She was late home and of course I wondered why. But a simple sentence like that conveys nothing of the turmoil the fact gave rise to. I cooked a meal for Jenny and tried to occupy my mind by laying out a separate plate for each of her imaginary friends. There were three of them, as far as I could remember. Melanie, Jessica and a third whose name always escaped me. I cooked a simple pasta and the chopping of the onions made me cry. She was practising inside on her violin, the halting finger scales that bore very little relationship to music, when they changed into a gentle arpeggio that she repeated and repeated, as if practising for a school concert.
What’s that? I asked her.
It’s the cello thing, she said. That the lady played.
Ah, I thought and then felt guilty that I had taken her down that street, let her hear that sound.
I’ve laid out plates, I told her, for Melanie and Jessica but I can’t remember the third name.
Rebecca, she said.
Will they all take Parmesan cheese? I asked.
No, she said. Melanie’s lactose intolerant. Jessica and Rebecca are on a diet.
No dairy, she said, continuing with the same arpeggio. Do da dee da dee da dee da do da dee da dee da dee da.
And you? I asked. You are the important one, after all.
Parmesan for me, she said and laid down her violin and bow and walked through the inner door.
Where’s Mummy? she asked.
Working, I imagine. So it’s just the two of us.
Daddy! Tut tut.
Sorry. The five of us.
Was it a game that she played that had become too real? Or was it a childhood reality that she would soon grow out of? If it was a game, it was fun to play it, the pretence of laying a precise ladle of pasta on every plate, with a spoonful of sauce and a small conversation about each invisible one’s eating habits.
Jessica thinks you should make it up with her.
But we’ve never fallen out.
Yes you have. Jessica says you can’t hide things from her.
Why would I fall out with Jessica?
Not with Jessica. With Mummy.
Ah.
That loaded word again. I thought about it while we both ate.
But I have made it up with her.
No you haven’t. You say you have but you haven’t.
Darling, you know Mummy and Daddy love each other.
She thought for a moment, then twisted some bands of spaghetti on her fork until they were uniformly red.
Jessica says that sometimes that’s not enough.
Oh dear. Jessica had far too much insight into domestic affairs.
Has she been watching those TV programmes?
You mean the ones where the couples shout at each other over the man with the white hair?
The Jerry Springer Show? Yes, I suppose I do.
I resolved to supervise her television diet more thoroughly. But I began to realise how useful Jessica was as a conduit into my daughter’s thoughts.
She watches it sometimes.
And she knows that she’s not meant to? It’s for adults.
Then why is it on in the daytime?
Why? I had no idea.
Tell her your mother and your father are nothing like those couples. We don’t pull each other’s hair and fight on television.
But, she said.
But what? I asked her.
Nothing, she said and filled her mouth with spaghetti. Maybe so she wouldn’t have to continue the subject.
I want to learn it, she said, eventually.
What? I asked.
That tune, the woman plays.
Bach, I told her. The cello suites.
And I pressed a button on the CD player, and the sober sound of Casals filled the room.
It sounds different, she said.
Yes. This is a man who died a long time ago.
Ah, she said. Maybe that explains it. I don’t like this. I prefer the woman.
What woman? I asked. And maybe I was fishing, to find out what she knew, or what she could intuit.
The woman we heard playing, on the way to music. Jessica says she sounds like jealous.
The cellist, I said.
And Jessica hears her too?
She looked at me and smiled, with a mouth reddened with sauce, and said nothing more.
I had her in bed by the time Sarah came back.
Forgive me, she said, with the kind of formality that implied there was something to forgive. I got caught in a riot.
Nothing dangerous, I hope.
Nothing like Mesopotamia, she said.
She liked the classical term. It blunted the reality of charred bodies and severed heads.
The dig, she said. We had to shift a tree. A crowd gathered. The tree is sacred, apparently. A vapis.
A what?
We left under police escort. Riot shields, tear gas, the works.
You want some food?
Please.
She sat. I filled a plate. There was a smudge of mud on her forehead.
You got hurt?
She shook her head.
A rumour spread. About the body in the bog.
The girl.
That it’s a boy. St Panteleimon. That the wounds are marks of persecution.
St who?
A martyr, under Diocletian. Sacred to one side or the other.
And is it?
No. It’s a girl. From centuries before. Early Bronze Age. But. They want excuses. To throw things at each other.
No killing.
Not yet.