by C F Dunn
“Darling, I am so sorry to hear the terrible news. Matthew must be devastated,” Mum rushed, without further preliminaries.
“News? What news?”
“Rosie’s just told me Pat and Henry are dead. I had no idea.” Rosie, swinging her legs on her chair at the kitchen table, colouring in and humming to herself, appeared oblivious to the confusion she had created.
“Mum, no, they’re fine. I think she must has dreamt it. Or something.”
“Oh.” A pause. “Well, that’s wonderful, darling. So when she said, ‘Daddy’s mummy and daddy are dead’, she meant…?”
I did a quick double take. “Er, I think she must have confused ‘passed on’ with ‘moved on’ – as in moved away. To Arizona. Where they now live.”
“I see. Well, I must say, I’m relieved to hear it. We’re very fond of them, as you know. We were a little surprised when you said you hadn’t been to see them recently. I know you live a long way away, but still, Matthew doesn’t want to let too much time slip by. Pat and Henry aren’t getting any younger, and I’m sure they would appreciate a visit.”
“Talking of which,” I said brightly, “Matthew and I were discussing Theo’s christening and wondered whether you would mind if we came home – to Stamford, that is – and…”
“Darling, that’s a wonderful idea. We could have tea here – I’m sure Beth and Rob would like to cater for it. Your father will be so pleased.” Brimming with enthusiasm, she chatted away quite happily until she came to a breathless stop. “I almost forgot. Rob wants a quick word; have you a moment?” I heard a fumbled exchange as she passed the phone over, and then, “Emma?”
“Rob, hi. Is everything OK? How did it go?”
“Just fine and dandy,” my brother-in-law said in his soft Scottish burr. “The papers came through and they’re all signed, sealed and will be delivered if the solicitor gets his finger out. How’s it feel to be a partner in the catering and hospitality business then, Em?”
I laughed. “Not me. That’s strictly Matthew’s business. I wouldn’t have a clue where to start.”
“Ah, well,” Rob sighed, “I know we’ve been a bit slow taking up the offer…”
“Four years slow,” I pointed out, slipping my jacket off and draping it over the back of a chair.
“Yes, well, we didn’t want to be taking your money, but to be honest it couldn’t have come at a better time. We got the place for a knock-down price because we paid cash, and the kitchens are usable with a good scrub until the rest of the refurb work is completed.”
I detected he still wasn’t comfortable taking money from us. “It’s a business partnership, Rob, not charity. Matthew will expect a good… return – if that’s the right word – on his investment.”
“Oh, aye, and no doubt you’ll be visiting every so often to make certain your money’s being well spent.’
“Definitely. Mum will want to see Theo’s new teeth.”
“And, of course, you’ll be wanting a complimentary five-course meal.”
“We wouldn’t want to eat the profit margins.” We both laughed, and I marvelled at how adept I’d become at skirting the issue of eating.
“We’ll be as rich as Croesus before you know it and I can buy an Aston Martin like your husband’s. How’s it running, by the way?” Matthew had traded in his car for something newer and faster and still decided it wasn’t fast enough, so had had it modified. It had caused quite a stir on campus, and I had spent a good week or so being plied with questions by curious students and envious staff (mostly men, I noted wryly) about engine capacity, which was pointless, given I didn’t know, and cared even less. At least he had opted to have it sprayed his trademark cranberry, which I did like, although it hardly blended in and could be seen from miles away. Rob detected my lack of interest and thankfully moved the conversation on.
“Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks. Yes, yes, I know, it’s business,” he said quickly, as I began to interrupt. “But thanks, Em – to you both – for enabling it to happen.”
“You’re welcome. I’m glad we were able to, and I’ll make sure I tell Matthew when he’s finished mending the roof.”
“Good,” Matthew said later that evening in the study, once he had tamed Rosie’s exuberance with a story from her favourite book, and Theo had dozed off in the crook of his arm, lulled by the soothing timbre of his father’s voice. With care, Matthew placed the snoozing baby on a pile of cushions, Theo’s leg twitching occasionally as he slept. “Beth and Rob have a solid business plan and will make the restaurant work, if anyone can. They just needed the means to do so.” He stood, and from his document case he had left by the desk, took a wedge of papers to do with my sister’s new restaurant. Opening the panel in the wall, he revealed the hidden safe, and then slid the rear section aside. From its depths, he removed the battered metal box. I expected him to make me go through the complicated procedure to open it, but instead he negotiated the subtle clicks and turns until we heard the small click of successful deactivation. He lifted the lid with care, releasing the smell of parchment and wax seals, checked the small bottles containing the chemicals and the detonator next to them, and began to sort the papers into a new folder.
I took the journal in its wrinkled leather bag from the case. The pages had survived remarkably well, but when I looked at it now, precious though it had always been, it came with a caveat. Unbidden, I saw the light fading from Guy’s face as the water rose around him. “Em’ma,” he whispered from among the pages. I closed the journal and put it back, jogging one of the cardboard sleeves as I did so. Deliciously antique writing peeped out at one corner of the folder and something fell onto the desk with a clunk. A key. I reached out to take it. “What’s this? I don’t recognize it.”
Matthew intercepted, and popped it back out of sight in the corner of the box. “Just an old key,” he said, and put the new folder on top, shut the lid, and replaced the box.
Theo’s naps were getting shorter, just as Rosie’s had done at his age. He began to croon as he always did before waking, and Matthew picked him up. Together, we went next door into the drawing room where Rosie was chatting away to herself as she played. It reminded me of the earlier incident and it hurt. Matthew patted the sofa and I sat next to him, welcoming his stalwart presence. “You’re a bit pensive this evening; are you all right?”
I lifted my shoulders briefly. “I’m OK. Glad you’re back, though.” I craned my neck and kissed him swiftly on the cheek, and took possession of his spare arm.
“Mmm. So what’s bothering you?” Rosie busied herself on the other side of the room, building a complex structure from Lego, seemingly in another world. “Rosie?” he mouthed.
“Friends,” I whispered back. “She doesn’t seem to have any.”
“Oh? What about those two in her group? Jamie and Clara, isn’t it?”
I shrugged again and he looked nonplussed. Rosie, oblivious, pushed something small and almost round through a channel of bricks with her finger, squinting after it. She seemed to be telling herself a story.
“Has she said anything?”
I told him about the incident outside the school and we watched Rosie play, unable to express the creeping despondency we both felt. “We can’t change her, Matthew, any more than you could yourself,” I said eventually.
“Yes, I know, but she’s the one who has to live with the consequences of it. Theo, too, in all probability.”
“It’s not so bad.” I hugged his arm around me. “It could be worse. I’ll keep an eye on things and have a word with her teacher if need be. Surely she’s not so very different from other children of her age, is she?” We both looked at our daughter. On the other side of the room, things were getting exciting as Rosie’s monologue accelerated and she began waving her arms about, helicopter fashion “What are you building, poppet?” I asked.
“It’s a zig’rat,” she said, slightly indignant that the higgledypiggledy multicoloured bricks needed further explanation. “
Nanna’s zig’rat,” she added, beaming. “She lives in there,” and she pointed to the haphazard pyramid rising in the middle.
“Ah.” I counted to three. “Rosie, darling, the ancient ziggurat of Ur was built for the god Nanna to live in, not your Great-Nanna. It was built about four thousand years ago,” I added, helpfully. There followed a momentary pause as Rosie considered this latest piece of information.
“It might be Great-Nanna,” she said, eventually. “Great-Nanna was very old.”
“Yes, but not that old, sweetness. Nor was she a god.”
Rosie pursed her pink lips. “Daddy’s old. Daddy can live in there.” She bent down and fished something from inside the cave-like entrance.
Smothering a smile, Matthew canted his head. “What do you have there?”
She hid her hands behind her back. “Nothing.”
He did one of those disconcerting things I always forgot to do when challenged by our daughter’s obstinacy: he didn’t react. She squirmed under his scrutiny, and stepping carefully between the loose bricks, came up to us. The object rolled unevenly in the palm of her outstretched hand.
“Daddy’s nutmeg! Rosie, you know you mustn’t touch the things in the cabinet!”
“Emma, it doesn’t matter…”
“And it’s cracked. It wasn’t cracked before. Daddy has had that for hundreds of years; it’s very special.” I saw my daughter’s face crumple, and swallowed my dismay. “Rosie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be cross.”
“Let me see.” Matthew took the nutmeg and rubbed his finger over the hairline fault in the worn wood of the fruit. “There. It’s only a crack in the outer case, just as it would have done if I had left it on the island to grow into a tree. No harm done.” He lifted her onto his knees with his spare arm and she hid her face in his neck.
“Sorry,” she said in a small voice.
He kissed her hair. “That’s all right, sweetheart, but don’t play with the things in the cabinet. If you want to see them, we’ll show you, but there are pieces in there which are dangerous…”
“Like the big knife?”
“Yes, and some things which are very delicate…”
“The hippi-campus?”
“Like the glass hippocampus. But most of all, next time Mummy or I ask you something, tell us the truth straight away. There can be no room for secrets in this family.” He closed his eyes briefly, his mouth forming a solid line. “Not any more.” He smiled then, and put her on her feet and handed Theo to me. “Come and show me your ziggurat. What were you using the nutmeg for?”
“It’s a ballista. It goes, wheeeeeeeee spooosh!” The imaginary weapon of her fingers flew over her head and landed in the centre of the structure, scattering plastic bricks. “The Termites have won!” she declared in triumph. Newly awake, Theo bounced on my knee.
It took a moment for the penny to drop. “Elamites, do you mean, Rosie? The people who defeated Ur?”
“Elamites, belemnites, ter-mites!” she sang out. “The zig’rat is like a termite mound, isn’t it? And a-ll the people run round like this.” Her fingers now became little figures scurrying around the remains of the structure. “People build buildings and termites build mounds.”
“And the ballista?” Matthew asked, puzzled.
“People go bash, bash, bash and break the things they build. Why do people do that, Daddy? Why do people hurt the things they make?”
“I suppose,” I said thoughtfully when we were finally alone, “that she does come across as a little… different, to the uninitiated.” I yawned and pulled the duvet over me. “One thing’s for sure. I’m going to have to work on her chronology, although Nanna would have thought it very funny to be considered worthy of a step pyramid. And I’m not entirely certain ballista were in use in that period, either.” I stared at the ceiling, thinking. “Actually, they probably were.”
Beside me, Matthew laughed softly. “And you think Rosie might be seen as different!”
I nudged him carefully in the ribs, and he had the grace to pretend he felt it. “I’m not the one teaching elementary science to a four-year-old.”
“Point taken, although I’ve had to reassess the situation and up my game.”
“Why?”
“She was getting bored.”
Rolling over, I propped myself on one elbow and looked at him. “I’m not sure things are going to get any easier for Rosie at school. She laps up everything we teach her and just wants more. She plays it down at school, but she’s finding it difficult to disguise her differences.”
“Has she said so?”
“Not in so many words, but she doesn’t always realize what might be viewed as unusual and what won’t. At some point, someone is going to notice.” I laid my hand on his chest, feeling the beat of his heart against my skin. “Matthew, there’s going to come a time when we have to move on from here.” His muscles tensed under my hand as he sat up, dislodging it.
“I’m on the verge of a breakthrough, Emma. I have Matias and Sung working on the project full tilt, and we are this close – ” he held up his thumb and index finger with barely a sliver between them, “ – to cracking the code. I can’t leave my research now – I can’t train anyone else to achieve what they do – not without years of work. And then there’s E.V.E…”
“E.V.E. is just software…”
“It’s more than that, Emma – much more – and without Henry…” He stopped and looked away. “Without Henry, I can’t hope to re-establish the programs within a reasonable timescale.”
“You don’t have to pretend, Matthew. I know you don’t want to leave just yet in case Henry decides to come home.”
He exhaled slowly. “Just a while longer, Emma; give me a little more time and then… then we can move on and make a new life. In the meantime, perhaps we can get Rosie onto an accelerated curriculum at school so she won’t get so bored. There might be children there she will get on with.”
CHAPTER
13
Elementary
The sounds of children playing swarmed through the open classroom window with the cooling autumn air, and the middle-aged woman rose and closed the casement. “They get noisy at recess,” she explained, sitting down at the desk in front of which we sat.
“I expect they are enjoying themselves,” Matthew remarked, mildly.
She tucked her greying sharp-cut hair behind one ear and produced a neat blue school folder with Rosie’s name on it. She cleared her throat. “Rose,” she began, avoiding our gaze. “She’s an… interesting little girl.”
“Interesting?” I said. “In what way?”
She ran her tongue over her teeth, adopting a professionally cool smile. “I’m glad you came to see me. I was going to call you. There are some issues…”
“She’s having problems making friends,” I intercepted, before she mentioned the recent incident with Bully Boy. “We were wondering whether there might be another friendship group she could join – in an accelerated class, perhaps?” The teacher’s face sagged. “Not that she doesn’t like being in this class, of course,” I hastened to add. “It’s just that she, well, she gets…” I floundered for a better word, “… bored, and we wondered whether she might find more friends in an accelerated learning group. There are such things, aren’t there?”
Colour flared along the woman’s neck. She opened the folder containing what looked like at least a dozen pages of typed and handwritten notes. “Rose does have some friendship issues surrounding play and socialization…” she said carefully.
“He was calling her names!”
“… and there are some concerns about her cognitive development.” She let the implication settle in the following silence, broken only by the cacophony outside.
“Cognitive development? In what sense?” Matthew said evenly, giving me time to recover.
She gave a little cough. “Child Development studies have shown that children of working parents sometimes do take more time developing skills. It’s
to do with the amount of time spent reading and playing with them. Children develop at different stages. I’m sure it’s nothing to be worried about.”
“Can you be more precise?” Matthew continued to smile, but I detected a certain coolness about it. So did she. Small pucker marks appeared around her mouth as she pursed her lips.
“I’m sure you are aware that the school expects a certain level of attainment, and there is competition for places…” Matthew’s expression hardened and the teacher hurried an explanation. “Rose is withdrawn in class. She doesn’t mix with the other children and can’t complete quite basic tasks…”
“Such as what?” I butted in.
The teacher glanced at a list in front of her. “Simple colour coding, a Draw-a-Person test, matching pairs – and she was unable to respond to visual prompts: she couldn’t identify a picture of a bug.”
“Did you ask her to classify it?” I said shortly. “She’s been able to correctly identify dozens of subspecies of dinosaur since she was three, she can write whole sentences, and was building a ziggurat only the other evening.”
“Excuse me?”
“Ziggurat. A stepped pyramidal structure, built… oh, it doesn’t matter. The fact is she can do all these things and you’re saying that she has cognitive difficulties?”
“That and other… challenges. Mrs Lynes, we haven’t seen Rosie do any of the things you mention. It’s only natural for parents to be anxious about their child’s progress and to see things that are, well, frankly not there. The truth is that Rose is very withdrawn in class and sits and talks to herself and stares out of the window. She won’t even answer questions. Sometimes I don’t think she’s even listening.”
I leant forward, ready to argue, but Matthew put a hand on my arm. “What do you suggest?”
She gave me a quick, worried look before answering. “My advice is that we look at a remedial programme for Rosie. It’ll take things more slowly and allow the therapist to work with her at her own pace.”
