‘I’m Ellen,’ a voice said. ‘How do you do?’
I hadn’t noticed the woman in a long green dress sitting by the crib. She was cross-legged, her arms held out in that absent-minded way I’d seen mothers do when their babies were learning to walk. The nanny who Maren mentioned before. The one who couldn’t go to Norway.
‘Sophie,’ I said, uneasily. Coco let go of the bars and plopped down on her bottom, then turned around and started to crawl. Tom bent down and scooped her up. Blonde, downy curls around her neck, like a little duckling, the same wide green eyes as Gaia. She was adorable.
‘And this is Coco,’ Tom said, planting a kiss on her cheek.
I was struck by how young Coco was, particularly since her mother had passed away.
‘She’s nine months old,’ Tom told me as though he was thinking the same thing. He seemed lost in thought for a moment, then pulled himself together. I can tell when people do that. ‘She’s just learning to crawl,’ he said then, his voice slightly loud. ‘And she can say Dada. Say Dada, Coco. Da-da.’
Coco smiled wetly at him. ‘Ma-ma,’ she said. ‘Ma-ma. Ma-ma.’
The room was suddenly charged with emotion, and I felt my lies pressing down on me like lead weights. But just then, Coco reached out to me, both her hands open wide. Tom passed her to me and I took her, feeling the lovely warmth of her in my arms. I swear, I’ve never been remotely maternal or gooey over other people’s kids – quite the opposite, especially during the drool stage – but there was something different about Coco and Gaia. Or maybe I just related to their loss.
It was clear that Coco had an interest in my hair – she grabbed on to it and yanked it hard, and even when Tom stepped forward to undo her grip she did it again and laughed hysterically. I pulled a face and she clapped her hands together and laughed again. I pulled another face and she squealed in delight.
‘Shall I let you spend some time with the girls?’ Tom asked me. ‘Ellen can fill you in on their routines.’
The urge to run out of there screaming was starting to wane. I was on surer territory, now, especially since I felt so comfortable around Gaia and Coco. It almost felt like I’d known them much longer than three minutes.
Serendipity. That’s what it felt like.
Tom left me and Ellen to chat while Gaia and Coco played in the nursery. Ellen told me she’d worked for Tom for just two and a half months, but she was getting married and couldn’t go to Norway. I could see she’d been torn about this and it was clear she loved the girls.
‘So you didn’t know their mother?’ I said, calculating the length of time Ellen said she’d been in the post and the length of time it had been since Aurelia died.
Ellen shook her head. ‘No. It’s clear that they were devastated, though they’re so young that it takes a long time to process something like that, losing your mother …’ She paused briefly. ‘It was one of the reasons Tom wanted me to nanny for him, while he tried to keep his business going and get his head around it all. I’ve had child counselling training, you see.’ She glanced over at Gaia who was playing with an enormous dolls’ house. ‘They’re doing much, much better now, though Gaia still asks questions. Just so you know, if she asks what happened, the party line is: Mummy had an accident and is in heaven.’
I nodded, though the phrasing made me unsettled. ‘An accident?’ I said cautiously.
Ellen dropped her gaze to the floor. ‘Suicide,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Terrible, isn’t it? What would drive someone to do something like that?’
The scabs on my arms began to itch beneath my sleeves. ‘Yes,’ I said after a long pause. ‘Terrible.’
I left an hour later, both exhilarated and disgusted with myself. There was no way I could take the job, absolutely no freaking way. I’d be lying to a family who had been utterly devastated by an unthinkable tragedy.
But on the other hand, I wanted to be a part of their lives.
I wanted to go to Norway, yes, and I wanted a home and a chance to write my book and turn my life around. But Gaia and Coco were sweet, precious girls who had lost their mother to something I knew better than I knew myself, and beneath the usual thrumming cacophony of self-hatred in my head was a quiet but insistent whisper that maybe – just maybe – I could actually make a difference.
It’s up to you, Universe, I thought. Que será, será, okey dokey?
On the train back to York, an email arrived in my inbox.
To: sophiehallerton1088@gmail.com
From: tom.faraday@tfarchitecture.net
Subject: nanny
Dear Sophie
Can you start on Monday?
Warmly,
Tom
THE NANNY
Now
I could not believe it.
I had to scroll up and down a few times to make sure there was no P.S. Just kidding, loser! at the bottom of the email. I even zoomed in on the email address to make sure it was from that Tom, the same Tom with the crinkly grey eyes behind rimless glasses, the same Tom whose sadness had swirled around the room when his baby girl said ‘Ma-ma’, and then I had to say the email out loud to check that I wasn’t getting the wrong end of the stick – ‘can you start on Monday?’ really did mean ‘we’re offering you the job’, didn’t it?
I clapped my hand to my mouth and gave a little scream. I thought I’d come across a little too wired-to-the-moon, especially when Maren was asking all the questions about my nursing degree and vegan cookery.
Speaking of which, I had five days to learn everything I could about veganism, and I figured I ought to brush up on some first aid … When I managed to get my hand to stop shaking I emailed back and said I’d be delighted to accept the job, and a reply came back shortly after saying that he was delighted too, and that details of the flight I’d need to book to Norway would follow shortly after from Maren, as well as money to pay for it.
I could hardly keep still in my seat. It was as if every emotion in existence had come blasting into the train carriage in a torrent, drenching me and leaving me gasping for air. I always did feel things a little stronger than the next person, but usually it was Bad Feelings that I felt strongly. I’d basically gone through life like a dandelion clock, blown to smithereens over and over by an endless series of misfortunes that gusted into my life. But now – now – things seemed to be actually working out, and while it wasn’t a feeling I was accustomed to, it was the best high ever.
A woman sat in the seat opposite staring at her phone with a frown, and I desperately wanted to reach across the table and shake her by the shoulders, screaming, I’ve got somewhere to live! Isn’t that great? And I wanted to shout about how I felt this was meant to be, that those little girls needed me in their lives and that the book I was writing was going to basically write itself, now that I was going to live in Norway surrounded by moody fjords and sinister, abandoned fishing villages.
Then I started to weep, feeling staggered by relief. Shortly after that, paranoia kicked in. A tiny voice in my head that sounded exactly like Eartha Kitt whispered, But what about when they find out you’re not Sophie Hallerton? But to that voice I said Shut up, shut up! and when the woman across from me looked up sharply I realized I’d said this out loud.
I pulled my phone out and dialled Meg’s number. I was on complete autopilot, and it was only when she answered that I realized with a jolt that I’d not spoken to her since she came to see me in hospital. Also, she answered with a distracted ‘Yeah?’ as though she was expecting someone else to be on the other end of the line and I worried I might be disturbing her.
‘Meg? It’s me, Lexi. You’re not going to believe what I’m going to tell—’
‘Where are you?’ she demanded, and I glanced out the window in case we were near something that indicated my location. Still just fields, sheep, and wind turbines.
‘I’m not exactly sure. I’m on a train …’
‘Right, but where have you been? I’ve … I’ve been calling you loads …’
I told her about the women’s refuge and the interview in Hampstead, about how I’d used David’s rail pass to get there and was in fact using it now, though I wasn’t quite sure where I was headed. I covered the handset with my fingertips and hissed at the woman opposite, who was starting to look considerably nervous.
‘Where is this train headed?’ I asked her.
She cleared her throat. ‘Inverness?’
I reported this back to Meg. ‘Anyway, I’m moving to Norway on Monday, but I’ve nowhere to stay until then so I wondered if I can stay with you? And maybe you can lend me some clothes? I’ll be gone until March and I legit have one set of clothes.’
A long pause on the other end of the line. ‘Do you mean … you’re coming tonight?’
‘Is that OK? I’ll see if I can get off somewhere near Newcastle. If not, I’ll get a train back from Inverness … Can you pick me up from the station?’
‘Yes,’ Meg said, strangely emphatic. ‘Yes, absolutely. Just … text me whenever you get in, yeah?’
‘OK, but it might be really late …’
‘That’s fine. See you when you get in.’
‘OK.’
‘Oh, and Lexi?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m so glad you’re safe.’
There was a weird, motherly tone to her voice. I hung up and frowned at the phone, then the woman opposite. ‘What was all that about?’ I asked her, and she gave a nervous shake of her head in response. ‘I mean, I don’t have a single missed call from Meg. I don’t think she’s rang me once all week. Why would she lie to me?’
The woman muttered a reply, but I was too caught up in my own thoughts to really hear it. I’d known Meg for over ten years. We’d gone to college together, both of us cajoled into doing a BTEC in Business Studies when the Creative Writing course turned out to be full. Meg wrote micro horror stories in biro, usually on people’s skin, a precedent for her current job as a tattoo artist. We were always close, and sometimes I confided in her when I felt down.
‘She sounds … very nice,’ the woman said, and I agreed. Meg was the closest thing to a soulmate I’d ever had. I’d miss her when I went to Norway.
The train pulled in to Newcastle a couple of hours later. I called Meg, and ten minutes later she was on the platform, waving her arm in the air. I noticed how dressed up she was, in a cerulean swing dress with white polka dots, her pink hair swept up in a chignon speared with a peacock feather. She pulled me into a tight hug, and then we walked to her car.
Meg’s flat was in the Avenues in Gateshead, close to Saltwell Park. When we pulled up I noticed a ‘To Let’ sign outside. I asked her about it but she didn’t answer. She made me dinner – a chip butty, a banana, and a cup of tea – while I told her all about the interview, about Tom and Gaia and Coco, and about my novel. She didn’t say anything. I noticed she’d had a new tattoo done. A big fox on her left bicep in thick black ink.
‘I have a favour to ask,’ I said finally, when she didn’t respond the way I thought she might. ‘Obviously I’m a bit skint just now, so I can’t afford to get my mail redirected, and David has blocked my number. Could you possibly nip round every month or so and pick up my post ’til I get back?’
She looked winded.
‘What’s wrong?’ I said.
She sat down at the table and clasped her hands, so that the letters on her knuckles read ‘LHOAVTEE’.
‘Look, I’m just going to say it,’ she said, lowering her eyes. ‘I’m … David and I …’
‘David and you what?’
I felt like I was in a meeting with my line manager, about to be given a Verbal Warning. She was wearing pea-green eyeshadow and navy lipstick. I always admired how Meg could pull off colour like that.
‘You’ve been pretty hard to deal with, Lex,’ she said tersely. ‘Cancelling plans at the last minute, not responding to text messages … You’ve never even paid me back that forty quid I lent you.’
‘When was this?’ I asked, flustered. ‘Forty quid?’
‘And you lost my Zara dress.’
‘I …’ The Zara dress flashed into my mind. Meg was a champion at finding amazing dresses. This one was an elegant chiffon number that I’d borrowed a couple of years ago when David and I went to York. I’d left it at the hotel and they’d never sent it on. I’d offered to buy her a replacement on eBay, but she said not to worry about it.
‘I didn’t mean to lose your Zara dress, Meg. You know I didn’t.’
She rolled her eyes and leaned back in her seat as if I’d told a barefaced lie. ‘You see? It’s always about you, Lexi. You’re so wrapped up in your own stuff that you never consider what other people are going through.’
The room seemed to be breathing and I felt a migraine coming on. Did she pick me up just to give me a bollocking?
‘I’m sorry,’ I said meekly, and she started to say more about something else I’d done, but then she clapped her hands to her eyes and started to cry.
‘Meg …?’
She lifted her hands off her face, her make-up streaked all down it.
‘I know I’m a complete tit at the best of times,’ I said. ‘But … I’m sensing this really isn’t about your Zara dress or the money I borrowed.’
She looked down at her lap.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘David and I … We’re moving in together.’
‘OK,’ I said gently.
She rubbed her nose. ‘And I know this sounds like I’m a bad friend, but it wasn’t planned. We just … I didn’t intend for everything to happen like this. OK?’
‘OK.’
‘I’m going to make it up to you,’ she said, reaching over to a box of tissues on the worktop and dabbing her eyes. ‘I’m going to go over to his flat tomorrow and pack up a suitcase of your things for you to take to Norway.’
I wondered if I should mention that David insisted on separating our food with named labels, even after eight years of living together, that he snored like a tractor was passing through the bedroom, or that he liked to cut his toenails with one foot raised on the dinner table, usually while I was eating. Maybe she already knew this.
‘Here,’ she said, sliding a silver door key across the table. ‘There’s milk and bread and eggs in the fridge. I’ll bring some ham and carrots tomorrow night.’
I tried to imagine a meal made of ham and carrots, but she interrupted my thoughts to ask if I’d left anything at David’s that I needed. My mind turned to the wall clock in the spare bedroom in the shape of a jam jar, my rattan bookcase, and my framed Frida Kahlo print, but Meg disagreed that these were crucial items for an seven-month-trip to Norway.
‘Where are you going?’ I asked when she got up.
‘I’m staying at David’s,’ she said in a thin voice, looking away. ‘You can stay here. I’ll bring your stuff and take you to the airport on Monday. OK?’
Oddly enough, I wasn’t perturbed at all by the thought of my best friend shacking up with my long-term partner a mere fortnight after we’d broken up. I was more concerned – amused, even – by the thought of Meg discovering that he liked to spend weekends holed up in the spare bedroom with violent video games and a bag of weed, or his weird thing about digging half an inch of wax out of each ear, only to leave a ceremonious row of used cotton buds lined up along the sink instead of chucking them in the bin.
That night, it is safe to say I had the best sleep I’d had for months.
The next day Meg turned up with ham and carrots, and a large suitcase of clothes I’d forgotten I even had. I was pleased to find that I now had seven tops, all with long sleeves to cover the ugly gashes along each of my forearms. The skin between my wrists and elbow was still raw and puckered, and the scars resembled the botched job I made once of repairing the hem of an old quilt. I didn’t want Gaia or Coco to see that. Plus, my cuts still hurt like hell and sleeves meant I could wear padded dressings without anyone asking awkward questions.
Meg also packed some of my old make-up – she must have really dug through my gear to find that – and an old bottle of Body Shop perfume, deodorant, some earrings, underwear, towels, a hairbrush, painkillers, a pretty pair of white leather sandals I’d never worn, my best dress, some of my favourite books and – luckiest of all – my laptop charger. I was stoked. She’d really put a lot of thought into what I’d need.
‘I’m going to take the rest of your things to the charity shop, OK?’ she said. ‘It would be weird, moving in with Dave and having all your stuff around.’
Mum phoned while we were driving to the airport. I hadn’t spoken to her in weeks and she was eager to share with me the latest plot developments in EastEnders, but I knew I had to be firm. I took a deep breath, recalled the epiphany I’d had, and said, ‘Mum, I’m going on holiday for a while, and I won’t be able to talk to you. So I love you, but for now I’m saying … au revoir.’
‘Holiday?’ she spat on the other end of the line. ‘Where do you think you’re off to, eh?’
‘I don’t think I’m off anywhere,’ I said, curtly. ‘I’m headed to Norway, as it happens, and for quite some time.’
‘Norway?’
She started to shout and swear then, a fiery, threat-filled tirade that circled the question of who was going to acquire cannabis for her if I wasn’t around, and though I was sorely tempted to share the news about the end of my relationship and subsequent homelessness, I simply said, ‘You have David’s number, Mother dear. Ask him for weed yourself.’
I said goodbye to Meg, checked in my suitcase, and took my seat on the plane. I’d been booked in first class, which meant that I was served an amazing meal of rump steak, garlic potatoes, and tenderstem broccoli, followed by sticky toffee pudding with banana ice cream. I’d even put on mascara and lipstick, and wore a smart white blouse with skinny jeans and white sandals, and when the other people in first class spoke to me they didn’t look wary, or full of pity. I felt almost happy, excited instead of skewered by fear, like I could hold a conversation with someone without apologizing for my general crapness.
In short, I felt like I was a different person entirely.
And I was a different person. As I stepped off the plane at Ålesund and headed into the terminal, a woman was holding up a piece of white card with my new name spelled out in red capitals:
SOPHIE HALLERTON
BUILDING A NEST
Then
Aurelia sits up in bed and glances woozily at the contraption to her right.
The crib.
There’s a noise coming from it that sounds like an alarm, but something at the back of her mind tells her she can’t just reach out and press a button to quieten it down. The room is strange, an arrangement of garish antique dressers and a monstrous wardrobe and that hideous purple wallpaper with a pattern that resembles moths fluttering against the sky at dusk … slowly, the foreign shapes and smells shift into familiarity.
She moves her legs carefully to the edge of the bed and leans forward to check on the soft, mewling bundle of her daughter, her peachy cheeks and rose-petal eyelids dotted with milk spots, a tuft of blonde downy hair springing up from the crown of her head. As always, her tightly bunched firsts are held at the side of her head, and she is wrapped caterpillar-like in a turmeric-yellow hand-knit blanket gifted from a client.
Aurelia watches as Coco drifts back to sleep, then leans forward to ensure the blanket is safely tucked under the mattress. The movement seems to cause her internal organs to slide around the spacious room of her abdomen, and she recalls with a shudder Coco’s quick birth back in London just four weeks earlier.
She’d been at her Preschool Singing Time group with Gaia when the cramps started, but there were still a couple of weeks to go before her due date. Gaia had had to be poked and prodded out of the cosy nest of Aurelia’s womb twenty days after she was supposed to be in the world, and even then it took another seventy-one hours before she begrudgingly emerged, her angry shouts of protest bouncing off the walls of the hospital room. No, it was too early for these cramps to be anything more than Braxton Hicks, she’d thought, as the group sat in a circle and began to sing ‘Row Row Row Your Boat’. The midwife said false contractions were more common with subsequent children because the body had to work harder, running around after one child while growing another.
She asked the group leader for a cushion to make the hard floor more comfortable to sit on, but it didn’t work, and when she could no longer sing for pain she stood up and took Gaia quietly by the hand to their car.
She drove home, intent on having a restorative nap with Gaia to ease the cramps, but they grew worse with alarming speed, so that by the time she pulled up into their driveway in Hampstead she couldn’t make it out of the car.
‘What’s wrong, Mumma?’ Gaia asked, unclipping herself and clambering through to the front passenger seat. She placed her hands on Aurelia’s belly and looked at her mother with concern. ‘Is it the baby? Is she coming?’
Aurelia tried to answer but just then a contraction was building to an almighty peak, rearing like a tidal wave of fire, prising her jaws open and flowing out of her mouth in one long, agonizing holler. Her waters broke in a terrific gush between her legs and around the foot pedals, and in the ecstasy of the gap between that contraction and the next she found her mobile phone and dialled for an ambulance. It came five minutes later, and the team that raced up the driveway found Gaia standing by the car, hand on hip.
‘I can see my sister’s head!’ she yelled. ‘Come quick!’
A noise makes her glance up. Tom is standing in the doorway, a broad smile across his face, his arms folded and his head cocked in curiosity. She is breastfeeding Coco. She can’t remember lifting her out of the crib and putting her to her left breast – the one that always produces more milk – but Coco is feeding nicely, and surprisingly it doesn’t hurt.
Tom takes a couple of steps across the room and kneels down in front of her.
‘I thought you’d be busy with Clive,’ she says, wondering what time it is. ‘Are you done for the day?’
He doesn’t answer, but presses his hands into the mattress on either side of her, leaning in to kiss her. She pecks him back, but when he makes to kiss her more passionately the baby struggles, Tom’s weight pushing her into Aurelia’s chest.
‘Tom,’ she says, pressing a hand against his shoulder to ease him away. ‘You’ll hurt the baby.’
But he persists. He straightens his legs and raises his hips, his mouth hard against hers, his tongue searching. She turns her head away in rejection. She is feeding their child, for heaven’s sake, can’t he see that?
He raises himself to his full height, his eyes blazing. What is wrong with him? She has a urinary tract infection that has knocked her for six, and she is still bleeding. He knows this. But it seems only his needs matter.
Suddenly, without any warning, he swings his arm back and cracks her across the face with all his might. She reels, gasps. Her cheek burns and her eyes brim with tears. She stares up at the horrible, cruel expression on his face and dissolves into tears.
