Did The Earth Move? (23 page)

She shook her head.

'We're so up close, together all the time, I can't
see
him. I haven't the slightest idea what it was about him that I fell in love with and if it's still there. And I no longer think there's any hope of finding out until I get away for a while. Have a holiday ... leave them all to it.'

With another almost laugh, she added: 'God knows how they'll react to that.'

'Try not to care,' Eve said.

'Yes. One long compromise – that's what my home life has become,' Janie said. 'No-one is doing what they want any more. We're all doing what we think we should ... what someone else wants. I know you can't please all of the people all of the time, but at the moment one of us is always miserable and all four of us have forgotten how to be happy.'

'Well . . . group living is tricky,' Eve said. 'Needs of the individual versus the group... I'm sure Anna could direct us to whole bookshelves about that.'

'She is a little bit scary, isn't she?'

'Occasionally, but she's quite a normal nine-year-old most of the time,' Eve said, never wanting Anna to be labelled with any hyper-intelligent tags that she might struggle to live up to later.

Something was occurring to Eve for the very first time.

'Now that I think about it,' she confided to Janie, 'I compromised totally for Dennis. I did everything the way he wanted and tried to be everything he wanted me to be. And with Joseph, it was the opposite. I fought every hint of a compromise all the way. I tried to make him do everything the way I wanted it – even changed his diet, made him give up coffee, cycle to college, recycle everything . . . Oh God! No bloody surprise he turned out the way he is. He rebelled!'

'Scary,' Janie said. 'And you know, I think when people live together for a long time, it's the trickle of water on a stone effect: gradually you change, you get worn down. David's little comments about my clothes: too expensive this, too revealing that, too tight, too bright... they've gradually, over the years turned me into a frump.
Me!!
Eve! The girl who used to spend half her wages on the very best Italian clothes Winchester had to offer.'

Eve considered this carefully then said: 'This is obviously why people getting divorced in their mid-forties go on these crazed "I'm an individual" benders. Buy sports cars, groovy gear and pop music.'

'Does it have to be this way? Do I have to get divorced to be me again?' Janie asked her now.

'I don't know.' Eve licked cream from the back of her spoon. 'Only you and David, and maybe the children, can help you with that one.'

Her sister looked down at her cup and began to stir again, over and over. How hard she was to read, Eve thought, her practised, inscrutable barrister's face.

Finally Janie looked up and said with a little smile: 'I'll have to wear the nice pants for myself for a while ... Get comfortable in them.'

'That's my girl,' Eve smiled back.

Eve had allowed the whole work thing to somehow get away from her. Lester had urged her to go ahead and apply for the promotion anyway, because she could always change her mind. And now here she was brushing down her best suit, ironing her shirt and polishing shoes for a day of meetings with the selection panel tomorrow because she was being interviewed for the job along with Lester's deputy and two outside candidates.

All this concentrating on whether or not she wanted it, she'd let slip the fact that maybe she wouldn't get it and suddenly that seemed to be whetting her appetite. Looking down at her note-scribbled diary, she saw the big red ring round 7 August, interview. She had the vaguest feeling that there was another reason she should remember the date, but shrugged it off. Thoughts of the interview were crowding in now ... maybe she did want to head the department, get things done the way she wanted, take the rap, make the changes .. . Her only reservation was family life and how it would be affected by taking on more work.

But wasn't that the hardest thing to get right? The balance between work and family. It was an art to be in the middle of the push and pull and not be torn apart, to find a way to give more attention to one side when it was needed then move quickly back and redraw the lines. She saw Janie and Jen struggle with it week in, week out and she knew Deepa and Tom would have to play the game too when the baby arrived.

After a long bath, Eve went to check on the children. Like every parent, she loved to watch them sleep – the long lashes, the flushed pink cheeks, the steady rise and fall of the little chests. Asleep, they were always perfect: Anna, an angel, Robbie, a little pyjama-clad Cupid.

Back in her bedroom, she worked through all the most complicated calming poses, then curled herself up small, tiny, tiny into child's pose on the floor and tried to relax.

That night, very soon after she had finally managed to fall asleep, she was woken by the scary sound of stumbling and choking in her room.

When she managed to get the sidelight on, she saw her little son, pale and sweaty, looking up at her with trails of vomit down his chin and pyjama top.

'It's OK, Robbie,' she'd said, going from asleep to fully awake and coping in twenty seconds. She gathered him up into her arms and put him in her bed. 'You get comfy, I'll go and get a cloth.'

She sponged him down, along with the floor, the rug and her work shoes – which had somehow got embroiled in the vomit scenario.

He was hot and listless in the bed. But not too hot, she thought, feeling his forehead, his neck and his tummy, so she gave him a few sips of water, then cuddled up with him and they both fell back to sleep.

In the morning, he woke well before seven and seemed warm but not too bad. He could still go to the childminder's, but for a quiet day in.

Eve had hardly sat down at her desk when the call came from Arlene. Robbie was burning up and wouldn't stop crying for her. Eve didn't need to hear the symptoms to know that he was really unwell, she could hear the horrible high-pitched wailing in the background.

'OK, I'll be right over, as fast as I can. Tell him I'm coming . . . There isn't any rash, is there?' Because it was impossible not to fast-forward to that.

'No, no rash,' Arlene told her. 'But he doesn't look good.'

Eve scrambled her belongings into her bag and went to find Lester.

He couldn't believe what he was hearing.

'I have to go,' she told him.

'For God's sake, Eve, this is really important,' he stormed. 'I don't know if it can be rearranged, and anyway what for? Your son has a temperature! You know what kids are like, he'll probably be much better by the time you get there and you'll wonder what you were so worried about. Isn't there anyone else who can look after him? Just to give you a few hours. We'll try and do your interview first.'

'No,' she'd told him. 'No, Lester. I don't know how unwell he is, I'm not a doctor. All I know is he's hot, miserable and he wants his mummy. I don't have the luxury of being able to send my wife – or Robbie's dad – so I have to go.'

And then for good measure she threw in: 'My family comes first. I want a world where that's not seen as a strike against me... that's why I do this job, for God's sake.' Flushed up with anger, she added: 'You bloody know I could head this department really well, because I
am
the kind of person who drops everything for a child who needs me.'

Lester's gaze fell to his folded hands and he gave a deep sigh. 'OK, OK ... off you go. Keep in touch and come back as soon as you can.'

'Thanks, I know you'll man the fort for me,' she said, her usual farewell to him when she was leaving early.

'But not for much longer, Eve,' he called after her as she hurried out of the door to the minicab she'd ordered. 'Not for much longer.'

* * *

As she ran up the path to Arlene's house, she was shocked to hear her son's piercing cries.

She rapped impatiently on the door and Arlene let her in almost immediately. She rushed to the sitting room, to see her little boy red and sobbing inconsolably on the sofa.

'Oh Robbie, Robbie.' She cuddled him up and he buried his head in her chest. 'I'm really sorry.' This was directed at both her son and the anxious childminder.

'What do you think it is?' Arlene asked.

'I don't know, probably one of those nasty kiddie bugs, you know the ones that go on for 24 hours of hell and then disappear. I'll get him home and see how he goes. We'll phone the doctor for some advice.'

Back at home, Eve washed Robbie down with lukewarm water, changed him into his pyjamas and let him doze on the sofa. He didn't want to let her out of his sight, cried whenever she went out of the room.

He was hot, 39 degrees, when she checked with the thermometer. She stood in front of the bathroom medicine cabinet and swithered – baby paracetamol or homoeopathic belladonna? Reduce the fever or stoke it up? Calpol or belladonna? Calpol or belladonna?

She decided to use belladonna but switch to Calpol if the fever went any higher. So Robbie was dosed, then sponged down with water every half an hour to keep him cool. He was vomiting back even the tiniest sips of water she was spooning into him and didn't perk up at all at the sight of Anna. By the evening, Eve decided it was time to consult the doctor again.

'Sounds like just a virus,' the tired foreign voice at the other end of the line told her. Because this was on-call time and the best you could hope for in this part of London now was a locum who at least knew what he was talking about, even if you couldn't understand him.

'Just a virus? Just a virus??!' she couldn't help snapping back. 'Isn't meningitis just a virus? AIDS ... Ebola?'

'There's no need to over-react.'

'No,' she agreed, trying to calm herself. 'I'm very tired, my son is ill and I want to know if he's going to be OK.'

'Well, it sounds like gastric flu. You'll have to keep a close eye on him. If his temperature goes up higher, if he gets too dehydrated, or if any sort of rash develops, call us straight back. Give him Calpol and tiny sips of water.'

Here we go with the Calpol thing again. Was this the only medicine available for children under ten?

'Calpol is just paracetamol. It's not a wonder drug,' she heard herself snapping again.

'It will make him feel a bit better, Mzzzz Gardiner. You might both be able to get some sleep.'

* * *

Mzzz Gardiner put the receiver down when the conversation was over, feeling mightily hacked off. At times like this it was very hard to be on her own. She needed another opinion, she needed somebody calm to look at Robbie, lying in a hot, dry, restless sleep in her bed, to say 'He's going to be fine', to put an arm round her and tell her to get some sleep on the sofa, he would stay with Robbie for a bit.

She thought, with tears welling up behind her eyes, that she needed Joseph. And before she could stop herself, her head was in her hands and she was remembering him covered in projectile vomit from a teething baby Anna, managing to smile and coo at her 'There, there, feeling better now?' while baby sick dripped off his cheeks and pyjamas.

Remembering him nurse her through flus and colds with soup brought to her bedside. He'd once set up the TV and video in her room and forced her to watch Laurel and Hardy films when she was too blue and unwell to make it out of bed.

He was a lovely man.

Was .. . was ..
. she reminded herself, willing her thoughts to stop. He turned into a jerk, remember, Eve? – that's why he had to go and you packed up his bags and got rid of him.

Robbie woke up hourly throughout the night, to be sick, to cry, to lie listlessly in her arms, willing her to make him feel better because she was his mummy. And that's what mummies were supposed to do.

At one point he woke up and demanded that they go and make a cake.

'What?' she asked him, fumbling for the sidelight, hardly able to wake up yet again because she was exhausted.

'I want to make a cake,' he was crying at her now.

'A
cake???
Oh Robbie, honey, it's the middle of the night.' In fact it was 5a.m. 'Shall we try and get back to sleep and make one in the morning?'

'I want to make a cake, I want to make a cake,' he kept repeating over and over. He was boiling hot and still so dry, not one bead of sweat, there was no sign of this fever breaking.

She needed to sponge him down again and get some water into him.

He was still grizzling on about the cake, so she went into the kitchen and poured flour into a bowl, put a wooden spoon into it and brought it back to the bedroom. I must be insane, she thought, watching her delirious son stir flour until it had settled on his hair, his arms, his pyjamas, her duvet cover, the bed.

He puked up the mouthfuls of water she had made him sip into the bowl and then, moments later, fell asleep in her arms.

Just a few restless hours later, Anna was up offering to make Eve some breakfast while Robbie finally slept deeply.

'So long as you haven't reverted to breastfeeding him,' Anna said, as they sat together at the kitchen table, Eve barely able to hold a spoon, she was so whacked.

'No, I haven't – but you know, if it was what he wanted, I'd have done it, just to comfort him.'

Eve had breastfed Robbie until one month after his second birthday, despite Anna's disapproval.

'He's anxiously attached,' Anna had told her.

'Maybe you're jealous,' she'd countered.

'Yuk, I am not!'

'I'll stop when he's two, I promise.'

So she'd had to explain to Robbie that he was going to get a beaker with milk. They had gone out together to buy a bright red beaker with purple swirls on it. He drank from beakers all day, but this was a special milk beaker.

'I like boobies,' he'd told her, cuddled up in her arms, after just a few sips of beaker.

'So do I,' she'd said. 'But you're a big boy now, boobies are for baby boys.'

'Am I big?' he'd asked with a smile.

'Yes.' And she'd kissed his fat cheek.

That was how the breastfeeding ended. Later that night, she couldn't help crying about it. That was it, the last baby weaned. Her little breasts would shrink up into an even tinier size and never be of any use to her again.

'You look terrible,' Anna told her now.

'Thanks, darling.'

'Is Robbie going to be OK?'

'I'm sure he is. I think he's a bit better already, he's sound asleep and he doesn't feel so hot any more.'

'How come you've got flour in your hair?'

'Oh, long story.'

Yup, she looked undeniably rubbish: sagging, shapeless grey nightshirt, greasy hair with flour, eyes with double bags. She really needed a bath, but then Robbie woke up and had to be attended to and somehow the morning wore on without her having the chance to wash, dress or sort herself out.

Until the phone rang.

'Hello, Evelyn, glad to catch you home.' She registered the American twang before she began to wonder how this voice knew her name – her old name.

'Hello?'

'Hi, yeah. It's Dennis here. I'm meeting the boys at their place at noon, so since I'm early, I thought I'd drop off. Visit you, catch up, see the flat.'

'Dennis?' DENNIS!!!!!! Heart pounding, breath catching shock.

'Yeah, hi. Are you about? Are you up for it? I'm just round the corner, in a cab.'

Round the corner!

'I'll be right there. Thought it would be good to say hello.'

Why was it so hard for her to say no to this man? He was like an unstoppable tide. Still the same bossy voice, just a bit Americanized, coming down the mobile phone at her. She was hardly able to speak, she was so shocked to hear him. Somewhere, there must have been a note of his arrival date, some word from Denny or Tom, but she'd filed it away and forgotten all about it. Avoided thinking about it, more like. Now here he was about to knock on the door, turning up completely unexpected, like a, like a ... virus.

She said nothing. He wasn't listening anyway. He just carried on, as he always had done, getting everyone else to fit in with his plans.

'OK, does that suit? I'll be there in five. Number 53, right.' Click. Unbelievable. He didn't even wait for her agreement, goodbye ... anything.

'AAAAAAAAAAARGH!' she shouted out loud with the burring receiver in her hand. 'Get lost! Get stuffed! Leave me alone!' But none of those things would come out when he was actually in earshot, would they? Why not? How did he still manage to make her feel this ... powerless?

He would be here in five minutes! In the reunion she'd pictured, she'd fussed about what to wear, how to look, what to say. Now she was about to get caught barefoot in her nightshirt, looking like crap. It wasn't fair. It made her want to cry.

She rushed into the bathroom. God, she looked awful. Where to even begin the rescue operation? She brushed through her hair frantically, but that just seemed to spread the flour around. She scraped it back in a ponytail and searched about for some lipstick, couldn't find any . . . raced to the bedroom for clothes. Anything clean would do... maybe even ironed, was ironed too much to ask?