pwe-school. NEVER going back. I’m never going back and you can’t make me!’
And seeing how her expression goes from remorseful to thunderous with such sudden ferocity makes me almost want to laugh. She’s folded her arms now and jutted out her bottom lip and is glaring at me defiantly, heels dug in.
Did she get that stubborn streak from me? Is that the only characteristic of mine she did inherit? I think, guilt suddenly magnified tenfold.
‘Now Lily, you know I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do, love …’
‘Miss Pettyfour is mean and I hate her too but the one I really HATE more than vegetables, more even than bwoccolli is …’
‘… Let me guess … A little boy in preschool called Tim O’Connor. Would that be right, love?’ I say softly.
An angry, furious nod, then suddenly she starts to wriggle awkwardly beside me, like she knows what’s coming next and is physically trying to get out of it. Such, it would seem, is the cognitive reasoning process of a small child; run away from the confrontation and it’ll just go away all by itself.
‘You know Lily,’ I tell her, gently pulling her back then folding my arms around her so she can’t toddle off. ‘I’ve just been to see Miss Pettifer and she told me all about what happened.’
The blue saucer eyes look worriedly back up at me, like a little puppy that’s just weed on the carpet, and knows right well it’s in trouble and there’s no backing out of it.
‘So honey, would you like to tell me your side of it? Don’t worry, Mama’s not angry,’ I tack on, pulling a stray, scraggy red hair back off her freckly face and biding my time, waiting for her answer.
‘Tim said I had no daddy,’ she eventually tells me sheepishly. ‘He said every other kid had a dad ’cept me. He said all I had was a mummy and a minder who collected me. So I smacked him and he cried and cried and then Miss Pettyfour made me go on the naughty step till bweak time …’
‘Lily,’ I say gently, ‘you know it’s very wrong to smack anyone, especially other children?’
A small, guilty nod.
‘I’m sowwy Mama.’
‘I know you are bunny.’
‘Won’t do it again.’
‘There’s a good girl.’
Then the little arms fold defiantly and the chin thrusts out.
‘But I’m still never going back to smelly pwre-school. EVER. ’Kay?’
‘That’s absolutely fine. No one, and especially not me, is going to make you do anything you don’t want to.’
She thinks for a second, then seems happy enough with this. So now that she’s not in trouble any more, she flashes me a gap-toothed smile and snuggles tight into me, warm and heavy and woozy with sleep, smelling of milk and plasticine.
I let her cuddle tightly into me as my thoughts race. Because how best to bring up that other, far more delicate subject? Her earlier words, the ones Miss Pettifer quoted back to me, are swirling round my brain now.
I do have a dad and one day he’ll come for me.
How in the name of arse am I supposed to explain this to a small child?
‘Lily?’ I begin slowly, gently.
‘Mmmmm?’ she says, sounding groggy now after all the drama in her little day, her sleepy, heavy head buried deep under my arm.
‘You know all families are different, don’t you? Some families have a mum and dad, whereas some just have a dad and then there are families like us, where the mummy is the one in charge.’
And just like that, she’s bright-eyed, alert and awake again.
‘But I DO have a dad. I DO. All kids do. Tim says you can’t be born unless you have a mummy an’ a daddy.’
Shit. Deep breath, try again. Try better.
‘Well, that’s true, but only up to a point.’
‘What’s uppa point mean?’
‘It means that some families have a dad who lives with them, and that’s fine. But plenty of families, like us, don’t live with their dad and that’s fine too.’
‘But where is my dad? Where’d he go? Did someone bold steal him?’ She’s looking intently at me now, little freckly face now frowning with worry.
‘He mus’ be somewhere Mama!’
‘Of course he’s somewhere love, but the point is, we don’t know where and we don’t need to know.’
‘Is he hiding? Like in a game? Is he playing hide and seek with us, Mama?’
Bugger. I’m making a right pig’s ear of this.
‘No pet, you see he doesn’t exactly know that we’re here. But then, that’s not really important, because we don’t need him, do we? We’re fine without him, aren’t we?’
‘But where did he go Mama?’ she pleads, looking dangerously close to tears now. ‘Why doesn’t he come to see me? It is ’cos I was naughty?’
My almost-three-year old looks at me with puzzled, monkey eyes, desperately wanting answers that her mother can’t give. Please, please, please, I find myself absently praying to a God I don’t believe in, send me the right words to explain this inexplicable situation to the tiny, precious bundle that’s cradled in my arms, looking up at me with absolute trust in my judgement. Please, just once, please Allah, Buddha, Santa, anyone up there who’s listening, steer me through this icky conversation in a way she can grasp.
Another deep breath.
‘OK Lily, let me put it to you this way. Before you were born, I wanted you so, so badly, that I had to go to a very special hospital to get you. And they planted you in my tummy and nine months later, out you came. Tiny and perfect and so good you rarely cried, ever.’
‘So …’ she says, frowning, concentrating hard and scrunching up her tiny, freckly nose ‘did you pick my daddy out when you were in the ’pecial hospital? Did you meet him there?’
Not for the first time, I’m totally taken aback at just how bright the child is; at the fact that she can grasp something so vague and inexplicable. With great pride, I cuddle her closer and she slips her thumb in her mouth, plump little arms locked tight round my waist.
‘No darling, I never met your dad either. Sometimes mummies don’t need to, you see. And that’s OK you know. mums and dads don’t always need to know each other or even be friends, just so mummies can get babies.’
A long silence as she tried to digest this.
And then it comes.
‘But … but I wanna see him Mama. I wan’ him
