Breaking and Entering (20 page)

Encouraged by her two whispered words, he enquired about the birthday cake – was there any chance she'd changed her mind and would come down after all? It would be such a shame if she didn't blow the candles out, and besides, what about the wish? She only got one wish a year, so she ought to make the most of it.

Not a flicker of response. He was probably taking the wrong line, treating her like a baby. When
he
was thirteen, he'd been precocious for his age – at least in terms of his intellectual interests – and Pippa was very similar. Ironically enough, it was largely he who had made her so. He'd introduced her to Keats and Dickens when other children were still reading picture-books; taught her French and chess; accompanied her on the piano when she played her guitar, and encouraged her to try her hand at more challenging types of music than those provided at school. Yet now he was resorting to wishes – childish magic to make things sweet and simple again, and banish the bad fairies.

He cleared his throat, tried a different tack. ‘Wouldn't you like to come down and see the dogs? You know how Arthur adores you. And there's another little terrier thing, sleeping on a blanket in my study. He's a bit raggedy round the ears, I'm afraid. Apparently he got involved in a dog-fight, and Auntie Jo rescued him …'

It was useless going on. She wasn't even listening, just staring out of the window, watching a plane plough a deepening furrow through the sky. The rain had stopped, giving way to an eerie, brooding stillness, as if time had been suspended, summer swallowed up. This morning's vivid colours were engulfed in a grey gloom; the once cloudless sky now overcast and scummy.

Suddenly he felt weary; drifted to the window and sat down at her desk. A bird flew past – a magpie – a flash of metallic blue highlighting its gleaming black and white. One for sorrow, he mused, instantly dismissing the thought with a twinge of irritation. He was for ever telling himself he wasn't superstitious, yet he had noticed in these last few weeks that he seemed increasingly susceptible to irrational ideas.

He fidgeted with the books on her desk, noticing the
Pierre Lapin
–
Peter Rabbit
in French – which he'd bought her years ago and read to her each night, alongside the English version. In only a few months, she had learned to recite it with him, stumbling over words like
parapluie
and
épouvantail
, which he patiently corrected. Perhaps he'd worked her too hard, expected too much of her too soon. Yet she appeared to enjoy the nightly ritual, and would rush up to him eagerly with the book open at page one, chanting: ‘
Flopsaut, Trotsaut, Queue-de-Coton et PIERRE!
'

That exuberant child had died, to be replaced by one who froze him off, ignored her favourite books, lost her prized possessions, rebuffed her former friends.

‘What's Emma doing today?' he asked, glancing surreptitiously over his shoulder to check on her reaction. Emma Hayes was her best friend – or had been for the past eight years. The two had met at primary school, and had soon become inseparable.

Pippa shrugged, scuffed her foot against the edge of the divan.

‘Why not invite her round tomorrow? We could save the cake till then, if you like, and have another party – just you and her and us.'

She might have been stone deaf for all the acknowledgement he received. He snatched up a pencil and started doodling on her scribble-pad. On
his
thirteenth birthday, he'd been stuck in bloody boarding school, where no one gave a toss whether he was happy or not, hungry or not, and there was more chance of a caning than a cake. Pippa's school was paradise compared with the barbarities of his. He didn't believe in private education (partly on principle and partly because of his own grim experience), so when they'd moved house, they'd deliberately picked this area on account of one particular state school. Northfield had an oustanding reputation, due largely to its head – the formidable Miss Whittaker, who had transformed a previously run-of-the-mill establishment through a combination of idealism and sheer bloody-minded obstinacy.

But perhaps he'd been misguided, after all. Penny had voiced doubts herself when they were still at the decision stage; feared Northfield was too big. They had been to see a much smaller school, but this time
he'd
objected on the grounds it was girls-only. He was well aware at an intellectual level that single-sex schools were often preferable for girls, who achieved better academic results without pressure from the boys. But emotionally he distrusted them. His own segregation amongst three hundred macho males had left him shy and callow, so that when he had finally escaped at the age of eighteen and a half, he'd blushed to the ears every time he'd been forced to meet a member of that strange species known as females. He didn't want his daughter similarly ill at ease, or emerging into adult life with an impressive string of A-levels but no basic social confidence.

The choice of school had proved quite a problem, one way and another. They had tried to keep their options open, and even considered a Church of England school with the unlikely name of St Willehad's. It was smaller again, and said to have high standards, but the thought of endorsing a religion he didn't actually believe in made him feel uneasy. It had been bad enough at Grey-stone Court – kneeling in a cold chapel every morning, begging an unresponsive God to please let the place burn down, so that he could be shipped back to his parents in Lusaka.

Now he was beginning to wonder if he had allowed his personal history to influence him unduly; whether in trying to save Pippa from what he himself had suffered, he had overlooked more subtle sorts of problems.

Dammit! He was frowning again. He ironed his forehead with his fingers as he turned to face his daughter. ‘How d'you feel about going back to school on Monday, darling? I could take you in the car, if you like, and you can always leave at lunchtime if you've had enough by then.' It was probably best to take things fairly slowly at first, give the child a chance to find her feet. On the other hand, he certainly didn't want her to miss any more of her school work, or fall seriously behind. She was no longer strictly ill. Dr Steadman had given her the all-clear, confiding to him and Penny that the sooner she got back to normal, the better she would feel. It wasn't good for adolescent girls to moon around doing nothing in particular, or cut themselves off from their friends.

He coughed, to fill the silence. Pippa's expression was so forlorn he couldn't bear to look at her. Instead, he looked around the room, trying to derive some comfort from his surroundings. This small untidy lair contained a potted history of his marriage: their wedding photo with Pippa as a scowling bridesmaid; the bear they'd bought her to keep her company when they went away on honeymoon; Penny's graduation photograph tacked up on the noticeboard beside snapshots of their holidays abroad. It also expressed the dichotomy between Pippa as a child and Pippa as a woman. Her cuddly toys were still lined up on the bed, yet there was an assortment of new make-up on the dressing-table, and a slinky black silk skirt lay crumpled on the floor.

There was another sort of conflict – between the Pippa he knew and the one her schoolfriends saw. It was
de rigueur
in her crowd to rave about pop music and be interested in boys, and she gave a convincing performance on both counts. But he was well aware of the strain involved in concealing one's true self for the sake of conformity. He had done the same at her age: avoided at all costs the stigma of being different from his peers. He found it rather strange that she was growing to resemble him in temperament – becoming highly strung, withdrawn and over-sensitive. Whatever had happened to Phil's and Penny's genes, which should have made her extrovert and bouncy? Or perhaps he had simply influenced her by a sort of slow osmosis.

He glanced at her again. She was still sitting in grim silence, one foot jigging nervously, as if his very presence frightened her. Alison had mentioned consulting a psychiatrist, but he recoiled from the idea of his daughter being turned into a ‘case'; so-called experts sinking probes into her skull, dredging up a rich haul of neuroses which would only alarm her more. Then they'd turn their microscope on
him
, no doubt; ferret out his affair, blame him for her condition. They were bound to suggest that he too needed therapy – or radical restructuring, more likely.

Suddenly, he caught her eye. She looked away, confused, and he too felt uncomfortable; made a show of studying her noticeboard. One of the faded snapshots had, in fact, attracted his attention: the three of them in Venice – Penny in a crazy hat, and Pippa in his arms. The child was smiling up at him, offering him a lick of her ice-cream; their faces almost touching. It had been so easy then to please her, in those uncomplicated days when she was still a non-stop chatterbox, and long before she'd developed breasts or started insisting on strict privacy, barricading the bathroom door if she so much as washed her hands. All he'd had to do was buy her little treats, read her bedtime stories, give her piggybacks.

He pushed his chair back, overcome by a simple longing to feel her arms looped round his neck again, her warm body on his lap. That was out of the question, but surely some small affectionate gesture wouldn't hurt? He stepped towards the bed, made a move to sit beside her, reaching out his hand.

She flinched as if he'd struck her, retreated to the far end of the bed. ‘Look, I'd rather you left me alone – okay? I've told you loads of times.' The words were quite distinct this time, and quite unequivocal. He blundered to the door, angry with himself as much as Pippa. All his good intentions of keeping his distance had been blown apart by one spontaneous move. It was impossible to win. Whatever procedure he adopted, he was met with blank rejection.

He trudged downstairs again, paused outside the sitting-room, dismayed to hear a babble of voices discussing Pippa and her problems – was she malingering, or sulking, or genuinely disturbed, and wouldn't it be wiser to take a stronger line with her and insist that she came down? It was only his presence which had stopped them prattling earlier, for the minute he walked in, the conversation died away and several of the faces looked shifty or embarrassed.

Katie broke the awkward silence by standing on the pouffe and yelling, ‘Can
I
blow Pippa's candles out? It's my birthday in July, so I'm the next birthday-girl.'

‘Well, it doesn't seem quite fair,' Penny said reluctantly, clearly opposed to the idea. ‘It's Pippa's special cake, you see, and anyway you'll only be eight, so you shouldn't really blow out thirteen candles.'

‘Oh, go on, Pen!' urged Lindsay, championing her daughter's cause. ‘Tell you what – let Beth and Katie do it together. Beth will be five in August, and eight and five make thirteen, which is just exactly right.'

‘Good thinking!' said her husband, and some of the others nodded their approval, obviously relieved to have been offered a solution.

‘Okay then, Sis?' asked Lindsay.

‘I'm still not sure. I mean, Pippa may object, or think we're trying to exclude her.'

‘But if she won't blow the candles out herself, she can hardly make a fuss if another child wants to do it for her. That's just dog in the manger, Pen.'

Daniel stood in tetchy silence as Penny gave a final grudging assent. The hostess had been overruled; the host not even consulted. Though if Lindsay had used her wiles on him instead, he would have given her short shrift. This was
Pippa's
cake, made in honour of her oldest toy – the furry frog which had accompanied her to Paris. She had always shown an interest in frogs, and now owned a whole collection: frogs in felt and porcelain, paper frogs and bronze frogs. So why should Lindsay's daughter or that spoilt-rotten little Beth oust her from her position centre-stage?

Yet the two girls were already hovering by the cake; the other children crowding round excitedly; Lindsay rushing off to fetch matches and a cake-knife, while Brian restrained an ever-frantic Arthur.

Daniel eased the knife from Lindsay's hand with as much grace as he could muster. She might have won her point, but he'd be damned if he'd allow her to usurp his role as host – or his brother-in-law Fergus, come to that. Fergus was lighting the candles, but had managed only three so far, burning his fingers in the process and dripping hot wax on the cake. Daniel took over, asking Kay to draw the curtains, to provide a more dramatic atmosphere. At least this little ritual would bring the party to a close, after which (with any luck) the guests might trickle off. So it was clearly in his interest to conduct it with some ceremony, so that everyone could leave feeling something had been salvaged from an otherwise abortive afternoon. He composed his face into a smile, moved the cake a little nearer to the children, and instructed Beth and Katie to give the biggest puff they could.

There was a spontaneous burst of applause as every small flame died, then one uncertain voice struck up ‘Happy Birthday'. Other voices gradually joined in, increasing in both confidence and volume until they reached what should have been ‘dear Pippa'. There were various permutations – ‘dear Beth', ‘dear Katie', ‘dear everyone' – though both the grandmas and Penny stuck loyally to ‘dear Pippa'. Daniel wasn't singing at all. ‘Dear Juliet,' he was thinking with a surge of hungry remorse, transforming the thirteen candles into forty-one tall gold ones: bewitching, tasteful candles, always strangely cool, despite the passionate heat of their flames. He could feel those flames scorching his bare body, shrivelling his marriage vows, his more recent vow to stay away from fire.

He drew in his breath as deeply and emphatically as he had directed the two girls to do, then snuffed out all forty-one candles, in a single violent blast.

Daniel sat at the desk in his study, eyeing his last Polo. He was uncomfortably aware that there was something faintly comical about a rational and intelligent man being mesmerized by a peppermint. He was wasting vital energies on the life-and-death decision as to whether to consume it now, or save it for the night. It was too late to venture out to the shops and buy a whole crate of mints, plus a ton or so of chewing-gum. The shops were shut, their owners fast asleep. He envied them their beds; would be lying in his own if only Kay and Fergus and Alison weren't still nattering in the kitchen with an apparently tireless Penny. Fergus had left hours ago, in fact – driven Jo home with the baby and the dog, but he'd breezed in again at ten o'clock to take Kay back to Lewisham. Penny had offered him a coffee and a snack, and they had evidently embarked on a second, smaller party, before the debris of the first was cleared away.