Eleanor hadn’t felt well, exactly, at the wedding: she’d felt tired, shaky, in recovery, but inordinately grateful not to be in pain. The headache faded and her strength came back as soon as they drove away from the house. It was genuinely moving seeing Amy and Dominic get married, but that pleasure was diminished by the fiercer delight at not being in the house. She was privately euphoric. She felt restored when they came back and Rosie seemed more content after her night with Richard’s parents. They had a relaxed Monday together, and Eleanor remembered how it used to be: enjoying Rosie and Isobel’s company, the way they could casually make her heart burst. But as the evening came round, the accumulating weight of the house became too much and a thin, faint pain covered her head like a cap. The following Monday was hard again: Rosie worried at her little finger as though she was trying to bite it off, and had another night terror, this time for several torturous minutes. Eleanor resigned herself to staying awake long after Rosie had gone back to sleep, fizzing with anxiety.
The next day, when she came to pick Rosie and Isobel up from nursery, Rosie didn’t want to leave. It was starting to happen regularly now. She was shrieking: ‘I don’t want to go home! I hate you! I hate home! I want to stay here!’
‘Ah, it’s cute she likes it here so much,’ one of the nursery assistants said, embarrassed, and Eleanor could only just manage a smile as she dragged Rosie out into the street, pleading with her to stop crying.
Eleanor tried reasoning, cajoling and distracting, but by the time they got to Litchfield Road, Rosie was still anguished. She was trailing some way behind Eleanor and Isobel, making consistent rough, rasping wails, her mouth a thin line of horror. Eleanor received it like artillery, a deliberate, measured attack. She ignored it, partly because she vaguely believed it might be the right tactic – she wasn’t making a fuss! – but also because she had no idea what else to try. She felt ashamed when they passed anyone and tried not to meet their eye. The panic was steadily rising; it was all she could do to keep it down. Rosie was now incomprehensible to her: even if she stopped crying, there was no way of telling whether she would start again or bite Eleanor or put Isobel’s elephant in the bin. She was an utterly irrational force and Eleanor felt entirely alone.
As they got near the house, Eleanor caught sight of a woman she thought she recognized. She was with two children, a boy and a girl, a little older than Rosie. Eleanor was too slow to look away and their eyes met. She thought the woman looked concerned and at the same time a little critical, though that could have been her imagination. Then the woman stopped outside a house opposite theirs, and got her key out. Eleanor became interested. She maintained eye contact and smiled ruefully, an unspoken apology for Rosie.
‘Are you all right there?’ the woman asked. Her tone wasn’t entirely sympathetic but Eleanor behaved as though it was.
‘I don’t know what else to do! She won’t respond to anything when she’s like this.’
‘How old is she? Three? Four?’
‘Three and a half.’
‘Oh, that’s a tricky age! My two were always pretty good, thank goodness, and we were very strict with behavioural charts – have you tried anything like that?’
‘We’ve never managed – Rosie, come on, darling, it’s all right – we’ve never managed to get anything like that in place.’
‘Oh, you really ought to. I mean, as I say, my two never really went in for this sort of thing, but you need to have a system . . .’
Rosie seemed to be running dry, intrigued by the woman and the older children. The wailing slowed and turned to a quieter rasping until it stopped altogether.
‘There we are, Rosie. OK, good girl,’ Eleanor said, swamped in relief. Then she held out her hand.
‘I’m Eleanor. We’ve just moved across the road, number 52.’
‘Number 52, now which . . . ? Oh God, not the madhouse?’
‘The what—?’
‘Oh sorry-sorry-sorry-sorry! I shouldn’t have said. That was just what Mark and I used to call it, because, well . . . Did you know the people you bought it from?’
‘No, we never met them—’
‘Mummy!’ Rosie pulled at her trouser leg.
‘I’m just talking, Rosie – let Mummy finish talking.’
‘I’m Joanna, by the way,’ the woman said. She looked at her watch. ‘Do you have time for a quick cup of tea? Or do you need to get back?’
Eleanor did need to get back but her excitement was mounting. She could find out more about the house, and perhaps Joanna might become a friend. It would be so nice to have a friend close by. Maybe they could spend some Mondays at her house. Perhaps she would help her handle Rosie.
‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’
‘No, absolutely not! It would be great to have company. And they can have a bit of a run around before their tea. Come on in.’
‘OK, then, well, that would be really lovely,’ Eleanor said, manoeuvring the buggy into the hall.
Joanna led them downstairs into the basement kitchen. She opened the door to the garden and let her children – Amelia and Jack, Eleanor learned – out with Rosie, where there was a slide and a trampoline.
‘We can keep an eye on them from in here. What kind of tea would you like?’
Eleanor kept one eye on Isobel, who was tentatively exploring, while she surreptitiously took in Joanna’s kitchen. Everything was ordinary, cheerful and smart – white wood, purple flower patterns, coasters, table mats, mug trees. It was not austere and refined, like the plans that Richard had for their house, nor minimal and clean, like the things she would have chosen years ago. It was the sort of house a family with two young children should have; it seemed to fit Joanna exactly. Eleanor might once have been privately condescending about it. Now, she would give anything to live there.
They talked in the way they were accustomed to, with frequent interruptions, and about the usual things – the schools, the area, their houses – until Eleanor felt brave enough to try and ask about number 52. She tried to keep her voice light and jokey.
‘So did you say our house was called the madhouse?’
‘Oh God, I’m so sorry about that! I should never have said a thing! It’s just the mum who lived there before and her kid, they were a bit . . . sort of nutty, you know. So Mark and I had this joke . . . But that was a long time ago, I mean we can’t have seen them for, what, a year? It’s not since you’ve moved in, God, no.’
‘How were they nutty?’ Eleanor said, watching Isobel stagger towards Joanna’s kitchen cupboards.
‘Oh, well, it was the little girl, really. She was appalling! Screaming, crying, making all sorts of noise. Look, all kids can be a nightmare at times, can’t they? But there was something . . . unnatural about her. Jack! Jack! Rosie’s go, OK? Let Rosie have a go.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Eleanor said, desperately hoping this train of conversation wouldn’t be derailed.
‘No, Jacky, she’s our guest! We don’t treat guests like that, do we? Sorry, what was I—?’
‘The people that lived in our house?’
‘Oh yeah! So this little girl, she was a couple of years older than Amelia, I think, though it was hard to tell, really. But the way she behaved! Weird noises, all the time. And I tried to be friendly with her, you know, the mum, because some women find it difficult, don’t they? It was clear she wasn’t coping – she just looked exhausted the whole time. Really haggard. And I never saw her! I don’t know where the girl went to school – Amelia! Amelia! You’re supposed to be the big girl, Amelia. Thank you! Thank! You! – but I’d never seen her at any of the play groups round here or anything like that. So if I saw her in the street, I tried to be friendly, but she made it difficult. She just wasn’t . . . responsive. And then there was this incident with the little girl— Jacky!’
Eleanor raced across the room. ‘Isobel! Not in your mouth, darling, OK? No, no, put that down, that’s Joanna’s. Sorry, what was the incident?’
‘Oh, well, we got talking in the street – I was inviting them to our Christmas drinks – I mean, to be perfectly honest, I don’t know what we’d have done if they’d come, but I thought we’ve got to ask her. And the little girl was, well, how she normally was, but more animated somehow. A bit kind of frantic. She was growling and flapping her arms about like this and then she bit Amelia.’
‘Iso! Iso? Why don’t you play with this instead? Look, this one. Sorry – she bit her?’
‘Yes, she just went for her! Like: pow! It was . . . savage, really, that’s the word. Brutal. She drew blood. And the mum didn’t even apologise! I couldn’t believe it. Amelia was howling and this woman was just standing there.’
‘Maybe she didn’t know what to say.’
‘But she had this look on her face. Sort of hard. Cold. So after that, I just thought, OK, I won’t bother then. I mean, this was, what, God, two or three years ago now? So Amelia was little, and as I say, this girl was older; well, she was bigger anyway. And I just thought, if she’s dangerous, Amelia and Jack have to come first, right?’
Eleanor nodded, mute, rattling a toy in front of Isobel’s face.
‘Look. Some kids aren’t easy. I know that. But you’d go past at ten in the evening. And there’s a light on upstairs! And you could hear the crying from outside. Our two would have been in bed for hours by then. And sometimes you do think . . . Look, I’m not saying it was her fault. There could have been all sorts going on that I didn’t know about. But children are like little sponges. They pick up on everything and there was something not right in that house. I’m sure of it. Jacky! Jacky! I’ll come over. OK. Good boy.’
‘What about her husband?’
‘Oh, you never saw him! It was always the two of them together. I saw him out and about once or twice – again, this was a few years ago now – and he looked awful, poor man. You know, unwell. Not that I’m really surprised; I’m sure it was no picnic living in that house. Jacky! Right, that’s it!’
She got up and intervened, and it was hard for Eleanor to ask her anything more. The conversation moved on and Joanna gave Eleanor lengthy advice about dealing with tantrums: a long explanation of a complicated reward system involving jars and bits of pasta.
‘I managed to stamp it out in Amelia and Jack very early on. But a lot of it’s you, you know. I mean, look at Rosie now! You’ve relaxed, and so has she.’
Eleanor watched Rosie running with Amelia and Jack, shrieking. She did look sublimely happy. Eleanor and Joanna talked more about the area and then the conversation dipped, so Eleanor asked the question that now carried with it a different kind of tenderness. ‘And what do you do? Do you work?’
‘Well, I used to work in TV, but I’m a full-time mum now. I went back to work after Jack, but it became obvious after a while that it just wasn’t possible, you know, with two of them . . . Mark’s job is pretty full-on – he doesn’t get home till eight most nights – and we couldn’t both have done that kind of job. I’ll probably look for something part-time when they’re older but, to be honest, I want to be the one picking them up from school. Do you know what I mean? I know it’s not right for everybody, but I want to be that kind of mum.’
‘I can understand that,’ Eleanor said.
‘How about you, do you work?’
‘I work in publishing. Four days a week. Iso . . . Iz, darling. Come on, we’ve got to go home soon.’
‘Oh. Well, lucky you,’ Joanna said, insincerely. ‘Still, four days is a lot, isn’t it? And even if you’re just working nine till five, it’s a long day in childcare. You’re just picking them up now, aren’t you?’
‘I don’t really know how else we’d do it . . .’ Joanna was looking at her, and it was clear that it was important to her that Eleanor express some kind of regret or unhappiness. It would be so easy to do. I envy you, I don’t really enjoy my job, we wouldn’t survive on my husband’s salary. It was partly true. Why didn’t she just say it? It was the kind of amelioration she used to offer up without thinking, but now she was just very, very tired.
Joanna looked pensive. ‘I did worry, you know, about how I’d cope not working, you know, losing my identity and all that. It’s such a big shift. But I did cope. And now I can be the kind of mum I want to be.’
Eleanor half smiled. ‘I don’t think I know what kind of mum I want to be.’
Joanna looked at her blankly and didn’t repay her expression of honesty; Eleanor felt foolish and bluntly angry. She sensed that Joanna might not be a friend after all. As she strapped Isobel into her buggy and prayed that Rosie would agree to come home without a fuss, she was thinking again about Emily.