The shop is all about rabbits, ladybirds and drifts of blankets so soft I want to bury myself in the folds. There’s barely time to be here, I know. The visit’s at four. I’ve cleaned, but nothing smells of lemons. I’m out of furniture polish and I haven’t been able to shine for days. I’m aching to shine, even for a second, so I drag my friends to Babylove to concentrate. Blake’s laughing. Shania sucks a frozen lolly like a Sex Ed teacher gone rogue. It’s October, but that doesn’t stop her. Once, I saw her buy ice cream in the snow like she was daring herself to feel all of the cold.
‘No one taught us this at school,’ Shania says, draining red colouring from the lolly. She grins, all stained mouth and white ice.
I say ssshhh, but not loud. It’s a ssshhh for me only, like the hush I get inside whenever I come here. We blurt into the store and the door makes an alarmed drone. The woman arranging sippy cups looks like she’d prefer a proper silver bell. She says, ‘Can I help you?’ like she’s breathed in a fly on her morning run. I say I’m just looking and browse like I’m loaded. Shania and Blake hit the breast pumps, howling. I pick up a blanket and can’t see them. I’m all about soft fleece, the silk wings of a bumblebee embroidered above the hem. I close my eyes to shine in on Kensay, baby fingers flicker and fade. The shine is like a torch with duff batteries, I’m all off. The girls laugh me out of the zone. Blake’s holding up a snowsuit. I picture Kensay in a chrome pram like a miniature Formula One driver and long to shine again. Blake asks if I’m alright, looking at me funny, like the time I told her about the shine, or tried to.
We were better friends between boyfriends. Me and Stan had split up, and Blake got dumped by the guy from the garage. In her bedroom, Blake dragged out her Love Book – folded card nicked from art, hole-punched spine. Each page listed the progress of love. February – first time we kissed. March – first time you called me your girlfriend. April – first time we got jealous, first time we punched a wall. May – first time you proposed.
‘Are you ever with him when you’re not there?’ I asked.
‘You mean like online?’ said Blake, playing with her eyelashes like a butterfly had landed on her fingers. I could never stick them on straight.
‘Close your eyes,’ I said, ‘and shine in on where he is now, what he’s doing.’
Blake blinked, her eyes opened that fast. She didn’t want to imagine anything, in case she imagined stuff no one needs to see. I tried to tell her to not imagine, just see. She replied, ‘You’re even crazier than me.’ And I couldn’t say anything about the shine, how even not seeing Stan, I saw him every day. Strangely, it was easier to shine for him then than now, like I just did what I had to. The social worker filled in forms. I stared at her defeated umbrella and was elsewhere. I didn’t even have to close my eyes. I saw Stan peel rubber off his trainers in his room as if he was just lying around, missing me like a full-time job. Then, I shone in on Kensay, crying at a milk bottle because it wasn’t me. It made me feel better somehow.
Blake waves a hand across my face, asking me something about snowsuits. I hold on to the bumblebee blanket.
‘You can buy me it when I have the party,’ I say. Shania yawns, she’s heard all about the party. I want it to be like an American shower, a coo of girls handing me bibs and silk booties. They’ll say Kensay is beautiful and looks nothing like me, and I’ll call them all cows, but I’ll laugh. I’ll laugh all night long when I get the baby back.
The shop owner’s pretending there’s some sort of rabbit onesie display crisis behind us, so I place the blanket back, folding over a smear of lipstick on the fleece. I didn’t know I’d held it so close. It smelled of nothing but the plastic tag.
I’m thinking nothing but lemon furniture polish outside. The house doesn’t have that lemony waft. I imagine the social worker, who’s told me a dozen times to call her Anne, sniffing something missing, my utter lack of lemons, and mentioning adoption again. One of Shania’s hands reaches into her bag and whips out a Peter Rabbit sippy cup. Blake emotes at plastic, ‘Awwww.’
‘Look, I got this for you,’ Shania grins.
I give her the death stare that has no effect but to make Blake look sad.
‘If you’re going to do that stuff, don’t drag me into it!’ I say. ‘What if I got caught? If I…’
Blake tugs her lip. Somewhere along the line of our friendship she’s become the one who’d do the feeling bad for us all. Shania’s all huffy. ‘I didn’t nick it!’ she says. ‘I bought you it last week!’ Blake goes to link her arm in mine, like she wants to remind me of when we were younger and could argue and forgive each other every day. I grab the Peter Rabbit sippy cup and walk off, already planning an I’m sorry, but text. The but is the baby, and me being fifteen when I had her, and falling out with Mum and stuff. But is a lot of stuff, but it’s not me now. I walk home past a woman with a buggy and wish I could shine in on wherever she’s going, absorb her motherliness, but I can’t shine on strangers. I’ve tried. I’ve sat in exams and closed my eyes, willing myself right there, seeing what the clever girls see. That paper, full of the right answers laid out before me.
It’s supposed to be daytime, but the moon’s out, chalking a faint idea of night onto the afternoon sky. I want to shine on Kensay, bad, but all I can see is a hundred things I must do like a sum that adds up to only one answer: fit. This afternoon, at 4pm, someone will say it about me, all mumsy cardigan and apple shampoo smell seeping out of me. The place will be immaculate. Stan and I will sit holding hands like a matching set of something: parents. I message him a reminder to come in a shirt, say I’ve got him a tie. Everything’s going to be fit.
I’m marching back as fast as I can, but I can’t step away from the look on Shania and Blake’s faces. It’s too soon to say I’m sorry. I shine in on her to see if she’s ok.
Blake and Shania are in Girls’ World considering hair extensions like Goldilocks’. There’s a bad cover of a Bryan Adams song on. The security guard is cute, in a Bruce Willis way.
Shania’s saying, ‘I know she’s our friend, but I don’t know what to say to her any more, she’s like a social worker. I’m sick of getting dragged to that snooty shop! I bet she won’t even get Kensay back, not in that dump, with that flatmate…’
‘You’re probably right,’ Blake’s saying, ‘but we can’t tell her. You know what she’s like.’
She strokes a lock of red hair like a pony, loops it on the rail.
I won’t listen. I’ll get Kensay back, and have a shower, rubber-duck napkins, cupcakes and balloons. The cows better learn to coo. I text Stan a reminder to bring his job applications as I unlock my door. My flatmate Lila’s bedroom door is closed and her coat’s not on the hook. The hall smells like a mouldering meadow and the rabbit’s out in the lounge. I’m not sure who brought it. I came home one afternoon and found Lila and some bloke watching it hop about on the carpet. I scoop the rabbit into its cage and sweep up droppings, small bags and bits of foil. I close my eyes to see Kensay again – her small hand grasps a cloth rabbit toy and I see no more. My shine’s blocked as the kitchen window, like something shattered and someone came in with chipboard, sealed off the view. I have too much to do.
‘Can’t make it, babe,’ Stan messages. ‘I forgot, I’ve got this job interview.’
I pick up the phone and shine for him while it rings. He is lying on a couch, video game in his hand, ashtray on the floor. His flatmate passes him a skinny cigarette. Stan hits mute on his phone.
‘What did you say to her?’ the flatmate is saying.
‘Interview,’ Stan inhales the word. Smoke and resignation curl in the air. ‘What’s the point going? Just for someone to say she won’t get the baby back?’
I call it my shine because I don’t have another name for it. The closest I’ve seen is that movie kid in an icy hotel. He shines and the caretaker comes. I shine, and it’s not like that at all. I can’t communicate a thing, I just see what someone else sees, listen, inhale someone else’s life for a minute. It’s not that useful; it wasn’t to my mum. She knew where I’d been, why I was late, shining on me every night like a spy. I won’t phone.
Mum is pulling a T-shirt down over her muffin-top and re-arranging the furniture, the same as last time I looked in. The living room is orange. It was purple last year. She’s dissatisfied with the placement of a chair. I see cotton flowers rolled into a corner, rolled out. There’s a stain from my grilled Mars bar on toast phase on the arm.
I shine off. Let her do the shining. Let her call. Or not. We’ve witnessed each other in so many private moments neither of us knows what to say.
Ssshhh. The polish can puffs air at dust on the coffee table. I forgot to buy more. There isn’t time now: the visit is in less than an hour and everything should smell of lemons, lemons could clinch it. It’s quiet, but for a hum in the kitchen. I open the fridge. There’s a bottle of cloudy lemonade in the door. The lid gasps. I pour lemonade onto a cloth and wipe the worktop, the sink, the TV, in the lounge. I can just about smell something like lemons, but not enough. I drench the cloth more, polish the coffee table and finally, breathing lemon, I feel I can shine. I see Kensay. Everything is so clear.
The baby is fussing in a white crib, biting her hand. Looking up, she sees penguins waddling around a mobile. The light is pale blue, arctic lit by a nightlight plugged in at the wall. The room is wide, fluffy carpeted, warm. On the shelves, on the walls, is what seems to be the whole contents of the swanky Babylove store: ladybird softies, a rabbit onesie, blankies. Kensay fusses some more. Ssshhh a woman is saying. Long fingers arrange blankets in the crib, silky bumblebees are embroidered above the hem, fleece soft as snow.
Sssshhh. The woman is picking Kensay up. Back and forth she walks, a ring on her finger like an iceberg.
‘She just wanted a cuddle,’ a man is saying. There’s a smile to it, though I can’t see it. Kensay is closing her sleepy eyes. Together, the man and woman back and forth and ssshhh.
And I can’t be there any more. I lie back on the couch, knackered, and pour lemonade into the Peter Rabbit sippy cup. I sip and sip, sliding my feet onto the sticky coffee table that smells of lemonade.