‘Go home, Amber,’ she says wearily, as if I’m a naughty child whose detention has come to an end. ‘Stay at home. We’ll do the explanations part later, shall we?’
I’ve no idea what she means, but I’m more than happy to make both our lives easier by getting the hell away from her, away from Ginny, away from 77 Great Holling Road, the scene of too many catastrophically humiliating events for me ever to be willing to come back here.
Back in my car, I force my mind to go blank. If I’m thinking anything, it’s ‘Drive, drive, drive’. I can just make it in time for the girls, if I’m ruthless. As I approach the Crozier Bridge roundabout, I get into the lane on the far left, the only one that isn’t clogged with queueing cars. Once I’m on the roundabout, I swerve over, attracting irate beeps from other drivers, and get into the lane I need to be in. I perform the same stunt at three more roundabouts and save nearly ten minutes of queueing time.
You are ruthless, and not only today. Don’t try to pretend this behaviour is new.
Hypnotherapy seems to have amplified the voice in my head that’s always trying to make me feel guilty. Or maybe it hasn’t. It’s certainly magnified my paranoia.
Drive, drive, drive. Drive, drive, drive.
My heart rate finally slows to a manageable level when I realise that I will, after all, be there in time to meet the bus. I’ve never missed it yet, not once, and I’m determined that I never will. The downside of seeing off my bus-related worries is that there is now space in my mind for other thoughts.
She lied to me.
The words were there in her notebook, exactly as I said: ‘Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel’. Written as a list on an otherwise blank page. No printed lines, true, but apart from that detail my description was spot on. So why did she tell me I couldn’t have seen it?
I need another perspective on this to orientate my own – not that I know what mine is yet, other than confusion. If I tell Luke what happened, he’ll tell me it’s obvious why Red Lipstick Woman lied. Since Little Orchard, his default mode has been to listen to whatever’s puzzling me, then deny the existence of the puzzling element in case I become obsessed. ‘You’re looking at it from the wrong angle,’ he’ll say. ‘It would have been odd if she hadn’t lied. She doesn’t care if your memory’s misfiring – why should she? All she’s going to care about is preserving what’s left of her privacy. She’s written something weird in her notebook, you’ve seen it, and she doesn’t want to explain what it is. No mystery there.’
Song lyrics? A poem? A description of her emotional state, or her personality? It was kind of her to let me have her appointment, cruel of her to sneer at Ginny for basing her hypnotherapy practice in a shed in her back garden.
Kind of cruel to lie to me about what she’d written in her notebook?
I shake my head, disgusted by the absurdity of my line of reasoning. How many people write lists of their own character traits in notebooks that they carry around with them?
Jo’s the person I’m itching to discuss it with, but I’m not going to allow myself to ring her as soon as I get in, however much I’d like to. On a day when I’ve already done too many bad things, I’m going to exercise some self-restraint for once in my life and stop myself from adding another to the list. Since Little Orchard, I have often drawn other people’s inexplicable behaviour to Jo’s attention and asked her if she can think of any reason why someone might behave so bizarrely. I do it to make her feel awkward; I am trying to tell her without actually telling her that I have not forgotten her and Neil’s mystifying disappearing act that Christmas – never referred to by any of us and never accounted for.
If Jo is conscious of my hidden agenda, she’s expert at concealing it; my frequent observations about the irrationality of this person or that person never seem to throw her off track. I’d like to think she’s as aware as I am of all the important things we don’t say to one another when we get the chance – aware, crucially, that these gaps between us are her fault – but I’m starting to wonder if she has deleted Little Orchard from her mind, and is genuinely oblivious to its continued occupation of mine. From the way she says, ‘That is odd’ and ‘What a weirdo!’ when I describe the strange behaviour of my various colleagues, it’s pretty clear she’s offering that response as someone who wouldn’t dream of behaving so oddly herself.
I arrive at the corner of Spilling Road and Clavering Road at my usual time of twenty-eight minutes past four. Dinah and Nonie’s school bus has two drop-off points in the centre of Rawndesley – here and the station car park. The station is the more popular one, but for me this one has two advantages: hardly anybody uses it, and it’s no more than five or six strides from my front door. Luke and I bought number 9 Clavering Road just over a year ago in order to have somewhere big enough for the girls to move into. I was determined to buy the biggest house I could afford; nothing else mattered. It still doesn’t. I don’t care that the carpeting throughout is hideous, synthetic and bright red, or that all the curtains are faded floral and so heavily swagged that you can barely see any window between the loops and folds of fabric; I don’t care that we can’t afford to replace any of it. What I love about my house is that even though it’s on a main road, even though I live with three other people, two of whom are children, I can always find a silent, empty room when I need one. Luke’s and my old house had a ground floor that was entirely open plan apart from a downstairs loo; this one has floor after floor of square rooms with closable doors. When I mentioned this to Jo as a major attraction, it was obvious she disapproved. ‘Who do you want to shut out?’ she asked. She didn’t say so, but I knew she doubted my ability to look after Dinah and Nonie properly – Saint Jo, who believes no one can nurture quite as well as she can, who loves nothing more than to surround herself with as many dependent relatives as possible.
I told her the truth: that the only person I want to shut out – need to, sometimes – is myself. I remember what I said. I chose my words carefully to tempt her interest: ‘My mind can be a harsh environment. Sometimes I need to take it far away from the people I care about, to make sure I don’t contaminate anybody.’ Jo’s reply shocked me. ‘Ignore me,’ she said. ‘I’m just jealous. Dinah and Nonie are amazing kids. You’re so lucky.’ At the time, I laughed and said, ‘As if you haven’t got enough people on your plate.’ It was only later, lying awake that night in bed, that I replayed the scene and decided I was angry with her – or rather, I decided I ought to be, I would have every right to be. I spend a lot of time wondering how I ought to feel about Jo, while having no idea how I actually feel.
She called me lucky, knowing my best friend was dead, knowing that Luke and I probably wouldn’t now have children of our own. She avoided responding to what I’d said about feeling the need to shut myself out because she didn’t want our conversation to go beyond the superficial. She never does any more; I’m convinced that her apparent determination to spend every waking hour catering for at least ten people is an escape strategy – how can anyone expect you to engage in meaningful conversation with them when you’re dashing around your too-small kitchen putting together a cream tea that would make the Ritz Hotel’s equivalent look paltry?
I look at my watch. The bus is late. It always is. We’ve been told in an official letter from the school that while we must be prompt and prepared to wait for up to twenty minutes, the bus will never wait for us. If we are not there to pick up on the dot of half past four, the children will be returned to school and put in something called ‘Fun Club’. I was instantly suspicious when I read this: if things are fun, one doesn’t generally need to be ‘put in’ them. I wanted to write to the school and point out that its bus needs a lesson in give-and-take, but Dinah forbade me. ‘You’re going to need to fight the school over more important things,’ she told me, as if toppling the board of governors was something she’d been mulling over recently, even if she hadn’t yet wholeheartedly committed to the plan. ‘Save your energy for a fight that matters.’ This made me
smile; it’s something Luke and I are always telling her. ‘Just make sure you’re on time for the bus. It’s easier for us to be on time than it is for any other family at the school,’ she added, sounding like a headmistress. I submitted because I was so relieved to hear her describe us as a family.
Luke and I didn’t know when we bought our house that the girls’ school bus dropped off and picked up right outside; when we found out, Luke said, ‘It’s a sign. It’s got to be. Someone’s on our side.’ On yours, maybe, I thought. The kind of Someone he had in mind would have had access to information about me that I was fairly sure would result in an instant withdrawal of all supernatural support. Knowing I couldn’t say that to Luke, angry to be trapped with a secret I hated and wished would go away, I snapped at him unfairly. ‘Would that be the same Someone who let Sharon die?’ He apologised. I didn’t and still haven’t.
Another cheery memory. Ginny Saxon would be proud.
I can say sorry to strangers, and even send them cheques for seventy pounds that I’ve told them they don’t deserve, but I can’t apologise to my own husband, not any more; I would feel like a hypocrite. Any ‘sorry’ I might say would be nothing more than a shield for the ‘sorry’ I’m not saying, the one I can never say.
Hypnotherapy and me are a bad match, I decide. I need something that’s going to pull me out of my endlessly churning interior world, not plunge me deeper into it.
I’ve never been less in the mood to make polite conversation than I am now, so Sod’s Law dictates that, on the exterior world front, today there are three mothers waiting on the corner for the bus. Usually there’s only one, who cuts me dead because I once said the wrong thing. I’ve forgotten her name and the name of her shaggy-headed child, but I think of her as OCB, which stands for organic cereal bar. She brings one every afternoon for her son, whose hair, she once told me, has never been cut because she can’t bear the thought of vandalising any precious part of him, and certainly not when he’s perfectly happy as he is, and why should she, purely for the sake of convention and to please the bigot contingent? She detained me for nearly fifteen minutes with a full explanation that veered into gender-role-redefining manifesto towards the end, even though I’d been polite enough not to ask her why her son resembled a sheepskin rug.
Before she decided I was beyond the pale and not worth talking to, I learned a lot about what it means to be a parent from listening to OCB. It seems fairly straightforward: if you have a child that behaves like a savage, deflect attention from his shortcomings by accusing the teachers of ‘pathologising’ him and failing to meet his individual needs, especially if these include the need to poke other children in the eye with a fork. If your son fails a test, accuse the school of being too outcome-focused; if he is lazy and says everything is boring, blame the teacher for not stretching or stimulating him in the right way; if your child is not particularly bright, couch the problem in terms of the school failing to identify and plug a ‘skills gap’; crucially, ostracise anyone who dares to suggest that some gaps – those belonging to clever children, specifically – are easier to fill with skills than others, and that, hypothetically, a teacher might try endlessly to lob into the chasm some fairly basic proficiencies and fail to lodge them there, owing to an inherently unsympathetic micro-climate of massive stupidity.
I probably shouldn’t have said that, but it had been a long day, and my freedom went to my head – the freedom of being a guardian and not a parent. I can see exactly how Dinah and Nonie make life harder for themselves, their classmates and their teachers, just as I can see their talents and their strong points, the personal and intellectual qualities that are going to make life easier for them. I feel no urge to feign modesty about the good or pretend the bad doesn’t exist, not having made the girls myself, and so I don’t need to enter into any reciprocal delusion-bolstering deals of the sort that many of the parents rely on: ‘It doesn’t surprise me at all that Mr Maskell hasn’t spotted that Jerome’s gifted, Susan – he hasn’t noticed that Rhiannon is either.’
Dinah and Nonie are first off the bus when it arrives, as they usually are. I hang back behind the mothers, as per Dinah’s instructions. In the very early days, she told me that I wasn’t allowed to run forward and give her a hug or a kiss, that Sharon hadn’t been allowed to either – any display of affection in a public place is embarrassing and therefore forbidden. I am, however, allowed to smile enthusiastically, and this I do as the girls walk towards me with quick neat steps, like purposeful businesswomen on their way to an important meeting. I can see from Dinah’s face that she has something significant to say to me. She always does, every day. Nonie is worried about how I will react to whatever it is, and how Dinah will react to my reaction, as she always is. I can feel myself mentally limbering up as they approach, knowing that whatever’s about to pass between us will seem to fly by at a million miles an hour, and I’m going to need to be on my toes, mentally. Luke has the knack of relaxing with the girls; he can coax them into winding down in a way that I’ve never been able to. My conversations with them often feel like super-fast games of verbal ping-pong, in which I’m desperate to let them win, but never quite sure how to.
‘Are you and Luke ever going to have a baby?’ Dinah asks, handing me her and Nonie’s book bags; it is my job to carry them to the house.
‘No. Why, what makes you ask that?’
‘Someone on the bus asked us, because you’re not our mum and dad. This girl, Venetia, said that if you had a baby of your own, you’d love it more than you love us, and Nonie got upset.’
‘If we did have a baby, we wouldn’t love it any more than we love you,’ I say to Nonie, making sure to look only at her, knowing Dinah’s pride would rebel at the slightest suggestion that she too might need reassurance. ‘Not one single bit more. But we’re not going to have a baby. We talked about it, and we decided. We’re going to stay as we are: a family of four.’
‘Good, because there’d be no point,’ says Dinah.
‘In our having a baby?’
‘No. It’d only grow up and work in an office. Has anyone from school phoned you today?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘Should they have?’
‘Dinah’s in trouble, and it’s not her fault,’ says Nonie, picking at the skin on her lip.
‘I told you.’ Her sister turns on her. ‘Mrs Truscott didn’t ring because she knew Amber’d stick up for me.’
‘Stick up for you over what?’
‘Is Luke home yet?’ Dinah ignores my question, unwinds her school scarf from round her neck and hands it to me along with her gloves.
‘I don’t know. I’ve not been into the house, I’ve only just—’
‘I’ll tell him first and then I’ll tell you.’
‘That’s stupid,’ says Nonie. ‘He’ll tell her.’
‘I’ll tell her. But she won’t worry as much once she sees Luke thinks it’s funny, which he will.’
All this before we get to the front door. ‘What’s wrong with working in an office?’ I ask as I fumble in my handbag for my house keys. ‘I work in an office.’
‘It’s boring,’ says Dinah. ‘Not for you, if you like it – that’s fine. I just mean, when you think how many people work in offices – almost everybody – then it’s boring. It’d be silly to have a baby just so that it could grow up and do a boring thing that too many people do already.’
I drop my keys on the doorstep, bend to pick them up, say, ‘People do different things in their offices – interesting things, sometimes.’ I notice I’m not demanding to know what Dinah is putting off telling me; I also like the idea of waiting until Luke’s here to soften the blow by finding it hilarious.
‘I’m going to be a stonemason, like Luke,’ says Dinah. ‘I could take over running his business when he gets too old. He’s quite old already.’
Can girls be stonemasons? Luke is forever lugging around huge chunks of York and Bath stone that I’m sure no female could lift. ‘Last week you wanted to be a barones
s,’ I remind Dinah as I unlock the door. ‘I think that’s a better fit, I have to say.’
Nonie hangs back. ‘How much money have we got?’ she asks. OCB, who is conducting an inventory of Sheepskin Rug’s possessions on the pavement nearby, adjusts her stance in the hope of hearing my reply.
‘That’s a funny question, Nones. Why?’
‘Enver in my class – his mum and dad have got so much money that he won’t ever have to get a job. We haven’t got that much, have we?’
I try to usher her inside, but she sticks determinedly to the doorstep. ‘You don’t need to worry about money, or about getting a job,’ I tell her. ‘You’re a child. Let the grown-ups do the worrying.’ Her frown lines deepen, and I realise I’ve said the wrong thing. ‘Not that Luke and I have anything to worry about. We’re fine, Nones, financially and in every other way. Everything’s fine.’
‘I’d like to get a job when I’m older, but I don’t know how to,’ she says. ‘Or how to buy a house, or a car, or find a husband.’
‘You’re not supposed to know about any of that stuff yet. You’re only seven,’ I say.
She shakes her head sorrowfully. ‘Everyone in my class already knows who they’re marrying, apart from me.’
‘Dinah – airlock!’ I call out, seeing that the inner door is wide open, the one that’s supposed to stay shut until the outer door’s closed. ‘Come on, Nones, can we go in? It’s freezing.’ She sighs, but does as she’s told. Disappointment rises from her small body like steam. She hoped to be able to solve her matrimonial problem before crossing the threshold, and it didn’t happen; now she’s having to go inside with it still unresolved.
I give her a hug and promise that as soon as she’s old enough, I will find the most amazing, handsome, clever, kind, rich, wonderful man for her to marry. She looks delighted for a second, then worried. ‘Dinah’ll need one too,’ she says. Nonie’s obsessed with fairness. I restrain myself from voicing my sudden strong hunch that Dinah will need at least three, as I hang up coats, arrange discarded shoes in pairs and pick up the envelopes that are scattered on the floor. One is from Social Services. I wish I could tear it up and not have to read what’s inside.
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