“It was good to see you,” I tell her. “We must do this again soon.”
“Yes, we must,” she says. “Of course.”
She drives off a little too rapidly.
I open the door of Sylvie’s room, moving very slowly, trying not to click the latch, wanting to check that she’s still sleeping.
But she isn’t asleep. She’s sitting up in her bed, and she’s taken the picture down from the wardrobe and has it in her hand. She looks up at me as I come in.
“Where’s Lennie, Grace?” she says.
Her face is puzzled, perplexed. The dim light of her bedside lamp seems to emphasize all shadows. There are patches dark as bruises underneath her eyes.
She must have heard Karen’s voice. She must have wondered why Lennie didn’t come too. I don’t want to tell her the truth, don’t want her knowing what Karen said—not now, not ever.
“I’m sure that Lennie’s fast asleep,” I tell her brightly. “And so should you be.”
I go to tuck her in.
She holds the picture out toward me. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it, Grace?”
“Yes, it’s a beautiful place.”
“Coldharbour,” she says. Setting the word so carefully down between us, like some precious thing.
“Yes. Coldharbour. Shall I stick it back on your wardrobe?”
“No,” she tells me.
She slips the picture under her pillow and slides down into her bed.
“I had a little white house when I lived in Coldharbour, Grace.”
Her voice is calm and measured.
It’s so chilly in her bedroom. I pull my cardigan close around me.
“What was it like, your house?” I say.
“It was nicer than this house,” she says.
I’m blurred and vague from the wine. It dulls the hurt a little.
“Can you tell me more about it?”
“You could see the sea from my house.” Her voice has a yawn behind it, she’s on the edge of sleep now.
“Anything else you can tell me, sweetheart? I mean, I’ve never been there, I don’t know anything about it . . .”
“Don’t you?” she says.
She pulls her duvet up to her chin. Her face smudges and softens with sleep.
“No, sweetheart.”
She yawns widely.
“There were fishing boats on the sea,” she says.
I think of the picture and know what Karen would say. For God’s sake, Grace, the boats are there in the photograph . . .
“I liked to look at the boats,” she says. “Before.”
She falls asleep abruptly, like a door closing.
24
LAVINIA BRINGS IN a pair of pigeons she’s picked up in a salvage yard. They’re cast in iron, battered but pretty, painted in cream with a speckling of rust showing through. The woman in the travel agent’s certainly wouldn’t like them. We put them out on the pavement, next to a statue of Ganesh that Lavinia found in Rajasthan and our rickety wrought-iron table that today holds just white flowers—orchids and snowdrops and crocuses. The orchids look like open mouths.
“So, Grace—how’s it going with Sylvie?”
I still haven’t managed to say that we have lost the nursery place. I decide I will wait until after our session with Adam Winters next Saturday. Then maybe it will all be different.
I tell her about him. She listens intently, bright-eyed.
“Wow, Gracie,” she says when I’ve finished. “How utterly intriguing. Did he tell you how he’d approach her?”
“He said he’d talk to her about it, perhaps get her to do a drawing . . .”
She nods. She picks a dead leaf from a plant. You can see the cinnamon staining on the insides of her fingers.
“I’d been wondering, Grace,” she says then. “Have you ever done that yourself—you know, asked her directly about all this?”
“Well, sometimes. Kind of.”
“Like—have you ever asked her why she never calls you Mum?”
I feel how damp my gloves are. I peel them off. I shall put them to dry on the hot pipes. The chill from my hands spreads through my body.
“If you ask her why she does things, she can’t really tell you,” I say.
“I just thought it might be interesting—to see what she would say to that. To hear it from her point of view.”
“Yes. Maybe I should try it.”
I don’t tell her the real reason. That I’m scared of what might happen. Afraid that Sylvie would fix me with her cool blue gaze, a little frown marked on her forehead, and say, But you aren’t Mum. Not really. Very calm and matter-of-fact. You aren’t my mum, Grace. I know I couldn’t bear it if she did that.
25
THERE’S A GUARD who is reading the Sun at reception, who gives us our security badges. He’s one of the men who tried to throw me out before. I’m embarrassed, but he doesn’t seem to realize, perhaps because I have Sylvie with me. Snatches of music drift toward us down the corridors—a band, a woman singing. On Saturdays there are music classes here. But mostly the place is empty, and it all has an echoey bleakness.
We knock, but there’s no answer, so we sit by Adam’s door.
The man I saw before comes out of the door next to Adam’s. He’s wearing his blazer again, and he has a precise, clean, organized look. He glances at us, stops and turns.
“You’re Adam’s clients, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I say. “Well, I came to see him before. I’m not sure we’re clients exactly . . .”
“He told me a bit about it. So everything’s going okay?”
“Yes. Thanks.”
He flicks some invisible lint from his sleeve.
“He has his own way of doing things, Adam Winters,” he says. There’s a hint of disapproval in his voice.
“Yes, I can see that,” I say.
“Adam can be very—how to put this?—enthusiastic,” he says. He straightens the cuffs of his shirt. His cuff links glitter. “Don’t you find that?”
I don’t know quite how to respond to this.
“I guess I know what you mean,” I say vaguely.
“You need to be a little wary,” he tells me. “Some of the stuff he’s into is really very left field. I wouldn’t want to think of you getting carried away . . .” His tone is slightly suggestive, or maybe I’m imagining that. “Well, the best of luck with it anyway. I’ll see you around, perhaps.”
He walks briskly off down the corridor.
Adam comes in through the doors. He’s crumpled and smiling and seems so pleased to see us.
He says hello to Sylvie and takes us into his room. Today it’s neat and orderly. He’s put a low child’s table in the middle of the floor, with a box of puzzles laid out on it. The air in the building is thick and hot, and he’s opened the window an inch or two. A slight breeze stirs some papers in a wire tray on the sill.
“We met one of your colleagues,” I tell him.
“Simon? Guy in a blazer?”
“How did you know?”
“Only Simon works on Saturdays.”
“He doesn’t share your interests, I gather.”
“Simon’s an expert on cognition. His big thing’s the decay of long-term memory,” he tells me.
“Oh.”
“I’m guessing he wasn’t exactly singing my praises,” he says.
“No. Not really.”
He has a rueful smile.
“He thinks I’ve lost it,” he says. “And he’s my boss, so it’s really rather unfortunate.” He draws up chairs, a child’s chair at the table and one behind for me. “Psychologists are all so sensible, when the world’s so wild. I mean, live a little, for Chrissake. You can’t box everything up.”
Sometimes he makes me uneasy. He’s so emphatic, leaning forward slightly, like he’s listening out for something, his voice rather urgent, running his hand through his hair. As though he could do anything.
He shows Sylvie to the table.
“
Now, Sylvie, what we’re doing today—I’ve got some puzzles for you. And Grace, you could sit behind us.” He gestures me to my chair.
He sits at the table next to Sylvie, and takes out wooden blocks and builds them into a bridge, and asks her to make a shape that’s just the same. She nibbles her lip; she has a little frown of concentration. He makes a note on a check sheet. Then he takes a book, and she has to name some images—a feather, scissors, a fish. I watch his slender fingers moving over the page and I see that his nails are bitten. The last test is an inset tray with a car, a tree, two children. She has to fit the cutouts into the holes.
“Okay, we’ve finished the puzzles. Thank you, Sylvie,” he says.
He leaves the inset tray where it is. She takes the cutout figures and spreads them out in front of her, and chooses the car and pushes it around on the desk. She’s humming softly to herself.
He turns to me. “D’you have the picture?” he says.
I give it to him.
She’s playing with the car still, but her eyes are fixed on him. She has a quiet, expectant look.
“Sylvie, there’s something I’d really like to talk about,” he tells her.
She nods. “My picture,” she says.
“Yes. Grace says you keep it by your bed.”
“Yes.”
“You like this picture, Sylvie?”
“Yes.”
He holds it out in front of them.
When she glances at the picture, she has a slight, pleased smile.
“Can you tell me why you like it?” he says.
She looks briefly back at me, as though needing some kind of permission. I nod.
“That’s where I lived,” she tells him. Her voice is small but matter-of-fact.
I glance at Adam. I wonder if he feels what I feel, the cold spreading over my skin.
“Could you talk to me about it, Sylvie?” There’s a thread of eagerness in his voice. “Anything you remember.”
I’m acutely aware of the words he uses—the way he says “remember.” I don’t know if that means that he believes her, or if he’s just seeking to put her at ease by entering into her world.
“Anything at all. Whatever you can tell me,” he says.
It’s still in the room, except for the air that comes through the half-open window and riffles through the papers in the wire tray like a hand. It’s so still I can hear my heart thudding.
Her eyes are on him, her cool, clear, wintry gaze.
“I liked it there,” she says. “I don’t like it here.”
There’s that little shock of hurt I always feel.
“Who lived there with you, Sylvie?” he says.
I don’t breathe.
For a moment she doesn’t say anything. It’s like she didn’t hear. She pushes the car around the table, threading it with precision between the bricks and other cutouts. She isn’t looking at him.
“People live with their family,” she says then. Her voice is cool, remote, a little accusing. “Haven’t you got a family?”
“Yes, I have a family,” he says.
There’s a catch in his voice. I glance at him. A shadow crosses his face. I see the sadness in him that I noticed when we first met.
“Can you tell me who was in your family, Sylvie?” he asks.
She doesn’t say anything.
“Maybe what their names were?” he says.
I feel he’s pushing too hard. Her face is blank, as though the question has no meaning for her.
“Perhaps you could draw them for me,” he says.
He puts out paper and crayons for her.
“That would be really great, if you could draw them,” he says. “Show me and Grace what they looked like . . .”
She picks up a crayon. She starts to draw. I watch, intensely curious. But it’s such a routine, perfunctory drawing—the standard stick figures she’s learned to do, a mother and a father with two children in between them, hands touching or clasped together. It’s the sort of thing that any child might draw. There’s nothing particular about the figures, nothing to distinguish them from any other family. I think, It’s just like Karen said. She’s envisaging a different life in which she has a father and perhaps a brother or sister: a life in which her family is complete. The thought depresses me.
“Thank you, Sylvie,” says Adam. “So this is the family you remember?”
Sylvie doesn’t respond. She takes another crayon, and all around the figures she draws a border of blue.
“I can see two children in your picture,” says Adam.
She nods slightly.
“I’m wondering if these children are boys or girls,” he says.
She doesn’t reply, intent on finishing her border. The end of the line doesn’t meet the beginning. She shades across the gap.
“So which is it, Sylvie?” he asks her.
He’s pressing her. I wish he wouldn’t. There’s a hint of urgency in his voice. I know that she’ll withdraw from him. Why can’t he see that? I think. Why can’t he be more sensitive to her?
“Boys or girls or one of each?” he asks her.
She puts her crayon down on the table. It makes an exact little click. It’s very still in Adam’s room. Distant sounds scrape at the edges of the stillness—the shrill of a siren, a far-off flute, its bright notes broken and scattering. You can feel the empty quiet of the corridors all around.
“Two peas in a pod,” she says.
It’s an oddly old-fashioned expression. I wonder where she’s heard it, perhaps from Mrs. Pace-Barden.
Adam frowns, perplexed.
“They look alike, these two? The children in your drawing?”
“Yes. Two peas in a pod.” She’s slightly impatient with him.
She gets up, takes the car from the puzzle, and goes to stand by the window. She has her back toward him. She moves the car through the squares of sun that fall across the sill. In the bleached, thin light, her hair is pale as lint. I can see the tension in her—the pursed lips, her fingers white and stiff where they’re gripping the car. There’s a little troubled frown on her face. She’s shut herself away, and now he won’t be able to reach her.
I suddenly think, This is all wrong, this isn’t what we should be doing, keeping her fixed on her obsessions rather than moving her on. Karen is right—this won’t help Sylvie. I feel a rush of guilt that I have let this happen—all this pressure, all these questions. I can’t trust Adam not to hurt her. I terribly want him to stop.
“Adam. I think we should leave it there.”
My voice is too loud for the quiet room.
He looks up at me, surprised by my insistence.
“Yes, of course. Yes, if you want to.” He stands up rapidly. “Thank you, Sylvie, for coming in. You’ve been extremely helpful. D’you think I could keep the drawing you did?”
She nods.
“Give Adam his car back,” I tell her.
She brings the car and slots it into the tray.
“Did I do the puzzles right?” she asks him.
“You did so well,” he tells her.
She smiles. The remote look has left her. She’s ordinary again.
“We need to fix up another session,” he tells me. “I could do next Saturday, if that suits you.”
I feel myself flush.
“Adam, I don’t know . . .” I want to tell him no, but I don’t know how to put it. “I’d like to think about it—you know, where we go from here.”
“Of course. If you want to,” he says.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“It’s okay,” he says.
We talk across each other; it’s embarrassing.
He has a disappointed look, and I feel I’ve let him down. I remind myself what Simon said: I tell myself that Simon was right, that I mustn’t get carried away.
“I just need to think it through a bit,” I tell him.
“Sure,” he says. “You’ve got my number. Ring me anytime.”
He takes us o
ut, past Carla’s desk. The distant band is playing “Steal Away to Jesus” with too much bass and raucously out of tune. I turn to wave as we walk away. In the bluish harshness of the tubular lighting his face looks bony, almost gaunt.
It’s cold outside after the dense, stale heat in his office. We walk back to the car, past the blossoming cherry trees that dazzle in the sunlight, their blackened branches caught in nets of white. Sylvie’s hand in mine has a waxy feel from the crayon. I have a sense of incompleteness, as though something hasn’t happened that was meant to happen.
26
WHEN SYLVIE IS in bed, I curl up on the sofa, wrapped up in my duvet because the flat is so cold, and flick through the TV channels. On Channel 5 there’s one of those house makeover programs. The presenter must have had lots of Botox, her face is far too still. The program features a couple who don’t like the feel of their home, and they have a color consultant and a psychic to advise them. The psychic has earrings like chandeliers, and her voice is emphatic and fruity. She says she feels a ghostly presence haunting their utility room, and she will burn some sage leaves to encourage the spirit to leave. I change channels rapidly.
I hear a slight sound from Sylvie’s room and go to look through her door. She’s lying on top of her covers, and at first I think she’s asleep—that sleep came on her abruptly, before she got into her bed. Then she moves her head, and I see that she is awake. She’s crying silently. Her wet face shines in the lamplight. She has the picture of Coldharbour pressed against her chest.
I go to hold her. She leans her head against me. Her weeping is quiet, despairing. Her sadness tugs at my heart. I’m so angry that I let myself be taken in by Adam, let him stir all this up in her.
Yes, My Darling Daughter Page 14
