‘Lily,’ I say gently, ‘you know it’s very wrong to smack anyone, especially other children?’
A small, guilty nod.
‘I’m sowwy Mama.’
‘I know you are bunny.’
‘Won’t do it again.’
‘There’s a good girl.’
Then the little arms fold defiantly and the chin thrusts out.
‘But I’m still never going back to smelly pwre-school. EVER. ’Kay?’
‘That’s absolutely fine. No one, and especially not me, is going to make you do anything you don’t want to.’
She thinks for a second, then seems happy enough with this. So now that she’s not in trouble any more, she flashes me a gap-toothed smile and snuggles tight into me, warm and heavy and woozy with sleep, smelling of milk and plasticine.
I let her cuddle tightly into me as my thoughts race. Because how best to bring up that other, far more delicate subject? Her earlier words, the ones Miss Pettifer quoted back to me, are swirling round my brain now.
I do have a dad and one day he’ll come for me.
How in the name of arse am I supposed to explain this to a small child?
‘Lily?’ I begin slowly, gently.
‘Mmmmm?’ she says, sounding groggy now after all the drama in her little day, her sleepy, heavy head buried deep under my arm.
‘You know all families are different, don’t you? Some families have a mum and dad, whereas some just have a dad and then there are families like us, where the mummy is the one in charge.’
And just like that, she’s bright-eyed, alert and awake again.
‘But I DO have a dad. I DO. All kids do. Tim says you can’t be born unless you have a mummy an’ a daddy.’
Shit. Deep breath, try again. Try better.
‘Well, that’s true, but only up to a point.’
‘What’s uppa point mean?’
‘It means that some families have a dad who lives with them, and that’s fine. But plenty of families, like us, don’t live with their dad and that’s fine too.’
‘But where is my dad? Where’d he go? Did someone bold steal him?’ She’s looking intently at me now, little freckly face now frowning with worry.
‘He mus’ be somewhere Mama!’
‘Of course he’s somewhere love, but the point is, we don’t know where and we don’t need to know.’
‘Is he hiding? Like in a game? Is he playing hide and seek with us, Mama?’
Bugger. I’m making a right pig’s ear of this.
‘No pet, you see he doesn’t exactly know that we’re here. But then, that’s not really important, because we don’t need him, do we? We’re fine without him, aren’t we?’
‘But where did he go Mama?’ she pleads, looking dangerously close to tears now. ‘Why doesn’t he come to see me? It is ’cos I was naughty?’
My almost-three-year old looks at me with puzzled, monkey eyes, desperately wanting answers that her mother can’t give. Please, please, please, I find myself absently praying to a God I don’t believe in, send me the right words to explain this inexplicable situation to the tiny, precious bundle that’s cradled in my arms, looking up at me with absolute trust in my judgement. Please, just once, please Allah, Buddha, Santa, anyone up there who’s listening, steer me through this icky conversation in a way she can grasp.
Another deep breath.
‘OK Lily, let me put it to you this way. Before you were born, I wanted you so, so badly, that I had to go to a very special hospital to get you. And they planted you in my tummy and nine months later, out you came. Tiny and perfect and so good you rarely cried, ever.’
‘So …’ she says, frowning, concentrating hard and scrunching up her tiny, freckly nose ‘did you pick my daddy out when you were in the ’pecial hospital? Did you meet him there?’
Not for the first time, I’m totally taken aback at just how bright the child is; at the fact that she can grasp something so vague and inexplicable. With great pride, I cuddle her closer and she slips her thumb in her mouth, plump little arms locked tight round my waist.
‘No darling, I never met your dad either. Sometimes mummies don’t need to, you see. And that’s OK you know. mums and dads don’t always need to know each other or even be friends, just so mummies can get babies.’
A long silence as she tried to digest this.
And then it comes.
‘But … but I wanna see him Mama. I wan’ him to be my fwiend. I wanna see him. I wan’ him to play with me and give me piggy back rides and … and … I want my dad to take me to the park and the movies, like the other dads in pwe-school all do. Can we just find him and say … Hello?’
‘Sweetheart … I don’t think that’s going to be possible …’
Now her face is getting pinker and the bottom lip is dangerously close to wobbling, a red-light warning sign that tired, cranky, exhausted tears aren’t too far off.
‘Mama PLEASE! Is it ’cos I was bold in playgwoup?’
‘No, of course not …’
‘I only want to meet him, that’s all! And I’ll be a good lickle girl. I pwomise!’
I sigh deeply. One the one hand, you should never make a promise to a child you can’t keep and on the other hand, there’s every chance she’ll have clean forgotten all about this by morning. But most of all, I never again want to see this level of disappointment in my daughter’s big saucery blue eyes. Again.
‘All right pet. I’ll try my very best.’
I’m rewarded with a toothy smile, then, as only small kids can, she puts the whole thing clean out of her little head, sticks her thumb in her mouth and cuddles back in tight to me, her worries banished as though they never were and all set for her afternoon snooze. I pull a cashmere throw off the back of the sofa and wrap it round her, tucking it tight in around her pudgy little legs and gently settling her down for her nap.
Then, just as I’m about to ease myself off the sofa without waking her, I hear the sound of footsteps click-clacking down the back stairs.
Ooooh, this’ll be good.
I stand up, arms folded, calmly waiting. The element of surprise, I feel, being the essential element here.
And sure enough, in trots Elka, wearing my silk dressing gown and with a sea-green facepack on her that looks suspiciously like the Crème de la Mer one sitting on my dressing table.
She nearly leaps six feet in the air when she sees me, standing nice and composed by my slumbering daughter, waiting like a praying mantis for her.
‘Eloise!’ she says, in her clipped, over-articulated English. ‘What are you doing back home? I did not expect you for a long time …’
‘You handed in your notice this morning, remember?’ I say coolly, voice even, fixing her with a steady, measured stare. One I save up for special occasions in the office, if I really need to terrify the bejaysus out of someone. Rarely fails me. Been known to reduce grown men to tears on occasion.
‘Eh … Of