SLEEP IS A door I can’t get through. I lie in my bed with open eyes, staring into the sepia dark of my room, at the clotted black that gathers in the corners and the delicate stippling of apricot light where the glow from the streetlamps seeps in. Questions jostle in my mind. Can I find another nursery to take her at such short notice? And even if I manage it, will the same thing happen again? Will it just go on happening? What kind of life is now unfolding before us? I go through these questions again and again. I can’t find any answers.
Around two, the traffic noise dies down and there’s a provisional quiet—the wary, uncertain silence of London nights, the silence occasionally split open by some abrupt noise from the streets, the scream of a siren, a burst of drunken singing. My body is exhausted, but my mind is utterly clear. I think of all the practical things that have now become so difficult. Like the dollhouse I was hoping to buy for Sylvie’s birthday. I was so excited about it, but now I will need to save my money for groceries and shoes. In case I can’t find her another place, in case our life caves in on us.
A distant church clock strikes three, its hollow sound clear in the quiet. I lie on my back, stare up at the ceiling. Shadows move across it as a little air tugs at my curtains, and the intricate plaster moldings are drawn in with lines of dark. I scroll through all the people I know, trying to think of someone who could tell me what to do. But there’s no one.
And then as I lie there—not knowing, despairing—a thought sidles into my mind. That there’s someone else I could go to, someone who should be helping me. I think of Dr. Strickland saying, Her father’s family? What about them? and remember the shame I felt when I said I didn’t know. I realize I am going to do the thing I vowed I’d never do. There is knowledge he has that might point me in the right direction. I have to try this, for Sylvie’s sake.
I ring him from my cell phone just after I’ve dropped Sylvie off at Little Acorns, before I drive to the flower shop. A nervousness like nausea surges through me.
It’s a woman’s voice I don’t recognize. He must have a different assistant.
“I want to speak to Dominic Runcie,” I tell her.
“And you are?”
“My name’s Grace Reynolds,” I tell her. “He’ll know who I am.”
“I’ll see if he’s available.”
There’s silence for a moment. I hear the thud of my heart.
“Just putting you through,” says the woman brightly.
I have a sense of shock. That this is so easy—that he is there, at the other end of the line.
“Grace. What a surprise.” His voice moves through me.
“Yes, isn’t it?” I say stupidly.
“You’re well and everything, are you?” he says.
“Yes, thank you. And you?” I’m very polite and careful.
“Absolutely flourishing,” he says. “Yes, really very well indeed. So, what can I do for you, Grace?”
I hear the wariness underneath his words. I know I have to reassure him.
“I wondered if we could maybe meet up. For half an hour or so. There’s something I need to talk about with you. It won’t take long, I promise.”
Dominic says nothing.
I think how when we loved each other, when we would speak on the phone, sometimes we wouldn’t talk for a while and I’d hear his breathing down the line. I always loved that, the way his breathing quickened when he wanted me. But now there’s just silence between us, like an absence.
I try again.
“Would that be possible, do you think? I’d be so grateful.”
He clears his throat. “I don’t see why not,” he tells me. “As long as we can keep it brief . . .”
“Thank you.”
Happiness floods me. That I am going to see him—be close enough to reach out my hand and touch. For a moment that cancels out everything else.
“There’s a café near the flower shop,” I tell him. “Or maybe you’d like to suggest a place.”
“No, that should do nicely,” he says. “I’ve got a space tomorrow. Half eleven tomorrow morning.”
I tell him this is perfect—that it’s really completely ideal.
All day the world seems bright to me. The shop is full of spring flowers, and their colors thrill and dazzle me—tulips of bright toy-soldier red, a basket of planted-up bluebells like a little scrap of sky. An elderly man as thin as a crane fly chooses some roses for his wife. The blooms all have to be perfect, and I think how loving this is. There’s a little thought that dances in the margins of my mind, twirling and waving and luring me on, a thought I try not to respond to. I push it away, but it goes on smiling, smelling of sherbet and waving its veils. That maybe this is all meant—that all this has happened to bring us back together again. Part of me knows this is nonsense, that I’m being overexcited, manic, and yet I can’t stop thinking it.
At the end of the day I pick up Sylvie. She has five pictures she’s drawn, all houses and all identical—a roof, a door, four windows—and each with a border of blue. She gives them to me to carry.
“She had a good day,” Beth tells me.
Of course she did, I say to myself. I tell myself it will all work out now. Dominic will solve this for me. Dominic has the key, the explanation. Everything will be different now. He always gave me the sense that he could sort everything out. At least until it all went wrong—but now I’m not thinking of that.
“You’re singing, Grace,” says Sylvie as we walk toward the car through the thickening dark that tonight has a scent of pollen and changing weather.
“Was I? I didn’t realize.”
I’d been planning all the things I have to do this evening—whether my prettiest clothes are clean, and I’ll need to straighten my hair . . .
“Why are you singing?” she asks me.
“I guess I just feel happy today,” I tell her. “People sing when they’re happy, don’t they? Like you when you hum to yourself. And sometimes you don’t know you’re doing it . . .”
“You don’t often sing, Grace,” she says.