The Drowning Girl. Margaret Leroy

but rumpled, his shirt hanging out. He’s tall now, visibly taller every time I see him, coltish, his hands and feet too big for him, a pale thatch of hair on his head. He looks around vaguely for something, then ambles out of the room.

      I feel the quick fever of excitement that always comes over me here. I wonder if I will see Dominic.

      But it’s Claudia who comes in. She walks right up to the window, which is a little open, and leans out, her arms on the sill. If she looked really hard she might see me now, but I’m sitting quite still in the shadow—and anyway, would she even know who I am? Does she know about me and Sylvie? Dominic never told me, there’s so much he never said. She lingers there for a moment. Maybe like me she’s just breathing in the scent of rot and bonfires, the smell of approaching cold that paradoxically seems so full of promise. Then she closes the window and reaches up to pull on the cord of the blind. Her head is back, and briefly the lamplight catches on the arch of her throat and the bright blonde fall of her hair. She’s thin; she has a figure that speaks of Pilates classes and always being a little hungry: her arm looks angular, stretching up, the amber brightness gleaming on the bony curve of her wrist. Then the blind slides down.

      I watch for a moment longer. There’s another shape in the room now, a shadow choreography behind the blinds. But the shapes are vague, indeterminate—it’s Charlie again, perhaps, or Maud, their daughter: I can’t tell whether Dominic is there. I think of this life of his that I am excluded from—that I was always excluded from, even when we were closest. The everydayness of him that I know nothing about. What he’s like at family mealtimes, or at dinner parties with friends, or kicking a football around with Charlie in the garden. I never knew him doing any of these things. I knew him only as a lover: tender, passionate, curious, in those lavish afternoons we’d spend together in my bed, when I’d feel a complete, exact pleasure in his insistent fingers, his easy, deep slide into me, the sweet assiduous movement of his mouth. Or cool, closed-off, rejecting, in that terrible moment at the Alouette, the moment we couldn’t get back from. I’d been taking antibiotics for cystitis, but I hadn’t known that antibiotics could interfere with the pill. I told him I was pregnant, saw the instant retreat in his eyes. Cold crept through me. His look told me everything: his narrowed eyes, the way he stared at me as though I were his enemy. I knew the whole thing was fractured before he started to speak—explaining in his measured voice that of course I’d want to get it done privately, that he knew a good gynaecologist, that naturally he’d pay.

      A familiar nausea rises in me. I sicken myself. I cannot live like this—parking near his house, ringing him just to hear him on his voicemail. Looking in on another life that isn’t mine, that can never be mine. This is wrong, I know that. I’m bitterly ashamed of it. I’d never admit to anyone—Karen, Lavinia—that I do this. I try to move on but nothing seems to work for me—the introduction bureau, the speed-dating evening at Crystals nightclub—none of it gets me anywhere: no other man seems quite real. They’re too young, too insubstantial, they don’t overwhelm me as he did. I have to make myself like them, check off their good points. Like with a man I met at Crystals, who seemed to have an interest in me, I spelt it all out in my head—his perfectly ironed white shirt, his floppy Hugh Grant hair, his smell of soap and cologne. Trying to convince myself.

      I resolve that this is the last time. I promise myself I will never do this again—never, never. I drive off rapidly, but the nausea doesn’t leave me.

      At the nursery it’s Beth who lets me in. She’s arranging the children’s artwork on a table ready for home time. She’s Sylvie’s favourite assistant: she has curly hair haphazardly pinned up, and warm brown eyes.

      She smiles at me.

      ‘Sylvie’s in the story corner,’ she says. ‘Oh—and I think Mrs PB wanted a word—she told me to tell you.’

      There’s a scurry of anxiety at the edges of my mind.

      ‘Has Sylvie been OK?’

      Beth makes a little rocking movement with her hand.

      ‘So-so,’ she says. ‘You know—most of the time.’

      I know she’s trying to smooth something over.

      I go into the Garden Room. There are alphabet posters, and trays of toys in gorgeous fruit-gum colours, and the warmth is welcome after the chill of the streets. I always love to come to Little Acorns. Our life may not be perfect, but in sending Sylvie here I know I have done my best for her.

      The children who haven’t yet been picked up are on cushions in the story corner: one of the assistants is reading them Where the Wild Things Are. It’s a favourite book of Sylvie’s, with its fabulous monsters at once predatory and amiable, but she isn’t paying attention. She’s hoping for me; she keeps looking towards the door. As I go in, she comes running across the floor towards me. But she doesn’t fling herself on me, the way another child might. She stops just in front of me and I kneel and she reaches her hands to my face. She gives a theatrical shiver.

      ‘You’re cold, Grace.’

      I wrap her in my arms. She smells so good, of lemon, gingernuts, warm wool. I breathe her in and for a moment I am completely happy. I tell myself, This is where I should be living—in the present, with Sylvie—not always looking behind me and longing for what I can’t have.

      ‘Ah. Ms Reynolds. Just who I wanted to see.’

      Mrs Pace-Barden is at her office door. She has cropped, greying hair and dark conservative clothes. There’s something wholesome and vigorous about her; I always imagine her as a hockey teacher, urging recalcitrant young women to keep their minds on the game.

      She bends to Sylvie.

      ‘Now, Sylvie, I need to have a word with your mum. Would you go and get your coat, please?’

      Sylvie’s fingers are wrapped like bandages around my hand. I sense her reluctance to let go, after a whole day without me. I don’t know what will happen—whether she’ll do as she’s told, or instead just stand here, mute and clinging, with her opaque, closed face and her fingers clenched around mine. Karen once said to me—explaining why she likes to stay at home with her children: ‘The thing is, you know your own children inside out, like nobody else does—you know just what their triggers are. I mean, Lennie hates having her food mixed up and is horrible after chocolate—and Josh used to have this thing about heads apart from bodies… You always know how they’re going to react…’ Saying it with the certainty that I’d nod and say I agreed. And I thought, But I don’t, I don’t know, not with Sylvie.

      But this time it’s OK, she holds on just for a moment, then heads off to the cloakroom. She must have been using pastels; her fingers have left a staining like ash on my hands.

      ‘Now, why I wanted to see you,’ says Mrs Pace-Barden. ‘I’m afraid we had a bit of a scene with Sylvie again today.’ She’s lowered her voice, as though anxious to save me from embarrassment. ‘It was when the water-play came out. Unfortunately Sylvie can be rather aggressive when she gets upset…’

      I feel a hot little surge of anger. I’ve told them over and over.

      ‘You know she’s scared of water-play,’ I say.

      ‘Of course we do,’ says Mrs Pace-Barden. ‘And we took that into account, we were careful to see she was on the other side of the room. But, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate, we can’t stop the other children from enjoying a full range of activities—not just for one child. I’m sure you can see that, Ms Reynolds.’

      ‘Yes, of course.’ Shame moves through me.

      ‘To be honest, I just can’t figure her out. I’m not often defeated by children, but this…’ Some unreadable emotion flickers across her face. ‘We need to talk about it. Wouldn’t you agree?’

      It isn’t a question.

      ‘Yes, of course,’ I tell her.

      ‘I’d like to make an appointment for you to come in,’ she says.