can hear my feet, Grace. I can hear them.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I’ve got noisy noisy feet. I could be a dancer. Listen, Grace. I’m a dancer, aren’t I, Grace?’
‘Yes, you’re a dancer,’ I said.
She did a neat pirouette, pleased, self-aware in her elaborate dress, then ran on again, white as a wisp of smoke or mist against the grey of the pavement, at once so pale and so vivid, as if she were the only living thing in the whole still darkening street.
A few doors up from Karen’s house, someone came out with a pumpkin and put it on their windowsill and lit the candle inside. We stopped to admire the pumpkin. The face was carved with panache: it had a toothy, rakish grin.
‘He’s smiling, Grace, isn’t he? He’s smiling at us.’
‘Yes, he’s smiling,’ I said.
She was happy for a moment, trusting, feeling the world to be benign. I wrapped my hand around hers. Her skin was cold, but she nestled her hand quite firmly into mine. I love it when she’s happy like that.
The magician is building to his grand finale. He wants a volunteer. All the children have raised their hands, urgent and eager, frantic to be chosen. Sylvie too has put up her hand, though not so keenly as the other children. There’s often a little reserve about her, something held back. I will him: Please don’t choose her, please please don’t choose Sylvie. But he does, of course, drawn perhaps by her reticence. He beckons to her, and we watch, all the mothers, as she walks out to the front and he seats her on his chair.
Karen glances towards me, with a quick reassuring smile.
‘She’s doing great,’ she murmurs.
And she’s right: for the moment Sylvie seems quite poised and controlled, clasping her hands together neatly in her lap. Her lips are pursed with concentration; the expression is precisely Dominic’s.
The magician kneels beside her.
‘No worries, OK, sweetheart? I promise not to turn you into a tadpole or anything.’
She gives him a slight smile that says this is naive of him, that of course she knows how the world works.
He scribbles in the air with his wand, mutters something in Latin. A flourish of his cloak entirely covers her for an instant. When he flings back the silk with a slight air of triumph, a real live rabbit is sitting in Sylvie’s lap. The children applaud. Sylvie hugs the rabbit.
Fiona turns towards me.
‘That’s your little girl, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘That’s Sylvie?’
‘Yes,’ I tell her.
Sylvie is stroking the rabbit with cautious, gentle gestures. She seems oblivious of the other children. She looks entirely happy.
‘I’m not surprised he chose her,’ she says. ‘That white-blonde hair, and those eyes.’
‘She was sitting right at the front, I guess,’ I say.
‘She’s just so cute,’ says Fiona. ‘And I’m always fascinated by the way she calls you by your Christian name… Of course, in our family we’re rather more traditional.’
‘That didn’t come from me,’ I say.
But she isn’t really listening.
‘Was it something you felt very strongly about?’ she says.
Her crystal earrings send out spiky shards of light.
‘Not at all,’ I say. ‘It was Sylvie’s choice. It came from her. She never called me Mum.’
The woman’s eyes are on me, taking in my short denim skirt, my jacket patterned with sequins, my strappy scarlet shoes. She’s older than me, and so much more solid and certain. Her expression is opaque.
‘Just never said Mama? What, even when she was just beginning to talk?’
‘No. Never.’ I feel accused. I swallow down the urge to apologise.
‘Goodness.’ She has a troubled look. ‘So what about her dad? What does she call him?’
‘She doesn’t see him,’ I tell her. ‘I’m a single parent. It’s just us—just me and Sylvie.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she says. As though embarrassed that she has called out this admission from me. ‘That must be quite a struggle for you,’ she goes on. ‘I honestly just don’t know how I’d cope without Dan.’
There’s a surge of noise from the living room, where the children are tidying, under the watchful eye of the magician. The rabbit is in a basket now.
‘He’s doing the games, as well,’ says Karen. ‘Isn’t that fabulous?’
Leo comes to refill his glass. He’s wearing a polo shirt that doesn’t really suit him: he’s one of those substantial men who look best in formal clothes. He greets us with the exaggerated bonhomie that men always seem to adopt on joining a group of mothers. He comes from Scotland and has a mellifluous Gaelic accent. He puts his arm round Karen, caressing her shoulder through the chiffony fabric of her frock. I can tell he likes the witch outfit. Much later, perhaps, when the party is over and the clearing up is all done, he will ask her to put it on again.
Michaela leans across the table towards me. She wants to talk about nurseries. Am I happy with Little Acorns, where Sylvie goes? She’s heard that Mrs Pace-Barden, who runs it, is really very dynamic. She has her doubts about nannies. Well, you never get to see what they’re actually up to, do you? She heard about this nanny who fed the kids on a different flavour of Angel Delight every lunchtime, because the mother said to be sure to give them plenty of fruit. I turn with relief from Fiona. In the living room, the magician is setting up a game of apple-bobbing. The girls make an orderly queue, though Josh and some of the other boys are racing around at the edges of the room.
The wine eases into my veins. I have my back to the living room now; I let my vigilance relax, enjoying this conversation. I love to talk about Sylvie’s nursery—it’s my one big luxury; I was thrilled when they gave her a place. The candles glimmer and tremble on the windowsill, and behind them, in Karen’s garden, darkness clots and thickens in the hollows under the hedge.
Out of nowhere, some instinct makes me turn. It’s Sylvie’s go at apple-bobbing; she’s kneeling by the bowl. I don’t see exactly what happens. A commotion, a scrabble of boys near the bowl; and then water everywhere—all over the stripped pine floor, and on Sylvie’s hair and her clothes. I see her face, but I can’t get there in time, can’t undo it. I’m too late, I’m always too late. She’s kneeling there, taut as a wire, the other children already backing away from her: tense, white, the held breath, then the scream.
The children part to let me through. I kneel beside her and hold her. Her body is rigid, she’s fighting against me; her screams are thin, high, edged with fear. When I put my arms around her, she pushes against my chest with her fists, as though I am her enemy. Everyone’s eyes are on us: the other children, fascinated, a little superior, the women, at once sympathetic and disapproving.
