The Playdate (13 page)
She knew better, though.
When it was finally over, and Henry’s wails had diminished into long, self-pitying sobs, and he accepted the “time-out” in his room, Jez returned to the bathroom and stood in the doorway with the repentant little boy.
“Now, say sorry to your brothers,” Jez said.
“Sorry,” Henry sobbed.
“Good boy. Now go and tidy your room till the bath is free.”
Suzy refused to look at Jez, instead sitting up to wash the twins and take them out of the bath. She would hug Henry later in his bedroom when Jez had disappeared back upstairs to his study or gone out. She would sneak him up a cookie.
Whisper to him how much she loved him and that she was sorry Daddy had shouted.
“How’s the rash?” Jez said after a minute, as she was wrapping Peter in a towel.
“What?”
“Peter’s rash. How is it?”
She pulled the towel tight, gulping. “Probably just eczema.”
* * *
She and Jez finally sat down to dinner on their own at 8:30
P.M.
in a tense silence.
“How did Henry get on at the pool?” asked Suzy, going to unscrew the top off a new bottle of red only to find Jez had already opened it.
“Useless,” Jez murmured, offering his glass for a top-up. “He should be swimming by now. Couldn’t even get him to put his head under the water.”
“Well, it’s kind of tricky, hon, taking three of them on my own.”
“Well, get him lessons then. I was swimming lengths by his age—on the school team at eight.”
God, he sounded like his father sometimes. She half-expected him to start harrumphing.
“I don’t think they have a swimming team at Palace Gates Infants School,” she teased, watching him lift his glass to his mouth. How many had he had? Three was usually when his jaw
began to soften. There was no point giving up yet. Not while there was still a possibility of conceiving. The top button of his shirt was undone, and her body ached to kiss the triangle of warm skin that it revealed, to feel his weight on her again.
“Well, he’s not likely to be there when he’s eight, anyway,” Jez said sarcastically, standing up and going to fetch the salt.
“No. He’ll have moved up to the junior school,” she said warily.
He shook his head. Even from behind, she could tell the expression on his face was one of irritation. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what do you mean?” she whispered.
“I mean, he’s not going to be staying at that school. At all.”
“What are you talking about? Are we going back to the States?”
“No.”
“Then what do you mean?”
Jez rolled his eyes. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it.” He walked toward the door. “Right, I’ve got work to do.”
“Jez!” she said. “What are you talking about?”
He shrugged as he walked out of the kitchen door with his plate and glass, and headed for the stairs. “I’m not getting into it right now. I said, don’t worry about it.”
She pushed her plate away, frightened.
The phone rang on Tuesday morning, injecting a panicked squeal into the bedroom. Debs woke feeling she was inside a cloud. She shook her head from side to side, moaning with the effort of coming to, then forced her arm to reach over, pick up her glasses from the bedside table, and put them on. A little dizzy, she tried to focus. The clock said 9:05
A.M.
She’d slept in. “Have another couple of hours, love,” she remembered Allen saying. He knew she’d had a bad night. At 11
P.M.,
the specter of Daisy Poplar had finally returned to visit her just as she was about to fall asleep. At 1
A.M.
, she’d given in and taken a pill to get rid of the girl.
She blinked her eyes and looked round the room. Who was that ringing? With a second surge of effort, she mobilized her sleep-heavy limbs and sat up, pulling round her shoulders the dressing gown that Allen had presented her with for Christmas. He said she couldn’t wear her old sage robe anymore.
The phone stopped. Never mind. If it was important they would ring back.
Time to get up. She forced her legs out of bed, and leaned over to lift the curtain to see what the weather was like. It had changed overnight. The sky looked like a wet gray blanket. She heard a bang. Callie came rushing out of the gate opposite, in a smart dress. Debs frowned. She’d hardly recognized the young woman when she’d come into after-school club yesterday. When she had turned up with that rather odd lasagne, she’d appeared so nervous. Now she looked like all the other stylish, professional women Debs walked past with her head bowed on her rare visits into central London.
Hang on, she thought, it was after nine. They must be late for school. Callie was calling from the pavement to Rae, who was dawdling inside the gate. From up high, Debs saw Rae bend down behind the wall and, with a rapid hand, take something out of a plant pot by the gate. There was a flash of yellow as she put it in her pocket and ran to her mother.
Debs watched. Later. At after-school club. She’d find out. When the little girl was on her own. She had just stepped onto the stairs when the phone rang again. Debs limped down the steps, trying to protect her knee.
Just as she got off the bottom step, the phone stopped.
How annoying.
She picked it up and dialed 1471. Number withheld. Probably someone selling something.
Now that she was downstairs she made a cup of tea. She’d made all the tea since Saturday and Allen still hadn’t noticed the pot was missing. As the kettle boiled she looked round the kitchen for a mug. Where were they all?
The dishwasher the Hendersons had left stared back at her.
She opened it up and found all six of them in there, washed from last night. How strange. For so many years it had just been
her plate, her cup, and her cutlery arranged neatly on the drying rack. She had no idea when to start stacking her and Allen’s things into this cavernous machine—wouldn’t they run out of dishes before it was full?
She took her tea back upstairs to the large front bedroom, and started again on her own clothes boxes. Just as she was hanging up a navy blue work skirt, the phone rang again. Honestly. She stood up, straightening out her sore knee, and padded back down the stairs. Suddenly, she had a horrible thought. What if the people who’d bought her flat had tracked down her number and were ringing to complain about their first night under the woman upstairs, and her noisy footsteps on the stairs?
As she got to the phone, she decided to pick it up anyway. It might be Allen.
Just as she put her hand out, it stopped again.
She shook her head. Very strange. Checking the connection at the back to make sure she wasn’t stepping on something, she frowned. Everything looked fine. For a minute she waited to see if the caller would ring back. When they didn’t, she turned back upstairs, remembering at the last moment to take another box from the hall with her. She was halfway up when the phone rang again.
The muscles across her chest pulled tight. What on earth?
She put down the box and ran down the stairs, this time flying off the last step to grab the receiver.
It stopped.
Debs’s face went cold.
The phone rang again.
She grabbed the receiver.
“Hello!” she shouted, her voice rising into a shriek.
Dead. The phone was dead.
“Oh no,” she murmured. “Oh no.” Grasping the phone with shaky fingers, she quickly dialed a number.
“Allen!” she said in a panicked tone. “The phone’s been ringing and cutting off. I think it’s them. The Poplars.”
There was a long silence. “I’m in a meeting,” he said neutrally. “Can we speak about it at lunchtime?”
“Yes, love, sorry,” she said.
“Why don’t I pop home for lunch?” Allen said.
Yes. Yes.
* * *
She didn’t hear him come in through the front door. The sky had finally cleared to reveal blue patches, so she was weeding a flower bed of pink peonies and blue irises that the Hendersons had left, to keep her mind occupied.
“Hello,” Allen called, walking into the kitchen and putting down his briefcase. He was wearing one of the two gray suits she’d helped him buy at M&S. She’d tried to persuade him to buy one version with a stripe but he had wanted them plain. “Don’t want to be a show-off,” he had said.
“Hello,” she called, trying to keep her voice from wavering. “Soup’s just on.”
“OK, love,” he replied.
The word
love
made her shoulders instantly drop down. Perhaps it wouldn’t be too bad.
“Good morning at work?” she said lightly, coming in to wash her hands and kissing his cheek.
“Yes, I think it was,” he said, wandering past her and out into the garden, looking pleased with himself. “I put forward my idea for the bus stop by the library and I think the planning officer liked it.”
“Mmm,” she said, not really listening, pouring out the chicken broth she had made earlier and bringing it outside on a tray with a spoon, buttered bread, a napkin, and a glass of water. “Uh-huh.”
“Of course, Ali said he’d already mentioned it last year and they’d said no, so . . .” he started, sitting down on a garden chair and taking the tray from her. “But I thought . . .”
“I am so very worried about these phone calls,” she blurted out.
“Hmm,” he said, looking down at the ground.
“Well, Allen, I’m sorry—it’s strange, isn’t it? I mean, why would the phone keep ringing like that . . .”
Allen lifted up a spoonful of soup and put it in his mouth. She waited for him to say something and when he didn’t she continued, desperate for something. She knew what he was thinking. She just needed some reassurance. Acknowledgment. Anything.
“Because I just think, how have they found my new number? And does that mean they know where I live, too?”
Allen screwed up his mouth and blinked hard.
“Debs, love.” This time the word
love
had a different tone.
He took another breath.
“I don’t know. You have no reason to think they’d call. The matter is finished with. It’s probably just one of those computerized phone companies that ring you automatically to enter you in a lottery or something.”
She looked at him.
“Do you think? Really? Do you think that’s possible?”
“I think it is,” he said, nodding. “Really, love, you’ve got to stop yourself getting worked up like this. This business with the planes, for instance . . .”
Planes. She looked up and checked the sky before she could
help herself. Why did he have to say that? She hadn’t noticed them since last night. Now she would start hearing them again.
“You know, love,” he continued. “Maybe you should do something to occupy yourself during the day. Some volunteering, perhaps, just to get you out of the house.”
“That might be a good idea.” She nodded, trying to show how much she appreciated his efforts to calm her down.
“Maybe a few hours in a charity shop?” he said.
“Hmm,” she said, trying to look more interested than she was. The thought of speaking to strange adults she didn’t know all day was more than her nerves could manage right now.
“That’s what Mum did,” he said, popping a piece of bread in his mouth. “Got her out of the house Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
She looked at him, horrified.
His mother?
Is that what she had become to him? One burdensome woman exchanged for another?
“Hmm, good idea, love,” she stuttered. “But the after-school club does take it out of me, you know. I know it’s only two and a half hours, but the children are very tired after school and it’s quite demanding. I want to keep myself fresh for that.”
He looked at her. He looked like he had something to say that was difficult to get out. “The thing is, love . . . The way you’ve BEEN recently . . .” He said the word
been
as if it had a hundred meanings. “After what happened, I’m not sure it’s really a good idea for you to be working with children again at all . . .”
Behind them there was a rustle. Suddenly a creature leaped over the fence, streaked across the garden in a blur, scrabbled up the other side with a loud bang, and was gone.