The Last Day I Saw Her

by Lucy Lawrie

  He thinks I’ve been getting migraines, and says you can get visual disturbances with that, which might well explain why our faces disappeared that day in biology! I asked if migraines could cause you to think you were seeing things that weren’t there, like maybe someone falling down the stairs. He just looked at me for a long time and said, ‘The brain is the most complex of organs. We only understand a tiny fraction of how it works.’ Then he asked me loads of other questions, then called Mum in again. He’s prescribed some tablets for me to take, which we had to fetch from Boots on the way home. I asked Mum if they were for the migraines, because I thought he’d just said to take aspirin for that, and she muttered something about ‘getting back on an even keel’.

  I’m not going to take them. They’re stuffed in the side pocket of my wash bag in with my dental floss and cotton buds.

  How are you, my dearest friend? How’s the piano coming along? Watch out for the METRONOME!!

  All my love,

  Hattie xxx

  37

  Janey

  It was starting to look questionable whether we’d make the meeting, even though we’d been up since six. One measly 9 a.m. meeting with the lawyers and everything was falling apart. How did people – mothers – manage to get to work every day, wearing ironed shirts and clean suits, having deposited their properly dressed, clean and fed children at nursery? I thought of the job applications I’d posted the day before and despaired.

  ‘Come on, Pippy. We must get you to nursery. Can I have my tights, please?’ My coaxing voice was starting to wear thin.

  Pip was jumping around in the middle of my bed, in the middle of a pile of clothes strewn across it. He’d taken my tights and pulled them on like a hat, so that the legs trailed down on either side of his ears, swishing slowly as he bounced.

  I was wearing a dark-grey dress with a short black cardigan, the fifth outfit I’d tried on. My face was grey too. I’d hardly slept. I knew it was only a meeting with the solicitors but my stomach – or whatever part of my body produced adrenaline – seemed to be under the impression that I was facing a firing squad. The adrenal glands were somewhere near the kidneys, weren’t they? I had a sudden image of one of Mrs White’s photocopied worksheets, and then of the letters Hattie had given me, sheets covered with her tight little words. I’d fallen asleep reading them last night, and dreamed strange dreams about Ramplings, its turreted halls listing and sinking into an effervescent sea of Coke.

  ‘I need my tights, Pippy,’ I said, holding out my hand.

  ‘More dam samwich,’ said Pip. ‘Dat one squashy.’ He pointed to his jam sandwich, which was squashed onto the cream carpet by the bed. It would just have to stay there until I got back later.

  ‘I’m sorry, darling, we have to go. You’ll get a snack at nursery.’ Pulling on the tights, I thought guiltily of the likely offering: cucumber sticks and raisins probably, served on dishwasher-faded blue and green plastic plates at ten o’clock. But I just didn’t have time to make any more jam sandwiches, because it was after half past eight already.

  ‘My tummy hungry,’ Pip said as I buckled him into his car seat. His voice wasn’t challenging me, he just sounded very tired. Tears pricked the back of my eyes. What kind of mother couldn’t even feed her child breakfast?

  ‘I’ll speak to Mrs Paxton. Maybe they can make you a dam sandwich, hmm? I’ll try, baby.’

  But when we reached the nursery, Mrs Paxton took a hard line. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Johnston, we can’t make special snacks for the children unless there are specific dietary requirements. It’s not a constructive use of the staff’s time, and it sends the wrong message to the children.’

  ‘But he hasn’t had anything to eat.’

  ‘Miss Johnston, I find that children will always eat if they’re hungry enough. You’ll have some lovely hummus and carrot sticks at snack time, won’t you, Pip?’ I fought down the urge to slap Mrs Paxton, but Pip just looked at her doubtfully and scratched his head with both hands.

  Mrs Paxton frowned and peered at Pip’s head, lifting the hair at his parting.

  ‘Hmm. It seems we have an infestation, Miss Johnston.’

  I looked closer. Two tiny creatures – they looked like tiny brown flies – were crawling around at the back of Pip’s parting.

  ‘Pip can come back to nursery tomorrow, once this has been fully treated.’

  ‘But he must have got them here in the first place,’ I said. ‘Please, Mrs Paxton. I have a meeting with the solicitors.’

  Visions filled my mind. Pip, gone every weekend from Friday to Sunday. Pip, being forced to do orienteering in a cold forest every Saturday morning instead of lying on the sofa in his pyjamas, watching Thomas the Tank Engine with me.

  Some judge deciding that Pip shouldn’t live with me at all.

  The nursery hallway seemed unfamiliar suddenly. Like somewhere in a dream. The skin around my lips began to tingle.

  ‘Miss Johnston?’

  My eyes shot to the clock on the wall: 8.45.

  I grabbed Pip and went back to the car, which had a parking ticket slapped onto the windscreen. How was it possible? I’d been gone two minutes at the most.

  And I couldn’t strap Pip back into his car seat – my hands wouldn’t work properly. The harder I tried, the more clumsy and dead they became. I began to wonder whether I was awake at all, or just having a nightmare, one of those ones where something bad is coming and you can’t run.

  How long would it take to get there from here? I knew where McKeith’s was, and I could picture the three New Town townhouses, knocked together and converted into offices. But how to get there? Somehow I couldn’t bring to mind the streets that would take me there, streets I’d known like the back of my hand for all of my life. I looked past the nursery to the cars queuing at the traffic lights at the end of the road, and tried to remember which turning I’d take. It was left, wasn’t it? But beyond that the streets simply dissolved into a grey blur in my mind.

  Get a grip, Janey. Breathe.

  I should call them and tell them I’d be late. I got my phone out, tried to find the solicitor’s number, swiping at the screen with numb fingers.

  The phone chirped and a text from Steve flashed up: ‘All okay for the meeting? Best of luck. xxx’

  I leaned back against the car for a moment and covered my eyes with my hand.

  He’d been thinking about me, right at that moment. I hadn’t been as alone as I’d thought. It almost undid me.

  I pressed the telephone icon at the top of the message and exhaled slowly.

  ‘Janey?’

  ‘Pip has lice. I’m at the nursery and they won’t take him.’ And then, the words I’d never been able to say to anybody before: ‘I’m panicking.’

  ‘Don’t drive. I’m on my way.’

  *

  And so it was that we ended up in the meeting room at McKeith’s: Murray, Gretel and their solicitor; me, my solicitor, Pip (who refused to leave my side), Steve (who’d come armed with brown paper bags, and refused to leave my side either) and an unknown number of head lice.

  I’d got my breath back now, and the feeling in my hands. But itches had sprung up all over my body. Putting my head to one side, elbow on the table, I moved my fingers – casually, I hoped – through my hair.

  It was the first time I’d met my solicitor. ‘Pauline Gaunt’ had seemed such a mature, responsible name, appearing at the top of her emails, but she seemed to be about eighteen.

  ‘Don’t underestimate Gretel,’ I warned in low tones.

  ‘Oh, Gretel’s fine. She talks the big talk. But she’s really, like, on it, you know?’

  ‘What? You know her?’

  ‘I worked for her when I did my seat in litigation here at McKeith’s.’

  ‘In your traineeship? When was this?’

  ‘Oh, last summer.’

  ‘So you’ve just started family law, then.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, no, because I did a six-month stint during my traineeship.’ />
  Murray’s solicitor came in. She looked about twelve, with long, swingy hair.

  ‘Hey,’ she said when she saw Pauline.

  ‘Hey, Holly,’ said Pauline, and then added, sotto voce, ‘Sorry I forgot to reply to your text, by the way. Did you see my cake on Instagram?’

  ‘Mamma,’ said Pip, pulling my sleeve. ‘Where my pens?’ I rummaged in my bag to try and find the colouring pens that were always loitering at the bottom. I produced a green one and a black one, and asked Pauline if she could donate a sheet from her notepad.

  ‘So,’ said Gretel. ‘We want to put the contact arrangements in a formal document. But first, perhaps you could make some coffee?’

  My head jerked up. She wanted me to make coffee now? But no, she was looking at Holly.

  I found myself relaxing as Holly poured the coffee, and passed round some Danish pastries. Maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as I thought.

  Steve refused a Danish pastry but took an apricot, which looked like it was only there on the platter for ornamental purposes. He placed it in front of him on the desk and sat there looking awkward, with crossed arms and rounded shoulders. Gretel looked across at him, wrinkling her nose.

  ‘So, basically,’ Holly began, glancing at Gretel, ‘we’d like these key terms to be set down in the agreement. Pip would stay with Murray and Gretel from Friday lunchtime to Sunday afternoon, three weekends out of four.’

  Steve placed a steadying hand on my knee.

  ‘No!’ I said, in a small voice that sounded like a mouse. ‘I’ve already said that’s too much. I’ll agree to one night per week, or two nights every fortnight. Any more than that and he’ll be completely disorientated. He’s only two. I’m his mother. He barely knows Gretel.’

  Gretel sat back in her chair, looking sad for just a split second before she shrugged, with exaggeratedly wide eyes, as though to say, ‘My point exactly.’

  She would never know how it felt to be Pip’s mother; anybody’s mother. Maybe that’s what I’d seen in her face, in that instant before she corrected her expression.

  Holly frowned. ‘Weeelll . . .’

  ‘Dend!’ shouted Pip, his limbs shooting out, rigid with excitement as though he’d been electrified. He was pointing to an empty chair to the left of Gretel.

  I groaned inwardly. This was all we needed. A visitation from Dend.

  Pip carefully took one sheet of the paper, and the brown pen, and placed them in front of Dend. Gretel smiled, clearly thinking they were for her, and reached out a manicured hand to pat Pip’s head, but he darted away.

  ‘I shared wiv Dend,’ he pointed out to me, with an angelic expression, then reached up and scratched his head vigorously.

  The imagined itches seemed to multiply over my body as Gretel held a whispered consultation with Holly, and I soon found I was fighting a terrible urge to scratch my crotch area.

  With horror, I remembered Pip jumping on my bed with my tights over his head.

  ‘You okay?’ said Steve, his eyes concerned behind the black-framed glasses. ‘You’ve gone a bit flushed.’

  The door swung open and in came a man, of imposing build and with greying dark hair.

  ‘Ah! Donald,’ said Gretel, and she and Murray both stood up to shake his hand.

  Oh no, not Donald Finlayson. He was a bit of a celebrity in the legal world. He had a regular slot on a morning TV show, giving advice to housewives who wanted to divorce their cheating husbands, or to tearful estranged fathers engaged in custody battles. He’d written the definitive textbook on Scottish family law. I knew, because I’d proofread it.

  ‘Mine’s a white with one, please Holly,’ he said as he sat down. ‘Now, Ms Johnston, three weekends out of four is our key stipulation, as I think you already know. There’s also a week’s holiday over the Christmas period, ten days at Easter and, er, a five-week block in the summer. And your undertaking not to take Pip out of Edinburgh without Murray’s express agreement.’

  ‘Outside Edinburgh? That seems very . . .’ I shook my head uselessly. What was the word? ‘Very ridiculous.’

  I glanced at Steve, who raised his eyebrows and nodded.

  ‘What if we want to go to Almond Valley Farm?’

  Pip jumped up like a rocket. ‘We going to farm?’ He started bouncing. ‘Now! Now!’

  ‘Not now, baby,’ I murmured.

  ‘Dend come too?’ He was pointing in the direction of my stomach.

  I looked down. ‘What?’

  ‘Dend sitting on Mamma’s knee. Silly Mamma.’

  I shivered. So I was not only crawling with lice in unmentionable places, but had a ghost sitting on my knee.

  Pip helpfully moved the pen and papers in front of me.

  ‘That’s a nice picture, Pip,’ I said. It was a green swirly blob, which I recognised as a snot monster, one of his regular subjects. ‘Is it Gretel?’

  He tore it off the pad and scrunched it up into a ball.

  Meanwhile, Pauline piped up. ‘We won’t agree to the “not going outside Edinburgh” thing.’

  Gretel shrugged. ‘We could extend the boundary to include Almond Valley Farm, and other attractions such as the Wallace Monument or the Falkirk Wheel.’

  The itch in my crotch had become almost unbearable now. I remembered a magnified picture of a head louse I’d seen once on the internet, and suddenly thought I might be sick.

  ‘Seems fair enough,’ said Murray, leaning back in his chair. ‘I think we can be pretty relaxed about the geographical restrictions.’ Donald frowned; this wasn’t Murray’s usual hardball mode of negotiation at all. ‘I mean, if we’re doing five weeks in Barbados over the summer . . .’

  ‘Hang on, Barbados?’ I said. ‘I thought you wanted to take him to Aviemore?’

  ‘We can’t,’ said Gretel. ‘Our holiday cottage was cancelled.’

  I shook my head in bewilderment. Had they run out of holiday cottages in Aviemore? Was the next nearest one in Barbados?

  ‘It was Annabel Masters’ stepfather’s holiday let, but then his niece, who was supposed to be backpacking in Thailand this summer, said she couldn’t go because her boyfriend got a record deal . . . EMI I think it was. He’s sort of a folksy-rocksy style but with a deep country twist, you know . . .’

  And she was off on one of her monologues.

  My phone vibrated in my pocket. It was a text from Hattie: ‘How’s the meeting? Hope you’re giving them hell!’

  ‘Gretel,’ I said, as she was launching into a comparison of the best five-star hotels in Barbados. ‘Please stop. Pip is not going.’

  Donald looked over the top of his spectacles. ‘There’s no need to get excitable, Miss Johnston.’

  My left hand moved across the table to Pip’s scrumpled-up drawing.

  No, please not now.

  I watched in horror as my thumb and first two fingers formed an ominous circle, flexed against each other and . . . ping.

  The crumpled ball shot right across the table, landing in Donald’s coffee, splattering his white shirt.

  I gasped. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Gretel gave a slow tut and a sigh. Murray put his hands over his face.

  Donald pressed his lips together as though he was trying to suppress a sound, which escaped, like a hiss from a pressurised valve, as something like ‘Fffffff . . .’ Then he said, ‘Holly, please phone Nadine and get one of my shirts biked over.’

  Holly went off with a swish of her perfect hair.

  Gretel, lounging back in her chair, said, ‘Right, can we get this wrapped up? Janey, are you agreeable to the terms or not?’

  Never had I wanted to leave a room so badly. My heart was thudding, and I was watching my left hand with no idea what it might do next.

  Think, Janey.

  If I agreed to three weekends out of four that at least would get Murray and Gretel off my back, and keep them friendly. But it wasn’t right for Pip to spend all that time away from me, and with someone who had all the maternal instinct of a poison dart frog. A
nd what about when Pip started school and I got a job through the week? I would hardly see him at all. And five weeks in Barbados, baking under a hot sun. Murray knew that Pip’s eyes got itchy in the heat, and he got headaches that made him clammy and sick.

  ‘I’m sorry. I just can’t agree. Not to any of it.’

  ‘Right’, said Donald. ‘Well, we seem to have reached an impasse then.’

  I heard Murray whisper to Gretel. ‘Maybe we could start with alternative weekends and see how it goes?’

  ‘No, Murray,’ said Gretel in a normal voice. ‘This agreement sets the benchmark. What’s the point of buying that blurdy house if we’re not going to use it for family time? This is what you wanted.’

  Murray laid his hands flat on the table. ‘Shall we reconvene once we’ve had time to think all this through?’

  My left hand lifted and the fingers folded and unfolded in a toddler’s wave.

  I grabbed it with my right hand and pressed it back on the table.

  *

  As we were walking out, Steve said, ‘Is Pip with them tonight?’

  My heart twisted. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shall I pop over later? I could bring the new series of Christiansen. You probably need a glass of wine too.’ He laid his hand on the small of my back, just for a second. We’d agreed not to be tactile when Pip was around.

  I thought of the tights on Pip’s head and the inspection I’d have to carry out later and shuddered.

  ‘Maybe not tonight. I’m not feeling too well.’

  ‘Yeah. About that. Maybe you need to speak to someone about, y’know, your hand? You didn’t look well at all in there.’

  How did he do this? Make me melt and also want to slap him at the same time?

  I turned and looked pleadingly at him.

  ‘It’s not that. Pip put my tights on his head this morning. Before I put them on. Before I realised he had lice.’

  He gave a low, resonant laugh.

  ‘Well, why don’t I make some dinner while you do whatever you need to do, and then we can catch up with Christiansen.’