The Unheard

by Nicci French

  Gina worked for a charity and she had returned to work three months after giving birth. It was her husband, Laurie, who worked from home and did most of the childcare. Sometimes I wondered if he actually worked at all. He genuinely seemed to love looking after the children: he was always baking with them, or painting, or going on outings to strange events he’d read about online. Poppy and I had accompanied him to a surreal rabbit gymkhana in Barking a few months ago and watched solemn teenaged girls tow their bewildered rabbits on leads over, and mostly through, miniature jumps. He was a slight figure, but I was used to seeing him with Nellie in a sling and Jake on his hip. Two or three times a week, he or Gina – but almost always he – took Poppy and Jake to school and collected them. I did the same on my days off. While Jason had sailed upwards into his headship, I’d shifted sideways after Poppy was born, becoming a part-time primary school teacher on a salary that sometimes covered my outgoings and sometimes didn’t quite cover them. How had that happened, I wondered, when we’d started out as equals? How had I let it happen?

  That morning, Poppy didn’t want to be left. She put her arms around my legs and hung on furiously. I had to prise her off me.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Laurie gave me a little push out of the door. ‘She’ll be fine as soon as you’re out of sight.’

  * * *

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ I said to Nadine as we ate our sandwiches together. Nadine was head of inclusion in the school in east London where I taught Year Threes. She was tall and strong and had dark, very short hair. She wore hooped earrings and leather jackets and biker boots. She had three sons and whenever I went to her house I was struck by the amount of noise and mess they made, and by how calm she remained, like she was in a space of her own. The children at the school were quite scared of her. I loved her, and I wanted to be more like her – solid, confident, safe, married.

  I took the drawing out of my backpack.

  ‘She’s never done anything like it before.’

  I told Nadine about what Poppy had said, about her wetting the bed, about her clinginess. Nadine listened attentively and then smiled.

  ‘It’s one drawing, one accident in the bed. Do you think that you might just be hyper-vigilant at the moment, because of everything you’ve been through with the divorce?’

  ‘It wasn’t actually a divorce.’

  ‘It was like a divorce. It was a crisis in your life and in hers. So one little thing triggers anxiety in you.’

  ‘What about “he did kill”?’

  She laughed.

  ‘You should hear some of the stuff my boys come out with. They take everything in, things you didn’t even notice they’d heard or seen. Something someone said on the street as they were passing by, something on TV, whatever.’

  I stood up.

  ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

  ‘If you go on feeling worried, you can always talk to Alex.’

  Alex was Nadine’s partner and a psychotherapist.

  ‘He wouldn’t mind?’

  ‘You can ask him.’

  ‘It’s OK. I’ll just keep an eye on her.’

  * * *

  When I collected her from Gina and Laurie’s, Poppy was bright-eyed and excited, with yellow paint smeared on one cheek and grass in her hair. She hurled herself into my arms and then pulled away to show me the stickers she’d put on her tummy.

  ‘It looks like she’s had a lovely time.’

  Laurie looked distracted.

  ‘I think so. Yes.’

  ‘Was everything all right?’

  ‘They had a little tiff. I’m sure it’s all sorted now.’

  I put Poppy down and spoke to Laurie in a quieter tone. As a teacher, I’d always tried to deal with bullying wherever I saw it. I had always promised myself that I would never be one of those parents who refused to accept that their own children could do things like that.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Jake got a bit upset.’

  ‘Did Poppy hurt him?’

  ‘I don’t know. Jake was crying. I think Poppy said something.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘I don’t know what it was exactly.’ Laurie gave a little shrug and smiled at me, a dimple in one cheek. ‘Jake just said it was something horrible. He was crying.’

  ‘Could I ask Jake about it?’

  Laurie shook his head. ‘I’ve only just calmed him down. Don’t worry. He’s probably already forgotten about it. We both know what they’re like at that age.’

  On the short walk back, I tried to let things be but I couldn’t. When we got to the little patch of green near the flat, I stopped and knelt down so that I could look Poppy right in the eyes.

  ‘Did you have fun with Jake?’

  ‘He cried,’ Poppy said, matter-of-factly.

  ‘Yes, I know. Why did he cry?’

  ‘He was crying.’

  ‘Did you say something to make him cry?’

  ‘I’m hungry,’ said Poppy. ‘Very hungry.’

  There was no point in pursuing it.

  ‘That’s good,’ I said, ‘because we’re going to have a barbecue with Aidan. That’ll be fun, won’t it?’

  I was being ridiculous, I thought. I was being just the kind of over-protective mother I promised myself I wouldn’t be.

  THREE

  Aidan arrived with food and quick-lighting barbecue bags. He unloaded the meal onto the kitchen table: corn on the cob, red peppers, two slices of tuna, a fishcake for Poppy, lettuce, tomatoes, a bottle of white wine.

  ‘You know there’s just the three of us,’ I said warily.

  ‘It’s the first barbecue of the year,’ Aidan said with an air of ceremony. ‘It needs to be done properly.’

  I turned to Poppy. ‘Do you want to help with the food?’

  ‘No,’ Poppy said firmly.

  Aidan looked a bit crestfallen.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘It’s all right. Only men are allowed near a barbecue. It’s the law.’

  The barbecue had collapsed during the winter and Aidan had to spend some time reassembling it before he could light it. I went inside with Poppy and gave her a drawing book and crayons and sat her down at her little red table and chair. Poppy immediately set to work with ferocious concentration, producing drawings at great speed: a page of violet streaks, one of green and yellow loops and circles, an orange blob that I knew to be Sunny – Sunny was her most constant subject. I looked over her shoulder: there didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary.

  In the garden, Aidan was still struggling with one of the legs of the rickety, rusty barbecue that the previous owner had left behind. It was probably time to buy a new one. He was wearing faded black jeans and a denim shirt, rolled up just below the elbows, and scuffed trainers. His dark brown hair was receding ever so slightly. His round-framed spectacles gave him a studious, slightly baffled air, owlish. He worked for an alternative energy consultancy and sometimes I heard him talking on the phone to colleagues about capacity factors, feed-in tariffs and more things I didn’t understand. He was a neat, mild-mannered, courteous and slightly shy man who never pushed himself forward or interrupted or raised his voice: the opposite of Jason in every way. I liked everything about him, especially the way he paid attention to people, listening to what they said with an air of studious concentration. He was like this with Poppy as well. I opened the bottle of wine, poured two glasses and walked outside. Aidan had got the barbecue steady and was lighting two bags of coal. He stood back and I handed him one of the glasses.

  ‘What time will it be ready?’

  He looked at his watch. ‘Seven. Sorry, is that too late for Poppy?’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘Hello!’

  We both had to look around to see where the voice was coming from. Bernie was leaning out of his window.

  ‘This is Aidan and this is my neighbour, Bernie.’

  ‘I’ve seen you,’ said Bernie. ‘Going in, going out.’

&n
bsp; He said this in an appraising tone, as if he were keeping count.

  Aidan lifted a hand. ‘Should we invite him?’ he whispered.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Barbecue,’ Bernie said.

  ‘Yes, I hope the smoke from it won’t—’

  ‘If you’re discussing whether to invite me down, don’t worry, I’ve got a friend coming over.’

  The window went down. Aidan looked at me quizzically.

  ‘He has a few of these friends,’ I said. ‘Some of them are very loud. You can hear it through the ceiling. Do you think I can ask him to be a bit quieter? It feels awkward.’

  ‘Does Poppy hear?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hope not.’ I noticed him smiling. ‘I know. It sounds funny but things feel a bit fragile.’

  He poked the coal with a stick and watched it brighten. ‘What’s up?’

  I took a sip of wine.

  ‘I’m sorry. Sometimes Poppy comes back from her father’s in a strange mood and then I worry and feel guilty about what we’ve put her through. Does that make sense?’

  Aidan looked through the window at Poppy, still deep in her drawing, that fearsome scowl, and the tip of her tongue on her lip.

  ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘I wish I could say something helpful. But probably it’s just like the weather. It’ll pass. I know that isn’t much comfort when you’re standing in the rain, but the rain will stop.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said doubtfully.

  He put his hands up. ‘Or maybe it’s not like the weather.’

  I leaned forward and kissed him on his stubbly cheek. He smelled nice.

  ‘I know it’s complicated, me and Poppy. I know I keep cancelling on you at the last minute, or sending you away in the middle of the night. And that my mind can be on other things. I come with baggage.’

  With his free hand, Aidan touched the back of my head and then ran it down the nape of my neck and spine.

  ‘I brought some work I need to get done after we’ve eaten. But after that, is it OK if I stay? For a bit at least. I mean, only if you want me to.’

  ‘I do want you to. Not for the night, though.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  * * *

  Poppy ate her fishcake and firmly refused to eat any salad or vegetables. Afterwards she had a bowl of chocolate ice cream and then complained that her tummy hurt. I took her upstairs, undressed her and helped her into the bath, soaped her pliant body, blew a few bubbles for her, then lifted her out and wrapped her in a towel. I put her in her pyjamas and read to her and she joined in with the lines she had learned by heart. When I put the book down, Poppy said she wasn’t tired. She gazed at me fixedly and told me I had to stay. But almost immediately she was asleep.

  While Aidan worked his way through a pile of papers, I brought the detritus of the meal in from the garden and cleared up. At one point, he looked up and asked if he could help.

  ‘It feels bad,’ he said, ‘the man working and the woman doing the washing up.’

  ‘It should feel bad,’ I said. ‘Most of the time. But it feels good this evening. I want to be doing something. Get on with your work.’

  When I’d put everything away, I wiped the surfaces and rinsed out the sink. Then I lifted my sewing machine and the costume I was making for Poppy onto the table. She was going to a birthday party in a couple of weeks and insisted she wanted to wear a golden witch outfit. I wasn’t entirely sure what a golden witch wore, but Poppy had very firm ideas. We had visited some stores in Spitalfields whose shelves were piled high with bolts of bright cloth, and Poppy had picked out a glittery length of blue and gold that almost hurt the eyes. Now I was making a hooded cloak. I slid the cloth onto the needle plate and checked the thread’s tension.

  I felt Aidan behind me. He put his hands on my shoulders and kissed the top of my head. I gave a small sigh and leaned back into him.

  I could trace the course of my relationship with Jason through our sex life, from those early days when we couldn’t keep our hands off each other, when it felt violent and almost dangerous, to the final months when it was almost like arranging a visit to the doctor, each of us removing our clothes on either side of the bed as if we were preparing for an inspection. I remembered once, years ago, when I had switched the light off and Jason had switched it back on: ‘I need to look at you,’ he had said. In the final years he had always switched the light off and I wondered now if it was because he wanted to pretend I was someone else.

  With Aidan I’d discovered what it was like to be desired again, to desire again. My body had come alive. I abandoned Poppy’s witch cloak and stood up and we wrapped ourselves around each other.

  ‘Is she asleep?’ he asked.

  I pulled him upstairs and into my bedroom, pushing the door shut with my foot.

  ‘Fast asleep. But we should be quiet.’

  ‘You don’t want to disturb Bernie. If we can hear him, he can hear us.’

  Aidan wouldn’t let me take my own clothes off. I felt he wanted to look at every bit of me, touch every bit of me. And then I lay under the covers and watched as he took his own clothes off, folding them up and laying them on the chair, his watch and his glasses on top of them. It was hard to keep silent and I pulled the covers over us so we were in our own dark cave. Even then, I worried we might have woken Poppy and waited, tense and listening out for any sound from the other bedroom.

  I lay on my side and put my hand flat against Aidan’s cheek. He looked different without his glasses, younger and less in control of himself.

  ‘I’m sorry, you need to go. Do you mind? I want to do this right.’

  Aidan didn’t speak but leaned over and kissed me and then I sat up, wrapped in the duvet, and watched him get dressed, liking the way he was neat and unhurried in everything he did, even in how he buckled his belt, laced up his trainers. I waited until I heard the front door close before I got up myself, pulled on pyjama trousers and a tee shirt and walked through to Poppy’s room. She was lying splayed out on her back, her arms spread out.

  When Poppy was a newborn baby, I had sometimes looked at her asleep in her cot and, suddenly fearing that she was no longer breathing, I would wake her up. Even now I had to stop myself taking my daughter in my arms and hugging her. I thought of her violent, black drawing – a figure falling from a height, and a small shudder rippled through me.

  ‘I’ll protect you,’ I said, silently, and went back to bed.

  FOUR

  When I woke the next morning, Poppy was beside me. She had padded across from her room and got into the bed without waking me. I’d always been a good sleeper. Until she was born, I used to sleep ten hours or more at the weekends, lying in bed until mid-morning while Jason went out to buy the paper and pastries. That felt a long time in the past. Now I felt dazed by the emotions of the previous day and by the crowded dreams I’d had in the night, although I couldn’t remember any of them, just a sense of anxious chaos. I had to gather my thoughts, remember I had a day off. Good. I snuggled down and closed my eyes for a few blissful seconds, then slid out of bed and went into the bathroom where I showered and got ready quickly. I woke Poppy and dressed her in jeans and a bright red tee shirt, which was a complicated business, since she stubbornly refused to cooperate.

  I put on the kettle for coffee. I poured milk and oats into a saucepan and stirred them, hearing the familiar sound of Poppy talking to herself in her room above – Poppy always talked to herself – and then a banging sound. She was jumping on her bed. It stopped and there was a noise I didn’t recognise and again, louder, and then really loud, as if something was breaking. I ran up the stairs and into the bedroom and saw Poppy in the act of violently hurling something at the wall. It was a small wooden cow and it hit the wall hard, leaving a mark.

  ‘Poppy, stop!’

  Poppy looked round, her eyes fiery bright.

  ‘Kingcunt,’ she shouted. ‘Kingcunt.’
>
  I fell to my knees and grabbed her and held her close, partly to reassure her but also to restrain her and shut her up.

  ‘What are you saying, Poppy? Where did you hear that?’

  I held her away from me so that she could speak. Her face bore an expression I didn’t recognise. Her mouth twisted. It frightened me.

  ‘Poppy, what is it?’

  ‘He did kill her.’

  ‘Poppy, Poppy stop!’

  ‘Kingcunt, kingcunt, kingcunt!’

  ‘Poppy, no.’

  I smelled burning.

  ‘Wait one moment.’

  I let Poppy go and ran down to the kitchen to find the saucepan in an eruption of foaming, spewing porridge. I switched the gas off and took a deep breath and tried to calm myself. It felt like a bomb had gone off, two bombs: one in Poppy’s bedroom and one in the kitchen.

  As calmly as I could, I poured what remained of the porridge into two bowls and put them on the table, adding milk to cool the porridge and a teaspoon of honey to sweeten it. I fetched Poppy down and we both ate while I tried to think what to do. I couldn’t get it straight. But first things first: I spoke in the most soothing tone I could manage.

  ‘Darling Poppy, you know those things you said, just now? You mustn’t say them to other people. You mustn’t say them in nursery. Do you hear?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘People will be sad. You can say anything to me. But you mustn’t say them to anyone else.’

  ‘Are you sad?’ She leaned towards me and squinted her eyes. ‘Did you cry?’

  ‘No, Poppy. I’m not sad. But you mustn’t say it at nursery.’

  ‘People will be sad.’

  ‘That’s very good, yes.’ I waited a few seconds. ‘Who told you that word?’

  ‘What word?’

  I gave up and poured a glass of juice for her. While she was half-drinking it and half-playing with it, I found my phone and stepped out of the room, but only just outside. I dialled the number. There was a click and I heard a voice.