her face is getting pinker and the bottom lip is dangerously close to wobbling, a red-light warning sign that tired, cranky, exhausted tears aren’t too far off.
‘Mama PLEASE! Is it ’cos I was bold in playgwoup?’
‘No, of course not …’
‘I only want to meet him, that’s all! And I’ll be a good lickle girl. I pwomise!’
I sigh deeply. One the one hand, you should never make a promise to a child you can’t keep and on the other hand, there’s every chance she’ll have clean forgotten all about this by morning. But most of all, I never again want to see this level of disappointment in my daughter’s big saucery blue eyes. Again.
‘All right pet. I’ll try my very best.’
I’m rewarded with a toothy smile, then, as only small kids can, she puts the whole thing clean out of her little head, sticks her thumb in her mouth and cuddles back in tight to me, her worries banished as though they never were and all set for her afternoon snooze. I pull a cashmere throw off the back of the sofa and wrap it round her, tucking it tight in around her pudgy little legs and gently settling her down for her nap.
Then, just as I’m about to ease myself off the sofa without waking her, I hear the sound of footsteps click-clacking down the back stairs.
Ooooh, this’ll be good.
I stand up, arms folded, calmly waiting. The element of surprise, I feel, being the essential element here.
And sure enough, in trots Elka, wearing my silk dressing gown and with a sea-green facepack on her that looks suspiciously like the Crème de la Mer one sitting on my dressing table.
She nearly leaps six feet in the air when she sees me, standing nice and composed by my slumbering daughter, waiting like a praying mantis for her.
‘Eloise!’ she says, in her clipped, over-articulated English. ‘What are you doing back home? I did not expect you for a long time …’
‘You handed in your notice this morning, remember?’ I say coolly, voice even, fixing her with a steady, measured stare. One I save up for special occasions in the office, if I really need to terrify the bejaysus out of someone. Rarely fails me. Been known to reduce grown men to tears on occasion.
‘Eh … Of course I do …’
‘Well, I’ve got wonderful news for you, Elka. You can leave even earlier than you thought. Like – how about right now? And what’s more, you can take your manky laundry strewn across my hallway and your abandoned, half eaten pizza with you. Oh and by the way? I’d strongly suggest you don’t come looking to me for a reference. Trust me, it would be a really, really bad idea.’
In the end, of all people, my sister Helen ends up being my saviour, my messiah in this hour of need. In total and utter desperation, I put out not so much a distress flare as an SOS to her, and to my astonishment and eternal gratitude, she tells me not to panic, that she’ll be on the next train up to Dublin from Cork.
Miracle. It’s a bloody miracle. I feel huge gratitude, mixed with a pang of sharp guilt when I think of how dismissively I’ve treated her over the years. And now, here she is, in my hour of need, dropping everything and running just to give me a dig out.
Hours later, while I’m still at home dealing with the massive backlog of phone calls and replying to all my emails from the office, while simultaneously seeing off Madam Elka, my nagging conscience won’t let up on me.
Would I have done the same for Helen?
The answer’s obvious. Not a bleeding snowball’s chance.
Bad mother, bad sister … Soul searching is something I rarely have the luxury of spare time to indulge in, but somehow there’s just no avoiding it today.
And then there’s little Lily, snoozing peacefully on the sofa, clinging to her battered and almost threadbare comfort blankie, worn out after all the high-octane drama of her day.
She’ll forget all about that other matter, I think smugly to myself, feeling a cool, tigerish joy flood over me at the happy sight of Elka finally getting her arse out of here in a taxi. She’ll wake up shortly, all refreshed and happy after her nap and the whole notion of her father will all have been banished right out of her little head, as though it never was.
I continue to think that as I tidy the spare room to get it ready for Helen. I still think it when Lily wakes up, beams to see me still in the house, then immediately waddles upstairs to her bedroom.
She’s ages in there, and in between firing off an email to Seth Coleman and putting a clean duvet cover on the spare bed, I suddenly realise the child is gone suspiciously quiet, so I stick my head round her bedroom door to do a lightning quick check on her.
‘Look at me Mama!’ she squeals excitedly as soon as she sees me, twirling round in the outfit she’s just changed into. A pink leotard and a matching fluffy tutu with bits of diamanté all over it, along with sparkly little pumps in … what else? Bubblegum pink.
‘You look lovely sweetheart,’ I tell her distractedly. ‘Now come on downstairs, I want you to have some dinner.’
‘NO! I HATE dinner! And I’m playing dwess up!’
‘Later, you can play dress up later. Is this so you can wear something pretty for Auntie Helen?’
‘NO Mama!’ she yells at me, stomping her foot in a gesture that a silent movie actress would shudder to use. ‘This is what I’m going to wear when we go to meet my daddy. Like you pwomised. Wemember? You pwomised!’
With that, the mobile tucked into my suit pocket rang out loud and clear. And this time, I never even bothered checking to see who it was.
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