motion and I remember to take it in; to commit this image of her sloping towards me to memory, her curls all awry and bouncing as she moves. I bend down to her as she reaches me and pull her up to my chest. She puts her arms around my neck, her fingers lacing through my own twisting locks. And I’m cast back to when she was a toddler and she had barely any hair yet. What she did have was downy-fine and corkscrew. She would find mine and pull it, gently unravelling the coil, fascinated by the spiral twists. I was captivated. She was not my child, but through the twists and turns of shared DNA, we had the same twisting, turning hair.
And now, here I am, my fingers laced through her mane, massaging her head in a way I know she loves.
‘I had a bad dream,’ she says, gripping me tighter.
Me too. I dreamt that your mummy had left us. Every night I dream your mummy has left us. Then I wake up and smell her pillow and tell myself it was just a dream.
‘Don’t worry, love.’ I kiss her hair. ‘It was just a dream.’
‘Who were you talking to?’
‘Nobody, I was just talking to myself.’
‘Daddy says people talk to themselves when they get old.’ She pulls away and peers directly into my eyes. ‘Are you old today, Nanny?’ Her mouth smiles, yet it’s her eyes, lined by long curving lashes, that seem to laugh. The wonder of that almost makes me gasp.
I tickle her under her arms. ‘Cheeky,’ I say. ‘Not that old. C’mon, let’s get you showered before breakfast.’ She squeals and runs up the stairs ahead of me, shouting that she has a card for me. At just five years old, she has no memory that today is her mother’s birthday too and, all in all, perhaps that’s a good thing.
At the school gate, I’m joined by Leah, who sidles up beside me. After I’ve held onto the child for an irrational length of time, I let go, and together we wave Rose into school.
Before she gets to the door, she runs back to me and whispers, ‘Love you, Nanny.’
‘To the stars and beyond.’ I blow her a kiss and she catches it in one hand, then tosses it back to me and I tap my heart. It’s a thing we have; something we started when I first dropped her at ‘big’ school. It’s something Anna and I used to do when she was little too.
She darts off, her friend Amy linking her arm at the door to their classroom.
It feels strange for me not to join her, but having managed to wrangle a rare day off by swapping shifts with Trish, the other teaching assistant for Year Six, I’m not hanging around in case someone changes their mind. My break for the half-term starts now. From the yard, Finn, Theo’s son, gives me a small wave. He’s tall for his age, his head hovering above his classmates, and I can tell he’s wondering why I’m still on this side of the gate.
‘You checking up on me?’ I ask my sister, as my fingers curl a return wave to Finn and I walk back to my car.
‘Yep.’ Leah isn’t known for subtlety.
‘I’m all right.’
She shakes her head. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, none of us are all right. Here …’ She hands me a small package and a card and I put them straight into my bag. ‘I know you won’t celebrate your birthday … her birthday,’ she says. ‘But nor should we forget the day.’ She reaches for me and gives me a squeeze. It’s not a hug. Leah doesn’t do proper hugs. I take advantage anyway and close my eyes briefly.
‘Sean is picking her up straight from school, right?’ she says.
I nod. He came around last night to collect her bag after she’d gone to bed.
‘It’s only for ten days. She’ll have a wonderful time with her daddy and it’s good that his parents are on hand to help.’
I pull away. The thought of Sean, Rose’s father, playing Daddy with her on holiday in some all-inclusive resort in the Canaries doesn’t fill me with the joy everyone seems to expect. He doesn’t even really know her; doesn’t know that she likes mini-yogurts after dinner; doesn’t know that she wakes up three nights a week calling for her mummy; doesn’t know that she likes to choose her own clothes every day; doesn’t know that she needs cuddles at night to help her sleep. He knows none of this.
‘He doesn’t even know her.’ I say it aloud.
‘He’s trying. Even before Anna died—’
My head snaps around. ‘Don’t.’
‘I’m just trying to point out that you and Anna together were a force of nature. Let him be her father, Jess. Rose is going to need him too.’
I wrap my arms around myself.
‘Let’s go for breakfast,’ she says.
‘No.’ I will her to stop talking, wonder why she’s not already on her way to work.
‘I’m sorry.’ She knows what she’s done. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘You shouldn’t.’ No one. No one is allowed to say that Anna is dead. No one. I don’t care if it’s denial. I don’t care if the chances of her being alive are nonexistent. I have no body to bury.
Leah reaches out, wraps her arms around my neck. ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeats. ‘Today of all days, that was insensitive.’
‘I miss her so much,’ I whisper softly, then bite my bottom lip so hard that I taste metal.
‘I know,’ she says, her squeeze lingering, her grip unusually tight on my sleeve. ‘I’m here. I love you.’
I don’t tell her that it’s not enough.
‘Breakfast?’ she repeats.
‘What in Christ’s name am I going to do?’ I ask on the way back to our cars.
Leah shrugs. ‘Just keep breathing in and out.’
‘That’s it? That’s your advice?’
‘You don’t—’
‘I don’t what? Tell me, Leah. What is it I’m not doing? You have no bloody clue.’
I walk away yelling behind me, ‘I don’t want breakfast. If you hurry you can catch the nine ten to Waterloo.’
‘Jess, stop. Wait.’
I’m already in the car, strapping myself in. She doesn’t get it. She has never had children, and it has left her remote, detached from real life. As the engine revs into life and her form disappears in the rear-view mirror, I justify leaving her there in my head, even though I know I shouldn’t have. I curse myself. She’s doing her best. We all are, but Leah doesn’t know what unconditional love is. Leah doesn’t know how the pain of a missing child takes over and has a heartbeat of its own.
I drive the short journey from the school to home, and when I get there try to busy myself with housework. On the way upstairs, I pass by a pile of Anna’s shoes in the hall. They’re stacked on top of one another. There are heels and flats all lumped in together
