you had turnips to eat exactly?’
‘I do know, Grace.’ She pokes a chickpea with her fork and raises it to her face and smells it with a noisy, melodramatic sniff. ‘Turnips,’ she says.
I hear Karen’s voice in my head, brisk and assured and sensible, knowing just what she’d say. You can’t let her have her own way, just because she doesn’t like vegetables. Children need boundaries, Grace. You can’t always let her get away with everything. She’ll run rings around you…
‘Sylvie, look, I want you to eat it. Just some of it, just a bit. If you don’t at least try it, there won’t be any pudding.’
She puts her fork on the table, precisely aligned with her plate, with a sharp little sound like the breaking of a bone.
‘I don’t want it.’ Her face is hard, set.
‘Sylvie, just eat it, OK?’
My chest tightens. I feel something edging nearer, feel its cool breath on my skin. But I try to tell myself this is just an everyday argument—a child refusing to eat, a parent getting annoyed. I tell myself this is nothing.
Her eyes are on me. Her gaze is narrow, constricted, the pinpricks of her pupils like the tiniest black beads. She looks at me as though she doesn’t recognise me, or doesn’t like what she sees.
‘I don’t like it here,’ she tells me. Her voice is small and clear. ‘I don’t like it here with you, Grace.’
The look in her eyes chills me.
I don’t say anything. I don’t know what to say.
‘I don’t like it here,’ she says again.
I stare at her, sitting there at our table in her daisy dungarees, with her wispy pale hair, her heart-shaped face, this coldness in her gaze.
Rage grabs me by the throat. I want to shake her, to slap her, anything to make that cold look go away.
She pushes the plate to the other side of the table, moving it carefully, not in a rush of anger, but very controlled and deliberate. She turns her back to me.
‘Stop it. Just stop it.’ I’m shouting at her. I can’t help myself. My voice is too loud for the room, loud enough to shatter something. ‘Jesus, Sylvie. I’ve had enough. Just stop it, for God’s sake, will you?’
She sits quite still at the table, with her back to me. She presses her hands to her ears.
If I stay, I’ll hit her.
I go to the bathroom, slam and lock the door. I sit on the edge of the bath, rigid, my fists clenched, my nails driving into my palms. I can feel the pounding of every pulse in my body. I sit there for a long time, making myself take great big breaths, sucking the air deep into my lungs like somebody pulled from the sea. Gradually, my heart slows and the anger seeps away.
I’m aware of the pain again. It’s worse now, drilling into my jaw. I find two Nurofen at the back of the bathroom cabinet. But my throat is tight, they’re hard to swallow, I’ve sucked off all the coating before I get them down. They leave a bitter taste.
In the living room, Sylvie is on the floor again, busy with her Noah’s Ark, humming softly to herself, as though none of this had happened.
‘I’ll make you some toast,’ I tell her.
She doesn’t look up.
‘With Marmite?’ she says.
‘Of course. If that’s what you’d like.’
I make her the toast, put milk in her cup. I eat a few mouthfuls of crumble, though my appetite has gone. I clear the table.
‘Shall we watch television?’
She nods. We sit together on the sofa, and she curls in close to me, taking neat bites of her toast. If she drops a crumb she licks her finger and dabs at the crumb and sucks it from her fingertip. It’s a wildlife programme, about otters in a stream in the Scottish Highlands. She loves the otters, laughs at their quick, lithe bodies, the way they slide across the rocks as sleek and easy as water. As we sit there close together, it feels happy again between us, the bad scene just a memory, faint as the slight bitter taste in my mouth.
‘Sweetheart, I’m sorry I shouted at you,’ I tell her. ‘I don’t feel well. My tooth hurts.’
She’s nestled in the crook of my arm. She looks up at me.
‘Which one, Grace?’ she says.
‘It’s here.’ I point to the sore place. ‘I’ll have to go to the dentist—he’ll probably take it out.’
She reaches across and rests her hand against the side of my face.
‘There,’ she says.
The tenderness in the gesture melts me. I hug her to me, bury my face in her hair, in her smell of lemons and warm wool. She lets herself be held.
CHAPTER 9
The receptionist greets me: she’s married to one of the dentists who work here. She has a faded prettiness and bleached, dishevelled hair.
‘Toothache?’ she says.
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Oh, dear.’ She shakes her head, a little disapproving. ‘You shouldn’t have left it so long.’
The waiting room has a fish tank and comfortable chairs. I sit and watch the fish. They have a transparent, unnatural look, like embryos, and their slow, threaded dance is hypnotic. There’s the faintest antiseptic smell, like that green astringent liquid the dentist gives you to rinse with. It’s very warm, and quiet with double glazing at the windows, so all you hear is the softest hum of traffic from the street. It’s pleasant sitting doing nothing, the warmth easing into my limbs.
There are papers and magazines on the table beside me. I look casually through the magazines, hoping for something glamorous, for opulent taffeta frocks and fetishy shoes; but they’re all just property journals.
A woman comes in and speaks to the receptionist. She’s dressed discreetly, in business black with sensible court shoes, but I can’t help staring at her: her face is a mess, the skin around one eye all bruised and broken. Someone must have attacked her; perhaps she lives with a violent man. She sits beside the fish tank, very straight and still, as though moving too much could hurt her.
The dentist’s wife puts down her pen.
‘So how’s your little one doing, Ms Reynolds?’
She knows Sylvie well: I may put off my own visits, but I never miss Sylvie’s check-ups.
‘Sylvie’s fine,’ I tell her.
‘She’s how old now?’
‘She’s three.’
‘They’re so lovely at three.’ Briefly, her face softens.
