Whatever You Love (17 page)

Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes wet. She raised a hand and placed it instinctively on the small rise of her abdomen. I guessed her to be around five months. She bit her lip and looked into the middle distance behind me. ‘It will stop,’ she said, so quietly I could hardly hear her, then slightly louder, ‘It will.’ She looked directly at me and nodded once. There was resolution, rather than regret, in her gaze.

‘Good,’ I said, again careful to keep my tone neutral.

As I walked down the immaculate tarmac driveway, I swung Rees up into my arms. Betty was bouncing beside me waving her angel – a toilet roll painted purple – in the air.

‘Baked potatoes!’ I said cheerily. I had put them in the oven before I left home. Betty loved nothing more than golden pools of melted butter, a puddle of mayonnaise and the droop of warm grated cheese.

‘Yum!’ said Betty.

‘I hate potatoes,’ Rees contributed, happily. He loved them too.

At the gate, I turned to wave goodbye to David and Chloe but they had already gone back inside their bungalow, closing the door behind them.

And stop it did.

*

Later, I wondered which of those two threats it was that had worked – to show the letters to David, or to go to the police. Perhaps it was the combined effect. There was no doubt in my mind that it was threat rather than guilt that had made Chloe stop. It must have been the police, I thought. Chloe would not have been frightened of me showing the letters to David – if she had been, she would have stuck to phone calls, something I could not prove. She must have felt sure that even if I showed him the notes, she could convince him she was not responsible. He thought me paranoid, after all, no doubt a thought he had shared with his new love. The police, though, would have been obliged to take a more even-handed approach. Malicious communication. I looked it up. It’s a criminal offence. At the very least, they would have had to look into it.

*

The police did look into Chloe, in the end, and me too, but in a way that neither she nor I could ever have anticipated. Each one of us leads our ordinary lives, full of such ordinary things: we shop, we eat, we argue about which film to see. We worry about when we will find time to fix the droopy hem on our favourite skirt or whether we should clean out the fridge. We try olive spread instead of butter, for a bit. We sleep. We make love. We fill our lives to the top of the cup, with routine so brimming that routine is the whole fabric of life, its meat and material. And we never know that waiting for us, there on the horizon, is the big thing, the thing our routines obscure – until it is upon us, that is, like an ocean liner looming huge and sudden through the mist – the thing that will create us. Only when it happens do we realise it was always there, that all our choices were leading up to –
this
.

This was my problem with Sally: I did not like her and knew I never would but it was impossible, for a variety of reasons, to actively dislike her, which left me in a strange, insincere limbo. She was the mother of my daughter’s best friend, so we were thrown together more than was comfortable for either of us – her friendship towards me often seems as effortful as mine to her. This, on its own, would not have been enough to prevent me disliking her as, in common with most parents, I had hypocrisy down to a fine art. My problem was that although she was an unspeakably irritating woman who sincerely believed she knew the best for everybody all the time, there was a large streak of kindness in her that was hard to overlook. Three months after David left, when I was at my lowest ebb, she turned up after school one day to collect Willow and when I opened the front door, I saw she was carrying four plastic bags of groceries. Seeing me glance down at them, she said, ‘Just got a few things for you,’ and marched past me, straight into my kitchen.

‘The girls are upstairs,’ I said, following. ‘Shall I put the kettle on?’

‘Have you got any lemon and ginger?’ she asked, plonking the bags heftily on my counter top and opening my fridge.

‘I’m not sure,’ I said, opening a cupboard door, knowing full well that we hadn’t. I turned to look at her. She was filling my fridge with the items she had bought.

‘The quails’ eggs were on offer,’ she said without looking at me, ‘so you’ll have to eat those in the next couple of days. I looked for some of that special salt but I don’t know what it’s called. It’s sort of brown salt. Do you know what it’s called?’

I thought that perhaps she had gone ever so slightly mad but with Sally it was always hard to tell. ‘No, is it special?’

‘I think so.’

There was organic chocolate, a vegetarian moussaka, a single steak in a plastic tray, a packet of Greek-style yoghurts in different flavours, some mixed olives, some salami… When she had finished, she turned with a small smile and said, ‘I saw a bottle of Baileys but then I thought, no alcohol. I know you like a drink or three, my dear, but it’s not really a good idea right now, is it? There. Do you recycle your plastic bags?’

It was all I could do to recycle newspapers, and then only intermittently. ‘Yes, sure,’ I said. ‘It’s a bit full, let me.’ I took the bags from her and jammed them in the gap between the toaster and the wall, then returned to my tea and coffee selection.

‘Mint will do,’ she said, ‘or fennel.’ As I poured the water into the cups, she sat down at my table and added, ‘I just thought you might need things buying for you, if you know what I mean. Just things, really, little treats. I thought maybe nobody’s buying anything for you at the moment.’

I didn’t know what to say to her. I don’t like moussaka and would probably end up giving the chocolate to the kids, although at least one of the yoghurts would be gone before Sally got home that evening and the olives and salami would go down very nicely with a glass of wine in front of whatever delights that evening’s telly viewing had to offer. I sat down opposite her with a bemused smile and just at the point when I was going to thank her with genuine warmth, she said, ‘You know, you could really cheer this kitchen up a bit if you painted the units and changed the handles. Yellow. Why don’t you try yellow? You can get paint that sticks to those surfaces although you’d have to wash the grease off first. It’s quite reasonable. You’d have a new kitchen in no time.’ I remembered why David and I had always disliked her and laughed about her behind her back: perfect plump Sally and her perfect plump husband and her oddly named and strangely perfect kids. Her kitchen had just been completed: glass portholes in bare brick and slate tiles on the floor and the faint scent of vanilla hanging around even when she wasn’t baking.

Willow and Betty ambled into the room as if they were bored with each other, nine-year-olds practising to be teenagers. Willow went over to her mother and Sally slung one of her hefty arms around her daughter’s waist and pulled her towards her. ‘
This
one is starting to say she wants to walk round to dance class on her own on Tuesdays.’ She beamed at me proudly, then took a sip of her tea.

‘Betty,’ I said, as my daughter opened the fridge and peered into it. ‘Did Willow leave her fleece in your room? It’s cold outside.’

*

The discussion about whether the girls should be allowed to walk round to their dance class on their own rambled on throughout that winter, with Sally and me agreeing a united front. We might allow the girls to do it when the weather got a bit better. They stayed at school an extra hour for Capoeira club on Tuesdays so it was often dusk by the time they emerged. When we had reached agreement in principle, there then followed a period of protracted negotiation about which route they were to take home. If they took the shorter route, leaving school and going down Fulton Road and Fulton Avenue, then they had three roads to cross in total, only one of which had a zebra crossing at the right place. There was a longer route that involved only one road, with traffic lights. ‘
Mu
-
um
. I’m not a
baby
.’

Sally was insistent that the longer route was best. I disagreed with her on principle. ‘Fewer roads, maybe, but more paedophiles,’ I muttered, as we discussed it in the school playground one afternoon.

‘What?’ she replied, startled, pushing her thick hair back behind her ear. Sally was not the sort of woman who thought you should joke about something like that. Her eyes glittered.

‘Only joking,’ I muttered, feebly, but she had already turned away.

*

A fortnight later, we decided we would let them do it. They could walk round to the Methodist Church Hall on their own as long as they went the long way round and crossed the road at the traffic lights.

Rees had a new obsession at that time, a spindly girl from nursery called Rebecca. Rebecca wore pebble-thick glasses and said her rs like ws: ‘Shall we play horses now Wees?’ I couldn’t quite see it myself. Speccy Beccy did a ballet class immediately before Betty and Willow’s tap class, so I had agreed with her mother Miriam that I would pick Rebecca and Rees up from nursery, give them snacks at our place, then walk them round to the Methodist Church Hall. I had told Sally I was happy to walk Willow back after their tap dance class had finished but she turned up at the Church Hall anyway, clutching the homemade drawstring dance-kit bag which Willow had left behind that morning. She had a smaller child in tow that I didn’t know, a neighbour’s daughter who was trying out Rebecca’s class. I suspected she had engineered this as an excuse to be waiting at the Church Hall when her daughter turned up.

There was no one point at which I started to worry. It happened more gradually than that. It grew, in the same way that the sky darkens at dusk. Capoeira club finished at 4.30 p.m. and it was a ten-minute walk round to the Church Hall for an adult but the girls would have to collect their belongings from school and then they would chat and amble – I wasn’t expecting them before 4.50 p.m. Their class started at 5 p.m. I had braced myself for the possibility that they would be late but that was okay, it was their first time making their own way. They would learn.

When it got to 5 p.m., and then passed 5 p.m., I became aware of a slight feeling of unease inside, like indigestion. I did not even identify it as present in myself until I looked at Sally. The little ones had finished their ballet class at the same time as the big ones’ tap dance started and they had already tumbled out of the hall and into the changing room. Sally was kneeling and fumbling to undo her neighbour’s daughter’s blue wrap cardigan. At the same moment I glanced over at her, she looked up at me, and we saw our formless thoughts reflected in each other’s brief, inarticulate gaze. Even then, we did not acknowledge to each other, even by our expressions, that anything might be wrong. She looked away first, turning back to the child she was dealing with, who seemed unhappy. I had been doing some colouring with Rees and he had been so demanding about it that I had left Rebecca to get changed back into her clothes on her own. She was kneeling in front of me with her ballet bag, folding her leotard neatly, unperturbed by my inattention. Sally finished getting her charge back into her own clothes and only then approached me and said, lightly, ‘Getting on a bit. They’ll miss the warm-up. Should I walk round?’

I didn’t want to concede that was necessary. ‘They came out really late last week.’ It was true. After last week’s Capoeira club, I was standing outside the school gates in the rain for twenty minutes. First the club had finished late, they said, when they finally came running, cheeks flushed, and then Willow couldn’t find her coat.

Sally nodded although I could see she didn’t agree. ‘Oh well, let’s give it a bit, then.’ She turned and went back to her neighbour’s child and started helping her put her dance things back into her bag. The child had a trembling lower lip and I guessed it had been Sally’s idea to bring her round and that the child herself – and maybe the neighbour too – was less than enthusiastic. By way of contrast, my charge Rebecca appeared to have an unnatural amount of self-possession. Once her bag was packed, she pulled on her coat and shoes without being asked and then sat primly on an upright chair, waiting for me to be ready to leave. Meanwhile, Rees bored of his colouring efforts and, while I picked up the felt tips, decided to race up and down the changing room like a tiny hippo, scattering ballerinas left right and centre. The other mothers were shooting can’t-you-control-him glances my way. Somebody would be in tears soon.

Sally finished gathering and comforting her neighbour’s child and then came over to me and said, ‘Why don’t I just see if they’re coming down the road?’ It wasn’t phrased as a question. Before I could reason with her, she turned to the neighbour’s child and said, ‘I’m just going to see if Willow and her friend are on their way. Stay here with Rees’s mum and Rees and Rebecca.’

Now I had three of them to keep an eye on. At that point, Rebecca’s mum sent me a text.
Meeting running over, can u
take R back to yours? V. sorry. Miriam. I liked Miriam
. She was a mess like me. I texted back. No probs. I couldn’t remember whether Miriam knew I was due to stay late at the Hall anyway, to wait until the end of Betty’s class. They’ll all need feeding as soon as we get back, I thought, I’ll cook them all rice and peas, that’s quick, and easy. I texted Miriam again.
No hurry. Stuck
here anyway so pick R up from mine whenever. Will feed her
. She texted me back.
Thnx!!!!

At that point, Rees attempted a cartwheel down the crowded room. As a gymnastic manoeuvre, it was an abject failure but he managed to take out a couple of tutus in the process who turned on him with the ferocity of pit-bull terriers. He made an ‘Aargh!’ sound and hurled himself backwards on to the squishy sofa pushed up against one wall, which destabilised a carton of juice left precariously on the arm. The juice tumbled. Another girl stepped backwards on to it. The carton exploded and mango and coconut spurted everywhere in a tropical spray. I glanced around to see which mother was stupid enough to leave a carton of juice balanced like that and then saw that Sally’s neighbour’s child was standing next to me and sobbing softly. I didn’t even know her name. My phone began to ring. I scrabbled in my handbag.

‘Hi, it’s me, look, I’ve walked all the way to school…’ Sally’s voice had a breathy quality. I realised that because she was worried, that had allowed me to remain casual. We had chosen opposite corners.

‘Why don’t you go to the office?’

‘There’s no one around. I’m sure the clubs are out.’

‘Why don’t you go and check?’ I refused to panic until there was good reason to. Betty and Willow were probably sitting outside the school office, waiting. They had probably forgotten they were supposed to walk round on their own. One of them would be feeling poorly or have lost something. One of them had sprained an ankle. Sue, the school secretary, had said to them,
just wait there. If one of the mums isn’t here soon I’ll
call them
. Then some other task had distracted her and she had forgotten to ring, forgotten the two nine-year-olds sitting plaintively on the plastic chairs outside her office. School secretaries are supposed to be models of efficiency but Sue was a bit scatter-brained.

‘All right,’ Sally said. ‘Call me if they show up.’ As if I wouldn’t bother.

My first feelings of nausea began when Sally returned to the Methodist Church Hall. She had retraced her steps all the way back instead of calling me again. This was a bad sign. ‘There’s no sign of them,’ she said loudly, staring at me hard. Her fear was making her aggressive. ‘I went to the office. Clubs finished on time. I walked all the way around.’

‘Which way did you go?’ I ask.

‘The long way,’ she said, ‘the way we told them to come. We both told them, didn’t we? I went that way there and back.’

I thought of the long way, tracing the route in my head, the streets that ran off it, the friends’ houses they would have passed. They would have gone past Jason Wellington’s house. Jason was a boy in their class with attention deficit disorder who exerted a huge fascination for the girls because of his loudness and charm. ‘Jason’s got a new rabbit,’ I said, triumphantly, and Sally looked at me as if I was mad. Without bothering to explain, I phoned Jason’s mum. No, Betty and Willow weren’t there.

By that point, other mothers in the changing room had overheard our conversation and dropped their own. Our anxiety was contagious. Two of them offered us their mobile phones despite the fact that Sally and I both had phones clearly visible in our hands. Another mother said she knew a boy who went to Capoeira, a Year Five boy, not one we knew. She offered to ring the boy’s mum and see if he was back yet. We already knew that the club had finished on time but Sally and I both fell upon this extra source of knowledge, which suddenly seemed hugely significant. The phone call was made. The mum didn’t know. Her son was going to a friend’s house after Capoeira but she said she would call the friend’s mother. After a few minutes, she called back to say that her son was picked up by the friend’s mother as expected. I was annoyed. What use was that information? I realised that what had seemed like an avenue worth exploring was a dead end, a pointless distraction.