As I drove to fetch Caitlin, I rounded up the possibilities. A mistake at the bakery seemed remotely possible. Chocolate sometimes has chilli in it, although it’s not something I’d ever want to eat; perhaps the ingredients had got mixed up in manufacture. Or the chilli could have come from another source – added to my cake on purpose? This was so far fetched I almost laughed out loud.
By the time I arrived home with Caitlin, via a lengthy visit to the supermarket and then the dry cleaners, I’d forgotten about the cake. I remembered it the day after, but for some reason known only to the machinations of my mind, I said nothing to Hector. It didn’t seem important enough to begin a conversation about it, and besides, it was an experience I didn’t want to relive.
It must have been around a week later when I took a call to the surgery phone from somebody who said she was a lunch assistant at Oakheart Academy, telling me that Hazel had fallen over and cut herself badly on a piece of glass. But when I landed in a sweating heap at the school office, nobody knew of any such accident. On my way out along the corridor, I cupped my hands to peer through the glass door of Hazel’s form room and saw her in a huddle with Zoe, sitting on a table, legs swinging, oblivious to my presence and clearly in one piece.
I did tell Hector about that, while the girls were out of earshot. My husband is a straightforward kind of guy. He sees the good in everyone, finds a rational explanation for everything; that was one of the qualities that drew me to him in the first place.
‘Some sort of mix-up, obviously,’ he said. ‘Right hand not knowing what the left hand’s doing. Could be some other child got a little nick from somewhere and the dinner ladies dealt with it. It wasn’t Hazel, that’s the main thing.’
‘I know,’ I said, ‘but it makes you think, doesn’t it?’
‘Think about what? Some well-meaning person getting their wires crossed?’ He kissed me, briefly, on the mouth. ‘You worry too much, overthink things.’
Hector is probably right about that, and I was glad then that I hadn’t told him about the chilli-laced cupcake, imagining his reaction if I’d said somebody was trying to poison me.
But I can’t stop the feeling that the cake ‘gift’ and the strange phone call are somehow related. Both incidents are hopelessly chained together in my head, one set of thoughts refusing to exist without the other.
As I drift into sleep, the familiar click-tick of the house settling down for the night becomes the sound of chasing footsteps tapping against tree-roots on the path through the wood. This time, when I turn, I see a pair of hands outstretched towards me, holding a basket of roses.
Two
FRAN
The morning is the usual tumble of rushed breakfasts, mislaid homework, and slammed doors. Hazel’s skirt hem has come unstitched at the back, and I am threatened with ChildLine when I suggest she staples it up until tonight, since her other skirt is in the laundry basket.
‘I’ll take a picture of the staple marks on the backs of my thighs, shall I?’
I hold back my retort that if she wore longer skirts, or the despised trousers they’re allowed, then staple marks on thighs would not be an issue.
Finally, Kitty, her blouse tied in knot, showing her midriff, and Hazel, her skirt angrily stapled, set out for Oakheart Academy together and there’s only Caitlin left. She stands in the kitchen doorway in her grey striped uniform dress and dark green bomber jacket – a contemporary take on the traditional blazer – and waits for me to drive her to school.
Honeybee Hall caters well for Caitlin’s needs. The year group classes are small, the teaching groups even smaller, and the staff foster a culture whereby children who are a little bit different are integrated, understood, and nurtured. Caitlin can stay there until she’s sixteen, with no stressful change of school at eleven. Honeybee is worth every penny. This, by the way, is my opinion – not necessarily Hector’s. It’s twenty minutes by car on a good day. Hector would happily drive her, but at the moment, for reasons known only to herself – perhaps not even that – Caitlin insists I take her, and that’s fine by me. I bring the car home afterwards then walk to work – parking in the high street after nine is nigh on impossible.
Caitlin stands perfectly still and straight, rucksack hitched over biscuit-coloured plaits, hands loosely linked in front of her. But her eyes behind her glasses are watchful, swivelling surreptitiously between me and her father in case there’s the slightest clue that she has displeased us in some way, or displeased each other – just as bad in her book.
Hector’s loose schedule means he leaves any time between seven and nine-thirty, depending on his workload. This morning, he’s in no hurry. As I follow Caitlin out of the front door, I feel the pressure of his hand on my bottom. It makes me giggle. Caitlin whirls round to check on me, and I straighten my face.
‘I’ll be done by lunch,’ Hector says in a low voice. ‘Can you get away early this afternoon?’
I can, as it happens. The receptionists work flexible hours, within the bounds of the surgery opening times, and I have some time owing. I widen my eyes at Hector in a silent promise, and he responds with a comedic lascivious grin.
As I see Caitlin into the car and hop round to the driver’s seat, I think, yet again, how lucky I am and how close I came to losing it all.
It’s Saturday morning. After a week of squally showers and a spiteful east wind that lands on our backs like physical punches as we walk, we wake to porcelain-blue skies and mild, still air. Hector is up at eight and gone by half-past. He doesn’t always work at weekends, but sometimes, as today, his potential clients are working themselves all week. He’s calling on a couple in Oakheart who want him to construct a tree house for their three children. Tree houses are fine with Hector. He doesn’t get many commissions for those, but when he does I see the small-boy glint in his eye and it makes me glad all over again that he swapped the pressure and edgy uncertainty of the financial world, and the deadly commute to London that went with it, to follow his dream.
I tell him I hope he enjoys his morning.
‘Yes, well, a tree house beats fitted wardrobes and kitchen cupboard doors.’ His voice betrays the inner guilt, still there after eighteen months, that he doesn’t earn a fraction of his city salary. I wish I could make the guilt go away, but I can’t; it has to come from Hector himself. Guilt has become my specialist subject.
I hang a wash out on the line – a chore that always conjures an image of my mother battling with snow-white sheets in our windy garden, a row of coloured plastic clothes pegs clamped between her lips like the instruments of some weird form of torture.
Caitlin bursts out of the back door to remind me we’re going to the shops. I assure her I haven’t forgotten.
‘I am ready,’ she says, pointedly running her gaze from my unbrushed hair down to my worn leopard-print slippers.
‘So will I be, in five minutes.’
She looks doubtfully at me. ‘Okay.’ She skips off, back indoors.
Twenty minutes later – ‘I knew you wouldn’t be ready!’ – Caitlin and I set off, leaving Kitty doing physics homework in her room. Hazel is watching TV downstairs in her pyjamas with Miss T on her lap, having assured me, a shade too forcefully to be convincing, that all her homework was done, like, ages ago.
Caitlin bounces along beside me, pin-neat in spotless blue jeans and Breton top, her favourite bag slung crosswise over her slender little figure. She smiles up at me. ‘Shall we have drinks after, at the café?’
‘If you like.’
The main purpose of this trip is a visit to the art and craft shop, which faces onto the square. It’s an Aladdin’s cave of art equipment, craft kits, cards, and stationery; Caitlin would live in it if she could. She collects stationery like a squirrel collects nuts, and spends much of her free time drawing and painting. At school, she does fairly well in all subjects, but in art she shines like the star she is.
She also spends time writing painstakingly in her collection of notebooks. What she writ
es in them, the rest of us have no idea; we are threatened with the greatest punishment if we dare to peek.
The stand with the notebooks is where Caitlin heads first. I doubt her other notebooks are full, but that is not, apparently, the point.
‘Look, they’ve got new ones with birds on!’ Caitlin holds up a pretty A5 notebook with a pair of thrushes on the cover, on a pale blue background. ‘The pages have got birds at the top. Every page.’ Reverently, she replaces the thrush notebook and picks up another. ‘Oh, magpies! Are they, Mum?’
‘They’re jays, I think. Look at the blue flash in its feathers.’
‘Yes, I think you’re right.’ Caitlin’s pale forehead draws together in a frown. She looks at me with serious eyes.
While Caitlin focuses hard on making the right choice, I walk my fingers through the birthday cards and find the perfect one for my father whose birthday is coming up soon. I pick a typically English seaside scene to remind him of home.
When I turn round, Caitlin has chosen her notebook – with a fairground carousel on the front, not birds – and moved on to the rack containing the pencil crayons.
‘Caitlin, you’ve got about a hundred coloured pencils already.’
Her shoulders tighten in response to my tone which, too late, I realise carries a smidgeon of criticism. I smile to balance it out.
‘It’s fine. Take as long as you want but don’t buy too many.’
She smiles back, relaxed again. ‘I only need one. It’s for my sweet chart. Dad bought new sweets and I haven’t got a colour for them. The round black ones.’
‘Pontefract cakes.’
‘They weren’t even cakes, though. They were liquorice pennies. It’s stupid to call them cakes when they aren’t.’
‘Isn’t it just.’ I exchange a smile with the man behind the counter, the owner of the shop.
‘You do have a black pencil crayon,’ I point out.
‘Yes, but I’ve already used it for blackcurrant pastilles.’
I rub the side of my face, keen to move on. But Caitlin won’t be rushed. Eventually, she chooses a dark plum-coloured crayon. I take it from her before she changes her mind and add it to our purchases on the counter.
Caitlin loops her bag over her head, undoes the zip, and produces some of her pocket money. I tell her she only needs to pay for the crayon, and the notebook is my treat. She tells me she loves me, I reciprocate, and finally we leave the shop, Caitlin gripping the handles of the small brown paper bag as if she’s expecting it to be snatched away.
‘Mum! Mummy!’
I’m on my knees on the grass, trowel in hand, when I hear the yell from above. I look up, and there’s Caitlin leaning across her bedroom windowsill. She only calls us Mummy or Daddy when there’s a problem.
I get to my feet. ‘What is it, darling?’
The window next to Caitlin’s opens sharply and Kitty’s head appears. ‘Mum, tell her to shut up. I’m trying to concentrate!’
Kitty’s window bangs shut. Caitlin has vanished, and moments later she appears in the garden. ‘I’ve lost my bag. The one I took to the shops.’ She hops from one foot to the other, eyes wide as if she’s witnessed some horror.
‘You couldn’t have lost it. You had it across you.’
‘No, Mummy. You’re not listening. It was across me when we were out, but it wasn’t when we got home. I remember now, I only had the bag from the art shop. It’s not in my room or in the hall or anywhere, so I have definitely lost it.’
She straightens her back and folds her arms, waiting for me to solve the problem.
‘Did you have much money left?’
‘One pound and five pence. That’s not the point. It’s my favourite bag and it had my notebook in it.’
‘The notebook was in the art shop bag, Caitlin.’
‘No, not that one. Another one. My pink one, with writing already in it.’
Suppressing a sigh – I won’t hear the end of this until it’s sorted – I tell her I’ll ring the art shop and see if she left it there. She did take the bag off when she took her money out; it seems the most likely place. But she has to learn that we won’t all jump to her command.
‘As I said, I’ll ring the shop, and if it’s there I’ll pop back and fetch it. But not right now, Caitlin. I’ve got other things to do, and so have you. You’re going to Maisie’s after lunch. That’ll be nice, won’t it?’
Caitlin’s friend Maisie lives a few minutes away. Caitlin doesn’t make many playdates because she finds them overwhelming and after an hour she’s itching to come home, but Maisie is a bright, thoughtful little girl, an only child. She attends the primary school in the village. Her elegant Ghanaian mother is a GP at the medical centre in the village, her English father is Head of Science at Oakheart Academy. Their house is an oasis of calm, and Caitlin loves spending time there. Hazel will walk Caitlin to Maisie’s; her sisters are very good with her, despite their complaining.
‘It will be nice but not as nice as it usually is because I’ll be worried all the time.’
‘About your bag?’
‘Yes, and the notebook. It’s very important that I have it. Very important.’
‘I know, darling, and as soon as I’ve got time I’ll see if I can track down your bag and your notebook.’
Caitlin looks hopefully at me, not entirely pacified but she knows not to push this any further.
‘Okay. But, Mummy, when you find my bag, please promise me you won’t read what’s in the notebook, because it’s private. Promise you won’t read it.’
‘I promise.’ I raise the trowel as if it’s a symbol of an oath. A clag of soil falls from it and drops onto my sandalled foot.
Hector arrives home in time for lunch. Kitty has already left to catch the train to Worthing with her friends, and while the rest of us have tomato soup and rolls at the kitchen table, Hector hears Hazel’s and Caitlin’s ideas for the perfect tree house. I’ve quietly tipped him off about Caitlin’s missing bag, and he does a good job of distracting her.
Lunch over, Hazel says she’s going to the cafe in the park, where her gang of friends tends to congregate, and she’ll drop Caitlin at Maisie’s house on the way. Hector asks me if I want to go for a drive or a walk, it’s such a lovely day. But I can tell he really wants to crack on with his plans for the tree house, so I tell him I’m going in search of Caitlin’s bag and we can perhaps do something when I come back.
My search draws a depressing blank. Having looked around the house, I agree with Caitlin that the bag didn’t make it home with us. So I retrace our steps, starting with the art shop and ending with the café, via the post office, mini-supermarket, and the bakery where I bought the rolls for lunch. If she dropped it in one of those places, surely somebody would have picked it up and handed it in. A small denim shoulder bag, appliqued with cats and dangling with charms, obviously belonging to a child and containing a tiny amount of money and a notebook, would have no appeal to a thief.
But it’s a funny old world, and the bag has probably gone for good. Her name and address were not inside, as far as I know.
I am intrigued, though, by Caitlin’s emphasis on the notebook as being the most important thing. Intrigued enough to sneak up to her room and take a look around, feeling like the lowest form of life but justified at the same time.
When I go back downstairs. Hector is at his desk in the conservatory, which doubles as a games-room and general dumping ground as well as being Hector’s office. He sketches rapidly, the pencil making swishing sounds on the paper as planks and ladders and ropes and hidey-holes appear, only looking up when he realises I’ve been standing there a while.
‘What’ve you got there?’ He frowns at my fistful of Caitlin’s notebooks, then gives a little laugh. ‘Fran, you haven’t! She’ll put a spell on you, you know that, don’t you?’
‘I only promised not to read the one she’s lost, not these. Anyway, she won’t know. I’ll put them back where I found them, inside an old shoe-bag in the bot
tom of her wardrobe.’ I look down at the notebooks, the top one out of line where my thumb is slid under it. ‘It’s surprising, what she’s written. I’m not sure I like it much.’
Hector’s pencil presses over a line on the paper, strengthening it. ‘It’s not for us to like, is it?’ He puts the pencil down. ‘Fran, if it was Kitty or Hazel, you wouldn’t be going through their stuff, would you?’
A whisker below the surface of this comment lies the inference that we – I – treat Caitlin differently from our other daughters. A criticism, but I don’t mind; I’m used to it.
‘I would if it was for their well-being and my peace of mind, yes.’ I put the notebooks down on the desk, keeping one in my hand. It’s small, like the others, its hardback cover sprinkled with white stars on a bright blue background. I rifle through the pages. ‘Listen to this: Today Kitty said something rude and horrible to Hazel about a boy in her class. I don’t think it’s fair but she didn’t take any notice when I told her that. She never listens to me like I am not anybody. And this: Dad and Mum had an argument at breakfast. Dad had let his car run out of petrol and not told Mum when she went out in it because hers would not start.’
Hector smiles. ‘She’s got our number all right.’
I smile, too. ‘Yeah. There’s more like that. Little things we all do and say, things she’s noticed and not been happy with. We do have to watch ourselves, Hec.’
‘Fran, Fran…’ Hector always repeats my name when he wants to get his point over. ‘We can’t not be ourselves, not live our lives, because we’ve got a little mole in our midst.’
The Wife's Revenge Page 2
