‘Please tell me you’re not doing Atwood,’ I said.
‘I am for sure going to do Atwood.’
‘You will make her cry.’ I clutched my heart in mock sorrow.
‘She doesn’t strike me as the crying type.’
I looked down at myself. ‘She for sure would if she had to wear this.’
‘True. Those white polka dots.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Dr Hunter seems into them, though. He’d be perfect for you, except for the fact that he sleeps with everything that moves.’
‘If that’s true,’ Zac said, ‘then why haven’t I slept with you?’
Milly let out a squeak.
Zac’s face was a tight mask. How did he manage to sneak up on us? Normally the sound of his shoes gave him away. Did he change his gait, to avoid the usual noise of the taps on his soles? Or were Milly and I so absorbed in each other we didn’t notice? There was no doubting the clip-clop of his walk as he went off to continue his rounds.
Milly wasn’t finished, though she was no longer smiling. ‘It’s so fucking predictable, your falling for this powerful doctor. It’s pure fantasy. We’re not living in my mum’s collection of Disney films. Tell me you at least know that.’
‘I do know, yes. But I also know I’m not alone.’ I hummed a few lines of the Gaston song from Beauty and the Beast, because Gaston was my nickname for Milly’s boyfriend.
‘You have got to stop calling him Gaston,’ she said. ‘Why do you?’
‘You know why. Because he’s so in love with himself. Like the character in the Disney film. They’re practically identical.’
‘That’s true.’
‘Remind me of his real name, Milly.’
‘You’ve known it since our first day of school.’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘Tell me the truth about something.’
‘What?’
‘You know that love letter you got when we were in Reception? We thought it was from a boy in our class, but we never figured out who …’
‘We were four. It was twenty years ago, Milly!’
I’d actually written the letter myself. It said, ‘I love you, Holly’, and the words were surrounded by a heart. It was hardly a work of art, though I suppose it was evidence of how much I loved to write and make things up, even at that age. I’d wanted Milly to think I had a secret admirer. I’d experienced a small sense of triumph that I pulled off that bit of fiction and made someone think it was true. Even then, though, I knew that the fact I could fool her didn’t mean I should. I’d felt a twinge of guilt, too, that it had been so easy.
‘Was it Fergus?’ she said. ‘Do you think he wrote the letter?’
‘God. No. I mean, I don’t know, but I’m sure it wasn’t him.’ I still didn’t want to confess to Milly that I’d faked the letter. At the age of four, I was already practising my tradecraft as well as my writing. But my strongest motive for tricking Milly was my wish to impress her. I’d wanted my brand-new friend and neighbour to think that other people saw me as special.
I tried to joke. ‘Gaston probably wasn’t able to write then, so it couldn’t have been him. But you and I were very advanced.’
She laughed. ‘Again true.’
‘I get that you had a crush on him when we were four. I don’t get what you see in him now.’
‘What I see in Fergus is that he’s always been in my life. That kind of loyalty matters.’
‘Not to him. You shouldn’t hold on to someone because they’re a habit.’
‘Why not? I’ve held on to you.’
As a joke a couple of years ago, Milly bought a book that instructed women on all the right things they should do to get a man to fall madly in love with them, and all the wrong things they shouldn’t. She read out bits to me and the two of us hooted in derision.
On my first date with Zac, I did two of the biggest wrong things. The first was that I didn’t make him take me out to dinner. I went to the house he was renting, nestled in farmland and set a few hundred metres from the coastal path.
After weeks of flirting and brushing past each other, his hands were all over me the instant he closed his front door. I said, ‘All those women. Is it true?’
‘Not any more.’ He was unzipping my dress, sliding it off my shoulders, letting it drop to the floor.
The book put the second wrong thing in a different font, for emphasis. Do not sleep with a man on the first date. Never ever. No matter what. Just don’t.
Zac was pulling me towards a rug in the centre of his sitting room, pushing me onto my back, and we were making love almost in the same movement.
When we got up to go to make dinner, he asked how I liked my steak, and I said, ‘Well done, with horseradish sauce.’ He kissed me and sat me at his marble-topped table and told me he would be right back. I heard him climb the stairs, and a minute later, his footsteps drawing near. But instead of returning to the kitchen, there was what I guessed to be the rattle of keys and the creak of the front door opening and closing, then the roar of his car engine.
Half an hour later, I was reading an article that Zac had left the newspaper folded to, which he’d neatly arranged on the corner of the table. The article was about a huge leak of records from a Panama-based law firm, and how the prime minister’s own father was on the list of rich people who put their money in offshore tax havens.
When Zac walked into the kitchen he nodded approvingly at the article. ‘Impressive thing to pull off.’
I took his hand. ‘Whoever leaked that data is a hero.’
‘Doubtful that he’ll appear on the Honours List.’
I stood and pulled Zac against me. ‘I hope they don’t catch him.’
‘I’m glad you feel that way.’ One of his hands was on the small of my back. The other was taking a jar of horseradish sauce from the pocket of his blazer and putting it on the table. ‘I want you to have your dinner exactly how you like it.’ But we ended up not eating anything.
Zac slept with his body pressed against mine that night, and it was the first time I could remember feeling as if I belonged somewhere. When he went into the bathroom the next morning to get ready for work, I listened carefully for the sound of the water running in the shower, then sat up to peek in the drawer of his bedside table.
There was a photograph of a woman who looked like me, with hair the colour of maple leaves in autumn and eyes the colour of moss. She was on a cushiony reclining chair by a beach with palm trees, sipping from a cocktail glass with carefully arranged edible flowers around the rim. She was wearing a tasselled white cover-up, so filmy I could see her orange bikini beneath it. On her left ankle was an oval mark like a black star sapphire, so distinct I wondered if it was a tattoo. Perhaps it was a birthmark.
‘You found my first wife.’ Zac’s voice came as the quilt slipped from my shoulders, or rather, as he pulled it from me, so it was only when those two things, the words and the movement, happened at once, that I inhaled and looked up to see him standing there, though I could hear that the shower was still on.
‘You startled me.’
He sat on the edge of the bed, a towel round his hips. There were drops of water on his shoulders, and he was dripping on me. He drew a wet finger down the centre of my chest and to my belly button, where he left it.
There was no good story to defuse my being caught with the photograph, so I didn’t tell one. ‘She’s very pretty.’ It occurred to me that other than the incident of Peggy and the apple tree when I was four, I had never knowingly been caught snooping.
‘Not as pretty as you.’
‘That was the right thing to say. Was there a second one?’
‘A second what?’ He pressed one hand over my breast and the other over my throat, tilting me flat again.
‘Wife.’
‘The divorce of the first only came through at the start of this year, so not yet.’ His mouth was against mine. ‘The grounds were desertion. She left me.’
‘When?’
‘Three years ago.’
> I thought, but didn’t say, that three years ago wasn’t a great time for me either, with Maxine and that glass table and the line I was stupidly ready to cross.
‘What’s her name?’
‘Jane.’ Zac went on. ‘The end of that marriage – it’s the worst thing that ever happened to me. If you know that now, it will help you to understand.’
‘Understand what?’
‘Understand me. The way I am. The care I take, now, to cherish what I value, to make sure I don’t lose it.’
‘The way you are is perfect.’ I pulled him on top of me.
He laughed. ‘That was the right thing to say too. And to do.’
‘Except for the arrogance thing and the god complex thing.’
‘That not so much.’
‘I find it hard to imagine any woman wanting to leave you.’
‘Good recovery. Smoothly done.’ He kissed me into forgetting about his first wife. When I next opened his bedside drawer, the photograph was gone.
Now The Girl with the Two-Coloured Eye
Three years later
* * *
Bath, Monday, 1 April 2019
I am at work, based now in the paediatric unit of a hospital in Bath. This place is so different from my old job in Cornwall. I am concentrating hard on inputting patient details, when the sound of a crying child makes my attention waver.
A woman is in a deep knee bend beside a pushchair, fumbling with a manicured hand to pick up a stuffed kitty that the child must have thrown. One of those women who spends her morning in designer activewear, then transforms into a lady who lunches. Her expensively jewelled fingers are tipped with blue-black manicured nails that for most mothers would not be compatible with a toddler. Those fingers curl around a takeaway coffee cup that she is struggling not to spill.
The child’s small hand shoots out to grab the edge of the woman’s techno-fabric sleeve. Trying to protect the child from the hot drink, the woman loses her balance and falls. The cup lands beside her, the lid pops off, and the steaming coffee splashes onto the linoleum as well as the woman’s blossom-print leggings. The child stops screaming, arrested by the spectacle of her mother on the floor.
‘Can’t she read?’ Trudy, who is the ward manager’s assistant and senior to me, is hissing from behind her computer screen. ‘Tell her. Get out there now, Helen, and tell her about the sign.’
‘Isn’t it a bit late for that?’
‘Go,’ Trudy says.
In my cardiology ward clerk job, I wore a dull-red smock with off-white polka dots. The spots on this paediatric smock are mint green. The background is strawberry-wafer pink. I will look like a walking cupcake as I approach the polished woman.
‘Okay, okay. I’m going.’ I grab the roll of blue paper towels we keep on a nearby shelf for such emergencies, then emerge from the shelter of the curved reception desk.
I squat in front of the woman. ‘You’re not burnt, I hope?’
She shakes her head no.
I offer her some paper towels and she begins to dab at her clothes while I wipe the floor. Trudy has marched across to direct this little scene and glower at the woman. I wouldn’t have imagined that somebody with curlicue hair like Shirley Temple’s could be intimidating, but Trudy is, despite being a mere one and a half metres tall. I know about Shirley Temple because my grandmother loves her, and endlessly watched her films.
‘No hot drinks allowed in Paediatric Outpatients,’ Trudy says. ‘Did you not see the signs?’
The woman stands, elegant and willowy beside Trudy. ‘I’m sorry. I was desperate for caffeine.’
The child is watching all of this with quiet fascination.
‘Children can be scalded by hot drinks. That is why there is a bin by the entrance,’ Trudy says.
‘I was tired,’ the woman says, ‘but that’s no excuse.’
Trudy softens, but to detect the softening you would need to be accustomed to monitoring every gradient of the human anger scale.
‘Come with me,’ Trudy says to the woman. ‘You need to book your daughter in and have her details checked.’
‘Let me grab her first.’ The woman moves towards the front of the pushchair to unfasten the child, who immediately begins to squirm.
‘Helen will watch her for a minute,’ Trudy says.
I am on my knees, mopping coffee. I straighten up, so my shins are resting on linoleum that is printed to resemble a giant jigsaw puzzle, and my bottom is on my heels. The little girl is staring at me, pursing her lips as if she is about to blow out birthday candles. Her hair is the colour of copper, the same shade mine used to be before I soaked it in black dye. It is baby fine, and her mother has arranged the front in a ponytail-spout above her forehead, to keep it out of her eyes. The spout is a white jet, and adorable on this child, though I wonder if her hair colour is a symptom of whatever medical condition has brought her to the paediatric unit today. Her skin is ivory perfect, though perhaps a bit too pale.
I glance at the mum, whose own hair is dark and artfully highlighted. It reaches the bottom of her neck. She pushes it behind her ears and says to me, ‘Is that okay?
‘Absolutely,’ I say, and she follows Trudy.
The child is frowning, uncertain as she scans for her mother, who is now out of her sightline. I expect her to start to cry again, or scream, or kick. But she doesn’t do any of these things. She blinks her eyes several times, so I look more closely at them. They are surrounded by long, red-gold lashes that match my own, though I wear mascara to hide the colour. One eye is four-leaf clover green, again like mine. The other is blue as a dark sky in the top half-circle, and brown as the earth at the bottom. The only other person I have seen with such an eye is Zac. It is one of the most beautiful things about him. Again, though, I wonder if the child’s eye is a symptom of something medical, the same as her white forelock.
I fantasise about picking her up and holding her close, pretending that she is mine.
To others, I must appear to be a normal woman. I alone know that I am a creature stitched out of pieces that don’t fit and never will, with some of them missing and others stretched too thin and in the wrong shape. My seams show vivid and red like those of Frankenstein’s monster.
I say to the child. ‘You are very pretty. What’s your name?’
She opens her mouth, then smacks her lips together.
I laugh. ‘I bet your name is pretty too. Can you tell me how old you are?’
She shakes her head.
‘Let me try to guess. Are you two?’
She holds up one finger.
Her mother speaks over her shoulder to me while Trudy enters more details into the system. ‘Alice will be two next month.’
‘Ah.’ I throw a smile of thanks over my own shoulder. ‘So you are one right now, but nearly two. That is very big. And you’re so clever to count like that.’
She gives me a slow, serious nod of agreement.
‘So you are Alice. I knew you’d have an extra-pretty name. Do you come from Wonderland?’
Alice nods yes to this question and holds out the stuffed kitty, stretching both arms in front of her in one decisive move.
‘For me?’
Another nod.
I take the kitty and jiggle it until she laughs and snatches it back.
‘I love your dress, Alice.’ It is sunburst orange with pink and purple daisies.
Alice points to my head, and I remember that I took the white pom-pom from the Christmas hat Katarina gave me last December and tied it around my ponytail this morning. I touch the ball of fluffy yarn. ‘Do you like it?’
Alice nods, her eyes wide.
Alice’s mum returns, and I show her where she can wait with Alice. It’s the nicest part of the paediatric unit, with PVC-upholstered benches for parents and boxes of toys for children. As soon as she is freed from her buggy, Alice toddles off in her bright play dress to the toy oven, to make pretend cups of tea and bake pretend cakes, helped by her mum, who kneels beside he
r.
Trudy is preoccupied at the other end of the desk. The buzzer goes, signalling the arrival of a new patient. The last thing on Trudy’s mind is me – she has way too much to do, hitting the button to release the door lock, then signing in a little boy and answering his parents’ anxious questions.
I shouldn’t do it. I know it is irrational. But that eye. I have to check. A few keystrokes, and I have Alice’s computerised records on the screen. The address is on a very expensive street. When I see that her mother’s name is Eliza Wilmot I get an electric shock and my heart starts to beat faster.
Eliza was the name of a woman I glimpsed with Zac in a hotel bar on a horrible night two years ago. I never learned her surname. Is this the same Eliza? And the child. Could she be Zac’s? I shake my head at the possibility, then stop myself, self-conscious, though when I look around nobody is paying attention.
When I see that Alice was born on May eighteenth, just a few days after my own baby, I take a short, sharp breath. My throat tightens, and I am in the grip of grief and panic. There is a real risk I will cry. Last year, on May fourteenth, I pulled the comforter over my head and didn’t get out of bed at all. I think of my grandmother’s photo in the paper. Has Zac managed to find me, and dragged along a child I never knew about? The coincidences are too strong for me to imagine anything else.
I press on through Alice’s referral letter and medical notes. She has type 1 Waardenburg syndrome, which is a rare genetic condition that can cause hearing loss as well as changes to the pigmentation of the skin, hair, and eyes. So far, the medical notes say, Alice has three manifestations of the condition. The white forelock, the iris that is segmented into two different colours, and eyes that appear widely spaced, though in Alice the latter manifestation is so subtle I hadn’t noticed it. She is new to the area, and today is her initial appointment with the paediatrician who will be monitoring her. Tomorrow, I see, she is going to audiology for a hearing test.
I Spy Page 3