Helen can gimme my bath and put me to bed.’
Don’t get me wrong, of course I could kiss Helen’s feet, I’m that grateful to her, but that doesn’t mean it’s not killing me inside.
No words to describe it, when you suddenly feel unwanted at home. When you’re superfluous under your own roof.
‘No, please don’t worry about rushing home, Eloise,’ Helen’s said to me time and again this week, ‘you don’t have to cancel your meeting and leave the office yet. Lily and I are having such a ball here! We’ve made cupcakes and I’m just teaching her how to ice them now. Stay in work, I know how important that is to you. And don’t worry, we’re all fine here, we’re having great fun!’
So far, the pair of them have been to the park together, the movies, the Build-A-Bear factory at the Dundrum Town Centre; they’ve even had tea parties for all of Lily’s dolls in the back garden and picnics at Sandymount Strand. Everything that I want to do with Lily but can’t.
So if I’m being brutally honest … I’m in equal parts grateful to her, but not a little jealous of her too. Burning childhood memories resurface; the way everyone, absolutely everyone just prefers her to me, she’s a bright light that people can’t help be drawn towards, moth-like. My own daughter, it would seem, included.
‘You know Eloise, I’ve been thinking,’ Helen beams over the top of the sofa at me, turning down the volume of the TV.
‘Umm?’ I mutter distractedly, my head buried deep in the pile of post that I’m still wading through.
‘Lily still hasn’t stopped talking about her dad you know, it’s become almost like an obsession with her.’
This, by the way, is delivered with a look that might as well say, ‘if you were around more often, you’d know.’
‘Oh come on, not this again …’
‘Yes, this again. You have to listen to me, Eloise. It’s the first thing she talks about when she wakes up every morning, last thing she asks me about before I put her to bed. When am I meeting him, where is he, have you found him yet, where are you looking … the poor little thing’s not letting it drop. And to be honest, I don’t think this is something that’s just going to go quietly away all by itself, like you’d thought.’
Okay, so now she has my attention.
‘So if you think about it,’ Helen goes on, pausing to dump the now empty tub of ice cream on the coffee table in front of her, then licking every single last dribble of chocolate sauce off the back of the spoon. ‘Would it be such a terrible thing if we did a bit of detective work and tracked him down? I mean, I’d be more than happy to make all the phone calls and do all the work for you. I know how busy you are, but trust me, you wouldn’t have to lift a finger. I’d report back to you at every stage and I wouldn’t do a thing without your say-so …’
I stand stone still and throw her a look so icy that it could freeze mercury. At least, that’s what I hope it conveys. Lately Seth Coleman has been saying behind my back that my glacial stares, once so terrifying, are now starting to make me look a bit constipated.
‘I mean … it absolutely goes without saying …’ she hastily backpedals, realising how unimpressed I am by all of this shitetalk. ‘Not that we’d want him to be a part of her life in any way at all. This is just so Lily can put a face to his name. That’s all. To help her get closure on this and you know … put it all to bed. She’s become unhealthily obsessed and I really think this is the best way to deal with the whole issue.’
Helen trails off, waiting on my response. Then for good measure tacks on,
‘So, emm … What do you think then?’
‘Helen,’ I begin, arms folded, nearly swaying with tiredness by now, ‘Are you completely insane? Why are you even raising this subject? Lily isn’t quite three years old yet, she’ll have forgotten all about it in a few days.’
‘But she hasn’t forgotten, that’s the whole point that you’re missing!’ Helen insists, forcefully coming right back at me. ‘You work twenty-four-seven; you haven’t heard her asking about him morning, noon and night …’
‘Oh here we go,’ I sigh deeply, sinking exhaustedly down into the armchair opposite her and kicking off unforgiving high shoes which have been pinching me since I first put them on … at five this morning. ‘Throw in the absentee mother jibe, why don’t you. Go for it, play the low card.’
Then I remember my manners, remember just how much I owe her for being here when I’d no one else to turn to.
‘Sorry, I really didn’t mean to sound so grouchy,’ I compose myself and apologise.
‘That’s okay. I think that after almost twenty-eight years, I’m well used to you by now,’ she smiles benignly, then looks back at me expectantly, clearly waiting on a fuller discussion to follow.
‘Thing is, I’m very, very tired, Helen. I’ve had the longest day in the longest week you can possibly imagine. Tracing Lily’s father is completely out of the question and to be perfectly honest, I’m not a hundred percent certain that I appreciate you even bringing it up.’
‘But I’m only doing it for Lily,’ she says sweetly, refusing to get riled.
Which of course only riles me up even more.
‘Because you know, this isn’t a bullet that you can dodge that easily,’ she chatters on easily, ignoring the waves of boxed fury emanating from my corner of the room. ‘Sooner or later, the day will come when she’s going to track him down for herself, you know.’
‘Yeah, fine, maybe when she’s eighteen, so why don’t I just cross that bridge when I come to it? I’ve told you Helen, it’s completely out of the question. I won’t have some total stranger barging his way into my baby’s life and maybe even letting her down and wanting nothing to do with her. Which he’d be perfectly entitled to do, you know. I’m only trying to protect her, that’s all’.
‘But you’re completely missing the point,’ says Helen calmly, reasonably. ‘She’s not a baby any more, she’s a little girl. And all kids want is to be normal, to be the same as the others. If you won’t do this for your own reasons, then at least do it for Lily. Let her just put a face to the word daddy, then let it go. She’s already well able to understand that you’re not with her dad, but just let her get this out of her little system. Then next time other kids in a playground ask her about her father, she can be one of them and answer truthfully about where he is and what he’s like, instead of having to tell the world that she doesn’t even know where he is or what his name is. It’s this whole mystery surrounding him that’s making her so obsessed.’
‘You’re completely exaggerating, she is not obsessed …’
‘Oh no? Do you realise that every picture she’s drawn with her new colouring set is of her dad? Then today we got the bus to the park and she waddled up and asked the driver was he her dad. Same thing to a guy serving on the till in Tesco. Then later on she was watching a DVD of Shrek while I was getting dinner and now she’s got it into her head that her father is king of some faraway kingdom.’
‘Well … This is just a phase and she’ll soon grow out of it.’
‘How do you know?’
