It wasn’t Lila’s fault—she was a peach. That fluffy blond hair sticking out at zany angles as if she’d put her finger in a socket; her flawless blue eyes; the crinkle at the top of her nose when she laughed, which was often. No, Lila was a lovely baby—it was just the monotony of sitting on the floor, with Maggie moving her toys around and keeping up a monologue in her best sunbeams-and-strawberries voice, that got tiresome.
After an hour or so, Maggie decided to strap the baby into her pushchair and take her to the café down the road. It’d be busy on a Saturday, but it was a baby-friendly sort of place. Where wasn’t, round there?
They took the long way, past the old Victorian cemetery that Tim had told her about. Now, in an early February thaw, there were snowdrops at the foot of the gravestones Maggie could see from the road, and the beginnings of crocuses on the grassy lawns.
Lila chatted in a tongue known only to herself from the buggy and Maggie tried to imagine what Margot’s days must be like, steering this thing around with its precious cargo, attention always on it, but the mind with freedom to wander. What did Margot think about Nick? Or Maggie? She knew Margot was viewing the pictures she had put on Instagram.
The fact of them was a small prick on Maggie’s conscience every day, but that didn’t stop her from posting. When the moment came to click “share,” Maggie found she always had a solid reason beyond baiting Margot to share whatever it was—a shoe, a piece she’d written, a bouquet of peonies she’d been sent. These were tokens of Maggie’s life, she reasoned, not a comment on Margot’s—everybody was on social media, there was no reason for one woman to take it personally, right?
As she strolled, Maggie thought of her predecessor wandering, free, in the fresh air as she, Maggie, sat at the desk she hadn’t thought of as Margot’s for some time now from dawn until dusk, toiling for Moff. Maternity leave had its upsides.
She wasn’t tiring of the job, but she was tired from it, especially now that she was spending so much time with Tim. Not getting those early nights she’d forced herself to have at the beginning, not sleeping in her own flat, not quite staying on top of things.
Maggie suddenly envied Margot her settled existence, her comforts, the stable knowledge of who she was and where she belonged every night. Life, Maggie decided, must be less existentially exhausting once you’re married. After all, so many things have fallen into place by then. You aren’t expected to juggle them all constantly like you were before you settled down.
The spare pair of knickers, shoes, and washbag full of travel-sized toiletries she now always carried with her in various designer logoed canvas totes cadged from the fashion cupboard seemed emblematic of her disarrayed mental state. By contrast, the carefully compartmentalized bag that hung from Lila’s pram and contained the baby’s diapers and wipes, milk, a change of clothes, a sun hat, and a bottle of Tylenol spoke of a serene and settled mind. Or of a psychopath, Maggie supposed, repressing a smile.
By the time they reached the café, the afternoon sun had dropped and, with it, the temperature. The lights shone through its fogged windows the way those of inns did to highwaymen traveling along misty moors. Lila and Maggie weren’t quite saddle sore, but the baby was impatient to be out and her babysitter was ready for a sit.
Maggie found a small, round table in one corner not far from the counter and parked Lila’s buggy there, giving her one of the rice cakes Margot had packed to appease her until she’d ordered. As she stood in line, Maggie gurned at the little pink face and bounced up and down, bending her knees and waggling her fingers to make the baby laugh. Lila seemed more interested in the snack.
Maggie ordered from the girl at the counter, then went back to the table. As she unfastened Lila from the straps of the pram and lifted her into a wooden high chair, a woman at the next table watched intently, ignoring the book open before her.
“What a beautiful child,” she said.
The stranger’s face was youthful, but there was age in it; her curly auburn hair was pulled back in an untidy bun. She wasn’t wearing much makeup, but the little she did have on made her look even younger. It sat on top of her clear skin, not quite blended, as though it had been inexpertly but enthusiastically patted on. As though she hadn’t quite committed to being around people that day.
Children were the sole talking point among strangers in this city now that fewer and fewer of its inhabitants had the need to ask one another for matches or a lighter. Maggie was usually the one giving the compliment—now, on the receiving end, she found herself responding unthinkingly with a warm grin and a scrunching of her nose: the universal signal that translates as both “thanks for noticing” and “of course she is.” Lila was a beautiful baby.
The woman smiled back.
Maggie’s order was called and she went to retrieve it from the counter, ending the brief interaction. How many of these do you have, she wondered, when you have a baby? It was a window into the spontaneous community of motherhood, one of the few real-life tribes that still existed in the digital age. Then again, what use was a smile in a café when you were on your own with a screaming child in the dead of the night? Maybe social media wasn’t all bad.
The server dithered, having confused her herbal tea with another customer’s. It took only a minute or so, but suddenly she felt nervous. She shouldn’t have turned her back on Lila for more than a few seconds.
But she needn’t have worried: When Maggie spun round, heart hammering, cup and plate in hand, she saw the woman had been making faces at Lila, disappearing and reemerging from behind a paper menu. Maggie gave her another smile as she slid back into the seat next to Lila, and the woman returned it, before resuming her book.
Lila chewed her rice snacks, burbled and fiddled with a napkin while Maggie drank her tea and ate her carrot cake. Was this what parental competency looked like? After ten minutes or so, as Maggie gathered up the last few crumbs from her plate with a fingertip, Lila began to fidget. When she checked her phone, Maggie had a message. Margot had texted a few moments earlier to say she was home.
Baby and sitter clattered through the gray front door ten minutes later, stepping from the blue evening into yellow house light, the shadows retreating from their faces at the same rate the smile dawned on the mother’s as she swept up her daughter in her arms. Lila bleated joyously to be reunited. Maggie felt a prickling behind her eyes: How strong the bond was between them, how much they reveled in the sight of each other. Would anyone ever feel that way about her?
She left Margot throwing Lila up in the air and catching her in a hail of giggles and nipped upstairs to use the bathroom. As she washed her hands, Maggie looked at herself in the mirror. She’d stopped wearing her red lipstick—not entirely, but mostly not on weekends—and she looked less fierce without it. She’d toned down the cleavage a bit, too.
Maggie took the opportunity to put a bit more makeup on. She was about to go back to meet Tim, and although he really wasn’t the sort to mind or even to notice if she wasn’t freshly scrubbed up, it was still early enough days that she felt a little self-conscious when she wasn’t. As she lined and plumped, blended and patted, Maggie looked along the wooden shelves over the bath, where lurid bath toys mingled with expensive potions in flat, round jars and fashionably anonymous brown chemist’s bottles. She recognized them as the fruit of the beauty desk’s treats table, where they laid out the products they’d tested and discarded or had no more use for.
Of course, Margot didn’t have to scavenge from the table the way the others did: She had a hotline to the beauty editor because of her rank, and it meant she got first dibs on what was up for grabs. It was a relationship Maggie had tried to strike up too, but she had received a distinctly chilly reception from Trina.
To women with children, the maternity cover was just another “other woman,” and Trina treated this one accordingly. Her assistant, however, had slid Maggie a few bits on the QT
, and she had them displayed every bit as proudly in her own bathroom, albeit alongside Cath’s Clearasil. Did Margot neglect to use any of these fabulously expensive unguents because her old garden-variety moisturizer actually worked better on her skin? Probably not: Margot’s skin looked like it had expensive taste—at least, it had used to.
Maggie packed up her makeup, stepped onto the landing, and walked past the open door to Margot and Nick’s bedroom, dark and cozy looking. From the top of the steep stairs, she could see Margot standing at the bottom, Lila balanced on one hip.
Maggie saw immediately from her posture that something had happened—Margot’s shoulders were hunched and her back doubled over like an old woman’s, her right arm across her body as though she’d been punched, and Lila folded into her side.
But it was the other woman’s face, as it turned to look up at her on the stairs, that sent a chill through Maggie. Margot’s mouth was slack and black inside, open in a silent scream. Her eyes were sharp and wary, the blue in them darkened to deep, empty pools, the brows above slanted at such an angle as to drag her features down toward a terrible gape of pain.
A quiet but high-pitched rasping sound was coming from the other woman’s throat.
Margot looked a hundred years old. She looked haunted. No, not that—she looked hunted.
13
MARGOT
“Met the new girl today.”
There was a time when the message would have been completely normal. When I would have been smug at the little villagelike community in which my young family and I lived, in my friendships’ overlapping like juggling balls in midarc. Now though, those arcs felt like concentric circles squeezing the air out of me as I drowned.
I know what you did.
That my oldest friend could terrify me like this felt ludicrous, surreal, but then the hollow sensation in my stomach curdled into an anxiety that bordered on nausea. I remembered it too well. It’s been a long time since I felt scared of you, Winnie.
Before I could process quite the order of things that must have happened to lead to Winnie—silent, bitter, grieving Winnie, whom I hadn’t spoken to since before Jack had died and who hadn’t been in touch since that final reproachful text—sending me a picture of herself with Lila gurgling next to her, Maggie had reappeared at the top of the flight of stairs, her legs and torso refracted by the angle, so that it was mainly my cover’s shocked and worried face I could see.
Maggie. What did she have to do with all this?
I had been reluctant to hand my baby over to a woman I already resented so much. Maggie had by degrees so inveigled herself into the entirety of my life, both professional and domestic, that I sometimes found it difficult to breathe around her. But I had told myself I was being overly sensitive. To refuse would hurt Maggie’s feelings.
Nick had taken pains to point out to me, at great length, the many flaws in my theory that Maggie was determined to usurp me in my own life, and I had relented: He would go to a football game with Tim and I would leave Lila with Maggie. I wondered now that I could ever have entrusted Lila to a woman I half liked, half feared for the sake of appearing polite and felt it as a judgment on my care of Lila. I wondered that Nick could have put Maggie’s feelings ahead of my instincts as a mother, ahead of the safety of our child.
Now this. Not for the first time, I felt the bleaching, corrosive sensation of being intently scrutinized. I gasped as I realized I had been crouching as though somebody had struck me in the stomach. I had been physically winded by the photo’s arrival.
“Where did you go?” I spat out. “Where did you take her? Who have you been with?”
My voice was a violent rasp that made me think of cartoon villains. I forced an airy laugh. I didn’t want Maggie to know how unhinged I felt. Bit late for that.
“Margot, are you okay?” Maggie started down the stairs, her concerned eyes sliding between my pale face and Lila’s rosy one. My daughter’s gummy smile was clouded over with that veil of the doubtful anxiety children seem to absorb when those around them are suffering. “Has something happened? Margot? Was it your phone? Is it that creepy troll again?”
So she knows about HelenKnows. Is it her?
I could feel Maggie’s dark pupils sweeping over my face, searching for something, waiting for me to speak.
The eyes. The stares. The open mouths.
This was the moment to tell Maggie, to explain who Winnie was and what she had done. What we had done. That we had been friends—the very best of friends—for years until Jack’s death and Lila’s birth, until that silly, thoughtless photo that had so wounded Winnie. Except that wasn’t quite it, was it?
There was so much more to it than that, so much that couldn’t be condensed into the sort of empty, neutral chitchat that I felt comfortable with around Maggie. And if I told Maggie—Maggie who also exerted this bizarre hold over me, a gentle but insistent pressure on the very foundations of my identity…Well, then Maggie would know my weakness. Maggie would know something that I hadn’t even told Nick. Something that was too terrible to tell anyone.
My replacement had burrowed so far in already; I couldn’t let her get to the core of me.
“No, look, it’s nothing,” I managed to say, my voice more steady and back at its usual pitch. “Just a stupid thing from my mum that I wasn’t expecting. Where did you two go? Did Lila enjoy it? Did you stop for a drink somewhere? Did you meet anybody?”
I knew I was asking more questions than was logical or sounded casual. I knew I was leading the witness, but I had to know what had gone on in the last few hours that had once more made my future happiness prey to Winnie’s vindictive streak.
I jiggled the baby with forced jollity and carried her through to the sitting room, where I set her up on the carpet surrounded by toys. Lila peered up between the faces of the women standing over her, her expression as grave as one and as bewildered as the other.
“We just went to that café along the road,” Maggie answered eventually, her eyes searching my face as though it were a map to a destination she had never heard of. “We took the long way round, had a walk, then a quick cuppa. Everyone was cooing over gorgeous Lila, as usual.”
I turned away. Winnie must have taken the picture without Maggie’s seeing. Had she left Lila and gone to the loo? How long had Lila been alone for? I felt a wave of nausea at what could have happened to the most precious part of my very being, followed immediately by a hot anger with myself for having let my child out of my sight.
“Then I saw your message and we came straight back,” Maggie finished, and dug her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. High waisted and fashionably cropped, not the skinnies she used to wear. “But look, are you sure you’re okay? Did something just happen?”
Here it was again, the chance to unburden, but I still didn’t take it.
That’s exactly what she wants—something to hold over me.
I didn’t even know whether I was thinking of Maggie or Winnie anymore, but my lips stayed closed, my breathing shallow. I shook my head.
“I’m fine, Maggie, thank you,” I lied, affecting bashfulness. “I guess I just haven’t left Lila for that long before and I got a bit anxious, that’s all. Quite highly strung at the best of times.”
It was only an extended version of the truth, but I played up to the stereotype. The new-mum demographic is so expected to career around fueled by angst and unreasonable panic that had I revealed what I really felt—an increasingly cool, detached sense of fear and an increasingly logical urge to protect myself—Maggie probably would have been even more concerned. Women with babies are not supposed to be capable of detachment or logic, only berserk, reactive mood swings and tears. I hadn’t cried for weeks; the salt water inside seemed to have evaporated under the heat of my constant anxiety.
When Maggie had slipped her leopard-print coat back on and the door had swung s
hut behind her, I reached immediately for my phone. I placed Lila among her toys once more, then opened my messages. Winnie’s face, gaunt, but recognizably the girl I had known since the age of twelve, looked out at me. Directly above it was the groveling apology I had sent to Winnie’s last text; above that were the months’ worth of unanswered upbeat banalities I had sent in an effort to prolong our relationship.
Winnie’s face was level with my daughter’s as she leaned in toward the café’s wooden high chair until their temples were touching. One arm outstretched with the phone and the other around my baby’s chubby bulk, my friend looked directly into the camera, while Lila’s eyes were fixed on the image of herself on the screen. One guileless pudgy fist reached toward it to try to touch it. Winnie’s lips were set in a smile; Lila’s rosebud lips formed an appreciative “ooh” and the permanent patch of dribble on her chin glistened in the light.
Her expression seemed genuine enough: Winnie looked delighted to be with Lila, to have encountered her unexpectedly while out and about. The little globe-round face smiled back at me too, the flaxen curls blending into Winnie’s own coppery halo where their heads were bent together to fit the frame. My insides felt cold.
What would Nick say if I showed him this?
He’d be delighted, I was certain of it. He’d see it as the beginning of a reconciliation, the renewal of a friendship that had lasted so long and been through so much. So much he doesn’t know about.
What would Nick say if I told him how frightened I am?
He’d cajole me into feeling less troubled. As much as I longed for the special sort of absolution my calm and rational husband could always provide, it was the opposite of what I needed, to relax into complacency just at the point when Winnie had me—and Lila—in her sights. I had to stay sharp for this, which meant Nick couldn’t know. For now.
Clever Winnie to make it all look so ordinary. You’d have to know everything to understand the threat she was sending.
The New Girl Page 14