Kate Hamer - The Girl in the Red Coat

‘I needed to talk to you anyway, Paul.’

‘OK.’ He braced himself.

‘About Carmel.’

‘Oh, yes.’ He relaxed.

‘We’ve had a parent — teacher meeting. They think, well, they think she’s quite special.’

His face dropped and he frowned, then looked round at the space where she’d just been. ‘What, like special needs?’

I let my breath out in a slow one, two, three.

‘No,’ I said. ‘No, the opposite. Clever, you know. Very bright … but …’

‘What?’

‘Dreamy. Too dreamy sometimes. Have you not noticed?’

Was it just me who saw those absences? When she stood rooted to the spot and her eyes became strange and stony — then as soon as they came, they went. Fugues, I began to name them. I wanted to talk to someone about it. Perhaps Paul was closer than he realised in his meaning of ‘special’. But after all, I couldn’t be sure — how can you tell when you only have one child, when there’s nothing to measure these things against?

Paul didn’t want to talk about this, I could see. I remembered how he used to be on accepting people as they are. ‘Maybe. But …’

‘What?’

‘I’ve always thought it was more like she has an old soul. The Chinese say that, don’t they, or the Hindus?’

‘Oh, Paul. She’s so pleased to see you,’ I burst out.

He looked uncomfortable. ‘I’m sorry I felt I had to wait until, you know.’

I did. Divorce is never pretty. Ours wasn’t.

‘But now. Now it’s all settled.’ For him I suppose it was. ‘Now things have settled we can do this more often, all the time.’

‘Look, Paul. I need to go over it with you, the meeting, there’s more.’

That’s when we heard Carmel coming down the stairs, so the conversation ended.

‘C’mon, curly mop,’ he said. ‘You and me hit the road.’

I watched their tail lights disappearing down the twilight road. Then once the last blink of red had gone I went and fished out some tobacco from the dresser drawer. The tobacco was old and had hardened inside the plastic pouch so it looked like chocolate-flavoured sugar strands. When I rolled the cigarette I had to twist both ends so the tobacco didn’t spill. I lit it and sat next to the window, smoking and looking out.

It wasn’t just a marriage with Paul — we’d run a business together buying and selling ginseng and specialist teas. When he’d left I’d been proud and angry and told him I’d rely on the reception job I’d found — not quite full time. We agreed that he would have the business and I would have the house. He had no need of a house now he was moving in with Lucy and it was better for Carmel to stay in the same place. Lucy had a small newbuild on the outskirts of town. I knew, because I found it one night, mad with jealousy. To her credit, she asked me in. So much younger than me; I burned at the cliché. As I was following her I looked at her behind, tiny in tight-fitting white jeans. My eyes followed the contours of her backside down to between her thighs and I thought, ‘Paul has put his cock inside there.’ And the thought made me feel sweaty and ugly.

Her feet were bare, with tiny pink painted shells of toenails, and I realised — remembering the shoe rack by the front door — that this was the sort of house where you’d take your shoes off in normal circumstances. Would Paul really do that? I looked down at my feet and wondered if after I’d gone, she’d be there with dustpan and brush and squirty carpet cleaner, rubbing at the cream carpet where my boots had been.

She told me they were in love and she was sorry. She seemed nice enough — I’d wanted her to be heartless and hard-faced and she wasn’t either of those things. But as I left I couldn’t help saying spitefully to her, ‘He’s unreliable and untrustworthy. He’ll do the same to you.’

She tried to still her face but I saw the movement flick deep behind her eyes, knowing what I’d said was possibly true. And I relished that flicker — took it home with me and turned it over later, Gollum-like, as though it was something to be treasured. It shames me now, to say that.

After Paul had gone the house slowly emptied of his presence. Every time the door opened the wind blew in and took with it a bit more of him. The smell of tea faded. We’d kept the dresser full of stock and it exuded smoky smells of Lapsang and deep stately tannin with a flowery trill of jasmine riding its wake. The smell of tea still makes me think of Paul. Even passing the tea section in the supermarket or taking the lid off the pot in a cafe to check the contents brings back our time together and the feel of him. After the dresser was emptied these tea smells faded away until it was strangely only the thin scent of jasmine that remained. I’d catch its sharp delicate breath in odd parts of the kitchen. Occasionally I’d find a piece of ginseng in a kitchen drawer, the rude rooty stub a reminder of something base and earthy. Once I came across a knotted ball of Japanese tea that had rolled behind the log basket. The dense packed ball looked like a form of root too but would reveal itself when boiling water was poured, growing in the cup into the form of a chrysanthemum.

The house became very quiet. The noise I made as I blew out smoke was a rushing wind in my ears. Sometimes the floorboards would creak upstairs or the old heating would clink rapidly for a few seconds. I stayed there until I saw the headlights of Paul’s car returning. I must take her out more, I thought.

When I wake up in the morning everything’s wonderful. For a moment I can’t understand why. Then I remember: Mum’s said if the weather’s good we can go to the storytelling festival and that’s today.

My bed’s under the window. I look through the glass, in the shape of diamonds, at the sky.

It’s blue, blue, blue.

I lie here, warm under my quilt. I can hear Mum downstairs — the big old kettle clanks getting put on the stove and then pop when the gas is lit. When Dad was still at home I could hear his voice rumbling the floorboards. Or sometimes I could hear him arguing with Mum and they sounded like two bears snarling. When I went downstairs they’d stop and smile at me but they were making their faces smile, I could tell. People think when you’re a child that you’re just a mouse on the floor with a tiny brain.

My headmaster thinks that — that you won’t understand things. On parents’ day Mum was a bit late. My teacher — Mrs Buckfast — told me I could wait outside the classroom until Mum got there. While I was waiting in the corridor I heard Mr Fellows the headmaster inside the classroom say to Mrs Buckfast that my mum was ‘yet another single mum’. This made my face go a bit red with crossness because I didn’t think it was his business to say things like that. When Mum got there she was out of breath and saying, ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry. I couldn’t get away from work.’ But I didn’t mind, I knew she was only late because she had to walk when everyone else had cars. So I held her hand and said, ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s only ten minutes.’ When in fact it was more like fifteen.

When we went in together Mrs Buckfast said I was ‘highly intelligent but sometimes on another planet’.

Mr Fellows kept looking at my mum and I knew why — because she’s much prettier than the other mums. She’s got thick brown hair and blue eyes and a nose that goes a little bit up and very pretty big lips that look nice when she puts some lipstick on them.

The headmaster started talking. ‘Carmel’s vocabulary is extremely advanced. Her imagination is amazing, I don’t think she quite sees the world like the rest of us.’ Then he looked at me and said, ‘But you’d forget your head if it wasn’t screwed on.’ Which I thought was rude. Especially with what I’d heard him say about my mum. When I didn’t answer he said, ‘Like last week on the school trip when we couldn’t find you and when we did, you were sitting on a bench on your own looking like you were a million miles away. We were very worried, Carmel.’ And Mum said, ‘What’s this?’ I sighed then and stopped liking them talking about me. I started feeling upset and I was really glad when Mrs Buckfast smiled and said I’d grow out of it she was sure, so it didn’t matter too much. And Mum told me not to worry too and afterwards she took me for a pizza in town — not planned or anything — and we had a lovely time. She told me knock-knock jokes until I was laughing so much some Coke came down my nose.