It was partly the bump grazing against the desk that made me fill in the rest of the form. A real and tangible touching. That touch. My baby. It brought to mind the large brown eyes of the children in Kos who queued up from sunrise to come to Stop Gap for the day, to get a meal, to talk to someone, but mostly just to play. At home, they never played; they had adult concerns. Finding food. Being quiet in the refugee camp. At Stop Gap, they could play—and be as loud as they liked. That was what they were queuing for, I thought.
I rubbed my taut bump and reread the information, then clicked: Next. A personal statement. And then all of the children were my bumps, too. Bana, whose hair had lightened in the sun. Moonif, with the scar across his forehead that he wouldn’t talk about. Amena, with the dirty koala toy. The queuing. Their disappointment.
I looked at the blinking cursor, as regular as the heartbeat inside me, and began to write.
15
Becky
Late afternoon, Friday, October 20
The reflux appointment has been all I have been able to think about, once I found out about it, as if it were a wrapped, pristine packet of cigarettes in my handbag waiting to be opened.
Even Marc just now texted me saying: It’s the day! Mind you, he’s nice like that.
I read the message a few times, thinking: How come you’re like this now?
I remember, a few weeks before we split up, I walked in the door, having been away at a bachelorette party for the weekend. Xander was already in bed—sleeping, of course—and Marc was alone in the living room, a can of beer on the arm of the sofa. “All right?” I said.
He didn’t reply, merely nodded. I took my shoes off, waiting for him to say something, but he didn’t. Not a single question about my weekend, nor an offer of a drink for me. Nothing. He didn’t even turn his head to look at me. Kept watching Match of the Day, his gaze fixed.
He had wanted to have sex with me the day right before I left, but I’d said no. I needed to pack, get going. It had been ages, he’d said, but I ignored him. He’d been off ever since, not saying good-bye to me, and not saying hello, either. His temper was one thing, but his sulking was worse. Something had changed with him. Was it the pressure—the tedium—of parenthood, or was it something more? I never knew, and things unraveled soon after.
Now, almost a year post-separation, he sends texts like that. If he had been . . . if he was this nice then, what would have happened? My heart answers before my brain can stop it, and I close my eyes with the pain of it.
I reply to him, now: Thank you—hope it goes well.
Me too, he responds immediately. But then he adds: This has gone beyond a joke now.
The arrangement. I know he means the arrangement. I wrinkle my nose in distaste and put my phone away. Before Marc withdrew completely, he developed this curious, macho attitude to life that reared its head at times when Xander was little. He would say things like “They need sorting out” and “He’s got it coming to him.” Sometimes he would snatch noisy toys from Xander, and slam doors, and bang saucepans around in the kitchen as he cooked. I could never reason with him when he was like that. It worried Xander, I know it did. But they never lasted long, his moods. He always snapped out of them. And he’d snap out of this, too, this disapproval of the nannying arrangement. Or so I hoped.
The health visitor will sort Layla out, and then we will be all right. She won’t cry so much, won’t be angry and tearful when Martha gets home.
It is late in the afternoon when we go for the appointment.
It is almost getting dark, and I perch in the window of a lit-up café nearby. I can’t go in. It feels like too much hangs on it. My hands feel clammy with nerves. Because . . . if they can’t sort it. Then what?
I sip my overpriced flat white and glumly watch the people walk by outside. A man with a poodle, both cowering a little against the wind. Perhaps it won’t always be this way. Soon, one day soon, I won’t be looking after my sister’s baby who cries all the time. I could get a loan. Go back to design school. Finally finish. Become more like Martha: achieve something, instead of languishing in mediocrity. I don’t want a big, flashy life. Somehow, being with Marc taught me about smaller pleasures—watching The X Factor with a Chinese takeout, a drive-through McDonald’s on a Sunday night—and I have no desire to become a high flyer, a traveler, a big shot. I just want life to be a little better. A little easier. To make money doing something I enjoy.
Marc’s right about the arrangement, even if he expresses it poorly. Something needs to change. I know it. Martha has taken advantage of me, and why shouldn’t she? I am a shadow of her, a pale imitation.
The door opens, letting in a blast of smoked autumn air, and I am immediately transported somewhere nostalgic, though I’m not sure where.
Martha and Layla emerge in the doorway, behind a woman in a polka-dot mackintosh. Layla is strapped to her mother’s chest, and is crying. My jaw sets.
“How’d you go?” I say.
“Oh, rubbish,” Martha says. “Last time we got Gaviscon. Now we have ranitidine.”
“I still can’t believe they prescribed Gaviscon,” I say.
What next? A prescription for Halls Soothers? Homeopathy? Probably.
“What does ranitidine do?” I say.
“It stops the production of stomach acid. Same as Gaviscon, but more powerful. To be honest,” Martha says, digging in the changing bag for the prescription, “it sounds like it’s just one of those things.” She shows it to me. Ranitidine. Three times a day.
“One of those things?”
“She’ll just—grow out of it. I already think it’s a bit better. Don’t you?”
The shock must show on my face because Martha steps back, covering Layla’s head with her hand.
“God. Maybe,” I say, covering it up. Though I mean: Are you deluded?
We leave the café, and Martha’s hair blows across her face in the cold air. We have the same hair, so much of it, brownish red. We don’t know where we got it from. Our parents both have thin hair, wispy, and here we are with massive manes that required special hairbrushes ordered from a catalog by Mum. Dad used to clear all the hair that clogged up the drains when we were growing up. He never said a word about it until I saw him doing it one day and he admitted he did it every Monday. That was his way: stoicism. Ethan has inherited it.
“How long until the drugs work?” I say.
Layla’s whimpers become louder as we walk across the car park, and Martha reaches around for her hand.
I can’t get in the car with the crying. I can’t bear it. But how can I tell Martha that? Actually, this arrangement isn’t good for me. I can’t stand it any longer. I can’t, can I?
“Feckless, unreliable Becky,” Martha will say to Scott, and then they will roll their eyes about me. Their staff, gone rogue.
No. I can’t have that happen. I will make it work: I am too proud.
“Up to a year.”
“Wow.”
“I know. But you’re so great with it. And think of next year, and how easy it’ll be,” she says with a wide smile. And then, as if she is trying to make things seem better, she says, “It’ll either work or it’ll pass.”
It is a very Martha thing to say. The logic of it. We sat up late one night, on the day of her thirtieth birthday, post-takeout, and she said to me, “I think I want a baby more than I don’t want a baby.”
“Right,” I had said, with all the annoying, knowing smugness of a parent. “It’s not that simple,” I added. Though, really, I suppose I was jealous of her. Her decisiveness, and her control. She would never have an accident and spoil her career as I had.
“We’re going to start trying tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“It can take years, and you only get two IVF cycles on the NHS if you are under thirty-nine.”
“IVF?” I said. �
��What?”
“In case we can’t conceive.”
I shook my head. She sometimes made no sense in this way, was five steps ahead of herself, having imagined nine disasters along the way.
“Look,” I had wanted to say. “Look at the women who get pregnant immediately, the women who have all of their babies in their forties, the women who look like they might miss out but who it works out for, seemingly at the last minute.” But anyway, this is what I love most about her. My lens is wide-angle. Hers is narrow, but clearer. I like the hyperlogic of it. She makes perfect sense, just not in the real world.
“Everything is a phase,” she says now.
I blink. The crying. Layla’s face, even now, is streaked with tears. This job of mine, this nannying a constantly crying child. It is going to go on and on. A year. The tears, mine and hers. I could get another job but . . . it is working, for Martha at least.
“This too shall pass,” I say faintly, remembering seeing it on Mumsnet one day but never having needed to apply it to my own child. Xander was a sleepy newborn, a docile toddler who played alone. It is only now, as he approaches his tenth birthday, that I foresee any problems; I can suddenly see him as a sullen teenager, withdrawn. But not quite yet.
“Yep,” she says, seeming happy.
Layla is her baby. I am thinking: It is different for me. Her phone rings. I can hardly make it out at first over the crying.
“Oh, hang on,” she says, lifting Layla out of her sling and placing her in my arms. She walks over to the car, leaving me in the middle of the pavement. Just like that. She doesn’t even check if that’s okay with me.
Offload the baby onto the nanny, why don’t you? I think spitefully. As Layla cries, I get my phone out and text Marc back. Fucking right, I type, my head full of the reflux prognosis—“one of those things”—and the way Martha presumes our arrangement will continue forever.
I stand rigidly with Layla. It’s normal, I am telling myself. She just left the baby with me while she went to get her phone. But it’s another imposition. One in a whole line of them.
When she gets back, I don’t ask her who it was. That is, until I see her face. She’s white.
“What’s up?” I say.
“We got the grant,” she says quietly. It is her tone that makes me look up properly. Her phone is still lit up by her side.
“The Lottery grant?”
“Yes.”
“How much?” I say.
She whispers her answer. “One point two million pounds.”
“Fucking hell.”
“Yes. We can do so much with it all,” she says.
“You can.”
“We could—we could even buy somewhere. In Kos. Somewhere—permanent.”
“Jesus,” I say.
She has this serious expression on her face, the one she only ever gets when she’s thinking hard. “Ami thinks I need to go. Next week. To look at places. She says there are a few great ones on the market at the moment, but they’re getting snapped up. And Scott’s going to be away again.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Where is Scott?”
“This developers’ conference . . . I can’t take Layla, Beck.”
“I know,” I said, thinking of the flight, the premises, the hundreds of children. She can’t take a baby into that chaos.
She is going to ask me.
She turns to me. Layla is held close to my chest, but is looking up at Martha in adoration. Mother and baby. “I need to go next week.”
“I know.”
“It’s chaos there. I can’t be viewing properties with an eight-week-old. She hasn’t even had all her vaccinations . . .”
I wait for it. Braced.
“Could you have Layla for a night? Scott is away for one night, but he can have her for the other. I’ll only be away two nights.”
“Of course,” I say, my voice husky.
“And then, after the trip . . . I could set up loads of things. A place where kids could learn how to use computers and learn English and . . .”
“Who are you going to get to do all that?” I say sharply.
“I could. With this money,” she says, like it’s obvious.
Like she doesn’t even have a baby to look after.
“I thought you were just arranging the premises and then handing it over to someone?”
“But everything’s changed, Beck,” she says, her eyes bright. “This is really working, isn’t it?” she adds, gesturing to me and Layla and demonstrating—as usual—a total and complete misunderstanding of reality. How she runs a charity is beyond me.
“What?”
“The nannying. Look—we could . . . couldn’t we make this long-term? You could stop all of your freelancing. I could pay you handsomely,” she says. She’s absolutely pumped.
“Oh—I don’t know,” I deflect, a fixed smile in place.
Like fuck we will make it long-term, I am thinking.
“We can get out of the fish market . . .” She pauses, then adds, “We teach them every day in the old fish market and it stinks, Beck. They even queue up to come—to spend their days in a horrible old market. If we had somewhere new, I could teach them seriously, with proper equipment, about geography, and science . . .”
I can’t argue with her altruism. It comes from a good place, I tell myself with gritted teeth. She takes Layla off me and the baby stops crying. For a moment, the night is blissfully silent.
In the quiet, I tell myself that I’ll do the night. The one night. I can handle it. I take a few breaths. Of course I can. But I can’t continue after that.
“Let’s get—let’s get you to Kos for the premises and then see. Okay?” I say.
I’ll tell her when she gets back. I’ll tell her that it can’t go on.
16
Martha
I don’t eat lunch. Everybody else orders fry-ups, and they arrive, steaming and greasy in front of them. I wonder what Becky eats for lunch with her legal team. She always had funny taste in food, would eat beans and processed pork sausages on toast, drink Cherry Coke. She’d eat Angel Delight when hungover. The sound of the whisk would signal it for me when we were teenagers. I hope she’s eating rubbish somewhere now, that she’s happy.
I can still remember the words Ami used as she told me about the premises in Kos. She wasn’t passing on the information just so that I, as CEO, would know, so that I would be kept in the loop. No. She was expectant. “You’ll come, won’t you?” she said. I recognized the tone, too: used by employees who give their all to work, who have nothing else to balance it with. “Of course you’ll come,” she was saying. There was no question. She wasn’t asking one.
And how could I not go? I needed to sign the documents. It was my charity. There were hundreds of refugees who were relying on me. In that moment—on that phone call, with Becky already nannying—it seemed so obvious, so logical.
It was only when I went to say good-bye to Layla that I saw the things I had missed in making that cold, dispassionate choice: That I loved Layla more than I had ever loved anybody. That my chest ached when I was away from her. That time away from her felt suspended, unreal, and only recommenced when I held her again. And that I suspected she felt the same about me.
I couldn’t go, I remember thinking, as I brought her close to me for the final time. I just wouldn’t go. But the details of canceling—the people I would let down, the flight I had booked, the premises viewing I had lined up—seemed insurmountable. And so I went. As I prepared to settle Layla in the Moses basket, she shifted her head closer to my chest and wrapped her little warm hand around mine, nuzzling into me. She didn’t want to be put down. I gave her one last breastfeed, even though I was late. She sucked until her eyelids were heavy, milk drunk. I tried to unlatch her, but she wouldn’t let me. Every time I did, she sucked again. Eventually, I unlatched her wi
th my finger, breaking her seal, and she wailed.
I left with both of us crying.
My tea is delivered on an old-fashioned wooden tray that says potatoes on it. The teapot is transparent and has a miniature milk bottle with it. Dad taps the lid once, awkwardly, and looks at me. It’s just a silly gesture.
Chin up, he is saying. Or maybe, I’m thinking of you. He doesn’t know how to say these things.
I stare across at him, and a memory forms in my mind. He’d taken us to the park. It must have been when he was looking after me and Becky. His year as a stay-at-home parent. I’d climbed to the top of the steps of a slide. He’d been holding Becky’s hand; she was walking carefully across the bark chips toward us. He raised a hand to me and waved.
“Remember when you looked after Becky and me for a year?” I say to Dad.
He blinks, looks at Mum, then back at me. He doesn’t like to take sides, to have difficult conversations. If he could, he would have simply watched Sky Sports all day, every day this summer and never mentioned the trial.
“Yes,” he says. “It was tough and brilliant.” He winces. Nobody knows what to say to me. To admit the positives of parenting, or to complain, is insensitive. Nobody can win.
I smile reassuringly at him.
Scott reaches for my hand and grasps it, under the table. “I wish I’d done more. More,” he says to my father, his voice cracking slightly, fractures showing in his stoic demeanor. “Like you.”
It surprises me. I should feel warm toward him, but instead I want to push him away. How could you have left her? I want to say. But then: I did too.
“How do you think it’s going?” I ask Ethan quietly, later.
I feel Mum tense next to me.
Ethan rests his elbow on the table and gestures with his fork, finishing his mouthful. And then he puts another slice of sausage in and chews that, too. “How do you think?” he says back to me, when he has finished.
The Good Sister Page 10
