These days I wake in a white Gothic house on a tree-lined London street. If I turn right out of the house and walk up the hill, within ten minutes I’m in the open spaces of the Heath, and it’s like Sam said, a kind of wild park with woods and lakes. I found the bench. It took a while. I went to every single one, reading the inscriptions engraved in the wood. Ever since I found it, I’ve gone there each day, hoping to see him. I left a note once. When I went back, it had gone, but someone could have taken it, or the wind, or the rain. I’m not giving up. One day he’ll come.
Leo’s house is tall and narrow, with battlements and fairy-tale windows. The rooms have working fireplaces and old-fashioned mouldings like piped frosting. There are paintings hanging on the walls, modernist swirls of thick paint, and everywhere bookcases are jammed with novels. My footsteps padding across oak boards sound as if I’m walking across the shiny surface of my own dreams.
The dream stops when I knock on Grace’s door to get her up for school. I never know what I’ll find: sometimes she’s buried inside her covers, rolled up in her blankets like a small hibernating bear, refusing to come out; or she’s already buttoned skew-whiff into the wrong clothes, down in the kitchen helping herself to a breakfast of chocolate cookies and ice cream. This morning she was naked, drawing over her wall with felt-tip pen.
I have a few hours during the day when I can breathe easy, knowing she’s safe at school. My duties are light: a bit of housework, nothing too strenuous, because a cleaner comes once a week. I shop for food. I bundle clothes into the washer in the utility room next to the big basement kitchen. No more dragging bags to the laundromat. There’s even a dryer for wet days, a line in the garden for sunny ones. Once I’m through with my chores, I’m free. Leo says I can read any of the books in the house, and he’s given me a list of museums and galleries he says I should visit. Often I sit in a café writing stories. Every day I go to Sam’s bench with a book. It’s kind of secluded because a hawthorn tree grows right behind it, but it’s on the top of a hill with a long view of the Heath and the distant city. Sitting bent over my book, I glance up each time a shadow falls, my heart singing with expectation. But it’s never him.
Grace’s primary school is fifteen minutes away on foot.
Today, halfway down the hill, she drops onto the sidewalk, hunching into a ball. ‘Come on, Grace,’ I say. ‘We’re gonna be late.’ I squat next to her. ‘Gracie, please get up.’
‘That’s not my name!’ She twists her head to peer at me with an angry expression.
‘Okay. I’m sorry.’ I sit down on the sidewalk next to her and start to hum. ‘Once,’ I say, slowly and casually, ‘there was a doodlebug who thought he was a butterfly.’
‘What’s a doodlebug?’ Her voice is muffled, her mouth against her knees.
‘One of those insects with an armoured shell on top. Tiny. Grey. They can roll right up into a ball, just like you’re doing.’
She uncurls herself and sits up, interested, despite herself.
‘Let’s walk awhile and I’ll tell the story,’ I say, getting to my feet and giving her my hand. Reluctantly she puts her fingers inside mine. ‘Well, he kept on trying to fly. He’d launch himself off the top of high things, like tree branches and park benches …’ I keep talking. We’re making headway now. The school gates are just around the corner.
Her room is large and pretty: a rocking horse by the window, shelves stuffed with plushies, and a giant doll’s house. Everything a kid could want. After dropping her at school, I settle on the floor with a bowl of soapy water and begin to rub at the marks with a damp cloth. She’s drawn stick people, but they’re missing arms and legs. Blood pours from cracks in their heads. Their mouths are open in silent screams.
Whenever anything like this happens, Leo always tells me, ‘Give her time. She’s still grieving.’
I got a book out of the library on how to help bereaved children, and it said to keep everything as normal as possible: familiar routines are essential; no big changes. I have no experience with children, let alone one who’s lost her mother. It’s a miracle Leo agreed to take me on. It was Grace who made the decision really. When I arrived at their hotel first thing in the morning, Leo asked me to wait outside in the corridor while he talked to his daughter. When he opened the door, he told me she’d like me to be her new au pair. They were leaving that day. I’d only just caught them. Eunice gave me a reference. And that was that.
On the way over on the plane a few days later, the hum of the jet engines under my feet, I was excited about finding Sam. I’d convinced myself there was bound to be an explanation as to why he never wrote: all I needed was to find him, and we’d straighten things out and carry on from where we left off. When he didn’t show up on the bench, I went through the phone book, flicking tissue-thin pages to the letter S, eager to hear his voice, his surprise when I told him where I was.
‘Wrong number,’ I was informed each time. ‘No one of that name here.’
I keep hoping to see him on the Underground train or sitting opposite me on a bus, standing outside a shop, walking along the sidewalk. I scan crowds, looking for his dark head. I didn’t realise how big London is; how it’s split by the river into north and south; how it can take hours to get from one part to the other.
I thought he lived in Hampstead, but I don’t have an address. I don’t know what his sister Mattie’s second name is, or how his parents died. He mentioned he went to Oxford University. But when I called up, I found it’s made up of different colleges. I’ve tried each one. None has a record of a student called Sam Sage.
Where are you, Sam? I remember how you sounded up on the stage at Ally’s, the way my stomach dropped and lurched during your performance. Most of all, I remember how you made me feel when we were together: your fingers and mouth and tongue lit up my body. I was home at last.
I sit on your bench every day, waiting for you. I didn’t make you up. You were flesh and blood in my arms. I remember the smell of your skin. The feel of your lips on mine. I miss you.
Mom writes me on paper scented with rose water, telling me of her reclaimed life in the South. She never mentions Dad. His letters are infrequent, shorter. He seems convinced he’ll win Mom back as soon as he’s out.
No chance, my brother’s voice sighs. She needs him like a mule needs a steering wheel.
Frank. Since living in London, I hear him less and less. When I do, his words are a faint echo, as if they’re coming across miles of ocean, inside the whip of an Atlantic wind.
There are cliques at the school gates. At the top of the pack are mothers, and then nannies. The odd father loiters on his own, uncomfortable and uncertain. Au pairs are bottom of the pecking order. I guess I fall into that category. Dougie is the only male in the playground today, and the only ‘manny’ in the school. He’s wearing a trilby hat and long scarf. He waves when he sees me. ‘Thank God you’re here,’ he says, kissing my cheeks with cold lips. ‘I smiled at one of the mums and they closed ranks in military formation. Honestly, you’d think I’d flashed my ding-dong at them, not my teeth.’
‘Ding-dong?’
‘Quaint term for penis,’ he tells me. ‘Less sexual than cock. Less offensive than fuckpole. Cuter than knob.’ He adjusts the flowing tail of his scarf and tosses his head. ‘Tallywacker would have been a more flamboyant choice, I admit.’
‘Tallywacker?’ I laugh.
‘I know.’ He grins. ‘Isn’t it a lovely euphemism?’
Just then, the bell rings, and a percussion of clattering footsteps, banging doors and children’s voices fills the air. The two little girls that Dougie looks after rush towards him, pale blonde plaits flying behind them. They land in his arms in a whirlwind of satchels, knobbly knees, clutched artwork and empty lunch boxes. He arranges confusion into order, answering breathy demands and wiping runny noses. They each hold one of his hands. ‘Right, we’re off,’ he says. Then, looking around, ‘No Grace?’
I’m straining my gaze towards the infants’ entrance, searching for her dark curls, her green coat. I have a familiar sinking feeling. ‘I’d better go look. See you tomorrow.’
‘We’ll get a date for coffee soon,’ he calls over his shoulder. ‘We need a gossip.’
I find Grace just inside the entrance. She’s there with her teacher, a plump woman with oversized pink-framed glasses. Miss Fisher bends down and puts her hand on Grace’s back. ‘Sit quietly over there, Grace. I just need a quick word with …’
‘Catrin,’ I remind her.
She leans close enough that when she breathes out, I taste the leftover cheesy tang of her lunch. ‘I’m afraid Grace bit another child today,’ she says in hushed tones. ‘Luckily her teeth didn’t break the skin, but she’s left a nasty bruise.’ She glances over at Grace, sitting on a chair by the door, swinging her legs. ‘We can’t keep making excuses for her. It’s just one thing after another. We had to punish her.’
‘How?’ I ask angrily. ‘How did you punish her? She’s only six.’
‘She spent a lesson on the naughty step. Excluding children is often enough. She needs to know right from wrong.’
I stand taller. ‘She doesn’t need to be punished. She needs help. She’s just lost her mom.’ I glance at Grace to make sure she can’t hear. ‘It’s hard for her to understand what’s happened. Acting out is her way of expressing it.’
I turn my back on the teacher. ‘Hey, let’s go, doodlebug. There’s ice cream for dessert. You can put sprinkles on too.’
At home, I grill her favourite fish fingers, only burning them a bit. When she’s finished eating, I sit beside her. ‘Grace,’ I begin cautiously. ‘Why did you bite someone today? Miss Fisher told me.’
She rubs her finger into the last swirl of ketchup and licks it. She shrugs.
‘Did they upset you?’
She shrugs again, not looking at me. ‘Can I get down?’
‘You mustn’t hurt other people.’ I place my hand over hers gently. ‘Even if they make you cross.’ Her fingers are hot and sticky. ‘I know life’s difficult right now. But things will get better, sweetheart. I promise.’
She blinks, pulling away. ‘Can I get down now?’
I sigh. ‘Wipe your hands first.’ I give her a damp dishrag. Expressionless, she rubs it between her palms, then clambers off her chair and walks out of the kitchen. With a hollow feeling in my chest I listen to the thump, thump of her feet as she climbs the stairs to the next floor.
Framed photographs of Elizabeth are propped on dressers and sideboards; they hang from walls, sit on mantelpieces. Wherever I look, she’s there gazing back at me. In private moments, I’ve picked one up and held it close, as if Elizabeth might whisper words of advice. I remember her in her coffin. The woman in the pictures is animated, smiling, with her dark eyes wide open. She’d been an actress before she married Leo. She has the radiant look of a star.
I dry my soapy hands on a towel, and glance at the clock on the wall. I’ll make a start on Leo’s supper, have it ready for when he gets back from the hospital. I’m teaching myself how to make English food from cookery books stacked on the shelves next to the oven, bizarre-sounding things like shepherd’s pie and liver and bacon, recipes earmarked, stained with splashes, and scribbled on in Elizabeth’s handwriting. I try and follow the instructions, but somehow I over-salt dishes. Onions blacken in frying pans. Water boils dry. But Leo keeps a sense of humour, says if he’d wanted a cook, he would have employed one.
This is not how I imagined life in London when Sam invited me to stay. I wonder where he is now; if he’s even here, in this sprawling city. From my bedroom window, I have a glimpse of distant rooftops and tower blocks. Sam could be in one of those buildings. I could walk past his front door, and never know it.