‘Oh, god.’ Kate puts her head in her hands, the memory washing up through her, making her cringe. ‘Spencer, I’m – I’m sorry. It’s been such a day even before – did Daisy—’
‘Not a sound,’ Spencer says. ‘Nothing has happened while you’ve been sleeping. Except for a couple having an argument underneath the window. I think they made up.’
‘Right. Well, that’s good, I suppose—’ Kate has turned to listen to him, watch him talk; in the fairy-light glow everything seems eerie, other-worldly. She stands, stretches.
Spencer stands, too, and then – just like that – they are kissing. Kate hasn’t had a chance to think that it might be coming, or to remember that he is Daisy’s teacher. Since waking she hasn’t considered how she hasn’t done this in years and she really needs to think about whether it’s a good idea or not, properly think about it, instead of daydreaming like she did when she was eighteen. She can’t do a pros-and-cons list, because the reality is here, and it’s too late for careful consideration. So she can do nothing except kiss, in exactly the way she would have asked for the kiss to be if kisses were agreed beforehand: gently, slowly, but with purpose. And then his mouth moves – to the tip of her nose, the place between her eyebrows, her forehead, the top of her head – and he pulls her towards him. Both of his arms go around her shoulders; hers are around his waist. Although the kiss worked, the hug is awkward, their arms in the wrong places; it would be platonic if it wasn’t for the erection pressing at Kate’s waist. Her body lets out a great remembering sigh. Spencer holds her more tightly, for a moment, and then steps away, his hands still on her shoulders. He smiles a soft, warm smile.
‘I’m going,’ he says, ‘before we turn into pumpkins. But Kate, I would very much like for us to go on a date, if you’d like to.’
‘I’d love to,’ she says, half serious, half laughing; she hasn’t spent enough time with him to understand what the look in his eyes means, whether his formality is meant as a joke or if he is trying to show her the contents of his heart. (There had been playground gossip about a heart tattoo, from someone who’s seen him swimming in the pool at Marsham. At least, it might have been him. And it might have been a heart. The Mysterious Mr Swanson is continuing to drive Throckton crazy.)
‘Good.’ He moves to the door, puts his hand on the handle. He’s smiling. This is how it should be, Kate thinks. Easy. ‘Your life is more complicated than mine, so—’
She nods, smiles back. ‘I’ll find a time and I’ll let you know.’
When he has gone – a kiss, light, on her lips, another smile, an ‘I’ll let myself out, it’s cold’ – Kate looks in on Daisy. She sits at the end of her daughter’s bed until she feels herself calm, and then she goes and gets into her own bed, and falls into a sleep so deep that when her alarm goes off in the morning, she is convinced it’s still the middle of the night. She wakes to Daisy burrowing into her side, snuffling for love, and is tempted to give them both the day off. But Kate wants to see Spencer; and Daisy is very clear that the time between now and the Christmas concert is precious and cannot be wasted. Meryl Streep would envy the level of commitment that Wendy Orr has instilled into her charges. So they get up and get ready – Kate stirs ground almonds into Daisy’s porridge, adds a spoonful of honey – and when they set off, they are barely late at all. On the way out, Kate finds a petrol-station receipt with Spencer’s phone number on the back lying on the mat. She imagines him going through his pockets in the cold outside, finding something he could write on, looking for a pen. She puts the number into her phone as ‘S’, and folds the receipt into squares and tucks it into the back of her purse.
Chapter 6
Early December, a day later
‘A
RE YOU SURE THIS is OK, Mum?’
It’s the Saturday after the clinic visit, and two days since the kiss. Kate isn’t sure that she should be measuring time by kisses. It’s better than counting from bad health news, she supposes. Now she’s standing in her mother’s hallway, a sullen Daisy clinging onto her hand.
‘Of course it is.’ Richenda kneels, looks Daisy in the face. ‘I know how important your time with Melissa is. And if Daisy didn’t come to stay, who else would I bake Christmas tree biscuits with? Who else would I take to the pantomime?’
Daisy’s grip loosens, and Kate works her fingers free, puts her hand on Daisy’s shoulder instead. Daisy looks up into her mother’s face, and says, in a faintly accusatory tone, ‘You didn’t say pantomime.’
‘I thought it would be a nice surprise.’ Sometimes, Kate feels resentful of all of the fun things her mother gets to do with Daisy, while Kate is the one with the nebuliser and the homework. It’s been a tiring, tiresome morning. Daisy refused to eat her breakfast, Kate shouted, and then she had to shut herself in the bedroom in case she cried. When she came out Daisy was stiff and silent. Kate put a bowl of chocolate raisins on the table, and Daisy ignored them. Then Daisy said she didn’t want to go to Granny’s, and Kate only just stopped herself from saying the words that gathered in her mouth: this is the first time I get to go away by myself all year, and you are not going to spoil it for me. Instead she packed Daisy’s mini wheeled suitcase and wondered whether it was really worth going away at all. If Daisy sulked when she left and sulked when she came back, she may as well not bother. A sneaking thought behind that one: if she cancelled going to see Melissa, maybe her mother would babysit and she could go out with Spencer. But, no. Friends first. And the two nights she had spent in London for Melissa’s birthday last December was her first real freedom since Daisy was born. It was the trip that had made her realise that she needed to find a way of moving out of her childhood home, making a space to be an adult in her own life, instead of constantly thinking about the parallel path she didn’t take when she decided to keep her baby. She is lucky to have so much support, of course, and she would never un-choose her beloved child. But when Melissa texted and asked if she wanted to come down for the party this year, Kate had jumped at the chance.
‘I don’t always like surprises.’ Daisy is undoing her coat with a martyred air.
‘Oh dear.’ Richenda flicks her gaze to Kate with a smile, but keeps the laugh out of her voice. ‘I expect it will be all right when we get there.’
‘Mummy is going to Auntie Lissa’s party, but I’m not allowed. And Auntie Lissa came to my party. It’s not fair. At school we have quick cocoa for parties. Miss Orr says it’s the fairest way.’
Kate glances at her mother. ‘Quid pro quo,’ she says, and Richenda laughs, straightening her face when Daisy looks at her.
‘I don’t think it’s fair AT ALL.’
‘Daisy, we’ve been through this.’ Kate can hear the frustration in her own voice, and stops, shakes her head.
‘Grown-up parties are boring for children,’ Richenda says. ‘And Mummy’s allowed to have fun, isn’t she?’
‘That’s what Mummy said’ – Daisy glances at her mother – ‘but when Mummy said it, she said a bad word as well.’
‘Why don’t you go and find Beatle and Hope, and see if they would like a biscuit?’ Richenda asks, and Daisy goes off, with a sigh.
‘Sorry,’ Kate says, ‘rough morning. Oh, and I said “bloody”.’
Richenda laughs. ‘She’ll be fine. You deserve a break.’
‘Are you sure?’ Whenever Kate has a quiet moment her mind goes back to the hospital, the weight chart, the plunging feeling of having got it wrong. She tries to remember the things Richenda said, and Spencer said, but it’s not always easy to let logic and good sense win out over guilt and panic.
‘I’m sure. And so long as I have some notice I love to have her. You know that.’
‘Thanks,’ Kate says. ‘And you know I’m sorry about going off with Melissa after Daisy’s party. I just—’
‘Hey’ – Richenda reaches for her – ‘I didn’t mean it like that. Darling, are you OK? You know I’m here, don’t you?’ Kate nods, and Richenda continues, ‘I hadn’t thought, whe
n you moved, that it would be harder to – to be sure that things are all right with you.’
‘Oh, Mum.’ There’s the laughing sound of Daisy in the garden with the dogs, the tiredness of the morning, the worry in her mother’s face, and she could cry. ‘Honestly, I’m OK,’ and then, quickly, before she can change her mind, ‘and actually I might get you to babysit, maybe next weekend? I might be going on a’ – she can’t bring herself to say the word ‘date’, somehow – ‘I might be going out with someone. If you don’t mind.’
‘Oh.’ Richenda looks surprised, and Kate thinks of how depressing it is that the idea of her seeing someone is so shocking. Still, you reap as you sow. ‘Who is he? I mean, yes, of course I’ll babysit.’
Daisy appears in the doorway. ‘The dogs have eaten their biscuits’ – she sounds a little like a TV announcer, solemn and slow – ‘and it made me think about biscuits for my own self.’
Kate laughs, and opens her arms. ‘Come and give me a hug, little one,’ she says, ‘and I’ll see you after school on Monday.’ She swallows back a ‘be good’. ‘Have fun, sweetheart. I love you.’
‘I love you. Will you bring me some of Auntie Lissa’s birthday cake?’
‘Of course I will, baby.’
‘Come on,’ Granny says. ‘Let’s wave goodbye to Mummy, then we’ll find the human biscuits.’ She smiles at Kate. ‘You can tell me more about the babysitting when you get home.’
‘OK. Her meds and her food diary are in the bag. I’ve been doing hot chocolate with her breakfast. And she might not have told you, but she likes avocado, now she’s five.’ Getting Daisy to eat avocado was a godsend, as it’s so full of calories and good fats. ‘I’ll text you the new doses for her tablets, just so you’re sure.’
Richenda nods, hugs Kate briefly, and opens the door. ‘Thank you. Don’t worry. I’ll keep in touch.’
Kate shoulders her rucksack and sets out for the station. She doubts there’ll be birthday cake at Melissa’s, but she can pick up something suitably sweet from the station before she comes home.
*
Melissa lives in a shared house in Shoreditch in a tiny room. It’s almost filled by a queen bed and a clothes rail; Kate’s rucksack has to be hung from the hook on the back of the door. Over oat-milk lattes in a café round the corner from the house, Melissa tells Kate she doesn’t mind the lack of space in her room because they all hang out in the kitchen most of the time, and anyway, she likes the vibe of the area. Kate agrees it’s cool, and it is, as far as she can tell. (‘How would you know what’s cool?’ asks the gremlin on her shoulder.) She always finds it strange to walk down a street where no one knows who she is, and where she doesn’t know who they are, and she can’t link them back to her own family within six moves. On the way to the station, she’d said hello to Jake, the younger brother of a boy in the year below her at school who used to wash her father’s car for pocket money, and when she got on the train it was behind the couple who’d bought the house three doors down from her parents’ place and then cut down all of the hornbeam trees in the garden. Here, on a not-especially-busy Saturday afternoon in east London, they must have walked past a hundred people in less than ten minutes. The café is full of people wearing headphones, reading, working on laptops, laughing with their friends, but no one turns around when the door opens to see who’s coming in.
‘Shall I get us some more coffees?’ She always forgets how expensive it is to be sociable: coffee, wine, tickets, taxis. She knows she’s lucky, to have a year of no rent, and a trust fund from the money her parents had saved for her university career, as well as the benefits she can claim for Daisy; but it would be so easy to fritter money away.
‘The party should get going at about ten,’ Melissa says when she returns to the table, ‘so we’ve got loads of time. I thought you might want to go shopping.’
‘I do.’ Kate’s boots really don’t stand up to scrutiny, and she feels dowdy in her best-of-two-pairs of jeans and blue striped top. Especially when everyone around her is – well, whatever the opposite of dowdy is. Stylish. Cool.
‘Great. Well, I thought we’d go to the market, and the vintage shops. I really want some big hoop earrings, and a bowler hat.’ Melissa cocks an eyebrow, tilts her head. ‘I’ve been thinking about it all week.’
‘Of course you do.’ Kate laughs. She can already see Melissa’s hazelnut curls bouncing out from under a black brim.
‘I reckon I could zhuzh it up with scarves and flowers and – anything really. What do you want?’
Kate doesn’t have a list, but she knows the answer. ‘To feel less like a—’ She’s not sure what the word is.
Melissa nods. ‘Less frumpy? I’m on it. Let’s go.’ She leaves her latte half drunk and heads for the door, Kate following in her wake, trying not to be bothered by the ‘frumpy’, though it’s probably true. Although Melissa would consider ninety-five per cent of the population to be frumpy. And Kate doesn’t have the time that Melissa has. At home, she gets up and gets dressed in one of her few carefully chosen outfits, all practical and sufficiently ‘her’ to make her happy, but nothing special. She’d rather spend her money on clothes for Daisy, and her mother takes Kate shopping, buying her good clothes that will last. But yes, she does feel frumpy, sometimes. And she doesn’t want to. And it has nothing to do with Spencer.
Two hours later, Kate is the owner of a pair of black ankle boots with silver buckles. (‘They’re not too – cowgirl?’ she’d asked Melissa, who’d said no, and anyway, could you be too cowgirl, a question to which Kate suspects the answer is ‘yes’.) She’s also bought a long, tiered floral dress with shoestring straps, which she dismissed as impractical until Melissa pointed out she could wear a long-sleeved top under it. Melissa persuaded her to try on a denim jacket in the second vintage shop they went to and, surprisingly, Kate loved it. She’s never owned a denim jacket before; she always thought they weren’t quite her. But maybe they are. Or could be.
She’s spent all of her money, plus a bit of the Christmas money she hopes will come her way from her mum. But it’s worth it. She feels like herself. A better, sassier, more in-control self. Which is odd, because she’s never bought vintage clothing, never owned almost-too-cowgirl boots. Maybe the self she could have been would have done these things. Standing in front of the mirror in the corner of the shop, the washed-out denim jacket somehow made her pale face, hair, eyes look interesting rather than peaky. She had stood there and wondered who wore the jacket before she did. Someone who had fun, she hoped. Someone who went on dates and enjoyed themselves and felt as though they had a future.
*
‘How do you know Melissa?’
The man who’s asking is called Felix. He’s introduced himself, solemnly, shaking Kate’s hand, and then asking if she would mind if he sat with her. ‘Kate,’ he says, once he’s settled on the sofa next to her, ‘you look like a woman with hidden depths to me.’
Kate laughs. ‘Do I, now?’
‘Why are you laughing?’
‘I’m not laughing. It’s my depths making a noise.’
Felix puts his arm around her, leans close. Kate stays upright. ‘I like you, Kate. You’re funny.’
‘Am I? You’ve hardly had the chance to find out.’ She has no idea what she is, once she gets out of Throckton.
‘I can just tell.’ He taps his nose, lifts an eyebrow, and Kate laughs.
She doesn’t mind talking to him, although she had come to sit quietly in the corner for a while, to take a breath and take off her new boots and cross her legs and drink some water. She didn’t know how much she had wanted to drink wine from a Mason jar, to dance, circling her arms and spinning on the makeshift dancefloor.
Felix nods. ‘You are. How do you know Melissa?’
‘School,’ she says. ‘Though we didn’t really become proper friends until we’d left.’
Felix leans back. His expression says that if she wants to lean against him, he’d be happy. But she crosses her legs under her
, stays upright, sways with the music. He rubs his hand up and down her back. It would have been nice, maybe, if she was in the market for it.
Kate turns. ‘I’m with someone,’ she says, a thrill in her gut at the saying of it. The thought of Spencer sends anticipation through her, a shiver from hair-parting to sole. They’ve been texting, ever since the kiss; and it’s nice to be here in London, to have some things to text about that make her sound as though she has more to think about than Daisy and waiting for her dissertation results.
Felix nods, and takes his hand away, a you-win-some-you-lose-some smile on his face.
Melissa is in the centre of the dancefloor, laughing, a bottle aloft in her hand. She found her bowler hat, and she’s wrapped some birthday ribbon round the brim; it glows, iridescent, in the near darkness of the candlelit basement. It must be about 3 a.m. Hollie, one of Melissa’s housemates, sits down on the other side of Kate, hands her a joint. Kate has started shaking her head – you don’t compromise your lungs when you spend all of your life watching a child who will never take the deep, unheeding breaths that you can – but then she thinks of all she has missed out on, doing her degree in her teenage bedroom with a child at her feet. She takes it between her fingertips. She’s never even smoked a cigarette. She concentrates, bringing the stubby, glowing joint to her mouth.
The paper is wet and sticks to her lip, and thinking about how many mouths might have already touched it makes her queasy. But she inhales, not too deeply, manages, at least, not to cough. Nothing much happens; if she’s light-headed it’s the wine and the lateness and the many, many coffees. But she’s done it. She’s smoked a joint. She hands it back to Hollie, who takes a deep drag, then says, ‘You’re the one with the kid, yeah? Melissa is her auntie?’
‘Yeah,’ Kate says. And though Hollie goes on to ask for photos, to tell her how amazing it is to be a mother, to bring, like, an actual human into existence – the night is not quite the same afterwards. ‘The one with the kid’ is, at least, a little better than ‘The one who got pregnant to the married man when she was nineteen’ or, worst of all, ‘the one with the kid with cystic fibrosis, poor little mite, such a shame’. But how lovely it would be to be ‘the one with the first-class degree’, ‘the one who is training to be a physiotherapist’. Even ‘the one with the bowler hat’ would be an improvement, in that it would be about her alone, the choices that she made today, not a six-year-old small-town scandal and a five-year-old who has no idea of how she’s whispered about. Kate goes to bed before four, checks her phone to see that all is well with Daisy, and sleeps.
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