MAISIE LOVES JEMIMA’S little cottage. There’s a tiny room at the top of the house where Maisie sleeps when Mummy is on a night or weekend shift at the hospital and Granny is away. It’s her own special place; nobody else sleeps in the small camp bed and a few special toys are always kept there. There’s another bedroom next to Jemima’s where Maisie can be if she wants to, but she likes to be in the little loft room. Granny’s house is nice, and it has a garden with a swing and a slide and a trampoline, but Jemima’s cottage is very nearly on the beach. She loves being with Jemima in the car and going for walks with Otto – and Jemima doesn’t get cross when Maisie talks about her father.
All the time, now, she’s looking for him. Ever since Mummy told her about how he left them, she’s been watching: it could be the man at the check-out, or someone in the farm shop, or at the garage.
‘No,’ Mummy says. ‘No, it doesn’t work like that. I’d recognize him. He’d recognize me. You’ve got to stop this, Maisie.’
But Maisie can’t stop. It’s nearly six years since he left them and he might have changed. Mummy’s changed. Her hair is shorter and darker then it is in the photographs taken when Maisie was a baby. And she’s much thinner. He might not know her straight away, and so Maisie has to keep watching.
She doesn’t look at fathers with children – if her father didn’t want her then he wouldn’t want anyone else – and she knows she mustn’t talk to strangers or wander off alone, but she can’t stop herself watching. She’s stopped asking Mummy about him because she gets a funny look on her face: part of it as if she is angry and part of it is like she might cry.
Sometimes Mummy makes friends with men who don’t live with their families: they live on their own. When one of these men comes round to the flat Mummy is different. She’s like a person that Maisie doesn’t know, which can be a bit frightening. She gets a bit giggly, and talks very quickly, like she’s a little girl. She hugs Maisie: her cheeks get very pink and she fiddles with her hair whilst looking at this other man. Then Maisie gets uncomfortable and pulls away and then Mummy gets cross and the man looks uncomfortable, too. It’s much better when these other men aren’t there.
Maisie climbs carefully down the little wooden staircase to the landing where Jemima is waiting for her.
‘All settled in?’ Jemima asks. ‘Unpacked?’
Maisie nods. She likes it that Jemima doesn’t fuss. She feels comfortable and happy with Jemima like she used to feel with Mummy. Now, though, Mummy seems to be a bit upset when Maisie wants to be with her friends or go to clubs after school, and then she feels sad because Mummy is on her own. If her father were to come back then Mummy needn’t be alone, but she got upset when Maisie said that so now she has to be very careful. It’s good to be with Jemima and not to have to think about what she’s saying all the time.
‘So,’ Jemima says. ‘Otto needs a walk before supper. Are you OK with that?’
Maisie nods happily, she’s very OK with that, and they go downstairs together. Maisie thinks the cottage is like a doll’s house. The sitting room is upstairs and really small, and the kitchen has a glass room leading off it that is called a conservatory. This is Jemima’s favourite room: she can see the ley from the windows and she can watch the ducks and the swans. All along the windowsills are painted pots with flowers in them.
‘This is my garden,’ Jemima tells people. ‘Good, isn’t it?’
And Maisie thinks it’s really good. And so does Otto. He has a basket under one of the windows and he stretches out in it with his paws hanging over the edge. He’s waiting for them now; he looks excited like that, with his ears pricked up and his tongue hanging out and his tail wagging. Jemima puts his lead on and gives Maisie a blue cotton bag, in case she finds a precious stone or some pretty glass, and they all go out through the little yard.
Maisie carefully closes the gate behind them and they turn down the narrow passage between the houses to the beach. She loves this beach, which stretches so far she can’t see the end of it. It’s not sand, though; she can’t build sandcastles but she doesn’t want to do that anyway. She likes to see what the tide has washed up: strange smooth lumps of coloured glass, oddly marked pebbles, pieces of wood bleached white as bones. She collects these things and makes patterns in Jemima’s yard or on the windowsill beside the flowerpots. Their own flat doesn’t have a garden, and her collection grew too big for her bedroom, so now she leaves some of them with Jemima and takes some to Granny, who has given her a special box for the best pieces.
Otto is running towards the sea, his tail going round and round in circles, his galloping paws sending up showers of shingle, which makes her laugh. She turns to look up at Jemima, who is laughing too, and Maisie seizes her hand and they run together after him over the shingle down to the sea.
When Maisie starts to hunt for treasure, Jemima strolls behind her keeping one eye on Otto, who is splashing at the water’s edge. Most of the families have packed up and gone back to their hotels or B & Bs or camp sites.
It’s been a hot day and a sea mist is rising. The distant headland, humped and grey as an elephant, is vanishing as the mist rolls inland; soft and gentle as a muslin curtain, it sweeps across the sea, across the patchwork of cliff-top fields and small white cottages. The sea birds rise up from the smooth pearly surface of the water, breasting the air-waves, turning towards the shore.
Jemima watches Maisie searching for treasure. Once she found a pound coin and they eventually decided, after serious discussion, that since the owner couldn’t possibly be traced it could go into the ice-cream fund. At nearly six, Maisie can be expected to make her bed tidy, dress herself, lay the table, and if she is good and quick then fifty pence or maybe a pound goes into the ice-cream fund. Jemima knows that Miranda only slightly approves but this is because she has to fight a little against the idea of anyone having any kind of control over Maisie other than herself. She is grateful that Jemima steps in when a childcare crisis occurs but, at the same time, she is very slightly jealous of the easy companionship between them.
The small figure in flowered boots and pink shorts and T-shirt crouches to examine something amongst the shingle. Otto joins her, curious and friendly, swiping her cheek with his tongue. She shrieks in protest, throws a pebble for him, and he goes pounding away after it. Maisie stands up, looks around for Jemima and waves excitedly.
‘Look what I’ve found,’ she cries. ‘Come and see, Jemima.’
It is a quartz stone, glittering with tiny specks of silver; it looks magical.
‘Is it treasure?’ asks Maisie, her voice hushed with awe. ‘Is it a magic stone?’
How to answer? The real treasure, the true magic, is being here with this child and the dog on the long empty beach, listening to the hush of the waves along the shore and the cries of the sea birds. She looks into the child’s face and sees the longing and the wonder – and her heart is touched.
‘It’s a very special stone,’ she answers. ‘Let’s put it into the bag. Oh, and here’s Otto with his pebble. Good boy!’
He lays the big pebble very carefully at Maisie’s feet and backs away a little, watching it anxiously, glancing up hopefully at her. To Jemima’s relief Maisie begins to laugh. She puts her stone into the bag and then picks up Otto’s pebble and hurls it as far as she can. He’s off like a rocket and Maisie runs after him, splashing down into the shallows, calling to Otto, her voice as high and piercing as the shrieks of the gulls wheeling above her head.
Following them, Jemima tries to imagine how she would feel if Maisie were her own child; if she had the responsibility of this small, vivid person. She’s always feared this kind of commitment: the weight of another person’s happiness, and the expectation.
‘I’m too selfish,’ she said to Miranda once. ‘I’ve been in love. I know what it’s like but it never quite gels. Anyway, I like my life the way it is.’
‘But don’t you get lonely?’ Miranda asked. ‘I couldn’t begin to imagine my life without Maisie.’
‘Nothing’s perfect,’ Jemima answered. ‘And one day Maisie will grow up and leave home. What then?’
‘Don’t,’ said Miranda, shaking her head. ‘I can’t think about that. We’ll always be close. Nothing can change that.’
But Jemima can see other things at work here. Young though Maisie is, Jemima can see her beginning to grow beyond this tight, protective trinity of child, mother and granny. She’s a social, grounded child who reaches out for friends and new challenges, embraces change. Maisie feels stifled by all this care and control whilst Miranda is dismayed at the speed with which her daughter is ready to experiment, to leave her behind.
‘It’s good,’ Jemima says encouragingly. ‘Fantastic. Imagine how awful if she were a lonely, no-mates, insecure little girl. You’ve done a great job with her. And it gives you some time for yourself. That’s good, too, isn’t it?’
But Miranda seems to have lost the trick of how to be on her own, or with friends – unless, like Jemima, they are unattached.
Jemima can’t help thinking that the recently proposed visit to Australia at Christmas, to connect again with their family, would be very beneficial for both Miranda and Maisie.
Maisie and Otto are racing back towards her. Maisie jumps and twirls and points behind her up towards the road. Jemima can see the source of all the excitement. The ice-cream van is still there in the car park. Jemima fishes in the pocket of her jeans – she keeps a five-pound note available on these walks for just such an emergency – and waves it in the air.
‘Yay!’ shouts Maisie. ‘Cool!’ She puts her arms around Otto’s neck and hugs him. ‘Ice cream, Otto.’
‘As long as you eat all your supper,’ says Jemima sternly. ‘No fussing. Promise? OK, then. Come on.’