30

IT’S OUR FIRST Monday at home together—the start of our new way of life.

“What are we doing today?” says Sylvie.

I glance around our living room. It all looks rather blurred and dusty in the washed spring light.

“I’m going to clean up the flat, and then we can do something nice,” I tell her.

“Are you going to play with me?”

“Yes. Once I’ve done the tidying up. We could have a picnic for all your Barbies and Big Ted. Would you like that?”

She’s pleased.

“Yes, Grace.”

I kneel down and hug her. Her silk hair brushes my face. She hugs me back with a little smile.

I tell myself I will make this work. I will give her my total attention, and maybe she’ll be a bit more at peace now that she’s home with me all day. Maybe her troubles were all just stress, and now she will be happier. I can make this work, I know I can.

I clean the room assiduously. The spiders have been busy—the cornices are lacy with webs. I sweep away the cobwebs and I dust and vacuum everywhere while Sylvie plays with her dollhouse, rearranging the furniture, walking the little doll figures through the rooms with the polka-dot walls.

When I’ve finished, I stand back, admiring my work. There’s a scent of polish and everything gleams and the edges of things are exact again. I put Lavinia’s lilies in the middle of the table. The buds are opening out now—you can see the rust-colored pollen in the throats of the flowers, and the small, pale hairs like animal hairs. The shiny room lifts my spirits. I open the window a little. There’s a fresh spring wind from the garden that smells of roots and green things, and the hems of my calico curtains wave and beckon like hands.

“There, that’s better, isn’t it?” I’m speaking half to myself. “Our room looks really lovely now.”

Sylvie glances up. For a moment she doesn’t say anything. Her cool gaze flicks around the room.

“I had a house before,” she says. “When I had my family. It was nicer than this house, Grace.”

Anger surges through me. My mouth is choked with ugly words that I want to shout and scream at her: I struggle so hard to build a decent life for the two of us, but whatever I do you just push it all back in my face . . . I clench my teeth.

I kneel, grab her shoulders.

“Sylvie, just stop this, okay? Stop all this nonsense. This is your house. This is where you belong. This is your family—just you and me together. You have to know that—you have to accept that. This is all there is, Sylvie, this life we have together here.”

She goes quite still. My face is very close to hers. She has her eyes tight shut so she can’t see.

“You’re hurting,” she tells me.

I pull away from her, make myself breathe. I see my hands are trembling.

The long day stretches before me, and I don’t know how to get through—not feeling like this, with this ugly anger burning away inside me. I tell myself that we have to get out of the flat, that outside in the wind and the freshness I’ll start to feel normal again. Even if we just walk down to Kwik Save.

“Sweetheart, we’ll go to the shop. We’ll need some chocolate fingers for our picnic.”

She goes obediently to find her coat and her shoes.

Kwik Save is almost empty, and the customers are different from the people I usually see, on Friday nights when it’s crowded and everyone’s rushing and full of purpose. I pass an old man with a thin, frail look, as though the slightest knock would make him fall, and an elderly lady who has a faint scent of mothballs; she has three meals-for-one in her basket, and I wonder if coming to Kwik Save is the highlight of her day. One of the women I sometimes see soliciting on the corner is buying Pampers and baby milk. She’s wearing a baggy tracksuit, and her face is creased and drawn. All these sad, tired people, swept to the margins of their lives. Like me, I think, and hate the thought.

There’s a mother and a little boy. I notice them at once—there’s something odd about them. The mother has scraped-back hair and a vigilant, fierce expression and deep frown lines on her forehead. I think she probably looks much older than her years. The boy is a little younger than Sylvie. He has a still, rather beautiful face, and his movements are random and wild. As I watch, he flutters his hand in a strange way, close in front of his eyes, and I realize he is autistic. I tell myself I am lucky. My difficulties count for so little compared to the problems this woman endures.

They’re in the biscuit aisle now, where I’m looking for chocolate fingers. With a movement that comes from nowhere, the boy throws out his arm and sweeps it through the biscuits. Dozens of tins and packets spill all over the floor. The mother swears. She snatches him up and dumps him in the baby seat on the shopping cart and straps him in, though he’s really too big for the seat. He fights against the straps. Sylvie watches with fascination.

The woman starts to put the biscuits back. I go to help her.

“Really, you mustn’t,” she says.

“That’s okay,” I tell her. “I know what it’s like . . .”

A strand of dull hair falls over her face. She pushes it wearily out of her eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have to do this.”

She must spend her whole life saying sorry like this and clearing up the chaos left in the wake of her child.

“It’s no big deal,” I tell her. “Really.”

We pile the biscuits up on the shelf. The boy is starting to cry, with a shrill, high sound like a piping bird’s that doesn’t sound like a human cry. The woman breaks out a can of Coke from the multi-pack in her cart, and hands it to him. He drinks, the crying stops. A dribble of Coke seeps down his chin, and he doesn’t wipe it away. Sylvie steps closer, eyes wide, mouth a little pursed. She has a rather self-righteous look.

They’re nearly out of chocolate fingers. I reach to the back of the shelf. There’s a choice of milk or plain chocolate, and I turn to ask Sylvie which flavor she’d like. I see—too late—that the boy is waving the drink can wildly, almost like it’s a rattle, like he doesn’t know what it’s for. An arc of brown liquid spurts up from the can.

I put out a hand to grab Sylvie. It all seems to happen so slowly, but I can’t reach her, can’t get there. Brown liquid splashes over her face. She’s still for a moment, rigid, her face white, set, a white mask.

“Sweetheart, everything’s okay, it’s just a drop of Coke. Sylvie . . .”

Her screams drown out my voice.

I hold her, but she fights me, hitting my chest with her fists. It hurts. There’s such ferocity in her. Around me, the whole place goes silent, everyone turning, listening. There’s nothing in the world but Sylvie’s screams.

The manager comes, a young, gangly man with pitted skin and an appalled look.

“Madam, is everything all right?” he asks me.

“No, not really. Look, we’ll just go,” I tell him.

I leave my basket of shopping, pull Sylvie down the aisle and out onto the pavement. The manager watches us helplessly; everyone is watching us. My body feels thin, brittle, as though I could easily break. Sylvie goes on screaming.

I drag her through the door of the flat and into the living room.

I’m shouting at her.

“Sylvie, stop it, stop it.” My voice is high, harsh. I know this is pointless, but I can’t help it.

She screams louder.

I want to scream back at her. I feel such rage that I can’t get through, can’t reach her, that she behaves as though I don’t exist. I have to make her notice me. The rage surges through me, blinds me. I hit her hard, in the face. My hand makes a loud sound.

At once she stops screaming. It’s like the sound is torn off. The skin is red where I hit her. She puts her hand to the sore place. She turns to me, her pupils like pinpricks. I see such hate in her face. She opens her mouth and screams again.

I go into the kitchen and slam the door behind me.

I sit at the kitchen table. I rub my hand across my face, and my hand is wet and I realize I am weeping. All the rage has left me. I feel weak, tired, bitterly ashamed. I can hear the sound in my head of my hand on her face, and it horrifies me. There are words in my head, over and over. I can’t do this, I can’t, I can’t do it . . . The words go around inside me. I can’t do this . . . I let myself cry for a long time.

Eventually I wipe my face on my sleeve. I feel light-headed, detached now, drained of feeling. I just sit for a while at my table, staring out the window, which looks out over the alley and across to the next block of flats. There are Dumpsters, and a telephone wire that stretches across the alley, and a sliver of sky with white clouds scudding across it. A bird has landed on the wire, a ragged sparrow that clings on tight as the wire swings about in the wind. I watch the bird for a moment. It’s so tiny, fragile, all knocked about, buffeted by the gusts of wind, and I feel a little afraid for it, afraid the wind will blow it off, as though just for a moment I’m forgetting it can fly.

In the living room behind me, Sylvie is still screaming. I open the drawer of the dresser and take out Adam Winters’s card.

He answers at once.

“Adam Winters.” His brisk work voice.

“Adam. It’s Grace. You know, Grace Reynolds.”

“Grace.” He sounds surprised. “How are you? How’s it all going?” I take a deep breath.

“Not good, really. Sylvie’s left nursery now. And today she’s just screaming and screaming . . .”

“I rather gathered that.” The way he says it, dryly, makes me feel that perhaps this isn’t the end of the world, a child crying.

“I’ve changed my mind,” I tell him. “I want to make an appointment. I want to see you again.”

“Okay.” He sounds pleased. “Where are you? Are you at home?”

“Yes.”

“I could come round now. Would that suit you?”

“You mean here? To my place?”

“Yes. It’s no problem,” he says.

It’s suddenly all moving so fast. But I have made my decision.

“Okay,” I tell him.

“It’s Highfields, isn’t it? Give me half an hour.”

I go back into the living room. Sylvie is still crying, but more quietly. I kneel beside her and hold her. Her body feels loose and floppy now. In spite of all the crying, her skin is cold to the touch.

“I’m sorry I hit you,” I say. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

She doesn’t say anything.

I rock her gently and stroke her back and feel her breathing slow.

“You feel so cold,” I tell her.

I carry her into the bedroom and tuck her up in bed and give her Big Ted and a picture book that has her favorite rhymes—“Little Bo Peep,” and “Hey Diddle Diddle,” and “Mother, may I go out to swim? Yes, my darling daughter . . .”

“You can stay here till you feel better,” I say. “You can just stay in bed for a bit and look at some books.”

She opens the book mechanically, scarcely glancing at it.

The picture of Coldharbour is stuck to the side of her wardrobe. It has a ragged look where she takes it down to slip it under her pillow. It’s hanging crookedly, and the corners are torn. I get more Blu-Tack and stick it up straight. She watches me; her eyes are shadowed and vast.

“I’ll bring you some milk,” I tell her.

“I’m hungry,” she says.

“Okay. I’ll bring you a biscuit too.”

I stare at the picture for a moment—the bright sea, the fishing boats. It could be the other side of the world, a place unguessably far.