Chapter Thirty-Four

A Nation of Three

 

 

August 2014

 

ALICE LEANT BACK in her chair, rubbed her eyes and breathed out. From upstairs, she heard singing, and the sound of Emily bouncing around her room. How someone so small managed to sound so heavy was a puzzle even quantum physics couldn’t solve; it sometimes sounded as if she was about to come through the ceiling.

Alice yawned, put her glasses back on and stared at the laptop screen. No, the rest of the book hadn’t magically written itself while she’d taken a breather. More was the pity; the deadline was coming up and right now the writing was like pulling teeth.

It didn’t help that the kitchen was hot, the air close and thick. It was like trying to breathe cotton wool. The summer had been fierce. A long hot spell had been broken by thunderstorms and torrential rains only a couple of days before – the river running by the village was still swollen and fast – but the blistering heat had quickly reasserted itself. Andrew had wanted to install ceiling fans when they’d redecorated last year, but Alice had vetoed it. She wished now she hadn’t: it would have done a lot to make the kitchen more bearable.

A pain was gnawing behind her left eye. Always the worst place, meaning a world-class bastard of a headache was on the way if she didn’t do something PDQ. Outside the sun was bright, the trees explosions of glossy dark green and the grass bright emerald. Clear blue sky without a cloud; the song of birds.

But all that was outside and she was inside, staring at the screen and its single winking cursor. Finish the chapter and you can go out, she told herself, but she’d been telling herself that all day and here she was now at two in the afternoon with barely a paragraph written. She’d manage a few words, a desultory and unsatisfying sentence or so, and then she’d abandon the work, leafing through a book or surfing the net instead. As if the part of her that did the writing was a sulky child who wanted to go out now.

Alice grunted, got to her feet and went to the sink, where she filled a half-pint glass from the tap. They kept their medicines in a cupboard above the sink; she popped two ibuprofen out of a blister pack and swallowed them with water.

“Mummy?”

Alice turned and smiled. “Hello there, chucky-egg.”

Emily bounced into the kitchen. The blue eyes might have been Alice’s, but where she’d got her ash-blonde hair from was anyone’s guess. Or that tiny heart-shaped face, which they both agreed was going to break hearts one day. Andrew was already joking about investing in a shotgun to deter potential boyfriends. “Look. New picture.”

Alice knew she was biased, but honestly thought Emily had real talent, although the subject matter was a bit worrying at times: here was another sword-fight, starring a young woman with blonde hair and blue eyes who appeared to be cheerfully dismembering her way through a mixed bag of disreputable-looking humans and other creatures of uncertain origin. “Wow. That’s good.”

“Can we go out and play now?”

“Emily, Mummy’s working.”

“Pleeeease?”

Working on her textbooks had been an easy enough job after Emily was born; she’d often set up a folding table in the nursery with the cot only a couple of feet away and beavered away on the laptop with breaks for feeds and nappy-changing. The first textbook had been a big enough success for her to have been offered more work, and that work had come often enough and paid well enough – not as well as the work at Amberson’s, it was true – for her to work from home. It wasn’t the big-bucks career she’d dreamt of a few years before, but she was content with it. Motherhood changed you. Andrew had the high-flying career now, and if Alice privately thought she was actually the brighter of the two of them, if she ever wondered if maybe she should be the one still at the lab while he stayed at home and wrote textbooks for school kids then, well, life was like that. There’d always be something you regretted or wondered about.

All the same, an infant in a cot was a lot easier to manage than a seven-year-old with fully-developed motor skills, boundless energy and demands of her own. “Oh come on, Mummy,” Emily said. “We’ve been here all day.”

“Well go and play in the garden, then.”

“Bo-ring.”

Alice took a deep breath, and then the phone rang. Probably for the best; she didn’t want a row with Emily right now. “Hello?”

“Hi, sweetheart.”

“Hey, babe.”

“Hiya daddy!”

“Say hello to the little monster for me.”

“Daddy says hello.”

Emily waved, then climbed up onto one of the kitchen chairs. “What can I do you for?” Alice said.

“Well, thought you might like to know. It’s about Teddy.”

She felt cold. “What about him?”

“It’s his last day today.”

“What?”

“Yeah, he gave in his notice a while b –”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“You haven’t seen him in ages.”

Alice felt a pang of guilt. “I know, but... anyway, never mind that. Why’s he going?”

“Early retirement. Seems he’s put a lot of money away for his old age, and – well, he had some bad news. You know, health-wise.”

“Oh God. Oh no.”

“Alice, it’s okay. It was the ‘if you hang up your boots now you should be fine’ kind rather than the ‘six months to live’ sort, if you know what I mean. But him and Stefan are moving abroad. Flying out to Spain in a week.”

“Next week? God.” She hardly saw Teddy these days, but the news still came as a blow. Even before Andrew, Teddy had been her friend – the first one she’d made when she’d moved down here, the first crack in the armour she’d built to keep out the world after John Revell. His humour and his kindness had meant a lot to her. If he hadn’t befriended her and started to winkle her out of her shell, she wasn’t sure if she’d have said yes to Andrew or not.

“Yeah, I know. I’m gonna bloody miss him. We both are. Anyway, listen – that’s not what I’m calling about.”

“What’s up, then?”

“Well, we’re going to need a new chief researcher. You know we’ve got a lot on at the moment – there’s that big MOD contract for a start – so I really need to start looking for a replacement for him. It’ll need someone with a solid background in physics, and experience in that kind of work, of course – but if I could also get someone who’s worked at Amberson’s before and knows all the drills and procedures, that would be really handy.”

In the moment following that, Alice was sure she felt the kitchen perform a single slow, graceful rotation around her. She looked at Emily, who sat, arms folded, at the table, pouting. Sulking because mummy wouldn’t come out and play.

“Alice?” said Andrew. “You still there?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Me? Is that it? You asking me to come back?”

“Have to go through the interview procedure, of course, but I think you’d walk it.” He hesitated. “It’d mean some changes, of course.”

“Yeah, it would, wouldn’t it? No more working from home.”

Emily looked up at her sharply.

“You need some time to think on it?” Andrew asked.

“Yeah. Maybe. Yeah.”

“Okay, well, we’ll talk about it some more this evening. I’d better go.”

“Okay. Speak to you later.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

Alice put the phone down. Across the kitchen table, Emily glowered at her – despite which, she still managed to look adorable. Who could leave all this? Alice sighed and managed a smile. “Let’s go to the park,” she said.

 

 

IT WAS THE right thing to do anyway; by the time they got there the headache was gone. Emily stayed quiet when Alice helped put her blue trainers on, quiet as they walked into the village, but there were children she knew at the playground and she ran off to join them.

Alice relaxed on an unoccupied bench. Not that she had anything against the other local mothers – well, apart from the fact that a distressing number of them were small-minded cows who thought that immigration was responsible for everything wrong with the country – but right now, like Garbo, she just wanted to be alone. There was a decision to be made, after all.

It was like a crystal that changed colour depending on how the light struck it: on the one hand, here was a chance to resurrect the glittering career she’d been mourning only seconds before Andrew’s phone call. On the other, how much of Emily’s growing would she now miss? How many little triumphs and tragedies, that in the normal run of things she’d witness, would now be seen instead by a childminder or a crêche supervisor? By some stranger, working for pay, because Alice couldn’t be bothered to –

Oh, for Christ’s sake. If the shoe was on the other foot – if it was Andrew contemplating a return to his old job after years juggling childcare and working from home – no-one would bat an eyelid. No-one would accuse him of neglect or of selfishly putting career before child. But if you were a woman, it was different.

That said, it still came down to whether Emily would spend most of her days with at least one of her parents or with somebody else. How would the girl feel? Just the hint of it before and her face had fallen. Would she feel abandoned, unloved?

She’d get over it. Kids got over worse all the time. Alice had.

But Emily wasn’t ‘other kids’, anymore than she was Alice: she was herself, with her own personal strengths and vulnerabilities. She might cope, adapt and shrug it off, or the abandonment might fester in her, bear some horrible fruit of neurosis or depression in later years.

Or maybe Alice was worrying too much. It was a stone-cold fact that if you worried over every possible thing that could go wrong, every potential negative consequence, you’d never make a choice or a decision again, go through life paralysed by what-ifs.

Well, if you’re so concerned, ask her then. Ask her how she feels.

But wouldn’t Emily automatically want her mother to stay? Wouldn’t she instinctively fight the change?

Maybe not. But what if she did? You’re still an adult, Alice – you still have a life, a mind, of your own.

Yes, she did: one that came with responsibilities attached.

So you have to consult your seven-year-old daughter before any life decision?

Emily would be affected by any decision she made.

Doesn’t mean she’s best equipped to judge for the best. Would Andrew ask her first if he had a choice like this?

He might. Emily was his little girl, after all.

Emily screamed. Alice blinked out of her reverie, looked around. What’s happened? Where is she? Oh God – what will I tell Andrew – I looked away for a second and –

But, no – there was the flash of the red T-shirt her daughter was wearing, a blur as the roundabout whirled round and round, and yes, there was Emily, shrieking and giggling with laughter as she clung to the ever-faster-spinning roundabout. Alice settled back.

She’s stronger than you know.

Alice nodded as if in answer to the thought. Emily was stronger: now and again the fact of her daughter hit Alice anew and dizzied her with wonder. Here was this tiny person, so herself, showing a glimmer of Alice or Andrew here and there – a mannerism, a gesture – and yet neither of them; complete in herself. With the talent for drawing and the sweet tuneful singing voice: her daughter. My daughter. My child.

“Come on,” she said at last.

Emily bounded over – but flush-faced, sweat-damp, grass-stains on the knees of her jeans and her brimming reserves of energy lessened just a little – grinning, with all bad humour gone. “Where now?” she said.

“How about the village?” said Alice. “I think I know a little girl who’d like some ice-cream.”

“Yeah!”

They started walking, along the footpath on the river embankment. Emily grabbed safety rails as she passed, swung on them, leaned on the top rail to peer over at the rushing brown foamy water of the Cuckmere.

“Get down from there,” Alice said. “You’ll fall in.”

“No I won’t.”

“Emily. Get down.”

“Okay.”

Alice chuckled and shook her head, fumbling in her handbag for her phone.

“Mummy, look, it’s a lizard!”

“Oh, that’s nice.” There it was; she flicked it open, cued Andrew’s number up and pressed CALL.

She looked out over the river for just a second as it rang. Just a second to take in the view of the river, the village, in the afternoon, of the stay-at-home mums whose ranks she was about to leave, before turning back towards Emily. She was halfway through the turn when Andrew’s voice sounded in her ear – “Hello?” – and, in the same moment, the screaming started.

“What –?” she said, and “What?” said Andrew’s voice, puzzled, but the screaming went on. It was from the other side of the river, from a woman with a pushchair, and the woman was pointing across the river at – at Alice? No, not at Alice, but just ahead of her, at –

“Emily!”

It was a scream torn out of her gut. It came because she completed the turn she’d been making to look at Emily, to where the screaming woman was pointing – and there was nothing there. Nothing but a gap in the railings, the prints of trainers in the soft earth beyond them – look, Mummy, a lizard – and then a sudden skid-mark gouged in the earth. That, and when she ran to the railing and looked frantically down, the telltale flash of a red T-shirt in the brown and foaming water, whirling faster and faster as it was swept away.