that I would always protect her. Always. Until she died, I would make sure my daughter was safe – as if I could do that, as if mothers were all-powerful beings who needed no one else.
I sat down at my sewing machine and stood up again. Opened the fridge and closed it, seeing the image of Poppy’s smiling face pinned to the door by magnets. Watered the garden. Paced about, itchy with the sense that I needed to do something and had to do something and would go mad if I didn’t do something, but I didn’t know what it was.
A message pinged onto my phone and I glanced down.
Sorry for late notice. Girls’ get-together this evening, at the usual place? Do try and come – it’s been ages! L xxxxxxx
‘Tess! Over here!’
It was hard to miss them – five women round a table already strewn with bottles, talking loudly. There was Liz with her mane of hair, waving her arms as she made some point; there was Cora giggling as if she was seven. There they all were.
‘We thought you weren’t coming,’ said Kim, standing up to give me a hug.
I was late because I’d felt nervous about seeing them all, even though we had been friends since university and had continued to get together over the years, shedding partners and children to gather in restaurants or pubs or one or other’s house, sometimes even for weekends away. It had been nearly twenty years since we had first met, I thought, as I looked around the group. They had lines on their faces, a few of them had grey hairs, some had gone through serious illnesses and one of them – energetic and loud-mouthed Tilda – wasn’t there; she had died of breast cancer three years back. Some were married and some single, two had got divorced, most had a child or children – though Liz was on her third round of IVF.
Seeing them was a marker of time, I thought, and I hugged each of them and then squeezed my way into the chair waiting for me. Perhaps that was why I had stupidly worried over what to wear and how to get there and nearly hadn’t come.
‘We’ve ordered already.’
‘Small plates.’
‘Bloody small plates. Since when did everything have to be shared?’
‘Look at you – how do you stay so skinny?’
‘Have some wine.’
‘How long has it been?’
How long had it been? I wrinkled my brow, sipped my drink.
‘God, I don’t know. Before Poppy – can that be true?’ I paused. ‘And before Tilda died. Where have I been?’
‘Well, you’re back.’ Cora held up a glass. ‘Welcome back.’
‘Here comes the food. Move some of these bottles. Who wants – well, whatever these are. What are they?’
For about half an hour, I was swept up in a torrent of talk, which lurched between the gossipy and the confessional. Then Becky turned to me, ‘So you finally got free.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re divorced.’
‘I was never married, but yes.’
‘Is it OK?’
‘Being alone? I don’t know.’ I opened my mouth to say something about Aidan, closed it again, and had some more wine instead.
‘It’s hard,’ said Kim. ‘But everything’s hard, isn’t it? Fucking life.’ She knocked over a glass of wine and ignored the red stream trickling towards her.
My phone rang. I looked at it: the Brixton landline.
‘Sorry. One moment. Hello? Jason? Is something up?’
I could hear a voice – Emily’s voice – saying something and then Poppy was on the other end.
‘Mummy?’
‘Poppy, darling. Hello! Aren’t you in bed?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘I want Milly.’
‘But—’
‘I want Milly!’
‘Listen, Poppy.’ I got up from the table and moved away, gesturing apologetically to my friends. ‘You have Teddy there, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Cuddle up with Teddy. We can talk about Milly when you come home. But now it’s time to go to sleep. Is Daddy there?’
‘Emily here.’
‘Where’s Daddy?’
‘Emily here, not Daddy,’ said Poppy again. ‘Mummy?’
‘Yes. Here I am.’
‘I want Sunny.’
‘Sunny’s waiting for you. I’m waiting. I will see you very soon. Give the phone back to Emily and cuddle Teddy and close your eyes and soon it will be morning.’
‘Morning,’ said Poppy.
‘Night night, my lovely love.’
There was silence. My heart was a bruise. I ended the call and made my way back to the table, trying to smile at them.
‘Everything OK?’ asked Liz.
‘Poppy’s having a bit of a hard time. Transitions.’ I turned to Becky. ‘Wasn’t I free?’
‘What?’
‘You said I’d finally got free. Wasn’t I free before?’
‘Well, were you?’
‘I guess a relationship, any relationship, is a kind of—?’
‘No! I mean, of course that’s true. But you, specifically. You know.’
‘No.’
‘You and Jason,’ said Liz and the table was suddenly quiet. They were all looking at me and suddenly I wanted to jump up and run away from their shrewd and tender eyes.
‘Me and Jason?’
‘He was always a bit of a control freak, wasn’t he?’
‘Was he?’ I felt a bit giddy.
‘Hang on.’ Miriam, who had barely spoken, raised her voice. ‘I don’t think Tess needs us bad-mouthing the man she lived with for years, who’s the father of her child. I want to see pictures of her, by the way,’ she added.
‘No, I want to hear this,’ I said. ‘I want to know what you thought of him. Honestly.’
Liz didn’t need much encouragement. ‘He didn’t like it when you disagreed with him, did he? I always wanted you to tell him to fuck off, but you just took it. He never knew how lucky he was to have you, that was his problem. He thought he was the catch. As if.’
‘He liked being the one to make the decisions,’ said Miriam.
‘Someone told me you left, and he kept the house.’
I nodded. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It seemed to make sense. It’s near his work and anyway I kind of thought I needed a fresh start.’ As I spoke, I wondered if that was the true explanation.
‘Bloody hell. Really? You put so much into that house, Tess. I remember you making all those bookshelves and the curtains, and painting all the rooms, and digging up the garden as well. It was your house way more than his. You loved it.’
I looked round the table. ‘You thought he bullied me? You thought I was being bullied?’
‘I wouldn’t put it like that,’ said Miriam hastily.
‘He didn’t like us much, did he?’ Becky picked up a stick of celery, dipped it into a creamy concoction and chomped it.
‘Didn’t he?’
‘Not as a group, anyway,’ said Cora.
I leaned forward. ‘Now what does that mean?’
‘Nothing.’
‘We’re all a bit drunk. Honestly, Tess, all we’re saying is we’re glad you’re here and you’re OK.’
‘No, really. What does it mean? Listen, don’t all look so worried. I’m not upset at what you’re saying. Actually, I recently discovered that Jason had started on what was to be a long affair just after I had Poppy, and what felt worst about it was that I’d been in the dark all that time. Other people knew this big thing about me that I didn’t. Friends knew.’ I looked from face to face. ‘It feels important to me to recognise what he was like. So: did he try it on with any of you lot?’
‘No.’ Kim was flushed. ‘But I always thought that he wasn’t the faithful type.’
‘He wouldn’t have dared,’ said Liz. She had a smear of beetroot on her cheek. ‘You don’t think any of us would have? Tess?’
‘Course not,’ I said. ‘You’re my dear friends.’
But in truth I felt nothing would surprise me anymore.
‘I heard a rumour,’ said Cora. ‘Don’t ask me anything else. It was years ago and it was just a rumour. I wanted to ask you – but you were very defensive at that time. The drawbridge would go up.’
‘Was I? Would it?’ I rubbed my face. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘I thought so anyway.’
‘I just thought he took you for granted,’ said Miriam softly. ‘When he should have been thanking his lucky stars for being with someone beautiful and clever and kind like you.’
‘It turns out nothing’s like I thought it was,’ I said. ‘What shall I do next?’
‘Eat pudding.’
It was nearly two when I got home. I made myself a mug of tea and was about to climb into bed when I heard a scrabbling sound from Poppy’s room. I went onto the landing and put my ear to the door, my skin prickling. Silence, and then a piteous miaow.
‘How could I have shut you in!’ I said as, full of relief, I pulled open the door.
Sunny shot out and down the stairs, an outraged orange streak. I wandered into the room and sat on Poppy’s bed, cradling my mug of tea. I had a sore throat and my eyes stung. The barrier between me and the world had grown as fragile as parchment and any new thing could pierce it; I would flood out and the world would flood in.
I finished my tea, put it on the floor, lay down on Poppy’s bed, put my muzzy head on Poppy’s pillow beside her favourite pyjamas, which were purple and decorated with pink seahorses. I thought about everything my friends had said and how with love and kindness they had rubbed out the picture I had of myself.
Maybe Jason and I hadn’t separated. Maybe he had left me, while making me believe we were deciding together what was for the best. Hot tears filled my eyes.
I wanted my daughter. I wanted Aidan. I wanted to go back and do everything again and do it better. I didn’t know what I wanted: I just wanted.
A fat tear rolled down my face and into my hair, then another. I wiped my face with the sleeve of Poppy’s pyjama top.
And as I did so, I felt a strange and nasty tingling on my skin, as if I had a high fever or was going to be violently sick. My stomach knotted. I sat up.
Why were Poppy’s pyjamas on top of her pillow? I felt sure that earlier they’d been tucked under it. Hadn’t they? I shut my eyes for a moment and tried to remember. Memory is fickle – that’s what everyone had told me, over and over again during these last days of nightmare. A child can’t be trusted to distinguish between memory and imagination, and nor could I be trusted when I said that the woman who accosted me in an Italian restaurant was the same woman who had died falling from a tower. My memory of my life with Jason had turned out to be a tattered thing made from anxious hope and blindness. Memory is a lie, a creative act, a flimsy shield against the truth.
But Poppy’s pyjamas? I could see them as they had been that afternoon, under the pillow. I stood up, looked around, my eyes scanning the room. My gaze froze on the Easter bonnet. Surely, surely, when I had looked at it earlier, the dried flowers I had stitched on had been facing me full on. Now they were at the back.
The chunky green caterpillar – that had been on the top of the toy basket and now it was half under the patchwork quilt. The drawers on the chest had all been closed and now the top one was a few inches open.
Someone had been in here. They had shut Sunny into the room, because now when I thought about it, I knew I had fed him just before I left and watched him tumble his old body through the cat flap. Someone had come in here and they had lifted up Poppy’s toys, her pillow, her Easter bonnet. I stood absolutely still, not breathing, and strained to hear a sound. Nothing, just the intermittent rumble of a car passing, the faint sigh of the breeze in the trees, the complaining creak of the water pipes.
Very quietly, I went out of Poppy’s room and shut the door. I went into my bedroom and tried to remember exactly what it had been like when I left. I opened my wardrobe and a dress had slid off its hanger. I picked it up and put in back on the hanger: had it been like that?
Had there been a robbery? I opened my jewellery box, though I didn’t have anything of value – no gold or diamonds. I gazed around.
In the conservatory, everything looked as I had left it. Except a cupboard door hung ajar: one of its hinges had come loose and it had to be lifted up to shut it properly. I didn’t remember it being open. I didn’t think I would have left it like that, because I was pretty obsessive about returning to a tidy house. I hated beds not being made, cupboards and drawers left open, chairs not pushed into the table.
I moved slowly round the flat, running my hands over surfaces. I checked the windows, the doors to the garden.
I was sure, but what was my evidence? Just a memory of how a cat was not shut into a room, pyjamas were folded under a pillow, a cupboard door was closed, not open. And who would believe me? After all, I was the woman who had already cried wolf.