do,’ she says, ‘Daisy’s sure to react.’
‘Really,’ I say again, ‘we get on fine. It’s nothing like that. I just know Daisy’s ill.’ I take a deep breath, try to keep my voice level. ‘I want her to be referred to the hospital.’
There’s a pause, as though this is entirely unexpected. She looks unsure; I see how young she is.
‘Please,’ I say. ‘She isn’t eating, she always feels so tired. I think we should see a paediatrician.’
‘All right, then,’ she says, but with reluctance, as though she’s been constrained.
She’s writing in her notes now. ‘I’ll refer you to Dr McGuire at the General,’ she says. ‘They’ll write to you with the appointment. I’m afraid there’s quite a waiting list. In the meantime, we’ll get all the blood tests done. You can come in on Thursday and the nurse will take the blood.’
As we go she gives Daisy a lollipop from the jug on her desk.
We walk back to the car, which is parked down the end of the road. There are green fresh smells of spring but the rainbow has faded.
‘She was really nice, wasn’t she, Mum?’ says Daisy.
‘I’m glad you liked her.’
‘I did,’ she says. ‘She was kind.’
She starts to unwrap the lollipop; I have to take Hannibal. We stop for a moment because it’s hard to do; the paper is firmly stuck to the sugary surface. The lollipop is veined with purple and red, the colour intense as nail varnish. I think of additives but don’t say anything.
She rips off the last scrap of cellophane.
‘There,’ she says with satisfaction.
She takes one careful lick. We walk on for a bit, the lollipop held in front of her, like some precious thing.
‘Is it all right if I leave this, Mum?’ she says then.
‘Of course.’
As we pass the bus stop she drops it in a bin.
CHAPTER 8
Daisy can’t sleep; she says she feels too sick. I sit her up, and prop her against the pillows and smooth her hair. ‘We’ll crack this,’ I tell her. ‘We’ll get you better. I promise. Soon it’ll be over.’
I read to her from the fairy-tale book, the story of Rapunzel, who was trapped in a tower by the witch, her mother, and let down her hair to a prince. Sometimes Daisy spits in a tissue.
Sinead comes to the door. She needs me to test her on her homework.
‘It’s false friends. For crying out loud. How can any word of French be your friend?’
‘I’ll come when Daisy’s asleep,’ I tell her.
I read till Daisy’s head is drooping, as you might with a very young child. Her eyelids are shut, but flickery, tense; she could so easily wake. Sinead looks round the door again. I put a warning finger to my lips. She mouths melodramatically, ‘My vocab, my vocab.’ I whisper she’ll have to wait. Eventually Daisy’s breathing slows and she sinks down into the pillows. I slip off my shoes and creep out like a thief. I sit with Sinead and test her on the words. She isn’t very confident, but it’s nearly ten, she’ll never learn them now. I tell her to go to bed.
Richard has his meeting and he won’t be back till late. I pour myself some wine, and try to imagine him there. When I think of it, this world of his that’s so mysterious to me, I always see men in suits all sitting round a shiny mahogany table, and heaps of papers in front of them covered in cryptic figures, and the coffee brought in by Francine, his glamorous PA. I met Francine once at a party at Richard’s office; she was wearing a rather impressive dress, demure in front, right up to her neck, but almost completely backless.
I take my wine into the living room. It’s cold in here tonight: the heating’s been off for most of the day, and the house won’t seem to warm up. I pull the curtains, shutting out the night, but chill air seeps up through the gaps in the floorboards.
I don’t turn on the main light, just the lamps on the little tables on either side of the fireplace. There is darkness in the corners of the room. The masks we brought back from Venice are lit from below, so the lines of the pottery are etched in shadow. I chose them because they charmed me, with their hints of a seductive world of carnival and disguise. But when Daisy was little, and mothers and children were always coming for coffee, I had to take them down; children seem to be often afraid of heads apart from bodies—it’s probably something primal—and there were toddlers who’d burst into tears if they saw them. The black one is a little macabre, sinister in an obvious way—it’s the fairytale crone, Baba Yaga perhaps, the glossy surface recreating the sagging folds of old flesh—but tonight I see it’s the white one that is more frightening: it’s simpler, almost featureless, a face that is an absence.
I sip my wine and go back over the conversation with Dr Carey. I don’t understand why she wouldn’t take Daisy’s illness seriously. I must have done something wrong. Should I have cried? Should I have sounded more desperate? Maybe I was too assertive; or not assertive enough? Perhaps there’s a code I don’t know about, some goodmother way of behaving. I once heard a famous female barrister speaking on the radio. If she was defending a woman accused of murder, she said, she’d urge her to wear a cardigan to court, ideally angora and fluffy, so no one would think her capable of committing a terrible crime. Maybe there’s a dress code for taking your child to the doctor that’s unknown to me: a frock from Monsoon perhaps, with a pattern like a flowerbed, or a tracksuit and pink lipstick.
There’s a clatter from the hall—Richard closing the door behind him, putting his briefcase down. Relief washes through me: I’m always so glad when he’s home. He comes in, and I see he’s tired; he’s somehow less vivid than when he left in the morning, as though the dust of the day has settled on him and blurred him. He’s brought me flowers, blue delphiniums, wrapped in white paper, with a bow of rustling ribbon. He’s good at choosing things—orchids, silver bracelets; his gifts are always exact.
‘Thanks. They’re so lovely.’ They’re an icy pale blue, like a clear winter sky, the flowers frail, like tissue. I hold them to my face; they have the faintest smoky smell.
He kisses my cheek.
‘There’s pollen on you,’ he says. He rubs at my nose with a finger.
‘Was the meeting OK?’
He shrugs. ‘So so,’ he says.
I’m not sure this is true: he looks strained, older.
‘D’you want to eat?’
He shakes his head.
‘I’ll get you a drink,’ I tell him.
‘Thanks. Scotch would be good. Just tonight.’
I smile. ‘It was that bad?’
He shakes his head. ‘It was fine. Really.’
He has a still face; he’s always hard to
