by Adele Parks
“But if he does, if this ever goes to court, they will be doubted for shilly-shallying. We don’t want to upset them before we know that the revised testimony is in the bag. Hang on, I’ll call Gillian.”
“Jesus, Jake. Are you listening to yourself? Ridley and Megan beat up Emily. Your daughter is bleeding. I’m going to their houses. I’m going to the school. I’m going to the police! They are not getting away with this.” I am raging. Sounds are whooshing in my ears and I think it is actual fury whipping up a storm. This means it takes a moment for me to realize what Jake is saying. “I think we should just pull her out of the school. Walk away from them all. We don’t need the police involved. We don’t need a scandal. We’re just getting through one investigation.”
My mouth is hanging open. “You can’t expect me to ignore this,” I splutter.
“When she gets out of the bath, we’ll ask her what she wants us to do. Take a deep breath, Lexi, I’ll pour you a glass of wine.”
“I don’t want to take a deep breath. I don’t want a glass of wine!”
“Think what is at stake here.”
“Our daughter’s health.” I glare at Jake, but can’t say any more. I’m conscious that Logan is still in the room with us. He looks shaken enough. I put my arms around his shoulders and pull him into a hug, kiss his forehead. He’s clearly upset because he allows this, uncomplaining.
“Will I have to change schools, too?” he asks.
Jake and I answer at once. I say, “Your dad wasn’t serious about that. We’ll discuss it.”
Jake says, “Yes, you’re changing schools. Fact.”
When Emily emerges from her bath, wearing candy-striped pajamas, she looks about ten years old. Vulnerable, overwhelmed. Her skin is pale. There’s a film glistening on her upper lip and her forehead. My heart aches for her.
I am making pasta arrabiata for supper, it’s her favorite. She sits down at the kitchen breakfast bar and watches me. “Okay, so we have some options. As this attack was on you, I want you to be comfortable with my response so your father and I can go to their houses right now. We can have it out with them and their parents.”
“Then what?” She slouches forward and rests her head on the breakfast bar.
“Well.” I’m stumped. “Demand apologies at the least.” I can hear how inadequate I sound.
“Their parents won’t even care. I mean, they hate us, right?”
I’m not prepared to give up at the first hurdle. “We can talk to the school to have them punished.”
She shakes her head. “What do you think will happen if you go in to school and get them into more trouble? Are you going to get me bodyguards?”
“Then the police. We’ll go to the police, press charges.”
“They can’t follow me around 24/7. They can’t make me safe. Besides, Dad isn’t pressing charges against Fred or Patrick and they assaulted him.”
“Well, no, but that’s different.”
“How?”
I don’t know what to tell my daughter. Maybe Jake should press charges. We just don’t want a scandal. Have we set a bad example?
“Well, what do you want to do?” I try to swallow my exasperation. I’m not angry with Emily, but my sense of injustice is so ferocious I’m not able to keep a lid on it as well as I’d like.
“I want to watch TV.” Her eyes swim. She’s fighting tears.
“What?”
“I want to leave the school. Go to a private school where everyone is rich and they won’t hate me for it.”
“Sweetheart, I’m not sure that running away is the answer.”
“It is.”
I drain the pasta and slowly stir in the sauce. “Are you saying you don’t want me to do anything?” I can’t believe my feisty little daughter would respond like this.
“Yes.”
“You are content with them getting away with this?”
“Don’t make things worse, Mum.” She walks through to the sitting room. Jake shrugs. He doesn’t look as surprised as I am. I wonder whether he talked to her before I did.
“That’s that settled then,” he says. “Shall we eat this in front of the TV?”
“It’s spaghetti, it will get everywhere.”
“We’re getting a new sofa soon anyway, right, and I think the important thing is to cuddle up with Emily and Logan.” He’s right about that at least.
Somehow, I hold it in while we eat dinner and watch a Netflix movie, all together as a family. Ostensibly. The thing is, I know we are in the same room, but I don’t feel we are very together. I have to concentrate to try to ignore the issue of our daughter taking a beating, since she is here with a split lip and bruises. If Ridley or Megan were stood in front of me, I would push my thumbs into their eyes until they popped. I would rip their heads off and use them as footballs. Instead, I put my arm around Emily and reassure her I won’t do anything to “make things worse.”
She lets me tuck her into bed. I kiss her forehead, and despite the trauma of the day she’s out like a light. She’s always been a good sleeper.
I sit on the floor by her bed, surrounded by bags of shopping and makeup. I lay my head on the side of her bed. I remember back to when she was a baby, and the fact that she always slept so well had Carla and Jennifer believing I was some sort of baby whisperer with a special knack. Carla used to get me to put Megan to bed whenever she could. I remember this and I cry, silent, fat tears that dampen my daughter’s duvet.
CHAPTER 19
Fifteen years ago
“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Carla commented as Lexi sneaked back into the sitting room. “Is she asleep?”
“No, but she’s calm. I think she’ll drop off soon,” replied Lexi.
“You are the baby whisperer, I swear it.” Carla scooted up next to Jennifer so that there was room for Lexi to join them in front of the TV. Lexi had noticed that Carla always positioned herself in the middle of things. No one minded, it was just what felt natural. She was physically the tallest and somehow also the biggest metaphorically in their threesome. Lexi collapsed onto the sofa, grateful to put her feet up. Baby whisperer or not, pacing the floor for forty minutes with a screaming infant, even someone else’s screaming infant, was knackering. She enjoyed the fact Carla turned to her, believing she could soothe little Megan because Lexi’s own baby girl was a good sleeper. The best of the three babies, actually. Emily hit seven consecutive hours of sleep at just ten weeks old, practically a miracle, and now she regularly slept twelve hours at night as well as taking an afternoon nap. Lexi didn’t brag about her daughter’s sleep patterns—she knew that exhausted mothers would find that really annoying—but her two best friends, of course, knew the facts.
It was flattering that Carla thought Lexi could work some sort of miracle on baby Megan, who was fractious and agitated, day and night, and had never slept more than three hours in a row, but truthfully Lexi didn’t think she had any special powers over Megan or anyone else’s baby. Perhaps she had a bit more patience.
Lexi was constantly being told that she was lucky her baby was a good sleeper, and a good feeder, too, as it was turning out. They’d all three recently started weaning. Emily would eat anything that was offered up. Was it luck? Lexi swore by routines, blackout blinds and home-prepared food. Carla didn’t believe in those things.
Jennifer leaned forward and picked up the bottle of red, poured a glass for Lexi and refilled Carla’s and her own. “Is it wrong of me to be glad I’m no longer breastfeeding, so I can enjoy a guilt-free glass of wine?” she asked, grinning.
The other two women smiled lazily and didn’t bother to reply. It was a rhetorical question. They felt the same. They were all good mothers, devoted even. Their eight-month-old bundles of joy were their worlds, but no one ever told a new mum just how exhausting and relentless the whole mothering business was. A glass
of wine, a bar of chocolate, the occasional whinge to each other were necessary coping methods that kept them functioning.
“Where are the men?” Lexi asked, looking about her.
“They’ve popped out for the takeaways,” replied Carla.
“Thai tonight.”
“Oh, goodie. Did you order me—”
“Crispy prawn tempura served with sweet chili sauce and jasmine rice. Yeah.”
Lexi nodded, grateful and content. It was amazing how close they had all become in the past ten months. Close enough for them to each know one another’s favorite dishes on the takeaway menus, whether they were opting for Thai, Chinese or Indian. They had met at a prenatal class and had clicked immediately, brought together by fear of the unknown as much as excitement. Bound by their swollen bodies that had seemed a long way from the desirable blooming, bonded by talk of intermittent incontinence and depressingly low sex drives.
A sound emitted from the baby monitor. They all froze and listened. Collectively holding their breath, they waited to see if it was a sleepy murmur, or a precursor to a full-on wail. “That’s Ridley,” they chorused in a whisper.
Close enough for them all to recognize each other’s baby mews. Lexi and Carla turned to Jennifer. She was perhaps the most anxious mother of the three. Ridley was the result of four rounds of IVF. All the babies had been wanted, of course, but Jennifer had waited the longest. Lexi hoped Jennifer wouldn’t dash upstairs to see her son. He’d most likely go back to sleep if left alone. All three babies were in the same room, two in travel cots. Chances were, Emily would sleep through if Jennifer did go in the room, but Megan would almost certainly wake and wail. They waited a beat. Nothing. Relieved, they smiled at one another. Then, suddenly, there was noise at the front door. Baritone laughter and chatter. The men back with the food. It was somehow primal and satisfying. The women leaped to their feet. Opened the door. Hushing their husbands, they began dashing around the kitchen, hunting out plates, cutlery, trays.
“Did you watch the lottery?” Jake asked as he landed a light kiss on the back of his wife’s neck. He was comfortable with giving public displays of affection. He fancied his wife like mad, even when she had baby food in her hair and hadn’t managed to put makeup on for a week. He liked to show his desire. Lexi smiled at Jake, paused for a fraction of a second and leaned her head back to rest against his.
“No, I missed it. I was helping Carla out, putting Megan down.”
“We caught it, though,” said Carla. “Sadly, we did not become millionaires this week.”
“Did any of our numbers come up?” asked Patrick.
“No, not one,” replied Carla with an air of amusement. This wasn’t a surprise. They’d been playing the lottery for about four months and they’d never had a number come up. It had become a running joke between them that they were defying the odds in managing to be so unlucky. Jennifer reached for the kitchen roll and efficiently snapped off six squares. They didn’t bother with napkins. It only caused more laundry and they were long past the stage of feeling they had to try to impress one another. In fact, they had simply skipped that stage. It was hard to be the sort of person who might impress guests when all your conversations centered around cushion rings for piles and putting cold cabbage leaves in your bra to ease the pain of cracked nipples.
“I’m not resigning on Monday then,” laughed Fred.
“No, darling, you’re not,” said Jennifer, playfully nudging her husband in the ribs. “So, make yourself useful and open another bottle of wine.”
The babies all slept through until it was time to carefully carry them home. The parents drank five bottles between them. More than they’d had for a while, but not as much as they once used to put away. Luckily, they all lived close to one another, and no one had far to walk, just a few minutes up the road. Lexi and Jake stood at the door, waving their friends off. The couples excitedly whispered plans for the next meetup and tried to smother the drunken laughter that erupted from one or the other of them. They all felt light-headed. Lighthearted. Lucky. As they closed the door behind them, Jake pulled his wife into a hug. He kissed the top of her head. He didn’t try to kiss her lips because he was aware that sleep was a higher priority to her than sex at the moment; if he’d kissed her lips, she might have thought sex was what he was hoping for.
“Who needs the lottery millions when we have everything already?” he asked sleepily. “Great friends, loads of booze, a beautiful baby and each other.”
Lexi lifted her head, met her husband’s slightly unfocused gaze and whispered, “Shag me.”
Their life was perfect.
CHAPTER 20
Lexi
When I’m certain Emily is fast asleep, I pick up my phone and hit Carla’s number. I know I gave Emily the impression that I’d follow her wishes, that I wouldn’t say anything, wouldn’t “make things worse,” but you know what—I’m the adult. I’m the parent. I get to decide what a suitable response to a beating is.
Carla picks up after just three rings. I imagine her in her immaculate Nicholas Anthony kitchen. The tobacco-dark wood units that beautifully contrast with the luminously pale, high-gloss lacquer surfaces. The ultimate in minimalist chic. Her cleaner comes in twice a week. She’ll be holding a glass of wine, perhaps. Red. There will be a bowl of fruit, all ripe and ready to be munched, nothing browning or past its best. I don’t bother with any sort of greeting, I launch straight in.
“In case your lawyers are just thinking about their retainer and not keeping you fully briefed, I thought you should know Jennifer and Fred have changed their stories. Initially, he maintained he and you had recommitted to the lottery. She double-crossed you from the off, said she was in the loo at the pertinent moment. Anyway, now they are both saying that they were present and aware and that they do remember pulling out of the lottery.” I have to be honest, delivering this news gives me a certain amount of satisfaction.
“I see.”
“So, you have no case. They’ve let you down.”
“What did you offer them?” she asks coolly.
“None of your business. I just want you to know, they are not your friends.”
“What happened, Lexi? When did you become this person?”
I ignore her comment. Don’t rise to it. “I had been planning on giving you three million.”
“Patrick and I are due six.”
“Why are you keeping up this pretence?” I ask. “Do you think I’m recording this call?”
“Do you think I am?” she counters. She’s good, I’ll give her that. I sigh.
“Well, I’m not recording it, don’t worry. I just wanted you to know I have been planning on giving you three million for old times’ sake. Jake doesn’t agree, of course, but I thought you were owed it.”
She’s quiet, so quiet I can hear her breathing down the line. It’s crazy to think you can interpret breathing, but I can. I know her that well. I’ve heard her breathless after a hard run, then her breathing is raspy, labored. I’ve heard her breath catch in chortles because she’s laughed so wildly, often at something I’ve said or done. We’d roll around the floor, our stomachs cramping in hysteria, unable to spit out words because we were laughing that hard. I’ve heard her breathing become ragged with shock when she took the call to say her brother had had a stroke. I’ve heard her fall asleep next to me on airplanes and in cars, after late nights out: gigs, parties, childminding. She doesn’t snore exactly, but she breathes heavily. I know how Carla breathes.
Her breath right now is expectant, hopeful. I continue. “With that sort of money, you could do a lot of things, Carla. You could move to a new house, go back to London.” I know she’s secretly hankered after the bright lights of the metropolis for a while now. She’s become bored of the countryside and misses the hit of being at the heart. “You could start up your own business, buy that beauty salon you’ve often talked abou
t.” Carla once put together a really impressive business plan to buy a high street salon, which she insisted on calling a spa. For a time, she was extremely excited about the prospect of working, being her own boss. Patrick vetoed the idea. Wouldn’t even let her petition the bank. He said salons were common. I think he likes having a little wife at home, being the big “I am.” I pause. “You could leave your husband. Take the kids and go somewhere very far away.”
She gasps. Shock? Excitement?
“But I’m not going to give you a penny now. Not one. Go and ask your daughter why.”
Then I put the phone down before she can respond.
CHAPTER 21
Lexi
Thursday, May 2
Neither of the kids are going in to school today. I can’t risk a repeat of yesterday.
“But I don’t need to stay off, do I?” asks Logan. “Ridley and Megan are hardly likely to try to beat me up.”
“We don’t know what they’ll try,” I mutter ominously.
“I’m not scared.” He looks frustrated. He thinks he’s being treated like a baby and he hates it.
“No, I know you are not.”
“I think we are giving Megan and Ridley and their apes the wrong message. You should stand up to bullies, Mum. That’s what you’ve always said. What’s going to happen every time someone crosses Megan? She’s going to think it’s okay to kick the hell out of them. Fail.”
My heart swells with pride. I try to hug him, but he dodges it as he’s annoyed with me. He stares at me with that particular brand of accusation that only children can muster when they quote back to their parents their own words.
“I’m surprised to hear you arguing for going to school.”
“I’m bored of shopping, and that’s what Dad and Emily are going to do today, most likely.”
“Actually, I think they are looking at new schools.”
He sighs. “My friends are not arseholes. I shouldn’t have to change schools.”
