The Playdate (21 page)
Two against one? Suzy thought, putting down the tea. I don’t think so.
“What did you expect?” she heard Tom say as she marched over. “She’s in no position to be left with other people yet. It’s too early. Just because you want to go back to work doesn’t mean that you can! Just because you don’t want things to be like this, doesn’t mean they’re not going to be.”
Callie’s head was bowed. She turned as Suzy approached. Her eyes were fearful.
“Hey—don’t speak to her like that,” Suzy said, standing in front of Callie and squaring up to Tom. He pulled his head back in surprise, his eyes still blazing.
“This is none of your business. This is between me and Callie.”
“What—and your girlfriend?” she said, motioning to Kate. “Actually, it is my business. She’s my friend, and she’s upset and she’s exhausted. And for your information, I spend much more time with Rae than you do, so I know how much you leave Callie to do everything. And she’s a brilliant mother—all the time. You are away—what?—eight, nine months a year? Even when you’re back you ring her all weekend, asking her stupid questions. If Rae says she’s sleepy, you’re on the phone. Then you waltz off again abroad with your girlfriend here and sit around on a beach with your bloody baboons or whatever and
leave it all to her again. You know, if you actually took some of the strain off her, maybe she wouldn’t need to be out working again just to feel she has a life.”
Tom went quiet. Then a smirk appeared on his face. “That’s how it is, is it, Callie?”
Callie kept her eyes on the floor.
He turned back to Suzy. “I’m not going to insult you by taking to pieces what you’ve just said, because I actually believe that you believe it.” He looked back at Callie. “You’ve done a good job there, Cal.”
Callie didn’t react.
With a disgusted shake of his head, Tom turned back into Rae’s room with Kate. Suzy reached out and pulled Callie toward her.
“Come on. Let’s get you home for an hour, and get some clean clothes.”
Callie didn’t speak, just walked numbly the way she was led.
“Hon, you are so well out of there. The way he speaks to you is outrageous.”
“Is it?” Callie said quietly.
Suzy put a protective arm around her and pulled her back close.
I want to speak to Debs. I want to speak to her with an urgency that I haven’t felt since the morning Dad rang, his voice stuttering and raw, to say that Mum had come home from her poetry evening class the previous night feeling fluey, and he had woken up in the middle of the night to find her covered in a meningococcal rash. She had died in hospital a few hours later as they desperately pumped antibiotics into her.
I sat on the train from London counting the minutes till I was back home to see for myself if it was true. To walk around the farmhouse numbly and see her glasses on the kitchen mantelpiece but no head to place them on, her wellies in the porch but no feet to put inside them, to take her to pick carrots for our tea. To shout, “Mum!” when Dad was out at the funeral director’s. “Mum! Can you move your car? Mum! What’s for tea? Mum! Have you seen my blue top?” Because in the millisecond of delay between my shout and the resounding empty echoing reply of the house, part of my brain still believed she might answer.
Suzy pulls into Churchill Road. You would never know anything had happened here last night. For a second, I hate London. Where someone can be stabbed in the park and it doesn’t even make the local TV news. When Mum died, our neighbors in the village were still discussing it a year later, bringing meals round, flowers, offers of help for Dad long after her anniversary.
Suzy parks outside her house, and we step out onto the pavement. The sun is dazzling today and hurts my eyes after nearly twenty-four hours in the fluorescent glare of the hospital.
“Come and have a look,” Suzy says.
She links her arm through mine and we walk to the end of Churchill Road, passing a couple in their fifties whom I recognize from farther up the street. I try to meet their eyes. They must have heard about what happened to Rae. The whole street must know a little girl had an accident here yesterday?
They cross over to the other side of the road, chatting.
“Yes, thanks—she’s fine,” I mutter under my breath, sad for Rae. Suzy shoots me a sympathetic glance.
“What do you expect, round here?” she says.
We stop at the end of the road and Suzy points to the gutter.
“I think she was running down here—and fell or slipped about here.” Her finger moves to the corner of the curb. “The boy was turning there.”
There is nothing there. I am not sure what I was expecting. Perhaps a broken paving stone or flipped-up drain cover that says this was the type of accident that could have happened to any child, not just mine. Then something catches my eye. A little piece of yellow plastic. I lean down and pick it up. It looks like the hair from the ponytail of her tiny little doll that she carries around in her pocket. I check, but the rest of it is missing, probably carried off in the tread of the bike’s tires.
“Um. I’m going to go in now,” I say to Suzy, pulling my arm gently from hers.
“You OK, hon?” she says. “What is it?”
I flinch. The word
hon
is grating on me. “Nothing. I just want to go and have a shower.”
She watches me carefully. “OK,” she says, sounding hurt.
I frown. “It’ll be all right, Suze. I’m just tired, and fed up. I’ll speak to you later.”
She nods, looking less than convinced.
“Do you want me to go and talk to that woman?”
“No—I’ll do it. Thanks for the lift,” I say, and cross the road toward my flat, before she tries to hug me again. I can’t help it. I just need to be away from her.
I open my front door to find a man in the hall. He is wearing white overalls and has gray hair that he has shaved to the skin, revealing a high forehead and a ridge across the top of his scalp.
“Hi. The plumber, right?” I ask.
“All right, love? Yeah. Come in. Nearly done but I’ve had to replace the U-bend so there’s a bit of clearing up to do. Had to take a couple of tiles off the back, too, so I’ve just got to do a bit of plaster on that and we’re done.”
“Great,” I say, following him back into the flat, not really caring.
The flat smells of chemicals and of him. A kind of male gym locker smell of cheap deodorant. Tom always smelled of soap and warm skin.
“Actually, I’ve just realized—can I take a shower, or is the water off?” I ask. “Sorry, it’s just that I’ve been at hospital all night.”
“Course you can, love. Water’s back on. Tell you what, I’ll go up the caff for half an hour and leave you to it.”
I nod, grateful.
“How’s your little girl, by the way?” he says. “Your mate said she had an accident?”
His question takes me by surprise. Suzy must have told him. “She wasn’t hit or anything,” I start, then stop because I can’t be bothered to explain. “She’s OK, I think, thanks. They’re watching her now, and she’ll get home this evening.”
“I’ve got one that age, myself,” he says. “Have to watch them like a hawk, don’t you?”
Yes, I think, you do, slightly testily. And I always do. And who’s looking after your child right now?
He grabs his jacket and heads out, shouting into his mobile about being “there at five o’clock, mate.” I shut the door, finally alone.
The shower feels good. It washes away the smell of hospital from my skin with welcome hot bursts. I stand for a while, letting water rain down on my head, soaking my hair into heavy tresses that press down onto my shoulders and across my eyes.
The thing is, I know what’s coming.
But for this moment, standing here, I can pretend it’s not going to happen. That everything is still OK.
The phone has been vibrating in my pocket all morning. It started at ten o’clock this morning, and I know who it is. It’s not Dad, because I rang him this morning when I knew Rae was fine, so he wouldn’t insist on coming down. It’s not Tom, either.
There’s only one person it could be.
I wrap myself in the only clean towel I can find and walk to the bedroom, where I sit on the bed and brush my wet hair. My work dress from Monday lies abandoned in the corner, the power of its silver sequins diminished now into a little soft
lump of gray. I pull on a clean skirt and a T-shirt I find in the ironing basket, then with a heavy sigh stand up.
The phone sits on my chest of drawers, letting out an intermittent beep. I open it and press “voice message.”
“Hi, Callie,” Guy’s voice rings out. “God. Sorry to hear what’s happened. Hope she’s all right. Ring us and let us know.”
Then there is the pause. The pause I knew would be there.
“God. Well. Listen. I think you know how it is. Unfortunately, Loll can’t change his trip to New York, so we’ll have to push on. I’ll probably pass it on to Jerome for the meantime, because we’re tight for time. Really disappointed, obviously—Loll loved your ideas. But, listen . . . take your time with what you have to do, then give us a ring when things have picked up. And we’ll talk . . .”
“No,” I murmur. Oh no. He gave my job to Jerome. Jerome in his midtwenties with no kids. Jerome who’ll never have to run home when his kid’s sick or take time off in the summer holidays.
What was I thinking? It is over.
Frustration makes me open my mouth.
“Aaaaaargh!” I scream. A great, big, angry scream that vibrates so hard from inside that it comes out like a roar.
“Shit!” I shout. All that. So close.
The bell rings, making me jerk my head upright. I take a breath and walk to the door.
The plumber stands on the step, eyes curious.
“Everything all right?”
“All yours,” I nod, picking up my bag.
“All right,” he says. “Before you go, love, can you give me the details for the invoice?”
The invoice? I try to focus. “You need to—actually, can you make it out to my little girl’s dad?” I say, taking his pen.
“Good on you, love,” he says. “Don’t let him get away with not doing his bit. My sister’s ex is a right slippery bastard. Never pays for fuck all, excuse my French.”
I write the details down, resenting every letter of every word I have to write. Guy’s message hits me in waves. The implications form behind it. I’ve messed up the Loll Parker job. Guy will think I’ve become unreliable. I will not be earning my own money after all. I stare at the invoice. I cannot even pay this plumbing bill. When I subtract the cost of the clothes I bought at Brent Cross, there will be hardly anything left from my three days’ pay.
“If she gets back in time, my neighbor across the road will collect the spare keys back off you; otherwise, just stick them back through my letterbox?” I call, on my way out.
I don’t mean to—it’s not his fault—but I slam the door and march to the gate. I look across the road at Debs’s house.
One day, I think. One whole day since the accident and she hasn’t even sent me a note or called or apologized. My daughter is in hospital, and now I’ve lost the only thing that makes me happy apart from Rae, because of that woman’s carelessness.
Mum’s temper surges out of nowhere and I find myself flying off the pavement.
Debs stood behind the voile curtain, watching.
She had seen Suzy and Callie arrive and enter their different houses, and now she was waiting to see what happened next. To keep herself busy she was rearranging her books in alphabetical order, moving Dickens up to the top and Hardy below. It helped. It was calming. Touching the books, smelling their comforting dusty covers. Getting some order back. Trying to forget what that young police officer had told her. Clearly, if the Poplars had left the country, some of their supporters, people who had read about the story in the newspaper, were doing the harassment. She just knew she wasn’t imagining it. Why would no one listen to her?
A movement caught her eye just as she was turning away from the curtain again. Callie was emerging from her flat. For some reason she didn’t lock the front door behind her, just walked straight out of the gate. Her hair was dark and flat as if she had just washed it and she was frowning.
Suddenly she stopped and looked across at Debs’s house. Debs gasped and fell back. Had she seen her?
She popped her head up for another look. Callie was marching across the road toward her house, with a furious look on her face.
“Oh, help,” Debs said. She cowered down under the windowsill.
Bang. Bang. Bang. The front door rattled, followed by two rings of the doorbell. Debs held her breath. She tried to make her body as small as possible. Looking up carefully, she saw Callie’s silhouette above her. She was peering through Debs’s window.
“Hello?” she was calling. The nervous little voice of the other day had been replaced by a confident tone. Shaking, Debs stayed where she was. What could the girl do? Apart from break the window, she couldn’t get in. As long as Debs stayed here, she was safe.
She counted to ten, then heard her gate slam shut, followed by the sound of a car. She raised her glasses over the windowsill and had another peek. Callie’s old red Renault was heading off along the road.
It felt safe down by the tall pine baseboard. She dug at the little bits of dirt stuck between the stained floorboards, wafting her hand over them to feel the faint breeze and damp smell from the cellar. The teapot was almost under here, she thought. A foot from Allen’s nose and he didn’t even know.
The door next door banged, making her flinch. She peeked again to see the American woman leave her house with some shopping bags and head off in her car.
Just to be sure, Debs waited another ten minutes, lying on the floor, sorting out the Whitmans and Yevtushenkos on
the bottom shelf. Now—it was probably safe. Crawling out of her sitting room on her hands and knees, she picked up the package wrapped in fairy paper that she’d left on the stairs beside the little girl’s squashed doll and put on her shoes. It was the best she could do right now. She crept through her front door, popped her head round the hedge to see that no one was around, and briskly made her way across the road. The path up to Callie’s door was a little different than she’d realized. The paint on the gate was scraped, and there were two bins, not one. Pieces of a broken box lay behind one, and weeds littered the front garden. That was odd. Not quite how she’d imagined Callie’s home would be. She was such a smart young woman.