Page 9

9.

In the morning, Pete didn’t rush off to work. He took his time apologizing to Stella, a version of the deep apology he’d given me last night: He’d reacted badly because he hated to see her so upset; he was tired and overworked. He wanted to spend more time with her. “So can you forgive me, sweetie?” he finished.

“Oh yes,” Stella said. Pete squeezed my hand, and Stella, her face inscrutable, studied our linked fingers. I felt sick but also ravenous. I ate two pieces of buttered toast, but was still hungry. The troika tin caught my eye, and I had a sudden craving for sweet pastry, something rich and heavy to take the place of the ache inside. But when I opened the tin, it was empty. “Pete, did you eat these?” I asked.

Pete raised his eyebrows. “I was in bed with you all night.”

I turned to Stella. “Did you eat the pastries, darling?”

“Someone else creeped in and ate them,” she announced. I couldn’t help smiling at that “creeped.” Stella was so precocious that I savored any childish solecism.

“Well, I hope whoever it was brushed her teeth afterwards,” I said, deciding to let it go.

“Didn’t you have enough to eat at dinner?” Pete said. “Is that why you had a midnight feast?”

Stella shook her head. “ I didn’t have a midnight feast.”

I frowned. If Stella did something wrong, she usually defended her actions. An outright lie wasn’t her style at all. But maybe she was asserting her independence.

Something was going right because she got ready for school in half the usual time. To my amazement, she put on her school dress of her own accord. Previously she’d refused to even try it on. Something else was different too. Usually in the morning her wild hair seemed to grow straight out from her head, as if it were alive. Today it lay flat and limp. “What happened to your hair?” I said.

“I brushed it!” Stella was outraged. Pete and I exchanged stunned looks. She had such a sensitive scalp that usually I could only brush a few strands at a time, and I had to hold them near the top to avoid the slightest tug on her head. I couldn’t deny she looked much neater. Still, I felt a pang: she’d robbed me of one of my few excuses to touch her.

After I dropped Stella off, I double-checked that I hadn’t received a message from Cherie: nothing. I figured that Zach was refusing school again, and she was too overwrought even to shoot me a text. But at pickup, I saw her in the distance, double-parked, hustling Zach into her minivan with his ukulele. I raised my hand, but she didn’t appear to see me. Bile rose in my throat. She deserved more than a scribbled card. I should have gone to see her.

I swallowed and forced myself to focus on what mattered: Stella had got through the second day of school without the teacher keeping me behind to talk, without Stella’s face looking like thunder at pickup time. Stella even waved a timid goodbye to Lulu.

I was so pleased with Stella that I walked to our favorite café on Muswell Hill Broadway for a treat, but when we got there, she said she wasn’t hungry. I hadn’t realized that the way home from the café led past Irina’s house until I saw her sitting in her front window, staring into the street. I wondered if I could get away with turning around and going home by a different route. But Stella waved, and Irina beckoned us up her front path.

When she opened the front door, she didn’t look good. Her bare legs were blotchy, her feet in dirty sheepskin slippers, and it looked like she had put liner and eye shadow on only one eye. I felt terrible for her. Still, I didn’t want to linger. I could smell the rubbish in her wheelie bins, but I could also smell the hard plastic the bins were made of, and that was worse.

But Irina produced yet another biscuit tin, apparently from behind the door, like she’d had it ready. “Do you know any hungry little wolves?” she asked Stella.

“Owooo! Ow-owooo!” said Stella, making me start. It wasn’t like her to be so playful with strangers. But Irina wasn’t a stranger, I remembered: Blanka had brought Stella here. “Mommy, let’s have some snacks,” she said, trying to tug me over the threshold.

“You said you weren’t hungry,” I told Stella. Then I addressed Irina. “Thank you, but we should be getting back,” I said. Who knew what inappropriate thing Irina might say about Blanka? But Irina sagged, and I felt guilty.

“Why don’t you come over to our place for a cup of tea?” I offered. “Then I could do Stella’s dinner at the same time.”

“That is very nice,” said Irina, and even though I felt I’d done the right thing, my heart sank while we waited for her to get her purse. Now I had to warn her not to mention Blanka, but I didn’t want to sound callous: “Sorry about your child’s tragic death, but I don’t want it to upset my child, who is very much alive. So could you play along with our charade?”

On the threshold of our house, Irina hesitated, and a shadow passed over her face. The poor woman must be thinking about Blanka, who had spent so much time here. I put a hand on her sleeve. “Come in,” I said. “I’ll get you some tea.”

Inside, Irina looked around and blinked. We had a pared-down style anyway, but as it happened, our bookshelves were completely empty at that moment. Before I got pregnant, I’d spent hours refinishing them, and once I started feeling sick, I’d lacked the energy to arrange our books and ornaments. Actually, I found I quite liked to rest my eyes on empty shelves.

In the kitchen, Stella surprised me by asking Irina to read to her from our latest library book, Shipwreck: A History of Disasters at Sea . Despite her poor English, Irina gamely ploughed ahead. I served Stella separate bowls of penne, kale chips, and blueberries, and to my relief, she ate. I made a mental note to try reading to her at meals. Pete texted to say he’d be home late—because he’d left early the previous night, he had a lot to catch up on. The pantry burped up the smell of stale pretzels, and my stomach lurched.

“Thank you so much for coming,” I twittered to Irina. “I need to give Stella her bath now.” I was pretty sure that once again she’d veto the bath, and I’d have to wash her with a damp cloth while she stood on the bathmat. But there was no need to explain that.

Irina didn’t get up. I clamped my hand over my mouth. I’d never even allowed Pete to see me throwing up. Sweat broke out on my forehead. Irina stared at me for a moment. Then she stood up. “I do bath.”

“That’s so nice,” I said, “but—” I tried to think how to explain that Stella would undoubtedly not want a near-stranger helping her with her bath.

She turned to Stella: “We can make ship, Titanic .”

Stella jumped up and down. “I can be a giant squid! I’ll eat everyone on board!”

Was it possible Stella had had baths at Irina’s? Her gaze flickered over my torso. “Rest.” She put her hand on my shoulder.

“She likes the water no more than lukewarm,” I began, swallowing back saliva. “You have to—”

“I understand.” Irina nodded towards my belly. “You can rest.”

I was about to explain that Stella also needed the door closed while the water ran. Then a wave of dizziness washed over me, and I sank onto the sofa. Irina followed Stella up the stairs. My urge to be sick passed. Edith would never have offered to give Stella a bath. When Stella was a toddler, she went through a phase of refusing to wear nappies—tight waistbands were torture—so I had to watch her like a hawk and whisk her to the potty any time she looked like she needed to go. I hadn’t had a shower or eaten a meal sitting at a table for two days. While I knelt on the floor, awaiting a telltale grimace from Stella, my mother watched from the sofa with her weak Earl Grey (“Barely let the tea bag touch the water.”), making me feel even more flustered. Her idea of reassurance was to tell me, “It seems hard at the moment, but motherhood is only one phase of your life.”

But now someone else was in charge, and for a minute, I would enjoy it. I picked up my phone and started watching an old episode of Neighbours , the Australian soap I’d watched after school with Maureen, our cleaner. Even when I grew too old to need a babysitter and Maureen only came once a week to clean, she still stuck around after work to catch the show.

After school on other days, I found myself borrowing cookbooks from the library, imagining meals meant to be shared. Edith only liked plain food, but one day, to accompany a special episode when two characters got married, I made a pavlova for Maureen. She had three helpings.

The following week, she brought the ingredients for shepherd’s pie and asked if I wanted to learn how to make it. We peeled and chopped, side by side. I dared ask if we could add a little Dijon mustard, and Maureen was intrigued. When the pie was done, she set it on the table with a flourish: “Madam, dinner is served!”

After a few mouthfuls, she said, “The mustard makes it”—she kissed her fingers. “We should open a restaurant and make this our signature dish.”

I felt warm inside. I stood up, did a silly bow, and picked up the salad servers: “Would madam like some salade verte ?”

“Ooh la la!” She held out her plate.

As we ate the salad, I said, “What would we call it? This restaurant.”

Maureen’s eyes sparkled. “Something French, because that’s fancy. Only I don’t know a single word of French.”

“You know ooh la la ,” I pointed out. “And maybe bonjour ?”

Maureen giggled. “We’ll call it the Ooh La La Bonjour restaurant.”

After that, we made dinner most Thursdays, and when Maureen wiped a smear of sauce from a dish rim or scattered parsley over the top, she said, “Nothing’s too good for the Ooh La La Bonjour restaurant.”

Edith wasn’t home until seven, so if we ate early, we had the kitchen to ourselves. When Edith eventually got home, I told her I’d already had supper, and didn’t mention that I’d eaten with Maureen. Somehow, I knew she wouldn’t approve.

Then one night, I pretended to be a snobby French waiter, pouring a splash of water into Maureen’s glass and making her sample it as if it were wine. “Does it have zee delicious tang of London pipes? Nothing but zee best for madam!”

Suddenly, Edith stood over us—we were laughing so much we didn’t hear her come in. Maybe it was the cold that made her look so drawn, her cheekbones sharp, a bright spot of pink on each one. She turned to Maureen. “What are you still doing here? I thought we agreed nine to four.”

“I was keeping Charlotte company while she has her tea.”

“I can’t pay for extra hours.”

“I wasn’t expecting any pay.” Maureen stood up and carried her dish to the sink. Her posture was queenly as she squirted soap onto a sponge.

“Charlotte will clear up the supper things,” Edith said. “I’m sure you’d rather be at home with your family.”

The boeuf bourguignon we’d made roiled in my stomach. Edith might as well have said, “Your real family.” As Maureen left, I wanted to run after her and fling my arms around her, promise I’d call the evening meal “tea” for the rest of my life.

After that, although Maureen and I still managed a chat at the end of her workday, she didn’t stay long. When I left home, we had a few stilted phone conversations, but soon our only contact was Christmas cards. One year hers had my name on the envelope but nothing written inside. I felt hurt that she didn’t care enough to scrawl something, but then, during one of my monthly calls with Edith, she told me Maureen had early onset Alzheimer’s and was now living in a care home. The next time I was in the UK, I visited her, but she didn’t remember my name.

I stopped the episode and swiped at my eyes. Then the sound of splashing and Stella chattering came from the bathroom. She was in the bath, and she sounded happy . I was stunned. How had Irina managed that?

Stella was lying full-length on her stomach in the bath. Irina sat on the toilet lid, smiling. I perched on the edge of the tub and dipped my hand in. I jerked it back. The water was hot , or rather, the temperature of a normal bath. When Pete had run a bath of this temperature, Stella had acted as if he were trying to boil her alive. But now she wriggled about, making little waves. I found myself grinning at Irina, and she smiled back. Stella rolled onto her back, her skin as pink as a newborn’s. I felt a surge of joy. This was a glimpse of another realm. It was the same way I’d felt once, when while out surfing, I’d seen dolphins riding the waves.