We don’t have many customers. The rain beats down all afternoon, deterring all but the most determined shoppers. I keep myself occupied tidying up, sorting the shelves where we display our gifts and garden accessories—wildflower seeds in brown paper packets, bottles of lavender linen water, candles that have a scent of figs or licorice. I have a lump in my throat, like when you’re trying not to cry.
Once or twice I see Lavinia looking thoughtfully at me. She’s about to go out for her smoke when she comes and puts her hand on my arm.
“Are you okay, Gracie?” she says.
“Sort of. Well, I did a stupid thing. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it was really stupid.”
“D’you want to talk about it?”
“Not really. Sorry. I don’t think I can.” My face is hot. The shame I felt in the café hangs about me. “I was trying to help Sylvie—well, that was what I told myself. But perhaps it was just an excuse.”
Her quiet gray eyes are on me. She has a knowing look, and I feel that she’s guessed what I did. But she doesn’t pursue it, and I’m grateful.
She gives me a quick, warm hug.
“Sometimes life’s a bitch,” she says.
I cling to her for a moment. I know I should tell her that we’ve lost the nursery place, but I can’t face it, not today.
When I go to my car at the end of the day, I look inside the envelope, count the money. He’s given me two hundred pounds.
On the way to pick up Sylvie, I turn off for Tiger Tiger. I shall buy her the dollhouse she wants, that I’d thought I couldn’t afford anymore, now that our future is so uncertain. This will be a good use for the money—this indulgent, extravagant gesture.
The shop assistant, a stylish young woman in glossy dominatrix boots, packs the house up in a box with lots of whispery tissue paper. I wonder again why this one is Sylvie’s favorite, this simple whitewashed cottage, when it’s so much less elaborate than all the other designs.
I choose a Barbie for Lennie, whose birthday it is on Sunday, just two days before Sylvie’s, and I find some figures and furniture for the dollhouse. I take them to the counter. The marionettes still hang from the ceiling, the princess in her wisp of silk, the witch with hair like cobwebs. They twist and seem to shiver in a little movement of air.
The woman smiles. “This dollhouse is gorgeous,” she says. “This is going to make somebody very happy.”
The shadows of the marionettes move over her hands as she closes the box.
“It’s for my daughter,” I tell her. “She’s wanted it for ages.”
“Well, she’s going to love it,” says the woman. She gives a small, nostalgic sigh. “I adored my dollhouse when I was a kid. It was my best thing, really. You get hours of play from a dollhouse . . .”
In spite of myself, I feel a flicker of pleasure thinking how excited Sylvie will be.
After supper, when Sylvie goes to play in her bedroom, I unpack the dollhouse and put it out on the floor.
“Sylvie! I’ve got something for you.”
She comes back into the living room. She looks at the house and gives a small, pleased smile. Then she turns to me, a little perplexed. “But it’s not my birthday,” she says. “It’s not my birthday till Tuesday.”
“It’s an early birthday present,” I say.
“Why, Grace?”
“Just because. Because you’ve always wanted it. Because you wanted it so much.”
“Thank you,” she says rather formally.
I kneel to hug her.
She waits till I take my arms from her, then goes to examine the house. She runs one finger along the the roof, touching it so delicately, as though it’s made from eggshell.
“It’s my house, isn’t it, Grace?” she says. But she’s a little hesitant now—somehow less certain than when she saw it in the window at Tiger Tiger.
“Yes. It’s the one you wanted. Isn’t it lovely?”
“Yes,” she says.
But there’s something puzzled in her expression.
I put out the little doll figures and furniture I bought for her. She plays with the house all evening, walking the dolls through the rooms. She seems happy enough, but it’s not how I imagined it. There’s something a little reserved in her play. I have a sense that the house is not quite satisfactory for her, as though it hasn’t delivered what it promised. The front of it was always closed in the window at Tiger Tiger, and perhaps it seemed more real to her when she couldn’t see inside. Perhaps it’s not as she’d envisaged—these neat, empty rooms, the plywood partitions, the scraps of polka-dot wallpaper on the walls.
I have a sad, incomplete feeling. I’d been looking forward so much to this moment, looking forward for months. But now I feel a faint regret that my gesture hasn’t worked out, that I spent all that money on it when I should have been saving it up. It enters my mind that perhaps I bought the house for the wrong person—for myself as much as for Sylvie—wanting her pleasure in it to assuage all the unhappiness I feel.
19
NEXT DAY I drive home in my lunch hour. I eat my baguette as I go. I tell Lavinia I’m going shopping.
My flat has a hollow feel without Sylvie. Mostly she’s such a quiet child, but I can always sense that she’s there, as though the atmosphere in the place is subtly changed by her presence. It’s so odd to be here without her—as though I am a trespasser.
I sit at my living-room table and look up nurseries in the phone book. The list is reasssuringly long, and I narrow it down to ten of them that I could easily reach. If I find a suitable place today, I won’t ever need to tell Lavinia what happened at Little Acorns.
I ring the first one on my list.
“I was wondering if you had any places. It’s just for a year, until my daughter starts school.”
“I’m afraid all our places are taken,” says the receptionist briskly. “Bumps-a-Daisy is a very popular nursery. We could put her on our waiting list, but really I don’t see her name coming up before she goes to school . . .”
I work through the rest of my list. They all say the same thing: nobody can take her.
The receptionist at the Leapfrog Nursery tries to empathize.
“You’re new to the area, then?”
“Well, not exactly.”
“Round here you have to get the child’s name down really early,” she says. She has a sibilant, sensible voice. She spells it out a little. “We have parents who do it at birth. Or even earlier, some of them, as soon as they’ve had the ultrasound. It’s very competitive, really. You need to plan in advance.”
“But sometimes you can’t plan like that. Sometimes things happen that weren’t meant to happen,” I say.
“Well, that’s exactly why you have to think ahead.” Her voice has a note of triumph, as though I have vindicated her.
The last nursery on my list is called the Mulberry Bush. I look out at my rainy garden, at my twisted mulberry tree and the tiny, tight knots of its new dark buds. I tell myself this name is a good omen.
The receptionist sounds effusively friendly. “I’m sure we’ve got places,” she says.
My heart lifts.
“Just let me check. Yes, here we are . . .” She’s pleased, like someone proffering a gift. “We could take your little girl for Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.”
“No, I’m sorry,” I say. “No, that’s not really what I’m looking for.”
I sit there for a moment longer, staring out at the garden. It’s all bare twigs, all dull and dormant, the rosebushes ragged and straggling, a few leaves scattered, sodden, dark as leather, on the lawn. My snowdrops are nearly over, and some primulas I planted have been ravaged by the frost, their leaves all withered and blackened. As I watch, a fox sidles over the grass. It’s limping, it must have hurt its leg. Everything seems broken.
I don’t know what to do now. Perhaps I could find a babysitter, but how long would that last when she found out what Sylvie was like? Perhaps I could choose a nursery that invo
lved a lot more traveling, but why would they have a place when all these others are full? And how soon would they give up on her? My mind is full of little tracks that don’t lead anywhere.
I flick on through the phone book. I realize I am looking for the university number, looking quite casually, just to see if it’s there. It’s simple to find, and I feel a faint, stupid surprise that this is so easily done, that anyone can ring it.
Watching myself, a little detached, I dial. I don’t know the extension I want, and I have to hold for the operator. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is playing, the same chunk of it over and over. I can’t believe I’m doing this. Sometimes a woman’s voice assures me that my call is important. I rehearse what I would ask in my head: I’d like to speak to Adam Winters. He works in the Psychic Institute . . . But if I spoke to him, what on earth would I say? I can’t imagine it.
The music loops around again, bland, bright, impersonal. “Your call is very important to us.” I tell myself this is crazy. I put down the phone.
20
IT’S LENNIE’S BIRTHDAY party. The children sit at the kitchen table, assiduously eating, under a sparkly banner that says MANY HAPPY RETURNS, while the mothers stand around and chat with glasses of pinot grigio. The room looks gorgeously festive, all color and shine and glitter, and I think, as I so often do, how fortunate Karen is to live in this beautiful house, with the space to be hospitable. I wonder if Sylvie minds that I don’t give a party for her, but when we talk about it, she never seems very concerned.
Sylvie looks happy today. She’s sitting next to Lennie, and they’re blowing bubbles into their grape juice through curly straws and giggling. It makes an alarming slurping sound, and I briefly wonder whether I ought to tell Sylvie to stop, whether Karen would expect that, but I love to see Sylvie playing about, just like a normal child.
Michaela comes to talk to me. She’s wearing a leopard-print cardigan, with half the buttons undone. You can see the deep crack between her breasts.
“Grace, I’d been meaning to tell you, we got the place at Little Acorns. We’re so thrilled.”
“That’s great,” I tell her. “I’m sure you’ll be happy with it.”
“Sylvie still loves it there?” she says.
“Yes, absolutely,” I say.
I can’t tell her that Sylvie’s been asked to leave, can’t face it: imagining her expression, shocked, concerned, perhaps a little distanced. Not wanting to talk to me quite so much.
“That garden room is gorgeous,” she says. “And Mrs. Pace-Barden seems to have such a lovely touch with the children.”
“Yes, doesn’t she just?”
I’m worried what else she will ask me, but Fiona is holding the floor, telling the story of how their cat ate their hamster. They thought that the cat had a sock in its mouth, then they heard this terrible sound of crunching, and all that was left was a sad little bit of brown fluff. The children weren’t too bothered, but Fiona needed counseling . . . Everyone listens raptly, and I’m glad of this distraction.
I glance at Sylvie and Lennie. They’ve moved their chairs together so they can drink from the same paper cup. As they suck on their straws, their heads are almost touching. Then Karen brings out homemade biscuits decorated with sweets, and Sylvie feeds Lennie some of the Smarties from her biscuit. I smile as I watch them playing. Sylvie has the solicitous air of a mother feeding her child.
When tea is over, Karen produces the cake. She’s made it herself, a Barbie castle with lots of extravagant sugar turrets and towers. She carries it into the living room, places it on the coffee table. The children and mothers follow. Sylvie comes to find me and slips her hand in mine.
“Are you having a good time, sweetheart?” I ask her.
“Yes, Grace. We blew big bubbles.”
Her breath has a scent of chocolate, and her lips are stained red from the grape juice. I kiss the top of her head.
We watch as Karen lights the candles. Then Leo turns out the lamps, so only the cake is illumined. We sing the birthday song for Lennie. I always love this moment—the tiny, shimmery flames, the sense of ceremony.
There’s a tense, expectant silence as Lennie draws breath to blow her candles out.
Sylvie tugs on my hand and pulls me down toward her. She cups her hand against my head to whisper in my ear, a loud stage whisper, every syllable weighted, bell clear in the stillness.
“They shouldn’t sing that, Grace,” she says.
“Shh,” I say. “Shh.”
“They shouldn’t, though. She isn’t Lennie, Grace.” A little impatient with me for not understanding this. “She’s not the real Lennie,” she says.
The silence is a hollowness around us; her words land in the hollowness like a handful of stones. Everyone is looking at us. Lennie frowns at her cake with a look of great concentration. I’m praying she’s preoccupied, that she didn’t really hear. My face is hot.
“Sylvie, just stop it,” I hiss in her ear.
She turns her face away from me. “You’re spitting, Grace,” she tells me.
Lennie blows, and we all applaud. The room fills up with noise again, and I let it wash over me, grateful. The children crowd together, and Sylvie slips away. Karen takes the cake to the kitchen to cut it into slices.
Leo refills our glasses. He has his genial party smile, and he’s wearing a flashing bow tie. He gives me an inquiring look, and I’m worried he’s going to make some comment about what Sylvie said.
“So, Grace. I’ve been meaning to speak to you. Did you find the name of that place that you were looking for the other day? That marvelous stretch of coastline?”
I’m relieved that this is all he wants to say.
“Yes, I think so,” I tell him. “I think it’s a village in Ireland.”
“And?”
“A fishing village. It’s just a place that Sylvie liked the look of,” I say.
The flashing bow tie is disconcerting.
“Oh, come on, Grace, there must be more to it than that.” He touches my bare arm teasingly. “Don’t leave me in the lurch like this. I’d had such high hopes of you, Gracie. Don’t disappoint me now.”
“But you know how children can be—when they get an idea into their heads . . .”
Leo frowns slightly. “So why the air of mystery? I mean, I was quite convinced that you and Karen were up to something. You both had a very conspiratorial look. But she wouldn’t tell me.” He studies my face for a moment. “And you’re not going to tell me either, are you?”
I smile at him. I don’t know what to say.
He brushes my arm again with one warm finger.
“I’ll have to keep working on Karen,” he says. “Maybe try the thumbscrews.”
He moves on, fills Fiona’s glass.
Michaela is talking about her house renovations. She’s making the blinds for her dining room from Hungarian linen cart covers, and her builder is an ex-marine and has the most beautiful abs. “Really. Kind of architectural. To die for . . .”
I’m only half listening to her. I feel a vague unease. I glance around the room, and see that Lennie is calling for her mother. Her face flares red, her eyes are bright with tears. Sylvie is beside her, looking quiet and demure. Maybe too quiet. I edge toward them through the crowd of children.
“Mum!”
Lennie is shouting, insistent. But Karen is in the kitchen slicing up the cake.
Lennie’s voice sharpens.
“Mum! She said that thing again. She said it again. Mum!”
I rush toward them, but it all happens so quickly. Sylvie says something to Lennie, but I can’t make out the words. Lennie spins around and punches her hard in the chest. For a moment Sylvie doesn’t react, doesn’t cry, nothing. I wait for a scream that doesn’t come. Then she bends down, sinks her teeth in Lennie’s arm.
I reach Sylvie, pull her away. Lennie looks in outrage at the exact red mark on her skin. There’s an instant of silence as Lennie draws breath, and then she starts to cry—at once appa
lled and furious. Karen comes in and goes to her.
I hear Karen trying to comfort her. Her voice is rather loud.
“She shouldn’t have said that. Sylvie’s like that, darling, you know that. She does say horrid things. No, of course she shouldn’t have said it . . .”
I pull Sylvie out into the hall. I press her face between my hands, forcing her to look at me. Her skin is so cold against mine.
“Sylvie, you must never, ever bite people. Only babies bite . . .”
Her face is still and closed. My words feel vacuous, meaningless, as though they just slide off her. I’m doing this for me, really, because the other mothers expect it—bringing her out here, telling her off. I know it won’t change anything. I know I can’t reach her.
“She hit me, so I bit her,” she says. Very calm, a simple statement of fact.
“She hit you because you upset her,” I say. “If you hadn’t done that, then none of this would have happened.”
Sylvie doesn’t say anything. She squeezes her eyes tight shut so she can’t see my face.
“Why did you do it? Why do you say all these things? Why did you upset her like that? And it’s her birthday, Sylvie.”
“She shouldn’t have hit me,” she says.
I take her back into the living room.
“I’m so sorry,” I mouth at Karen. But she isn’t really looking in my direction, and perhaps she doesn’t notice. She has her arm around Lennie, who is still yelling vigorously while looking with a kind of pride at her very visible wound. You can see the tooth marks. I know Karen must be angry—with me, with Sylvie. Anybody would be.
Fiona comes to speak to me, her face composed in a look of careful empathy.
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