reached for my duster and dropped it over my head and face. ‘How about now?’
This was greeted with hoots of laughter. She twitched the duster off my face and rubbed her boneless button nose against mine.
I cleared a space on my bench and gently sat her down. I didn’t really like seeing Cassie in the bindery. There were too many instruments of harm in here, too many long-bladed knives and mallets and jars of glue and size. The sight of her anywhere near the big old hand-operated guillotine with its grinning, curved metal blade made sweat break out down my spine and in the hollows of my hands. I blew a raspberry against the back of her plump, pale-brown neck and told her to sit still.
I never worried about my own two when they were small the way I feared for Cassie. It was only when I got older and Lola and Jack didn’t need and certainly didn’t welcome my physical protection that I started to.
But Evelyn didn’t worry about Cassie either. She let her play on the bindery floor, where she chewed strips of discarded goatskin and banged her head on the iron legs of the guillotine. ‘Let her play, Sadie,’ she would say with a shrug.
Penny came in with a tea towel over her shoulder.
‘Pen …’ I began.
She held up her hands. ‘I know, I know. But she wanted to come and see you on her own. You’re here and I was watching her all the way.’
Penny was incapable of refusing Cassie anything. She loved the child with an absorbed, half-unbelieving passion. I loved her too; the familiar weight of a baby in my arms, the softness and tenacity and scent of her. I missed my own children’s infant selves – Lola was already overtaking me in the adult pecking order and Jack was angular and rejecting – and Cassie filled some of the space they had left empty. So she moved between the three of us women, bathed in the constant light of our adoration.
‘I’m just finishing,’ I capitulated. ‘Do you want to stay here with me, Cass, and then I’ll carry you up to bed?’
‘No bed.’
‘Yes bed.’
‘No.’
‘Yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyessss.’
‘We’ll see,’ she suddenly bargained and I could hear her mother’s sweet cajoling voice. Evelyn seemed other-worldly, but she always got exactly what she wanted.
After I had checked that Curzon was properly positioned and all the machines and lights were switched off, I hoisted Cassie into my arms again, locked up and followed Penny up the path to the back door of the house.
The ground-floor rooms interconnected and together they functioned as kitchen, living area and bindery office. There were books everywhere, and newspapers, heaped up on battered but good-looking furniture. Penny’s rooms had always looked the same, in whichever of her houses, but since Evelyn’s arrival there had been some changes. She had feng shui’d the place as soon as she moved in, shifting the position of the table, lining up chairs and introducing frondy plants and scented candles. It was funny to see her Hello! magazines alongside Penny’s London Review of Books.
Penny was sitting at the computer making up invoices. This was usually my job.
‘I’ll do those tomorrow.’
I put Cassie down and she immediately ran away and hid.
‘Sade, will you tell me why you’re rejecting all offers of help and sympathy?’
I played for time. ‘Am I?’
I felt fraudulent, that was why. I had hardly cried yet for Ted and I couldn’t map even the outlines of what his loss meant to me. What could I look for from my friends, when I couldn’t locate my own grief? All I felt was numb, and exhausted to realise that my relationship with my father wasn’t going to end with the mere fact of his death. It was going to go on and on, for ever, the old disabling argument between love and bitterness.
Penny sighed. ‘Never mind,’ she said gently.
‘Shall I put her into bed?’ I asked.
‘Yeah. Tell her I’ll come up in a minute.’
I found Cassie behind the sofa, her usual hiding place. She let me carry her upstairs to her bedroom, on the second floor next to Penny’s and Evelyn’s. It was at the back of the house, and looked out over the bindery and the gaunt ribs of the gasometers. I drew the curtains, dark-blue ones with gold stars, and turned on the man-in-the-moon nightlight.
‘Time to go to sleep now.’
‘Lie down too.’
I slid under the duvet with her. She put her thumb in her mouth and began winding one of her curls round her forefinger. Lying there with my arms round her and her breath on my face, I felt some of the sadness melt away.
Downstairs again Penny was standing looking out of the window at the little backyard. Evelyn had put some tubs out there and there had been a spring display of daffodils.
‘She wants you to say goodnight. She’s nearly asleep.’
‘Do you want to stay and have a glass of wine?’
My own children would be waiting for me at home.
‘Thanks. Not tonight.’
‘See you tomorrow, then.’
I touched Penny’s shoulder. She was much shorter than me. She had always been squarely built and now, in her contentment, she was putting on weight.
I walked home along the canal towpath. The gates that gave access to it were locked at dusk, but the railings were easy to climb. Muggers and junkies hung out down there, especially in the thick darkness under the bridges, but tonight I wanted the silence and solitude of the path instead of threading the longer way through the busy streets. Lights were reflected as broken tenements of yellow and silver in the flat water, and dripping water echoed my footsteps. The city traffic sounded muffled; the rustle of rats clawing the litter in the rough grass on the land side was much louder. I walked briskly and saw no one.
Lola was on the phone. She mouthed ‘hello’ at me as I came in. When she hung up she said, ‘Mum, that was Ollie. I said I’d go and meet him and Sam for a drink, is that okay with you?’
She had stayed in with Jack, waiting for me to come back. Having her at home in university holidays had great benefits for me, although I tried not to take advantage of this too often. And I was glad that she felt like going out with her friends tonight. She had cried enough for Ted. I smiled at her. ‘Of course it is. Where is he?’
‘He said he was going to bed.’
‘Did he talk to you?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think he didn’t talk to you.’
‘Precisely.’
Lola and I have always discussed almost everything. Once she had forgiven me for leaving her father and got over the extremes of adolescent rebelliousness
