‘Shall we go home now?’
She nods. She climbs into the back and fastens her belt.
My hands on the steering wheel are shaking, and I’m cautious at junctions, I know that I’m not driving well. My car smells as always of pollen, from the flowers I deliver; I flick a broken frond of fern from the dashboard onto the floor. I glance at Sylvie in the rear-view mirror. Her face is absolutely white, like someone coming round from shock. There’s a dull weight of dread in my stomach, the feeling I always try to overlook or push away: the sense I have that there’s something about Sylvie that is utterly beyond me. There’s too much sadness in her crying, too much fear.
* * *
My flat is in Highfields, in a street of Victorian terraces. Long ago, this was an imposing address, now it’s the red-light district. In the street near my door, there are smells of petrol and urine, and the thick unwholesome perfume of rotting melons from the market. The sky is the colour of ink, and absolutely cloudless; later, once it’s fully dark, there will be lots of stars. A couple of prostitutes are huddled on the corner, next to Somerfield, bare-legged and quietly talking, a blue vague haze of cigarette smoke around them.
There’s a nervousness I feel always, coming back to our home. The flat is on the ground floor, with an alleyway beside it, and I worry about intruders—about the rootless, drifting people I often see in the street. Sometimes I think I should have chosen somewhere different, more rational. And it’s draughty, high-ceilinged, hard to heat, with a temperamental boiler in the bathroom. My elderly landlady, who smells of eucalyptus and wears a moth-eaten leopardskin coat, explained about the boiler when we moved here, but I’ve never got the hang of it. And it all has a rather empty feel—the flimsy wicker furniture that was all I could afford is really too insubstantial for these high-ceilinged rooms. But it has French windows and a scrap of garden—a patchy lawn, a wall of yellow London brick, a mulberry tree that’s trained against the wall. To be honest, I probably chose it because of the mulberry. It was fruiting when we first came here, and, urged on by the landlady, I picked a mulberry each for Sylvie and for me. Sylvie held her hand out; I put the mulberry onto her palm.
‘Hold it lightly,’ I told her. ‘Careful you don’t crush it.’
Her eyes were round and very bright. She kept her hand flat, lowering her mouth to her hand—with a kind of reverence, almost, as though the fruit were some precious thing. I thought she might not like it—that the taste would be too complex, too subtle, the winey sharp-sweetness of it—but she loved it, ate it slowly, ceremoniously. Her hand and her mouth were stained with vivid juice.
I open up, turn the light on. Everything is as it should be. My living room greets me, orderly and tranquil, the calico curtains, the apples in a bowl. Some sunflowers I brought back from the shop—not fit to sell, but still with a day or two’s life in them—are glowing on my table.
Sylvie is exhausted now. When I sit on the sofa and pull her down beside me, her body is heavy, her head droops into my chest. I breathe in the scent of her hair. As I watch, her eyelids flicker wildly; between one breath and the next, she sinks deeply into sleep. I lay her down on the sofa, carefully, scarcely breathing, as though she could easily break. I cover her with the duvet from her bedroom, tuck in Big Ted beside her. When she wakes she’ll be fine, as though none of this had happened.
I sit there for a while, relishing the silence and the sound of her peaceful breath. I think of the women at the party, sitting around Karen’s table, their orderly lives and platinum wedding rings and confident opinions. I wonder what they have said about me, about Sylvie. I imagine their conversations. ‘Poor Grace, what a pain for her…’ ‘Of course kids have tantrums, but not like that, not when she’s nearly four…’ ‘It’s so important to let them know where you stand. You have to be consistent…’ ‘Well, of course, Grace is on her own. That can’t help when it comes to discipline…’
And Karen—what will she be thinking? Will she be joining in? Solicitous, concerned, perhaps a little disapproving? Karen matters so much to me. I’m grateful for her friendship, yet always uneasy because it feels so unequal. I could never ask her and Lennie to visit us here; I know just what she’d think about the syringes in the street. We always meet at her place, where there’s a family room that’s full of books and toys and sunlight, and the whole wide garden to play in with its tree house and velvet lawns.
I met Karen on the maternity ward, after giving birth to Sylvie. It was a strange time. You’re opened up, your body breached, all your defences down. I scarcely slept at all, the ward was so noisy at night. Instead I’d lie and stare at Sylvie through the transparent walls of her cot, just stare and stare; I couldn’t believe that such a perfect creature existed. Or in the day I’d hold her for hours, feeding her or just rocking her in my arms. Thinking, She is mine. My daughter. And when she startled when a door banged, and I felt the fear go through her, I thought, She only has me. She only has me to keep her safe. I knew that I would do anything to protect her, that I’d die for her if I had to; I wouldn’t have to choose, I’d just do it. There’s a kind of exultant freedom in that knowledge—to love someone more than you love yourself. Not by any effort of will, but just because you do.
Sometimes I thought of Dominic, imagined that maybe he’d come. It was just a little bright flicker of hope that wouldn’t be extinguished—like those novelty birthday-cake candles that keep relighting however often you blow on them, that simply won’t be put out. In my half-hallucinatory state after the nights of insomnia, I’d think I could hear his voice, which is rather loud and authoritative when he isn’t being intimate, or his firm step coming down the ward. I’d picture it all, too vividly: how he’d come to my bedside and scoop Sylvie up in his arms and hold her against him; staring at her as I did, loving her as I did. I couldn’t stop thinking these things. Though the rational part of me knew it was just a crazy fantasy—it was spring half-term, he was probably skiing at Val d’Isère with his family.
I was aware of a woman watching me from the opposite side of the ward: dark hair trimly pulled back, a serious, sensible look. She had an older boy and a constant stream of visitors. I knew that her baby was called Lennie: that she’d been born a little early, and had lots of bright black hair that would fall out in a day or two. This woman noticed things, I could tell that. I knew she’d have seen I hardly had any visitors. Just Lavinia, my boss, who came dripping beads and bracelets, with a worn, exquisite silk scarf that she’d found in a Delhi market looped around her head, and bearing greetings and gifts. Some woolly things she’d knitted and some Greenham Common wire that she’d kept since the seventies, when she’d gone on an Embrace the Base demonstration with thousands of other women and had cut off a bit of the boundary fence with wire-cutters; and a tape of whale sounds that she promised would help Sylvie sleep. Flowers, too, of course, a lavish bunch of them, the yellow day-lilies I love. My life was far from perfect, but at least I knew my flowers were the loveliest on the ward.
She peered down at Sylvie.
‘She’s so beautiful,’ she said. ‘Little bud.’ Touching her with one finger, on her brow, like a blessing. ‘Little perfect thing.’ And then, hugging me close, ‘You’re so clever, Gracie!’
I was happy with Lavinia there; it was almost like having my mother back. But after she’d gone I cried, I couldn’t stop crying, holding Sylvie to me, pushing the tears away so they wouldn’t fall on her face.
Karen came over then, Lennie in one hand, box of Milk Tray in the other. She sat beside me and put the chocolates down on my bed.
‘It can all feel a bit much, can’t it?’ she said. ‘Last night I had to sit in the bath for hours before I could pee. And that bloody woman who came round this morning to talk about contraception. I told her that intercourse wasn’t exactly top of my To-Do list at the moment…’ She pushed the chocolates towards me. ‘Come on, get scoffing. You need to keep your strength up.’
Watching me, her clear steady gaze. She knew it wasn’t the pains of birth that made me cry. But we bonded over these things, the scars and injuries of labour. She lent me a rubber ring to sit on, which helped