“I’m going out now,” she said. “I’ve lost my appetite. But this isn’t over.”
* * *
She walked in long, deliberate strides up the steep avenues that wound precipitously to Alexandra Palace. Handsome terraced Victorian houses like her own lined the route, any space in between them filled with side extensions and garages and six-foot-high side-access gates. Through the windows she could see plasma tellies, modern art, leather sofas: the trappings of middle-class British affluence. Each door was painted a different color, from cherry red to ice blue; door numbers ranged from traditional
brass to modern slate in bold typography. Flower boxes tumbled over with bloodred geraniums and Japanese ferns and jeweled lobelia.
Each house a different variety, but all the same breed, she thought. Owned by people who had left behind family to come to the city in search of money and goals, prepared to live shoulder by shoulder in cramped, insufferable spaces to achieve it. An image popped into her head of butterflies pinned to a board.
What was wrong with these people? she thought, glaring through their windows. You don’t do that to family. You don’t just walk away from mothers, and fathers, and grandparents and cousins. They are your blood. And if blood doesn’t look after blood, who does? You especially don’t send your children away, either, as if they were worth nothing. Children are not worthless. They are precious.
Suzy marched up to an old kitchen cupboard that had been dumped overnight on the pavement, and kicked it with such force that its side splintered.
* * *
God, it was so hard to make her legs work properly here. Five minutes later she reached the palace entrance, turned in to it, and began the steep climb up the hill. That felt better. There was no room in London to stretch the sinews and muscles and skin, not enough clean air to refresh her lungs with gulping breaths. There was no big sky on which to rest her eyes, just a crushing gray smudge. It was impossible to find a clear path for more than a minute before it became blocked by children’s buggies and bikes on the pavement and dogs on leads; by workmen endlessly digging up roads; by 4x4s squeezing through the narrow paths left by the workmen.
She pushed her body deeper into the steep gradient to feel the stretch.
Then stopped.
The action brought an image to her mind of the old woman outside Northmore. She shook her head furiously, trying to release it.
Those legs. Those legs. Those great hammy legs.
And now her sister’s letter.
No wonder she had woken in the night, gasping for air.
She tried to lose the images in her head by forcing herself on, up past the deer park and duck pond, to where two skater boys smacked their boards down on the runs and ramps of the skate park underneath the glowering palace wall.
For a second she paused to take a breath. Grateful for an audience, the boys pushed back their floppy fringes from serious faces, and put in extra effort as they lifted their skinny knees high and twisted full spin. The dark-haired one reminded her of Henry. Henry would be his age before she knew it. Except this boy still lived at home. He would leave this park in a while and open the front door of his house with a grumpy “hi” followed by a reluctant kiss for his mother, before heading up to a bedroom that smelled of feet and moldy cups and that hid his teenage secrets. A room where he felt safe. Henry would be long gone from her home by then, molded into a little Jez, having hid his tears for his mother’s kiss in a dormitory pillow in the middle of the night.
“No,” she moaned under her breath.
It was no good. The memory of those legs would not go away.
* * *
“Mommy, where are we going?” she had asked that hot afternoon. The cracked leather seat of the man’s dirty old Buick
burned the backs of her knees. In the afternoon glare of a Colorado summer, the oil smell in the car worsened and made her head swim. She pushed away a pile of the paint-strewn clothes and black-streaked mechanical manuals that littered the backseat, and tried to sit up higher.
When her mother didn’t answer, she glanced at the man.
He looked back at her in the rearview mirror. His eyes reminded her of the eyes bandits had in cowboy films.
“Where are we going?” she asked, looking through the grubby windows at an area she didn’t recognize. This didn’t look like the way to the store where they sold ice cream. The street they turned into was wide and quiet. Nettles grew in front of single-story houses. The pale gray road looked like it had dried out in the sun and cracked. One front yard was full of rusted cars and motorbikes, an American flag hanging. There was a faded picture of a gun in the window. “Beware of the owner!” it said underneath. As the man drew into the driveway of a small house with a collapsing wooden porch, paint peeling off it, she felt herself sink down.
“Come,” her mother said, opening her door and taking her hand. Glancing over, Suzy saw the man bring a bag from the car. The long arm of her Pink Panther drooped from an opening. Hypnotized, she allowed herself to be led to the door. She never saw it open. She just looked up to see the monster. As wide as she was tall, short man’s hair, eyes that bulged behind dirty glasses. The monster’s chest sank to her waist, shrouded in a dirty tent of a dress. Her mouth moved like Suzy had seen her friend’s baby sister do on its mother’s breast. Wet, in a repetitive sucking motion.
“No . . .” she began to whine as her mother pushed her toward the woman and a smell inside the house like dog food.
“It’s just till the baby’s born, hon,” her mother said, and then she was gone.
“Nooo!” Suzy had screamed, trying to run after her. But before she knew it, the monster had dragged her inside, pushed her to a sitting position and those hammy, stinking legs were coming round her from behind, squeezing her cheeks together till they hurt. Squeezing her face till the tears couldn’t come.
“Quiet, you!” the monster barked. “Quiet, you.”
* * *
Oh, today, Suzy could cry. She really could. She could march up to those skinny skater boys and scream and bawl right in their faces. But if there was anything the monster had taught her, it was this. There was no point crying.
She had tried, of course. She had screamed and yelled for her mother, and flown at the monster’s soft stomach with her little fists. But then the monster had just smacked her round the head with a sweaty paw and locked her in a cupboard with spiders and roaches. For hours she’d been in there, having to pee in the corner and eat the candy in her pocket, stolen at a school half-filled with other children that nobody seemed to care about. She had tried screaming, too, when the monster held her head under a faucet, screamed in the hope that a police officer would come and take her back to her mother and tell off the monster. But a police officer never came to this street. Monsters, Suzy soon learned, got away with things. Just like the one with the giant legs, panting up the hill outside the hospital yesterday. How she had prayed that traffic warden would catch that disgusting old woman, but deep down she had known he wouldn’t. Monsters always win.
So, Suzy thought, kicking a stone as she flew past. There really
was no point screaming. Locking her jaw, she turned right down a path.
No. There was a much better way to deal with people like her mother, who betrayed the very people they were supposed to love.
Skirting the back of the palace, she entered the ice-rink car park and crossed it, before emerging at the front of the palace and taking the stone steps that descended steeply to the road. She waited for a bus to pass before she crossed, then dipped down into the parkland. Continuing down the steps, far into the trees, she turned left into the stalky woods that led to the wildlife area. There had been a hidden lane here, she remembered, when she and Callie had brought the kids one day in spring to see the wildflowers. Down in the trees, without a hill or view to guide them, they had become disoriented and found themselves on a lane so narrow they had been forced to pull the kids into the center to keep their legs from being scratched by brambles and nettles. She stopped. Now where was that? She tried a few different ways, trying to recall its exact location. A holly tree caught her eye. Beside it there was a gap.
There it was. Good.
Checking that no one was watching, she turned right beside the holly bush, and walked down the lane. Yes. This was fairly hidden. Dog walkers and joggers would use the wider lanes. This one was nothing but a back way down to the cricket club. Only the park maintenance people and young people with reasons to hide away would use it.
And there was an old bench, over there under an oak tree with thick, low boughs. Perfect.
This would do.
This is where she would do it.
* * *
She made it back to nursery by 3
P.M.
to pick up Otto and Peter and their stroller, then carried on to fetch Henry at school. The twins were happy to gabble cheerfully to each other all the way, giving her time to plan.
When she arrived, most of the other schoolchildren were already outside the classroom, putting on their coats. Suzy ignored their parents and walked to the door.
Ms. Aldon was waiting. Normally she would see Suzy coming and call for Henry. But not today.
“Mrs. Howard, have you got a minute?”
Suzy steeled herself. That was never a good sentence to hear.
“Yes,” she said.
From this angle at the classroom door, she could see Henry sitting at the far end of the classroom by himself, his shoulders hunched, his eyes on the floor.
“I’m afraid we have had another incident,” Ms. Aldon said quietly. Her face was apologetic and irritated at the same time. “Henry pulled Luke’s head back very hard at playtime. The sticker chart we discussed doesn’t seem to be working, I’m afraid, so I think we are going to have to arrange a meeting for you and your husband with the head to discuss what happens next. For instance, I am sorry to ask this, but is there something happening at home we should be aware of?”
Suzy stared at her. “How dare you?” she whispered.
Ms. Aldon went pale. “I’m sorry, but we have to ask . . .”
“For your information, no. There is nothing happening at home, not that it is any of your business. I presume you are taking into account that he’s very upset that Rae isn’t here?” she said. “Henry finds it very difficult when Rae is not around.”
“Well, that’s something I wanted to talk to you about, too,” Ms. Aldon said, looking increasingly pained. Her eyes darted behind Suzy as if hoping to find an ally.
“I’ve had reports from the playground assistants that Henry is being quite disruptive about Rae’s other friendships. He seems to think that she should only play with him. I’m not sure if this is something you encourage at home, for example? He becomes agitated when she plays with other children, like Hannah, for instance. I can’t corroborate this claim, but Hannah did tell the playground supervisor that Henry had threatened to spit at her if she didn’t leave Rae alone.”
Suzy chewed her lip.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Aldon. But I’ve had enough of these accusations. If Henry is acting up, perhaps you should look at the way he is treated by the other boys in this class. Henry is always being left out of everything by the other children—and Rae, too, by the way. They don’t let him play football or invite him to parties. So if you are going to single out my son, I suggest you look at the way you supervise all the children in your playground and in the meantime I will arrange my own meeting with the head to talk about what I am beginning to perceive as negligence in the care of my son. Not the best time, I would imagine, with one of the after-school staff already being investigated for what happened to Rae in her care.”
And with that she motioned Henry over, took his hand, and marched away.
* * *
Nobody spoke on the way home. Henry was crestfallen and tripped beside her quietly. Even the twins seemed to sense it
was not a good idea to act up, and sat back in their stroller with dreamy expressions on their faces.
Suzy marched into the house, unstrapped the twins, and placed them on the sofa beside Henry with beakers of juice, turned on the television, and walked back to the stairs.
“Jez?”
There was no answer, so she shouted twice more till he appeared at the top of the banister.
“What?”
“I’m going out. You’ll have to look after the kids.”
“Are you joking?” he growled. “I’m waiting for a conference call.”
“Tough,” she said.
“Suze. Don’t even . . .”
But she was gone, slamming the front door.
Rae is so excited about Hannah’s party tomorrow she cannot sit down. She has changed her outfit three times before settling—with my strict approval—on her silver fairy party dress that Kate bought her for Christmas, jeans with warm socks and sneakers, and a fleece. I watch Rae taking off her dress carefully for tomorrow, trying not to think about it. I think I am hoping that the party will be canceled. Or that I will still come up with a really good reason not to let Rae go that will not leave her prostrate with grief on the floor and upset Suzy any more than I clearly already have. I am frozen. I wish Tom was here to help me decide. He is twenty minutes late.
The doorbell rings, making me jump. I open it nervously to find Suzy. Her cheeks are bright pink.
“Thank God it’s you,” I say under my breath. “I keep thinking it might be Debs.”
“Why?”
“Oh, I’ll tell you in a minute,” I say, nodding at Rae.
Suze gives me a sympathetic frown and rubs the side of my arm. “Hon, you look exhausted. Listen, I’m going to Brent Cross for an hour, you want anything?”
A figure moves behind her on the doorstep. Tom walks in through the front gate. He sees Suzy and hesitates.
Things need to be said, his expression says.
Suzy is talking but I can’t hear her words.
“Suze?”
“What?”
I point behind. She stops talking and turns to see Tom. They regard each other without expression.