Her (15 page)

Emma comes to the top of the stairs. She’s holding the baby, Cecily, on her hip. Emma’s top is splashed with water, and her face is pink, shiny, hot-looking, as if she has been boiled. Beneath the fluster of her greeting, she is (I can see) resigning herself, quickly, to failure: she thinks I’ve come round to cancel.

Ben has neglected to ask for my coat, so I pull it off and hand it to him, moving things along, and I let him explain the situation. ‘Sophie’s not feeling very well,’ he says, ‘But Nina’s very kindly offered to step into the breach.’

Tugging off my boots, I prop them with the other shoes under the skirts of the coats and go up the stairs, advancing towards her, murmuring reassurances. ‘You need a night out,’ I say, reaching for Cecily, who in turn is reaching for me, drawn to the glitter of my long jet necklace. Emma surrenders the baby. I catch the surprise as Cecily goes to me without complaint. ‘I saw the look on your face when we talked about it at lunch,’ I say. ‘It’s important. You need a night off, every so often.’

Cecily’s fingers, busy on the string of beads. I dip my head, cooing at her while pushing the necklace into my jersey, out of sight.
Hands off.
‘Now, where is your delicious brother?’ I murmur, bearing her away.

He’s having a bath: a small, rather poky bathroom, with a window facing onto the neighbours’ side return. A whirring extractor fan and a few squares on the wall where little fingers have industriously worked away at the mosaic tiles. A bottle of formula has been placed on the counter, next to the folded pyjamas.

Christopher glances up – he’s playing with a collection of toy horses, marching them through the foam, arranging them around the edge of the tub – and I say, ‘It’s me! You remember me, don’t you? Mummy’s friend, Nina? With Henry the cat? I get to put you to bed tonight. Sophie’s not well, so I thought I’d do it. Do you want one story, Christopher? Or – as it’s a special night – what about two?’

Almost reluctantly, he tells me the name of his favourite book. Oh, I remember
Goodnight Moon
: the comb and the brush and the bowl full of mush. The same scene revisited again and again. Everything just so; exactly as it should be. The inventory of reassurance. And yet Sophie never really liked
Goodnight Moon
. She was spooked by the quiet old lady whispering ‘hush’.

‘Goodnight stars, goodnight air,’ I recite, from memory, ‘Goodnight noises everywhere.’

Behind me, Emma is hovering, smiling, uncertain. Cheerfully I dismiss her.
Leave the bottle to me, go and get ready – have a shower! A G&T!

She asks me to ensure Christopher doesn’t drink anything else tonight – he has recently dropped the night nappy – and after that she and Ben retreat to their room while I pop the baby down on the carpet and help Christopher out of the bath. For a moment or two Cecily is content to sit there unsteadily, but then she starts to grizzle, looking for her mother, threatening to build up to something, so I hurriedly help her brother into his pyjamas, biting my lip as the cotton jersey snags and wrinkles on his small damp limbs: an ancient just-remembered frustration. Now I’m under pressure to silence Cecily, to show them I can cope, so I scoop her up, lifting and then – as Christopher leads me to her room – jokingly half-dropping her, trying to distract her with excitement, needing to make her forget her tiredness and hunger and my unfamiliarity. She’s not convinced at first, but then I feel it, a fat bubble of laughter rising up inside her, and I think,
bull’s eye
.

While we sink into the chair – her soft head in the crook of my arm, her hands grasping the bottle in proprietary fashion – Christopher toils busily to and from the bathroom, collecting his horses and showing them to me, telling me their names, their favourite foods and particular talents. I can hear the tidal
whoosh
as Cecily sucks; a little muscle just below her ear pulses with every swallow. Her expression begins to glaze, her long dark lashes hover and flicker, lowering themselves onto her cheek.

‘Broken Whitey, I can see how he got that name,’ I say, tuning out of Christopher’s chatter, looking around. It’s a box room, barely big enough for its contents: a wooden cot, a chair, a white-painted chest of drawers, a changing mat on the floor. An alphabet frieze runs around the wall. A is for acrobat, B is for bear, C is for cloud.

Cecily chugs through the formula, a doughty trencherwoman, and then Ben comes and takes over for the last bit.

I’m sitting on Christopher’s bed, legs tucked up on the spaceman duvet, when Emma appears in the doorway, slightly self-conscious, her hands in her hair. Waves of gardenia gust over me as she kneels to kiss Christopher goodnight. She’s wearing a blackberry-coloured wrap dress, gaping a little at the bosom, and thick purple tights; gold eyeshadow and a bit of foundation have sharpened her up, given her definition. There’s a little splash of mascara above her left eye, but I don’t say anything apart from how nice she looks.
It’s nothing
, I mouth, waving a hand, encouraging her.
You look great! Have fun!

Behind Christopher’s chatter, I hear them going downstairs, opening cupboards, collecting coats and bags and keys, leaving the house.

When they’ve gone I make him put his horses in their stable and then I read him
Goodnight Moon
and a few A. A. Milne poems, including the one which has special significance for us both, and then I escort him for a last wee and run downstairs to fetch a creature he calls Blue Bunny and a sippy cup of milk. Just before I turn off the light, I hand this over and watch as he sinks half straightaway, enjoying the treat of milk in bed; and then I pull the duvet up over his shoulders, and I say, ‘Well, goodnight then. Sweet dreams.’

‘Where’s Mummy?’ he asks, sitting up suddenly.

‘She’s gone out to dinner with Daddy. Back when you’re asleep.’

‘She didn’t kiss me goodnight,’ he says, and I can see the horror in his eyes, the realisation that she’s not here, she has left him.

‘She certainly did, you little fibber,’ I say, lightly, pressing him back down onto his pillow. ‘I saw her do it! She came in, wearing her best dress, and kissed you goodnight.’

I watch him as he remembers this, and though it’s not much of a consolation he knows from my expression that this is as far as it’s going to get him.

‘Goodnight, Christopher,’ I say from the doorway, quite firmly.

‘Don’t close it!’ he calls. So I leave the door open a little, and from the landing his room looks wonderfully cosy, the heaps of bears and blocks and trucks, the hobby horse propped up against the chest of drawers, the golden windows of the toadstool nightlight.

I tidy up the bathroom, draping the bathmat over the radiator rail, wringing out the flannels and rinsing the toothpaste off the basin. Someone has lugged a basket of wet laundry up from the machine in the kitchen but hasn’t had time to hang it up, so I wrestle the clothes airer over the bath, pitting myself against its flimsy cantankerous gymnastics. Socks and pants and vests, the demoralised-looking bras in dishwater shades dangling there like pale bats.

Once that’s done, I peep round Christopher’s door and see he’s already asleep, an arm thrown over his head, the blue bunny under his cheek. Not a squeak from Cecily.

I stand with my hand on the doorknob of the master bedroom, waiting, though I’m not sure what I’m waiting for. Then I turn the handle and go in. As I push the door shut behind me there’s a scraping noise which alarms me, and then I realise it’s her necklaces, strung over the hook: wooden discs and perspex baubles and cheap ethnic charms, swinging and clattering against each other. I put out a hand to still them.

They’ve closed the curtains and left the bedside lamps on. The room smells pressingly of her floral perfume, and underneath that there’s the vague soupy scent of bodies and sleep. A wooden bedstead, a fringed blanket shaken across the duvet, belts and shirts and trousers slung over the foot. A Lloyd Loom chair painted duck-egg, heaped with jerseys. I pause in front of the chest of drawers, poking through her makeup bag, unscrewing the lids and clicking open the compacts, my eyes catching in her little flashing scraps of mirror. Dipping a finger in the round pots of shadow and blusher, smudging their gauzy golds and dream-coloured pinks over my wrist.

Next, I go to her side of the bed and look at the things on her bedside table, the novel she’s reading (the one everyone was reading last summer, or the summer before that), a book about raising boys. Eye serum and a tube of budget hand cream, last night’s cold mug of herbal tea, the bottom black with sediment. The drawer contains paracetamol, a herbal sleeping remedy, antidepressants. No surprises there. And then there’s a little orange jotter.

I sit down on the bed, turning the pages; and as the hand-writing engages me I lie back, nudging the dented pillows up behind my head, lifting my feet onto the blanket. The handwriting is less elegant late at night or at the crack of dawn, and in other ways too it’s a joyless sort of document, full of afterthoughts, panicked intentions and dreary ambitions.

Cecily’s jabs

Library books

Cotton buds

GP re hydrocortisone cream

Lucy’s birthday present

Cancel veg box

Ebay newborn stuff

Smear test

SHED DOOR

STAIN ON CHRISTOPHER’S CEILING

I turn a few more pages. Meal plans, ideas for Christopher’s birthday party, a list of novels she has read or plans to read. There, that’s all there is, apart from a single line:
All this buttoning and unbuttoning
.

I almost feel sorry for her now. So easy to feel sorry for someone whose life is full of such tasks and aspirations. Lying here, in her place, on her bed, my head on her pillow, it is all pitifully clear: Emma is the engine of this home, the person who propels it forwards, keeps everyone fed and clothed and healthy and happy – and yet she’s entirely alone within it, and getting lonelier with every item ticked off her checklist. This is what it comes down to: the flat-out invisible drudgery of family maintenance, the vanishing of personality as everyone else’s accrues.
You never asked for this, did you, Emma? You didn’t know it would be quite like this.

Ah, well. We all have our crosses to bear.

I swing my feet off the bed and shake out the duvet and blanket so the impression of my body is lost, and replace the jotter in the bedside drawer, underneath the blister packs of medication.

Downstairs in the kitchen, while I’m waiting for the kettle to boil, I rinse the crumbs off the plates left in the sink, and then I pull open a few cupboards, checking what’s on the shelves and in the fridge, putting away the jam and the Marmite, running a cloth over the surfaces. Whistling a cheerful tune under my breath: ‘Housewives’ Choice’, I realise.

It’s strange to be here, alone, surrounded by the sense of her: all the little things she collects, the context she has carefully assembled for herself. The tortoiseshell reading glasses on top of yesterday’s evening paper; the enamel pans in pistachio green and strawberry pink; the fridge magnets holding up the macaroni collages and the play-school newsletters (my little message is long gone. I wonder if anyone noticed it). There’s a dish of pears on the table, so I help myself to one – it’s slightly over-ripe, but I don’t fancy the ready meal they’ve left out – and peel and eat it, with a stick of decent cheddar. Looking around, taking it all in.

Wholesome mess and order, a more confident display of self than the bedroom allowed.

I rinse the juice off my fingers and carry my mug through to the sitting room, a room I haven’t been in before, placing the tea on the low table in front of the big baggy sofa, an object with pennies and crumbs and pens doubtlessly calcifying in its fissures. Its vast ugliness fills me with gloom.

Next, I draw the curtains. Better to have some privacy. Not that I’m doing anything wrong, of course; in fact, anyone glancing in from the street would see a person tidying up, setting the room to rights. Yet I’m keen not to be seen as I wander around, touching things, examining them and turning them over, lifting the lids of boxes and pulling open drawers, reading the notes and greetings cards left out on the mantelpiece, between the candlesticks and pebbles shaped like ghosts.
Lovely to see you on Sunday! Thought Christopher would enjoy this! Happy Mother’s Day!
All the here and now.

The wooden marble run is set up on the coffee table. Absently, I set a few marbles rolling.
Click, click, clickety click.
The glass balls roll down tracks and over bridges, bowling along ramps and spiralling into chutes, triggering the motion of tiny seesaws and roundabouts. One thing leading to another. It’s as restful to look at and listen to as a fountain. Idly, I collect another cold handful of marbles and start them off again.
Click, click, click.

And then I see it, the thing I didn’t know I was looking for. On the bookshelf, in a silver frame, a picture of two people. I recognise them, of course, though this picture must have been taken a few years before I knew them, a fact made obvious by her hairstyle, the cut and pattern of her tunic, the line of his collar. There they stand at the end of a long summer’s day: a little self-conscious, smiling and squinting vaguely into the sun, a trug of something – broad beans? – at their feet. A long black shadow falls over the stony track towards them: the photographer’s shadow, probably a child’s, though it’s impossible to know for sure. Lucy’s shadow, or maybe Emma’s.

Behind them, their shadows in turn fall on a wall, the rough warm stone of the barn. It’s the stone that has the effect, more than the man and the woman. Alone in Emma’s sitting room with the picture in my hand, I’m taken by surprise, overwhelmed by the hot dry scent of that summer, grass and salt and strawberry-flavoured lipgloss; the snags and twists of dirty wool dancing on the miles of barbed wire. The boredom, the long days when nothing ever seemed to happen, and then the sudden unfurling sense of possibility.

Avid now, I put the frame back where I found it and start to hunt, running a finger along the books, craning up to look on high shelves and crouching down to check low cupboards. It’ll be here somewhere, shoved behind the rolls of wrapping paper, forgotten under the Hungry Hippos box, the sewing kit and jigsaw puzzles.