by Adele Parks
I hear the grocery delivery guy cough loudly. It’s not subtle but it is fair. I dash into the kitchen and apologise. I throw my groceries onto any available surface in order to be as fast as possible with the unloading, I accept all substitutes and then bundle him out of the door. I start to clear out the food in the fridge that is out of date and past its best. I consider washing the plastic vegetable drawer because a tomato has been squashed in to the back corner and already looks like a science experiment. I pull out the bulky drawer and look around with faint desperation because the sink is full of breakfast pots that should be in the dishwasher, but the pots in the dishwasher are clean, so they should be in the cupboard. Right. I need to set this place straight. I start to move about the kitchen. First I unload the dishwasher, then refill it with the dirty pots that are scattered about. Then I wash the vegetable drawer and only at this point am I ready to find homes for all the new groceries. I am just beginning to enjoy the sense of order I’m restoring to the room when I suddenly hear Millie scream. It’s loud and convincing, not a playful shriek but a scream that’s full of pain and panic. I launch myself upstairs, dashing two at a time and explode into the bathroom.
My first thought is that she’s crying so not drowned, not dead. Relief. Then I notice the blood. There’s a lot of it. Panic. It’s smeared on the back bathroom wall and all over her hands and face. I pull her out of the bath, she’s wet and slippery but I hold her tight. Examine her quickly. ‘What happened? Where did you get hurt?’
‘I slipped. I banged my head.’ She points to the back of her head. My stomach lurches. There’s a nasty cut, and she’s losing a lot of blood. I grab a towel and put it over the wound, trying to stem the flow of the bleeding. I realise that the blood on her face comes from her hands, where she’s touched her own wound. I can smell iron in the air. I want to be sick, but I must stay focused, useful. I wrap another towel around her and pick her up. She sobs into my shoulder. I can feel her entire body hiccup with stress and pain. ‘We need to go to A&E,’ I tell her. ‘The doctor will take a look but don’t worry. It’s going to be OK.’
I call to Simon, but he doesn’t reply. I haven’t got time to look for him. I swiftly dress Millie in pants and a long T-shirt then carry her to the car and drive her to the hospital.
* * *
When we get back from the hospital, the house is in darkness. Millie’s head is glued, and she has a sticker declaring her bravery. She’s fallen asleep in the back of the car. Usually when she sleeps I’m relieved. She has a lot of energy and by the time she is ready for bed I’m begging her to go. However her sleep makes me slightly uneasy now. It’s deep and terrifying. I have been given a leaflet that tells me what to look out for: drowsiness, dizziness, forgetfulness, headaches. I feel queasy just reading it. A close call. The friendly young doctor called it a ‘nasty bump’. I was asked a lot of questions. ‘Who was supervising her when she slipped?’ ‘Her father,’ I lied. I couldn’t bring myself to admit she was on her own. We’d failed her. It isn’t a concussion, but you can never be too careful with head injuries. I will wake her every couple of hours tonight. She’ll be grumpy, but I don’t care.
I lift her from the car and carry her into the house. Her feet trail low, down past my knees, she’s too big to carry but I want to hold her close and tight. I lower her into bed, she rolls onto her side as her injury is too tender to allow her to sleep on her back. That thought causes a twinge in my belly. I’d take her pain if I could. I kiss her forehead and she murmurs, ‘Don’t worry, Mummy. It doesn’t hurt now.’ Then her eyelids drop heavily, like a metal shutter over a shop window.
I wander into the bathroom. The water is still in the bath. It’s pink with her blood. I’m shocked again as I see her blood smeared on the tiles. It’s obvious where she fell, the blood is most concentrated there. It’s dried hard. There are also small bloody hand prints on the bath edge. I pull the plug and use the hand-held shower to sluice it away.
‘What’s going on here?’ Simon is stood in the doorway. He wipes his eyes, clearly he’s been asleep for the entire time we have been at the hospital, four hours. He must have been asleep when she fell.
‘Millie slipped as she tried to get herself out of the bath,’ I snap.
‘Daisy!’ I hear accusation in his voice. He thinks this is my fault and maybe it is. I can’t trust him. I glare at him.
‘I asked you to bath her, or if that was too much, at least to watch her whilst she bathed. She could have drowned.’
He looks a little shamefaced and then defiant. ‘But she didn’t.’
‘She’s badly hurt her head. It’s been glued.’
‘Glued?’
‘They do that instead of stitches now.’
‘So she’s OK?’
I know what he’s asking but I can’t give him that glib reassurance yet. I’m too angry. ‘No, she’s not OK. I’ve just told you. She cut her head, banged her elbow. She was really upset. There was a lot of blood. A lot of painful bruising.’
‘I need a drink.’ He leaves the bathroom and goes downstairs. I’m furious. That was not the response I wanted. But then I sigh. What response did I want? What could he say or do now? I finish cleaning the bathroom. I want it to look spotless by the time Millie sees it next. After washing away all evidence of her fall I also put her dirty clothes in the wash basket. I pop my head around her bedroom door just to check on her, before I go downstairs and join Simon in the kitchen. He’s stood by the breakfast bar in semi-darkness. He has only bothered to put on the small light above the hob. I don’t flick the switch for the overhead lights. I think it would be too garish. The dimness offers us both a cloak which, for reasons I can’t explain or even understand, I feel we need.
‘Do you want something to eat? I’m hungry,’ I say. We missed supper. This offer is as conciliatory as I’m capable of being right now. I feel I can’t blame Simon for the fall, at least not entirely. I knew he was less than sober and in a weird mood. I should have unpacked the shopping and then bathed Millie myself. I shouldn’t have allowed her to try to manage and I shouldn’t have relied on him. I’m telling myself all of this to try to stop feeling angry with him, but I just find I’m angry with him for a different reason. Not for the fall but because I can’t rely on him.
Simon reaches for a bottle of red wine from the wine rack. He slides it out. The sound of the glass bottle scraping against the wooden shelf is a familiar one. Like opening the fridge or the sound of the back door closing, the TV jumping to life; a domestic sound, familiar to our home. ‘Do you want a glass?’
‘No, it’s too late for me,’ I say pointedly. Then I dare to add. ‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough?’
‘No, I don’t.’ He says firmly as he unscrews the cap and reaches for a glass.
Simon has had enough to drink. Too much. Why can’t he see it? Why can’t I say it?
This happens from time to time in our marriage. Simon likes a drink and then there comes a point where he drinks too much. Usually I wait it out. After months, maybe a year, he’ll notice he’s over-doing it and cut back. No one is perfect. We all have stuff to deal with. He drank heavily when we were trying to conceive. He drinks heavily if things are stressful at work. I wonder what’s on his mind now? I fear it’s something to do with wanting another child. The visit to the fertility clinic was so peculiar. The way he ran out of the place. Odd. When I asked him what the doctor had said to upset him, he said he never even got the chance to speak to the doctor, that he’d just been left waiting in the consultation room. He said that was what had annoyed him, the lack of manners. The arrogance. ‘I knew you didn’t want to be there, Daisy, so I just gave up. I thought, forget it.’ I don’t really believe him. I suspect it had something to do with his drinking, nearly everything does. Maybe he felt woozy or nauseous, maybe the doctor commented that he didn’t seem quite sober, maybe he suddenly just wanted a drink more than he wanted a baby; he did bolt straight to a pub.
He’s right about one thing, I
didn’t want to be at the fertility clinic. It was a great relief to me when he charged out of the building and I was left to hurriedly collect up Millie and our belongings. I daren’t even ask him if we got a refund. I don’t really care. I want to leave the matter alone. I’m glad he’s stopped talking about a sibling for Millie. Yet, I can’t ignore the fact that Simon is drinking heavily again. It’s not social drinking. It’s not even overindulgent drinking. It’s purposeful, determined drinking. It’s as though he’s trying to find something at the end of the bottle. Oblivion, maybe.
‘Simon, you were drunk and therefore late to the recital and then you came home and drank some more so fell asleep instead of looking out for Millie. How could you let her down like that?’
I steel myself to look at him. I don’t want to because he’s ugly to me right now, he’s in the wrong. Millie got injured, she will still be in pain tomorrow, she’s shocked, scared and it could have been a whole lot worse. That doesn’t bear thinking about. But when I lay eyes on Simon, my fury crashes, dissipates. He’s staring at the counter. He looks sad, confused.
‘I didn’t mean to let her down,’ he says with a sigh. He looks out to our garden. My eyes follow his. I think I see a fox by the bins.
Whoever means to let anyone down? I wonder. ‘Have you got something you want to talk about?’ I ask his reflection in the kitchen window.
He shakes his head. We stand in silence for a minute. Then he asks my reflection, ‘Have you?’
‘No.’
He picks up the bottle of red wine and pours a second glass and I put two slices of bread in the toaster. We eat and drink in silence.
8
Chapter 8, Simon
Saturday, 18th June 2016
Simon really wanted to make it up to Millie for leaving her alone in the bathroom. When he thought about her battered head, her aching elbow, when he imagined the moment of panic she must have felt when she slipped, the fear, the confusion – he hated himself. He got up early on the Saturday morning and made pancakes with her. The first couple were misshapen, but he told her that they looked like Mickey Mouse’s ears and she was kind enough to agree with him. He got into his groove and then made twice as many as they could possibly eat. They took some up to Daisy in bed because Millie wanted to, even though breakfast in bed was usually only something that occurred on birthdays or Mother’s Day. As it happened, Daisy was already in the shower. But they persuaded her to put on her robe and climb back into bed to eat them. She said they were delicious. There was a lot of smiling. Simon’s smiles were bashful, then hopeful, then rather pleased with himself. Daisy’s were tentative, possibly forced, certainly smaller than he’d have hoped. Millie’s smiles were the most fabulous and uncomplicated. Her smiles buoyed everyone up. Like a life raft.
Daisy said she had a lot of marking to do. Simon realised that she’d probably intended to do it the night before but had had to abandon it to dash to the hospital. Usually Millie spent Saturday morning at ballet school and Daisy marked her books whilst she sat in the car waiting for the classes to finish, she had to do it this way because the ballet school was a serious one and not the sort that allowed the mothers to sit on chairs along the wall, chatting and distracting. However, Millie wasn’t allowed to dance for a week or so because of her injury. Simon offered to take her to the park instead but even that caused Daisy to look aggravated. ‘She can’t play on the swings or slides. She has a suspected concussion.’
‘We’ll just have a stroll about,’ he replied. Daisy didn’t look convinced. Her brow was knitted with concern. Simon decided not to pursue the matter. He wanted to entertain his child, yes, but he also wanted please his wife. He’d woken up ashamed. Of course Millie was his child. Of course Daisy would never be unfaithful and then pass off another man’s child as his. That was madness. He was mortified by his own stupidity and only glad that he hadn’t shared his fears with anyone else, grateful that no one could read his mind.
‘How about we go and buy a tent?’ he suggested.
Millie had been begging to go camping for weeks now. She’d seen people camp on the beach during half term and fallen in love with the adventure and freedom that sleeping outside offered. They didn’t own any camping equipment, it wasn’t Daisy’s idea of fun. Simon used to camp as a boy, he’d been a Scout, and as a young man he’d had a few rowdy nights under the stars at festivals. He had a vague idea that one day they could all go on a family camping trip and he’d impress them with his tent pitching skills. Or, if Daisy wasn’t up for that, then maybe a father-daughter camping trip. It would be fun. Not now, not while Millie was injured. But the weather was starting to warm up, maybe they could camp in the garden to start with, to see if Millie caught on to it. If so, they could go further afield at a later date. He suggested as much to Daisy, taking care to do so when Millie was not in earshot, because Daisy would appreciate them talking about it as parents first and reaching a consensus before Millie’s exuberance railroaded them into a decision. ‘It would take her mind off her injury,’ Simon pointed out. ‘We don’t have to buy a tent. We can borrow one off someone.’
‘I’m not sure. Not all night, not when we’re still monitoring her. But maybe you could put up a tent, make a den, cook supper on a stove in the garden. She could fall to sleep out there and then you could carry her into her bed,’ Daisy conceded.
Millie loved the plan. She and Simon travelled by tube to Holland Park to see their friends, Luke and Connie Baker. They had three kids and all the trappings of a middle class west London family life. They owned little fold-out chairs that ‘Came in handy on prize-giving day or at the races’, they had a picnic basket with glass, silverware and china ‘for Glyndebourne’, and a roof rack that was useful when collecting the two-metre tall Christmas tree that they bought from a Chelsea garden centre every Christmas. Simon guessed they’d have camping equipment. One phone call to Luke had confirmed that indeed they had. Luke laughed and told Simon that a few years ago they’d tried camping, ‘Connie and my girls hated it. We spent a bloody fortune on all the gear. Only ever used it once.’ Luke laughed about things like that. He and Connie were loaded, the waste didn’t matter as long as it made an amusing anecdote. ‘Borrow what you like. It’s good to know it’s getting used.’
Luke was an architect. He sometimes put interior design work Simon’s way, decent work, Simon couldn’t complain. Connie was a photographer and was managing to make a good living out of it even though everyone had an iPhone and filters nowadays, and could take decent snaps for themselves. Simon had known Luke for twenty-something years, Daisy and Connie had made friends at university when they were still teenagers. Simon and Daisy met at Luke and Connie’s first wedding anniversary party. Somehow, the fact that they’d found each other through the Bakers, and Luke sometimes commissioned Simon, had led to an unarticulated hierarchy in their relationship. Simon always felt Luke was lording it over him. Simon felt stung by a sudden determination that his girl would like camping, and that they’d go on to have lots of memorable trips away together, which they’d record on his iPhone and post on Facebook.
The trip to the Bakers and back took most of the morning. By the time they returned, Daisy had finished marking her books. They had a sandwich lunch and then pitched the tent together. Millie filled it with pink cushions from her bedroom and a huge number of cuddly toys. Simon doubted there would be room for him to lie down. Daisy found some solar fairy lights in the back of the cupboard where they kept their boxes of Christmas decorations. They draped them over the tent and waited until it got dark. For supper they made beans and sausages. The Bakers’ camping stove worked a treat. Millie was too excited to fall to sleep in the tent. At 10 p.m. they all gave up and went inside, but it wasn’t with an air of defeat, it was a decisive victory. The day had been won. The day had been glorious. Daisy made hot chocolate in the kitchen.
Simon made his that bit tastier by adding a nip of whisky.
9
Chapter 9, Daisy
Thur
sday, 23rd June 2016
Connie has got it into her head that she wants to throw a party. The Bakers throw a lot of parties, they always have. They’re party people through to their souls. Over the years, Connie and Luke have thrown lavish Christmas, birthday, Easter and summer dos, any excuse. Connie is known for her incredible attention to detail and her generous hosting. I used to love them, I really did, but I haven’t been to one since Millie was born. I hate parties now. I find excuses. Some of Connie’s friends take their kids along but I never have. I tell Simon that I worry about drugs. Connie doesn’t indulge but a lot of her guests do. It’s not something I want Millie to be around. Truthfully, some of the people Connie mixes with leave me cold.
This is the third time she’s brought up the topic of us hosting a joint party, a ludicrous idea. The previous occasions were over the phone; I was able to say someone was at the door and cut the conversation short. This time, it’s harder to dodge. We’re sat face to face in a coffee shop in Covent Garden. I can’t even depend on one of the kids interrupting us because her three girls and Millie are all sitting at a different table. Fran, Connie’s eldest, is holding court the way only a thirteen-year-old can. Her younger siblings, Flora who is ten, Sophie age seven, and Millie are in her thrall. She’s showing them different apps on her phone. There’s no way any one of them will tear themselves away from that.
The café is a noisy, overly trendy place. Pricey but fun. It’s a novelty, being out in town after school. Normally Millie and I have a class or rehearsal to dash to. Unfortunately, because of her slip in the bath, Millie isn’t well enough to go to classes. I’m trying to make sure we enjoy the time that has been freed up, rather than resentfully dwell on Simon’s carelessness. Millie is laughing and giggling with the others. For a moment I’m able to forget the inch-long wound at the back of her head, flagged by matted, dirty hair. I can’t bring myself to wash it yet so we’ve been making do with dry shampoo.
