Jennie Ensor - The Girl in His Eyes

‘Yeah, sure. If you like.’ Emma pulled the door open a fraction further and made way for her to pass. Blue painted fingernails. Skin bitten at the edges.

Laura stepped over a plastic dumper truck in the hall and followed Emma into a long room, a living area at one end and a dining table at the other. Toby leaned over the table, his legs dangling off the floor, mopping up the mound of peanut butter on his plate with a slice of toast.

‘Hello, Toby. How are you doing?’

Toby stared at her in silence. His fair hair, slightly too long, tickled long-lashed, intensely blue eyes. He had the angelic features of a boy destined to become a heartbreaker – a boy who was probably used to being admired by grown women. Laura did her best to smile. She was always awkward around small children, never knowing what to say – they seemed such alien creatures. Emma sat down beside Toby and helped herself to a taco chip from a large bag in the middle of the table.

‘I’ll wait over here, shall I?’ Laura gestured to an armchair.

Emma made a wordless mumble in reply.

Laura took off her jacket and sat in an armchair, with the dining table to one side of her. From here, she could see the children without having to face them. She took her phone from her bag and checked her emails. Two replies to her latest job enquiries. She opened the first.

Thanks for your interest, but we’ve been overwhelmed with the response to our ad and are no longer taking applications.

The other was from an agency. She would be welcome to come in to register, but she’d need recent experience and the ability to type 60 words per minute. With a sigh, she put her phone back in her bag.

‘You’re making a mess all over the table!’ Emma hissed at Toby, and their squabbling resumed.

Laura checked her watch, nearly 7.30pm. She felt uncomfortable. This was not what she’d imagined; she’d wanted a short chat with Jane, alone. It seemed wrong to sit here listening to the children’s increasingly loud verbal thrusts, without intervening. She fidgeted in her chair, taking in the room. It was all quite tasteful, middle class. Expensive looking furniture. Framed paintings – all originals, abstracts – everywhere. But there were signs of stagnation. She counted a dozen marks on the walls. A wooden side table bore a deep scratch. What looked like the base of an iron was imprinted on the carpet near the TV.

‘I am not!’ Toby yelled. ‘Stop kicking me!’

‘Shut up, dick-brain.’

She thought about what she’d planned to say to Jane, who would be coming home tired from a long day at work. This probably wasn’t the best time to mention that Dad might pose a serious danger to Jane’s daughter, given he’d taken Emma swimming every weekend for the past six weeks.

A loud bleat made her start. Surely, they didn’t keep sheep in the garden? No, it was Emma’s mobile.

Emma stopped glaring at Toby and studied her phone. ‘It’s Mum.’

Laura got to her feet. ‘Will she be long?’

‘She’s going to be another forty minutes probably. The District Line is stuffed.’

‘Oh.’ Disappointment ballooned in her chest. She considered staying for forty minutes more. No, that wasn’t possible.

Toby sprang up and pointed a remote control at the TV. A smiling, smooth-skinned, lightly-tanned, late-teen girl ran through a sunny room in skimpy shorts. An advert for deodorant.

‘What I wanted to say to your mum, it’s to do with you.’ Her words petered out. Emma was frowning at her. She glanced at the glass panelled door that led into the kitchen. She couldn’t talk about this in front of Toby. ‘Could we go in the kitchen for a moment?’

The kitchen was modern, designer. No one ever tidied here, it looked like. The surfaces were cluttered with papers and toys and books, and the cooker was scabbed and stained.

Emma waited for her to speak, jiggling from one foot to the other.

‘I heard you’re going to the pool with my dad.’

The girl stopped jiggling and looked down at her fingernails. ‘I’m not going there anymore, I’ve got other stuff to do. I’m in the netball team now. Our matches are starting soon.’

‘Did everything go OK, then? With the swimming lessons, I mean. Did you enjoy going to the pool with him?’

‘Yes, I suppose.’ A quick smile. ‘I’m a much better swimmer now.’

‘And he’s not done anything… unusual?’

Emma righted a toy car that lay on its side on the worktop. She seemed uncomfortable, as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words.

‘You shouldn’t let my dad take you swimming again, Emma. He’s not…’ Not right in the head , she nearly said. In the other room, the TV volume increased. Men shouted angrily against a volley of gunfire. ‘He’s not the sort of person you should be with – alone.’

Emma shrugged and studied her nails again. ‘Sure, OK.’

‘There’s something you don’t know about him. I don’t know for sure, but…’ In her head, a succession of words came and went. They all sounded too dramatic, or plain scaremongering. ‘You should be careful,’ she said at last. ‘He could try to take advantage of you. I don’t think you should spend any more time with him.’

Another shrug. ‘Sure. I’m not figuring on that anyway.’ From next door, a rattling blast of bass. A scowl rucked Emma’s features. She yanked open the door. ‘Toby! Shut up in there, will you? What did I tell you?’

Laura followed Emma into the living room. Toby was now sitting on the sofa, knees up, feet on the coffee table, watching cars screech across the TV screen. She reached for her jacket.

‘I’d better go now.’

There was no point in staying any longer. She needed to be away from this house now, alone, in the quiet. How did Jane put up with this commotion? It was a mystery to her how mothers looking after children on their own managed to carry on without walking out or strangling them.

At the front door, Laura stopped. Should she leave a note for Jane?

An image thrust its way into her mind. Her mother, sobbing hysterically in the back of a car, on the way to some terrible place where the flowers were changed daily and listless people sat about with medicated smiles, a cross between a psychiatric ward and a care home for the elderly. Then she imagined a policeman, taking her father’s arm, tugging him into a police car.

No, she’d already talked to Emma, and Emma would be bound to tell Jane. Leaving a note would make this too formal, somehow.

Laura opened the door. Male voices boomed from the TV.

‘Thanks, Emma.’

Emma shrugged, her lower lip jutting out sulkily. ‘No worries.’

She tried to read Emma’s face. Should she kiss the girl goodbye? But Emma didn’t look like the kissy type. She touched her arm.

‘You’ll remember what I said, won’t you?’

‘Yeah, of course.’ Emma’s lips puckered into a smile. Her next words were the friendliest sounding so far. ‘See you, then.’

Paul tapped his fingers against the coffee table, willing Toby to dislodge himself from the Sony tablet that he hadn’t looked up from for about ten minutes. Why couldn’t Jane just take her son away, and leave him and Emma in peace? Time was ticking by. He didn’t want his last afternoon with Emma to be frittered away watching her mother flap about like an old woman. But he must try not to appear impatient. He was grateful for these last precious hours, hours that had almost been snatched away from him by a shopping trip. Instead of going swimming with him, Emma had wanted to go shopping instead, with her friend Mandy.

Jane’s text last Sunday morning, saying he wasn’t needed anymore, had plunged him into gloom verging on despair. He’d lost his appetite, stopped listening to music, had taken no pleasure in anything. Then, salvation. Mandy had been suspended from school that afternoon for scrawling graffiti over the walls of the gymnasium, he learned yesterday evening, when Jane had called. He’d been on his way home from work. Jane didn’t want Emma to spend any more of her spare time being influenced by Mandy – a smoker and troublemaker, as well as a graffiti artist – could he possibly take Emma swimming tomorrow after all, one last time? She had to take Toby to a soccer match in Watford and didn’t want to leave Emma alone in the house, tempted to slip out with the likes of Mandy.