The Drowning Girl

‘Yes, of course.’ Shame moves through me.

‘To be honest, I just can’t figure her out. I’m not often defeated by children, but this…’ Some unreadable emotion flickers across her face. ‘We need to talk about it. Wouldn’t you agree?’

It isn’t a question.

‘Yes, of course,’ I tell her.

‘I’d like to make an appointment for you to come in,’ she says.

‘But I’m not in a hurry. We could talk about it now.’

‘I’d really rather have a proper discussion,’ she says. ‘I think we owe that to Sylvie.’

Her seriousness unnerves me.

‘Perhaps a fortnight today?’ she says.

I know this isn’t negotiable.

We fix the time. She goes off to her room.

Sylvie comes back with her coat and slips her hand into mine, and we go out into the foyer.

‘Now don’t go forgetting your picture, Sylvie,’ says Beth. She turns towards us, holding out the drawing. ‘It’s one of her houses,’ she tells me.

I glance at it—a house in pastel crayons, precisely placed in the middle of the page. Just the same as every day. She’s been drawing houses for several months, and she draws them over and over. They’re neat, exactly symmetrical—four windows, a chimney, a door—and they’re always bare and unadorned. Never any people—though she knows how to draw stick people now, with triangle skirts for the women and clumpy big boots for the men—and never any flowers in the garden. Sometimes she draws blue around the house, not just for the sky, but all around, a whole bright border of blue, so the house looks like it’s floating. I said to her once, ‘It’s such a nice house in your picture. Does anybody live there?’ But she had her closed look, she didn’t tell me anything.

I hold the picture by its corner: pastel smudges so easily. We say goodbye to Beth and go out into the night.

In the middle of the night I wake, hearing the click of my bedroom door. I’m afraid. Just for an instant, a heartbeat, taking in the shadow in my doorway, dark against the crack of yellow light from the hall, I think that someone has broken in, that someone is looking in at me—a stranger. I can’t make out her face, she’s just a silhouette against the hall-light—but I can see the shaking of her shoulders as she sobs.

I’m drenched with sleep; I can’t get up for a moment.

‘Oh, sweetheart—come here.’

She doesn’t come.

I put on my bedside light and drag myself out of bed. My body feels heavy, lumbering. I go to her, put my arms all around her. Her skin is chilly; she doesn’t feel like a child who’s just tumbled out of a warm bed. Sometimes in the night she’ll kick off all her covers, however securely I tuck her duvet in around her, as though her dreams are a struggle.

She lets me hold her, but she doesn’t move in to me. She’s clutching Big Ted to her. Her face is desolate; she has a look like grief.

‘What did you dream about, sweetheart?’

She won’t tell me.

She moves away from me, makes to get into my bed. I slip in beside her, wrap her in my arms.

‘It’s all over,’ I tell her. ‘The nightmare’s over. You’re here with me now. Everything’s OK.’

But she’s still shuddering.

‘It’s not real, Sylvie,’ I tell her. ‘Whatever you saw, whatever happened in your dream… It didn’t really happen, it was only a dream.’

Her eyes are on me, the pupils hugely dilated by the dark. In the dim light of my bedside lamp, they’re a deeper colour than usual, the elusive blue-grey of shaded water. The terror is still on her. When she looks at me, it’s as though she isn’t seeing me. Nothing I say makes sense to her.

I try again, needing to say something, anything; hoping my voice will soothe her.

‘That’s what a dream is,’ I tell her. ‘It’s something your mind makes up—like a picture-show in your head. Sometimes a horrible one. But it’s gone now, it’s over. It doesn’t mean anything.’

The front of her pyjama jacket is damp from all the crying. I feel I ought to change it, but she’s starting to quiet; I don’t want to rouse her again. I stroke her hair.

‘This is the real world, sweetheart. You and me and Big Ted and our home and everything…’

Quite suddenly the tension leaves her. Her hand that’s clasping the teddy bear eases open, her fingers are lax and fluid; her eyelids flutter and close. I want to say, Why do you do this, Sylvie? Why are you so unhappy? But she’s asleep already.

CHAPTER 4

On Saturday something cheering happens. Even the timing is perfect—because Sylvie and I are about to set off for Karen’s: if he’d rung a moment later, we’d have been gone. This timing is a good omen.

‘Now, am I speaking to Grace Reynolds?’

A man’s voice—light, pleasant, with a smile in it.

‘Yes,’ I tell him, a fragile hopefulness flaring up in me.

‘Grace, it’s Matt. We met at that weird evening at Crystals, remember?’

‘Of course I remember.’

‘Grace, to get to the point—I’d love to take you out to dinner. If you’d like that.’

‘I’d like it a lot,’ I tell him.

‘Great.’ He sounds relieved, as though it matters.

We fix the time, the place—next Thursday, and we will go to Welford Place. It’s a restaurant by the river I’ve sometimes driven past; it used to be a gentlemen’s club. Quite different from the Alouette, I guess: no red-checked cloths or accordian music or menus scrawled on a board. I imagine silkily ingratiating waiters, and a silver trolley that’s heaped with indulgent desserts.

I can’t recall if I told him about Sylvie; it’s probably best to make sure.

‘I’ll have to fix a babysitter. For my little girl,’ I tell him.

‘Of course, Grace. Look, just ring if there’s a problem.’

I put down the phone and stand there for a moment. I remind myself of his white linen shirt and the hair falling into his eyes; I remind myself I liked him. I have a distinct, thrilled sense of newness. This is all so easy, so straightforward—both of us unattached, and I told him about Sylvie and he didn’t seem to mind.

It’s a gorgeous afternoon, honeyed sunlight mellowing everything. I decide we will walk to Karen’s; it isn’t that far. Sylvie brings her Shaun the Sheep rucksack, with some of her Barbies inside. We talk about the things we pass: a glove that someone has dropped in the road, that looks from a distance like a small dead animal; a caterpillar that Sylvie spots on the pavement, no longer than her thumbnail and the fresh, bright green of limes.

‘We must be very careful when we come back,’ says Sylvie. ‘We mustn’t tread on the caterpillar.’

In the tree-lined road where Karen lives, there’s a cat that sits in a circle of sun.

‘The cat has yellow eyes,’ says Sylvie. ‘Look, Grace.’

She strokes the cat with a gentle, scrupulous touch, and it rubs against her, purring hugely.

‘He likes me, Grace,’ she says.

I watch her as she pets the cat. Just like a normal child.

At Karen’s, the girls go up to Lennie’s room. They’ll probably play their favourite hospital game with Lennie’s Barbies—this always seems to involve a lot of amputation and bandaging. We sit in the kitchen, where there’s a scent of baking and citrus, and Karen’s Aga gives out a welcome warmth. Leo and Josh have gone sailing today, as they usually do on Saturdays. You can hear the liquid sound of chatter and laughter from Lennie’s room—Karen has left the kitchen door open. I notice this, and briefly wonder whether she leaves the door ajar when other, more predictable children come to play.

Karen complains about homework. Josh has been given an alarming Maths project to finish by Monday morning.

‘It’s the poor old parents who have to do it as usual,’ she says. ‘Why can’t they just give us a break for once?’

She puts the coffee pot to perk on the hob.

During the half-term holiday, she tells me, Josh’s homework project was to make a model castle. Karen found cereal packets and paint, and he put together something with a vaguely medieval look, though the turrets kept collapsing. But when she dropped him off at school at the end of the holiday, there were far more fathers than usual accompanying their children, and all of them carrying the most complicated constructions, one complete with a miniature cannon that fired.

‘All Josh’s mates laughed at him and said his castle was crap,’ she says. ‘What’s the point? It’s nothing to do with kids actually learning stuff, it’s just competitive parenting…’

Karen’s coffee has a kick to it. I drink gratefully. She takes muffins out of the Aga and puts them to cool on a rack.

‘Let’s have one now,’ she says, ‘before the little vultures get at them.’

The cakes are still hot to the touch, and taste of butter and orange, with a glittery crust of vanilla sugar on top.

I tell her about my phone call, and her eyes are bright and excited. I’m touched she’s so pleased for me.

‘And you’ve been out with exactly how many guys since being ditched by the Rat?’ It’s her usual name for Dominic.

‘Nobody else. Not properly,’ I tell her.

She has a satisfied smile.

‘You’re ready, you see. It’s like I always said. You’re ready to move on now. Guys can pick up on that.’

Karen is one of those people who live in an ordered universe: her world is like a tidy house where everything matches and fits—where you meet the right man once you’ve achieved some special state of preparedness. Which I always feel leaves out that whole scary, unnerving randomness of who you meet when: of what happens. But just for now, I like the theory. It makes me feel it’s all meant to be.

‘I’ll babysit,’ she tells me.

I hug her.

‘You’re an angel. Thank you.’

‘Well—it’s important,’ she says. ‘A fresh start. Someone completely new. Just what the doctor ordered. And he’s taking you where?’

‘To Welford Place.’

‘Oh.’ She fixes me with a rather analytical gaze. ‘It’s classy, Grace, you need to look the part.’

‘Karen, what are you trying to tell me exactly?’

Her eyes move across me. Today I’m wearing jade fishnets, a little black skirt, cowboy boots from Oxfam and a cardigan I knitted from some wool I found in the corner shop, which I loved because it’s the exact sooty blue of ripe bilberries.

‘You always look lovely,’ she says placatingly. ‘It’s just that it’s all a bit kooky. He does what, your Matt?’

‘I can’t remember exactly. Something financial.’

‘Well, then. I think you ought to come with me.’

I follow her upstairs. As we pass Lennie’s room, we glance in through the door. It all seems happy. They’re busy with Lennie’s toy cooker: they seem to be cooking a naked Barbie in a saucepan, and Lennie has a plastic knife in her hand. Both girls are smiling gleefully.

Karen’s bedroom has a scent of rose geranium, and a sleigh bed covered in white with crocheted flowers. On the dressing table are silver hairbrushes, handed down from her mother, and family photographs in leather frames. It all speaks of continuity, of her sense of where she belongs. I envy her this sense of connection: it looks so solid, so comforting.

She opens her wardrobe and rifles through her clothes. Karen likes classic things—trench coats, silk shirts, cashmere. She pulls out something pale blue, with a sheen—a satiny blouse, with long full sleeves and buttons made of pearl. She holds it against my face to see if the colour will suit me. I feel it’s all wrong for me—too cool, too grown-up—but the feel of it is wonderful, the fabric smooth and fluid against my skin.

‘Well, go on,’ she says. ‘Try it.’

I pull off my cardigan and put it on. It’s low in front, in spite of the demureness of the sleeves, and cut to pull your breasts together: I’m surprised to see I have a proper cleavage. Karen puts her hands on my shoulders and turns me towards the mirror. We look at my reflection.

‘Mmm,’ she says. ‘I like it. And you could put your hair up.’

‘I always wear it down.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, I don’t know—because I always have done probably.’

She gives me a sceptical look. I feel my face go hot.

‘OK. I confess. It’s because it’s how Dominic likes it.’

‘Liked it. He’s in the past, Grace.’ She wags her finger, with mock severity. ‘Remember: no more father figures,’ she says.

I told Karen once about my father. Just the outline—well, there isn’t much to tell. I told her how I remembered him—how big he seemed, and his warm smell, and the thrill I’d felt when he’d carry me round the streets on his shoulders, and I couldn’t imagine what it was like always to view the world from such a height. And my mother just saying, one day, when I was three, ‘Your father’s gone’—and not knowing what she meant by that, thinking she meant he’d gone but would come back again; so for years when I heard a taxi stopping in the street I’d rush to the window, a little bud of hopefulness opening up inside me. Karen was fascinated. ‘Well, there you are, then,’ she said—convinced that my passion for Dominic is all tied up with this loss, that it’s all about recovering my lost father. She’s probably right, but knowing doesn’t help much; I can’t untie it.

She sweeps up my hair in a twist at the back of my neck, fixes it with a sparkly clip from her dressing table. I look somehow more definite—as though I’m more clearly drawn in.

‘Fab,’ says Karen. ‘Kind of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. And maybe some earrings—just little ones…’

I grin at my reflection, the cleavage, the new hair. It’s fun, this dressing-up. I half notice and then dismiss the sudden silence from Lennie’s room. I feel a light fizzy excitement.

She opens up her jewel box. A ruby glows with a dull rich light. I watch her careful fingers move the jewels aside.

‘I’ve got some sweet pearl earrings somewhere…’

There’s a sudden scream from the playroom, a rush of steps on the landing, a bang as the door is thrown back. Lennie erupts into the room, flings herself on her mother. Her face is blotched with furious red. She’s sobbing, outraged, she’s crying too passionately to speak. I think, Oh God, what’s happened? What did Sylvie do?

I can see across the landing through the open door. Sylvie is still in Lennie’s room, wrapping a Barbie in a blanket. She has her back to us. She seems quite unconcerned.

Karen kneels by Lennie, holds her.

‘Was it something that happened, sweetheart? Did you hurt yourself?’

Lennie’s breath comes in shaky gasps.

‘She says I’m not Lennie.’ The words tumble out through her tears. ‘But I am, Mum, I am.’

Karen strokes Lennie’s hair away from her wet, bright face. She’s frowning.

‘Of course you’re Lennie,’ she says.

‘She says I’m not,’ says Lennie again.

‘Sylvie said that?’

Lennie nods.

‘Sylvie does say funny things sometimes,’ says Karen. ‘You know that…’

I go across to the playroom.

‘Sylvie, what happened? What did you say?’

She isn’t looking at me. She’s preoccupied with the doll, extravagantly solicitous, wrapping the blanket close around it with fastidious care. Her face is a mask. She’s humming very quietly.

‘You’ve got to tell me,’ I say.

I reach out, hold her face between my hands, so she can’t escape me, so she has to look at me. Her skin is surprisingly cool for a child who’s been playing indoors.

‘What did you say to Lennie? Did you tell her that isn’t her name?’

She shrugs.

‘She’s not,’ she says. ‘Not really. She’s not my Lennie.’

She jerks her head, slips from my hands.

‘Lennie’s really upset, can’t you see that?’ I say. ‘I want you to tell her you’re sorry.’

Sylvie says nothing. Her back is turned to me now. She’s busy with the Barbie, running her finger round its face in a detailed little enactment of maternal tenderness.

‘Sylvie, will you say sorry?’

‘She’s not my Lennie,’ she says again.

I feel a pulse of anger. Just for an instant I could hit her—for her detachment, her coolness, the way she eludes me, the way she slides from my grasp.

‘All right. We’re going home then,’ I say.

She puts down the doll that she was tending with such deliberate care—just dumps it on the floor at her feet, as though she has no interest in it. This was meant to be her punishment, to show my disapproval, but it’s as if she’s glad to leave. Without being asked, she heads downstairs to find her coat and shoes.

I go back to Karen’s bedroom.

‘Karen, I’m so so sorry. I think we’d better go now.’

Karen’s face is tightly closed, holding everything in.

‘Really, you don’t have to,’ she says.

‘I think we should,’ I say.

I’m still wearing the blue silk blouse. I can’t take it off with Lennie there.

‘We’ll be downstairs,’ says Karen. ‘Remember to take the clip too.’

I catch sight of myself in the mirror. I’m not so sure now that Karen’s clothes suit me: the paleness of the fabric makes my face looks hard and tired. The gloss has gone from the day.

When I go downstairs, Sylvie is ready and waiting to leave, she has her shoes and coat on. She has her back to Karen and Lennie, her face quite still, no feeling in it, her eyes fixed on the door. Lennie has stopped crying now, but she’s pressed into her mother, frowning at Sylvie’s back, with Karen’s skirt clenched fiercely in her fist. It’s happening again: I’m leaving Karen’s house embarrassed and ashamed.

CHAPTER 5

Outside it’s dark and cold now. We can see the smoke of our breath as we pass beneath the street lamps. Sylvie slips her hand in mine. I feel her small, cool touch: my anger seeps away.

She walks slowly, as though her shoes weigh her down.

‘I’m tired, Grace. I don’t want to walk. My feet hurt.’

We could catch the bus, but I’d rather save the fare.

‘Will you walk if we go past Tiger Tiger?’ I ask her.

‘And see my house?’

‘Yes. The shop will be closed now, but we can look in the window.’

She nods.

‘I want to see my house,’ she says.

It’s only a slight detour. Tiger Tiger is in a row of expensive shops two streets down from Karen’s, next to the organic deli. It specialises in dolls’ houses and handmade wooden toys. The shops are all shut up now, but at Tiger Tiger the lights are on in the window. We stop there, looking in.

Some of their most impressive things are in the window display—a rocking horse with mane and tail made from real horsehair, some jointed German teddy bears, all the dolls’ houses. There’s a castle with exuberant crenellations; a Gothic mansion with ivy painted all over the walls; a splendid Georgian town house that has the front pulled back, so you can see the family of beribboned mice that live there, the wallpaper with cabbage roses, the tiny button-back chairs. As a child I’d have adored it, this enclosed, enchanted world. But Sylvie gives it only the briefest of glances.

Behind the lit part the rest of the shop is in shadow. The marionettes that hang from the ceiling catch briefly in the headlights from the road. There’s a vampire with clotted bloody fangs, a pale anorexic princess in a wisp of silk, a witch. The witch has hair like cobwebs and gappy teeth and white and vacant eyes. The marionettes look a little sinister, hanging there in the quick thin shafts of light that pass across them, their hair and the fringes on their outfits shivering very slightly in the movement of air from some secret vent or opening: the air in the shop must never be quite still. When I was a child they’d have frightened me, but Sylvie isn’t frightened. She often seems so afraid, yet the things that usually terrify children—gaping mouths with teeth, or zombies, or heads apart from bodies—never seem to worry her.

‘There’s my house,’ she says, with a slight sigh of satisfaction. ‘There it is, Grace.’

The one that she loves is the smallest one—really only a cottage, with slate-grey tiles and roughcast whitewashed walls. This always surprises me. I’d have thought she’d have gone for the mansion or the Georgian town house. I feel again how I don’t know her, can’t predict her. The house is squat, symmetrical, like the houses she draws. Maybe that’s why she likes it. It has shutters at the windows and moss is painted on the tiles.

Lights from the shop-window shine in Sylvie’s eyes; her whole face is luminous, looking at it. She presses up to the glass, her face flattened against it, her hands on either side of her face, the fingers splayed.

‘That’s my house, isn’t it, Grace?’ she says again.

I bend to her.

‘Yes. That’s the one you like the best.’

She’s pushing against the glass as though she could push through. I worry that she’ll set off an alarm, that perhaps the window is wired.

‘Who lives there?’ I ask her.

When she turns her head towards me, you can see the perfect oval, blurring at the edges, where the glass has misted with the warmth of her breath. She has a puzzled look, a little frown stitched to her forehead: as though there’s something obvious I haven’t understood.

‘Me, Grace,’ she says. ‘That’s my house. I told you.’

‘It’s like the ones you draw,’ I say.

She doesn’t say anything for a moment, just stands there looking in.

‘I want it, Grace.’

‘Sweetheart, I know you do.’

When I crouch beside her, I see the marionettes reflecting in her eyes in tiny immaculate images.

‘I really really want it. Will you buy it for me, Grace?’

‘Perhaps one day,’ I tell her.

I’m always vague when she asks, in case my plan goes wrong. I never know when something will happen to throw out my calculations—a rise in fees at the nursery, or Sylvie growing out of her dungarees or her shoes. I have a special account, and each week I save just a bit, just as much as I can manage. By February—when it’s her birthday—if nothing goes wrong, I hope I’ll have enough. This gives me a warm, full feeling—that I can buy this doll’s house for her. I see her in my mind’s eye, playing with it, intent, with a quiet, composed face, the look she has when she’s concentrating; singing to herself in a breathy, tuneless hum. I brush my lips against her cool cheek, feeling a rush of love for her.

Because we are happy together for the moment, I try to talk to her about the afternoon.

‘Sylvie, what happened at Karen’s?’

She doesn’t say anything.

‘Why did you say that to Lennie?’ I ask.

Her face is blank, giving nothing away. She shrugs. It’s almost as though she’s forgotten.

‘She’s Lennie, and she’s your friend,’ I tell her. ‘She got upset when you said that. Friends are precious. You don’t want to upset your friend.’

She turns from me. I wish I hadn’t said it.

‘I want to go home now, Grace,’ she says, in a flat, expressionless voice.

We walk home mostly in silence. She says her feet hurt.

CHAPTER 6

Welford Place has an old-fashioned, country-house glamour, all burgundy and gold, with chandeliers. Matt greets the head waiter, and we are led to our table. I feel so different from usual, my hair heaped up, and wearing these pale, grown-up clothes. I’m aware of men’s glances brushing against me.

Our table is by the window, looking out over the river, and the curtains are looped back, to frame the view. The night outside is festive: in the trees on the opposite bank there are strings of lights like coloured beads, their jewel colours reflecting in the dark river water.

‘It’s beautiful,’ I say.

We sit, and smile at one another, sharing a slight sense of triumph in achieving this, in coming here.

‘You look fantastic with your hair like that,’ he tells me.

I make a mental note to thank Karen.

It’s good to be here—not being a mother for once, just being me. I’m always so preoccupied with Sylvie, alert to every nuance of her mood—perhaps it isn’t good for us. The room smells of roasting meat and the perfume some woman is wearing, sultry like gardenia, and there are starched linen cloths on the tables, and ornate silver cutlery weighing heavy in your hand. The wine, a Bordeaux, is like velvet. I think of my usual evening routine—scrubbing down the kitchen, slobbing around in a baggy T-shirt, eating Sylvie’s leftovers. It’s somehow a surprise that this other world still exists—a world of glamour and very expensive claret, and feeling men’s gazes on you, warm as a breath on your skin. I feel a light expectant happiness. Maybe, as Karen said, it’s a new beginning, the opening of a door.