‘Concerns?’ Kate echoed.
‘Spiritual concerns?’
‘He’s five years old,’ Kate said, trying not to yell. ‘No, it’s nothing like that. I just came to check that you wrote the letter to St Anthony’s confirming the fact that Findlay comes to church here on Sundays. You needed to write a letter—about Findlay. It was part of our application, and I just wanted to check that it was done because I got a letter this morning saying he didn’t get a place.’
A place where? Heaven? Full of a sudden dread, the Reverend Walker wondered whether they were talking about a dead child—the woman’s son? Was he dead? Had there been a funeral she’d forgotten to attend? A child she’d forgotten to bury? She started to walk slowly, earnestly, towards Kate.
‘We’ve been coming here to church since he was nine months old and this morning—this morning—I find out that he doesn’t have a place at St Anthony’s, and nobody seems to know why. Every Sunday—nearly every Sunday—for over four years, and he doesn’t get a place.’
The clouds gathered and the moisture thickened until it officially became rain—the steady sort of rain the birds carry on singing through.
Kate tried to breathe in but there was no air anywhere, her nostrils were full of rain and it seemed as though the Reverend Walker was staring at her from the end of a long green tunnel.
‘We’ve been coming to St Anthony’s every Sunday,’ she said again, before realising that she was repeating herself.
Somebody’s voice—a long way off—was saying, ‘Only fifty per cent of places are offered on the basis of faith; the other fifty are offered according to catchment area criteria and whether a child has siblings at the school. Do you want to come inside?’ the Reverend said at last.
‘We’ve done everything right—everything,’ Kate yelled. ‘Right down to sitting through sermon after sermon on those fucking Sudanese orphans.’ She broke off, vaguely aware that the rain was running so steadily down her face now it was impairing her vision. The right-hand side of her head seemed to be filling with blood, and the weight of it was pulling her down through the rain towards the lawn. She stumbled, but managed to regain her balance. This prompted the Reverend Walker to say, ‘Come inside,’ again.
Kate stared at her, suddenly intensely aware of the fact that she was, in effect, accosting the vicar in her garden. If she took a look around her, the evidence would be there: her footprints in the gravel on the drive, and across the wet lawn behind her. God. This was exactly the sort of thing her mother would have done. God.
The church bells began ringing and, pushing the vicar’s hands away, she turned and ran back across the lawn and gravel drive, her head thumping so badly with migraine now that it was beginning to seriously affect her balance. She staggered towards the Audi. Somewhere beyond the bells there were screaming children and, beyond them, a dog was intermittently whining and yapping.
A workman standing in front of a Portaloo on the drive next door was staring at her. How long had he been standing there?
Ignoring him, she yanked open the driver’s door and fell into the car—the sound of the wet afternoon immediately muffled by safety glass as she slammed the door shut.
What was it she’d yelled at the Reverend Walker? Something about Sudanese orphans…?
Afraid, she phoned Robert, but Robert didn’t answer his phone.
She pulled up in front of Village Montessori nearly twenty minutes late—which, following stringent regulations, she’d have to pay for by the minute—with a full-blown migraine; but at least the rain had stopped. She retrieved Flo from the sensory room where she was lying on her back with fifteen other babies—who looked as if they’d just been thrown out of heaven, and landed on a rug of synthetic fur—all jerking their arms and legs towards the ceiling where silver spirals were revolving, overlooked severely by the black and white faces on the Wimmer-Ferguson Mind Shapes mural. There was a CD of rainforest sounds playing.
Mary handed her Flo from among the minute bodies jerking on the floor, and Kate wasn’t entirely sure—if it hadn’t been for Mary—that she would have recognised her daughter. The lighting in the sensory room was eerily low and Kate wondered how Mary coped, sitting among the parakeets and the jerking, snuffling bodies, with the door shut. Surely Village Montessori was in breach of EU health and safety regulations?
Once in her mother’s arms, Flo showed absolutely no sign of recognition. It must have been the same with Findlay at this age, but with Flo, for some reason, Kate felt less able to cope. Flo twisted her head blearily from side to side, blinked her wet eyes at nothing in particular, posited a dribble of something white and curdled on Kate’s lapel then concussed herself on her collarbone—and started to cry. Kate felt a wave of violence pass through her that she found difficult to control—because of the migraine.
Her arms started to shake and she experienced an almost vertiginous nausea as she tried to remember the names of familiar sights and sounds. This had been happening to her at least twice a day since Flo was born—the first time, slumped in a hospital bed at King’s, she had been staring past the mass of bouquets on the table at newborn Flo, in her Perspex hospital tank, and there, right in front of her, her daughter turned into a piglet.
Findlay, sitting on the end of the hospital bed, pushing a small fire engine with a broken ladder along the railings, became a centipede, and Robert became a bear—a huge bear clumsily trying to pull the blue curtains round the bed for some privacy.
Now, all she wanted to do was hurl Flo over Mary’s shoulder through the silver spirals and into the wall behind her, where the impact would no doubt make various bits of Flo burst open and trickle over Wimmer-Ferguson’s impervious black and white faces. Then everybody—including Mary—would be able to see that Flo wasn’t a human baby after all; she was in fact nothing more than a tiny pig.
Kate stood with her arms shaking, listening to Mary give her a rundown on all Flo’s bowel movements since 8.30 a.m.
Then it passed, and after it had passed, she remembered to smile adoringly at Flo—like the woman on the front of the Johnson & Johnson’s wet wipes packet—and nod and say ‘great’ in response to Mary’s monologue.
Mary looked surprised, indicating that ‘great’ wasn’t quite right.
‘Everything okay?’ she asked.
‘Everything’s fine,’ Kate said, hoping she was still smiling.
‘I saw Findlay today—he’s a big boy now—he’ll be leaving us soon?’
Kate was aware of Mary—who had been Findlay’s primary carer as well—watching her.
‘I know,’ she said vaguely.
‘Where’s he going?’
A pause. ‘St Anthony’s.’
‘That’s good—a good school. A lot of my friends—their children, they all went there and now they go to university.’
Mary was smiling at her.
‘And Findlay—he told me Flo had an accident this morning. He told me she fell off the bed.’
‘I know,’ Kate said again, sounding as though she was confirming gossip she’d heard about another person’s child. ‘She did sort of roll off—onto the duvet, fortunately. Our duvet was on the floor.’
Mary carried on smiling, and carried on watching. ‘I think she has a bump, just on her left temple. There’s a swelling.’
Mary’s finger hovered over the pink and green protrusion.
‘But the duvet was on the floor,’ Kate