I’m awoken by the doorbell, and as I fumble and stumble into my clothes, I realise that I have slept well for the first time in a week. Feeling normal because of something as simple as a good night’s sleep is an invigorating, optimistic experience.
As I hop into my jeans, I peer out and see Susan and Sarah on the doorstep.
The second I open the front door, Sarah runs past me shouting, “Mum? Mummy? Mum! We had pancakes and strawberries and maypole syrup.”
“Maypole syrup,” I laugh, and Susan smiles at me for the first time ever.
“I told her she’s not here,” she says. “I said she’s at the hotel, but it goes in one ear and out the other at that age. Sorry if this is a bit early, but we have a long drive ahead.”
I glance up at the hall clock. “Six-thirty! Wow. I haven’t seen six-thirty in a while.”
Susan nods. “Your lie-ins are over,” she says. “This one goes off like an alarm clock every morning at six.”
“Six?”
“Sometimes earlier. Will you be OK? She’s a bit of a human dynamo.”
“I’m sure I’ll cope somehow.”
Susan hands me a folded post-it. “My mobile number,” she says. “Just in case.”
I blink slowly at her. “Thanks for that.”
“We’re back on Sunday.”
“Right.”
Her husband appears holding his daughter’s hand. I nod a “hello” at him and he nods back and then stares at his feet.
“You must be Franny,” I say to his daughter. “Hello!”
She too nods and stares at her feet. She’s a rotund little girl, which I guess is what having a mum who makes pancakes for breakfast will do for you.
“Shy,” Susan says. I’m not sure if she means her daughter or her husband or both. “Did you find the keys?”
“Keys? Oh! Yes.”
“Because I do have some. I, um, forgot.”
“It’s fine. I found some. Keep them.”
“Right.” Then clapping her hands and turning away, she shouts, “OK, let’s get this show on the road.”
When I close the front door, Sarah is clambering back downstairs. “Where’s Mummy?” she asks.
“At the hotel,” I say. “Susan told you.”
“The same hotel? With the polish machine and the magic fridge?”
“Polish machine?”
“It cleans your shoes.”
“Right. OK. And there was a magic fridge?”
Sarah nods at me seriously. “Angels fill it up with chocolate when you go out.”
I laugh. “Do they? How amazing. I wish I had a magic fridge. No your mum’s in a different hotel this time. One where they bring you dinner in bed.”
Sarah wrinkles her nose. “In bed? Proper dinner?”
“Yes, they bring you a tray with sausages and potatoes and a cup of tea.”
“We had sandwiches in bed. And Coke. And chocolate.”
“Well it’s the same. Only the food’s not so much fun.”
“I like sausages and mash. Where’s Gran?”
I swallow, and clear my throat. “Didn’t Mummy tell you?”
Sarah shakes her head, holds on to the bottom bannister and swings one leg around self-consciously.
“Umh, where do you think she is?” I ask, stalling for time.
“Mummy says she’s gone away.”
“Right.”
“But Franny says she’s died and gone to heaven.”
I grind my teeth. May whatever turns out to be truth forgive me for what I’m about to do.
“Well, they’re both right,” I say. “She’s gone away to a place called heaven.”
Sarah nods, apparently thinking about this.
“Please don’t ask me what heaven is like,” I think.
But what Sarah asks is, “Do you want to see my Polly Pockets?”
I laugh. “I’d love to see your Polly Pockets.”
And so the day passes. We play with Sarah’s Polly Pockets – three inch dolls with rubber clothes – for almost two hours.
I ask Sarah what she wants for lunch, and with an expression that reveals that she thinks she’s pushing her luck, she asks for alphabet spaghetti. She doesn’t seem able to believe it when we head off on a shopping trip to actually look for some.
In fact, I don’t think she can believe her luck in general, for, having no idea what to do with a four-and-a-half year old, I become her personal slave, taking her – on order – to the park, to the ice-cream shop, and on a second shopping trip for bangers and mash because she, “Wants to have the same dinner as Mummy.”
She asks me repeatedly about her mum and grandma. What will Mummy be eating? Can we go and visit Granny? Do they have chocolate in heaven? (The answer is, of course, masses of chocolate.)
But she shows no signs of stress at this strange new situation whatsoever. Her trust in this barely remembered adult called Mark is absolute, and I can’t help but think, somewhat nauseously, how easy it must be for bad people to abuse that trust. Suspicion is clearly something we human beings take a while to develop.
There is a single moment, as she eats her sausages, when she suddenly goes quiet. A tiny crease even forms on her forehead. After a day of jubilant monologues and endless questions, the change is immediately apparent.
“Is something wrong?” I ask her. “Don’t you like the sausages?”
Sarah looks me straight in the eye and says, “Is Mum with Granny? Is she in heaven too?”
“No, Dumpling. She’s in hospital.”
“You said she was at the hotel,” Sarah says.
“Oh. Yes. Well a hospital is a kind of hotel. It’s a special hotel where you go when you’re tired. That’s why they bring your dinner in bed so you don’t even have to get up.”
“Can we call her on the tephelone?”
“The te-le-phone? Of course we can,” I say. “We can call her as soon as you’ve finished your tea.”
“And then can we call Granny?” she asks.
I shake my head. “They don’t have phones in heaven,” I say. “But we can call Mummy at the hospital and wish her goodnight.”
We get patched through to Jenny without any problem this time. I listen as Sarah tells Jenny that we had alphabet spaghetti and that Frannie has three Polly Pockets but that I am going to buy her a new one and that Gran is in heaven but we can’t phone her because they don’t have phones, but they do have chocolate, and, and …
And then I send Sarah upstairs to get her pyjamas on whilst Jenny tells me that I am spoiling her daughter.
“Well, of course I am,” I laugh.
“How was she about her gran?” she asks. “I should have told her myself, but I didn’t have the heart.”
“Fine,” I say. “I didn’t decide to tell her either. But her friend Franny told her and I couldn’t see any point confusing things by saying something different.”
“No. You’re quite right,” Jenny says. “As long as she’s OK.”
“I don’t think she has any idea what it means, actually. She asked me if they have phones in heaven.”
“Right,” Jenny says. “Do they?”
“Of course they don’t.”
“No.”
“You sound better.”
“Yeah, I feel tired still. And these pills they’re giving me make me want to puke all the time.”
“Poor babe. Have they told you anything?”
“No. Nothing. And nothing about when I can go home either.”
“Well don’t worry about Sarah,” I say. “Everything’s fine here.”
“I’m sorry Mark. It’s hardly fair …”
“How long can you stay? I mean, if need be?”
“As long as it takes.”
“You don’t have a flight booked, or …”
“Not for weeks.”
“I’m sure I’ll be out by the weekend, but …”
“Really. Don’t worry about it.”
“Are you coping OK?” Jenny asks. “She can be pretty hard work sometimes.”
“Sure. We’re fine.”
“You can take her to school tomorrow. Ten till four. It’ll give you a break and the routine is good for her.”
“Sure, no worries.”
“She needs a packed lunch or three pounds dinner money. It’s just around the corner. She’ll show you the way.”
“Do you want me to bring you anything? Money, or clothes, or your phone?”
“Tomorrow maybe. If they keep me in again. Would that be OK?”
“I could bring Sarah after nursery.”
“Sure. That would be nice.”
“See you then, then.”
“Right.”
“Bye.”
“Bye. Oh and Mark? If she won’t sleep, just lie next to her and read. There’s a really boring one about a hibernating dormouse. That usually works.”
“No problemo. Bye then.”
“Bye – oh, are you still there?”
“Sure.”
“Umh, thanks for this. I don’t know what to say really …”
“It’s fine, Jenny. Honest,” I say.
“I feel bad though.”
“Well, now we both feel bad. But it’s the least I can do. Under the circumstances. Right?”
“I suppose. But thanks anyway.”
*
Sarah does indeed wake up at five-thirty the next morning, but all she does is pad downstairs and crawl under my duvet. I’m a bit surprised by this, and can’t really decide if it’s appropriate, but in the end I’m too sleepy to think about it, so I go with the flow.
“Where’s Mummy?” she asks, snuggling against me.
“At the special hotel.”
“And Granny?”
“She’s gone away.”
“Why are you sleeping here?”
“Shhh. Go back to sleep.” Which amazingly, for another forty minutes, she does.
As I doze back off myself, I think about how nice this animal warmth is beside me, and how simple our instincts can be. It’s such a shame adulthood makes everything so complicated as our desires for human warmth become confused by desire and suspicion and morality. Sarah, with almost cat-like simplicity, wanted to snuggle up, and that’s exactly what she did. And her trust in me is more than enough, I now see, to compensate for waking up at five-thirty am.
The early morning calm doesn’t last for long of course. At six fifteen she starts to fidget, and at six twenty she starts to talk.
By six thirty I’m in the kitchen thinking about breakfast options.
“What do you usually have for breakfast?” I ask her.
“Chocklit biscuits,” she says definitely. She’s such a bad liar, I laugh out loud.
“Well, I don’t think we have any, how does toast sound?”
“With jam?”
“Sure. With jam.”
“OK.”
But when I open the drawer to take the bread, Sarah’s eagle eyes spot the Hobnobs. “See,” she says, pulling them out. “Chocklit biscuits.”
“Well for each slice of toast you eat, you can have a Hobnob. How does that sound?”
Sarah wrinkles her nose. “But not the crust.”
“This bread doesn’t have crust,” I say.
She points at the vague brown stain around the edge of the loaf.
“Fine,” I say. “Without crusts.”
I wonder if toast, butter and jam is actually in any way healthier than chocolate biscuits. My guess is that there’s not much in it.
She’s an amazing kid: funny, helpful, clever … But by the time I leave her at the nursery, I feel as if I have done a full day’s work. Boy does she talk! I can feel my brain turning to mush from the simple endless bombardment of kiddy talk. I wonder how heteros manage to put up with it day after day. Maybe it does turn their brains to mush. Maybe a few months of this and I would be buying frozen meals and watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.
At half past five we get to Jenny’s ward and find her sitting on her bed, fully clothed. “God!” she says. “Finally! I thought you were coming at four, straight from the nursery.”
It’s so close to how I imagined she would be yesterday, that I experience a brief unsettling sensation of déjà vu.
“We went to the park, didn’t we,” I say, lifting Sarah up and putting her next to her mum. “I brought your phone and stuff, but it looks like you’re all ready to go.”
“Yeah, I’m out of here,” Jenny says. “One more over-cooked cabbage leaf and I swear …”
“That good huh?”
“That good.”
“So what do you think of this hotel?” I ask Sarah who is looking around the ward, wide-eyed.
She shrugs. “Why has that man got tubes in his nose?”
“Because he isn’t very well,” I say. “The tubes have medicine.”
“The other hotel was nicer, wasn’t it?” Jenny says.
Sarah nods. “Are we going back there?”
“No, we’re going home,” Jenny says.
“To Gran’s?”
After a silence that lasts exactly one breath, Jenny answers. “Yes. To Gran’s.”
In the taxi, I ask Jenny what the verdict from the doctors is.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I have to keep taking the horrible pills.”
“Are they still making you feel sick?”
“Yeah,” she says. “And really tired too. Well, I think it’s the pills. I have to go see a specialist on Friday so maybe I can get them changed. Will you still be around?”
“It’s entirely up to you,” I say.
“Because he’s in London, the specialist. So if you could look after Sarah on Friday … Otherwise I can ask one of the neighbours.”
“No, it’s fine. But why London? And what kind of specialist?”
Jenny turns away to look out of her window. “I don’t know,” she says. “A woman-who-has-fits specialist I suppose.”
“And why London?” I ask again.
“Search me,” Jenny says, pulling a circumspect face.
When we get back to the house, I open the front door and Sarah runs straight upstairs. Jenny, for her part, hovers on the doorstep.
“Are you OK?” I ask. “You look a bit pale.”
“Yeah,” she says.
“Actually, you’ve gone green. You’re not going to faint are you? You’re not having another fit?”
Jenny scrunches up her nose. “No. It’s just … Look. I haven’t been in the house actually. Not since, you know … Not since Mum died.”
“Oh,” I say thinking back to the funeral and realising that she stayed in the garden the entire time. “God.”
“I know.”
“Do you want to go down the pub or something, have a pint first?”
“I’m not allowed to drink.”
“Oh. OK. You could go back to the hotel for the night maybe?”
Sarah comes back downstairs carrying Polly Pocket. “What are you doing?” she asks as she reaches the porch.
“Nothing,” Jenny says.
Jenny puts one foot upon the doorstep. Her eyes flick down at the hall floor. “No,” she says.
I step up beside her and take her hand. “I’ve been here for the last two days. It’s fine,” I say.
“Right. On three,” Jenny says.
“On three.”
“One, two, three, go …” She shakes my hand free and strides along the hall straight into the kitchen where she instantly busies herself filling the kettle and putting teabags in cups. But I catch a glimpse of her face and see that her eyes have a glassy shine to them.
When Sarah heads out into the back garden, Jenny asks, “So what are we telling madam?”
“About?”
“About Mum.”
“Oh. Um – that she’s in heaven.”
“Right.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what you wanted to say.”
“It’s fine. I just need to know. So we both say the same thing.”
“She’s in heaven. And they have lots of chocolate but no phones.”
“Oh yeah. I remember now. You told me yesterday. If only, eh?”
“Sorry?”
Jenny shrugs. “I’m not, you know … a great believer in heaven.”
“No,” I say. “But then again, who actually knows? Maybe it’ll turn out to be the best description anyone ever stumbled upon. A land of endless chocolate.”
“I should have told her. I should have just said. But I thought she’d be too upset,” Jenny says, fishing out the teabags and adding milk. “Sugar?”
“No thanks. I thought she’d freak out too, but she seems to accept pretty much anything. She’s a great kid.”
“She is.”
Jenny carries the two cups of tea to the kitchen table and we sit face to face. “So,” she says.
“So.”
“I’m going to have to go and have a kip once I’ve had this.”
“Right. I can make dinner, so …”
“I’m ever so grateful for, you know … And I’m sorry I was a bitch.”
I shrug. “I deserve it. It’s karma,” I say.
Tears are clearly visible in Jenny’s eyes now and after a few sips of tea, I say, “I’m so sorry about your mum.”
She sips her tea and flicks away a tear with one finger. “It’s not that,” she says. “I haven’t even had time to think about it. That’s the worst thing. Not having the time to think about anything.”
I nod. “Sure. What with the hospital and everything. Still, you can have some time-out now. Just rest and think about everything. Get it all into perspective.”
“Yes,” Jenny says. “Get it all into perspective. Right.”