Margaret Leroy - The Perfect Mother

She lets out a brief thrilled scream, and even I start a little. Yet these animals, these teeth, this predatoriness: these are only the shadows of my hands.

Sinead comes into our bedroom in her dressing gown, her face and hair rumpled with sleep.

‘Cat. Dad. Daisy’s ill.’

I’m reluctant to leave the easy warmth of bed, and Richard, still asleep, curving into me. It’s one of those quiet days after Christmas, the turn of the year, when all the energy seems withdrawn from the world. A little light leaks round the edges of the curtains. I turn back the duvet, gently, so as not to wake him, and pull down my nightdress, which is long and loose, like a T-shirt, the kind of thing I started to wear when Daisy needed feeding in the night, and then got rather attached to.

I go to Daisy’s room. The stars glimmer on her ceiling in the glow from the lamp I leave on all night. I push back the curtain. Thin gilded light falls across the floor, where various soft toys and yesterday’s clothes are scattered. Her favourite cuddly sheep, Hannibal, is flung to the foot of her bed. He owes his name to Sinead, who once saw The Silence of the Lambs illicitly at a friend’s house, having promised they were borrowing 27 Dresses. Daisy is still in bed, but awake. She has a strained, stretched look on her face, and her eyes are huge, dilated by the dark.

‘I feel sick,’ she says.

‘What a shame, sweetheart.’ I put my hand on her forehead, but she feels quite cool. ‘Especially today.’

‘What day is it?’ she says.

A little ill-formed anxiety worms its way into my mind.

‘It’s the pantomime. Granny and Grandad are taking us.’

‘I don’t want to go,’ she says.

‘But you were so looking forward to it.’ Inside I’m cursing a little, anticipating Richard’s reaction. ‘Snow White. It’s sure to be fun.’

‘I can’t,’ she says. ‘I can’t, Mum. I feel sick and my legs hurt.’

Daisy always gets nauseous when she gets ill. They each have their own fingerprint of symptoms. Sinead, when she was younger, would produce dazzling high temperatures, epic fevers, when she’d suddenly sit up straight in bed and pronounce in a clear bright shiny voice, the things she said as random and meaningless as sleep-talk, yet sounding full of significance. Daisy gets sickness and stomach aches. She’s been like that from a baby, when she used to get colic in the middle of the night, and I’d walk her up and down the living room with the TV on, watching old black and white films, or in desperation take her into the kitchen, where the soft thick rush of the cooker hood might soothe her at last into sleep.

I go downstairs to make coffee; I’ll take a cup to Richard before I tell him. It’s a blue icy day, the ground hard and white, a lavish sky; but the fat glittery icicles that hang from the corner of the shed are iridescent, starting to drip. Soon the thaw will set in. It’s very still, no traffic noise: the sunk sap of the year. With huge gratitude, I feel the day’s first caffeine sliding into my veins.

When I go back upstairs with the coffee, Sinead has drifted off to her bedroom and her iPod.

Richard opens one eye.

‘Daisy’s ill,’ I tell him.

‘Christ. That’s just what we needed. What’s wrong?’

‘Some sort of virus. I’m not sure she can come.’

‘For goodness’ sake, she’s only got to sit through a pantomime.’

‘She’s not well, Richard.’

‘They were really looking forward to it.’

‘So was she. I mean, she’s not doing this deliberately.’

He sits up, sprawls back on the pillow and yawns, disordered by sleep, his face lined by the creases in the pillowslip. He looks older first thing in the morning, and away from the neat symmetries of his work clothes.

‘Give her some Calpol,’ he says. ‘She’ll probably be fine.’

‘She feels too sick,’ I tell him.

‘You’re so soft with those children.’ There’s an edge of irritation to his voice.

I feel I should at least try. I get the Calpol from the bathroom cabinet, take it to her room and pour it into the spoon, making a little comedy act of it. Normally she likes to see this, the sticky recalcitrant liquid that won’t go where you want it to, that glops and lurches away from you. Now she watches me with a slightly desperate look.

‘I can’t, Mum. I feel too sick.’

I take the spoon to the bathroom and tip it down the sink.

Richard has heard it all.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, let me do it,’ he says.

He gets up, pulls on his dressing gown, goes to get the Calpol. But when he sees her pallor, he softens a little.

‘Dad, I’m not going to,’ she says. ‘Please don’t make me.’

He ruffles her hair. ‘Just try for me, OK, munchkin?’

I watch from the door as she parts her lips a little. She’s more willing to try for him; she’s always so hungry to please him. He eases the spoon into her mouth. She half swallows the liquid, then noisily retches it up.

He steps smartly back.

‘Sorry, sweetheart. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.’

He wipes her mouth and kisses the top of her head, penitent. He follows me back to the bathroom.

‘OK,’ he says. ‘You stay. It’s a damn shame, though, when they’ve paid for the tickets and everything. Especially when Mother hasn’t been well.’

I think of them: Adrian, his affable father; and Gina, his mother, who favours a country casual look, although they live in chic urbanity in Putney, who reads horticultural magazines and cultivates an esoteric window box, who reminisces at some length about her job as an orthodontist’s receptionist. There’s something about Gina I find difficult: I feel colourless, passive, beside her. It’s not anything she says; she’s always nice to me, says, ‘You and Richard are so good together.’ Sometimes I feel there’s a subtext that I’m so much more satisfactory than Sara, Richard’s highly assertive first wife. But it’s almost as though it’s hard to breathe around her, as if she uses up all the air.

‘Daisy can write them a letter when she’s well,’ I say.

‘It’s not the same,’ he says, frowning.

Richard’s intense involvement with his parents fascinates me. I know that’s how it must be for most people, to have your parents there and on your side, to worry about them and care what they think about you; yet to me this is another country.

Sinead comes down when I’m making breakfast, still in her dressing gown but fully made-up, with her iPod. She takes one earpiece out to talk to me.

‘Cat, I really need your opinion. D’you think I look like a transvestite?’

‘You look gorgeous.’ I put an arm around her.

It’s part of my role with her, to be a big sister, a confidante, to be soft when Richard is stern.

‘Are you sure my mascara looks all right?’ she says. ‘I’m worried my left eyelashes look curlier than my right ones.’

‘You’re a total babe. Look, I’ve made you some toast.’

‘How is she?’ she says then.

‘I don’t think she can come.’

She sits heavily down at the table, a frown like Richard’s stitched into her forehead.

‘Do I have to go, then?’ she says.

She’s cross. She’s too old to go to the pantomime without her little sister. Daisy was the heart of today’s outing, its reason and justification: without her it doesn’t make sense.

I put my arm round her. ‘Just do it, my love. To please Granny and Grandad.’

‘Snow fucking White,’ she says. ‘Jesus.’

I overlook this. ‘You never know, you might enjoy bits of it.’

‘Oh, yeah? You know what it’ll be like. There’ll be a man in drag whose boobs keep falling down and lots of EastEnders jokes, and at the end they’ll throw Milky Ways at us and we’re meant to be, like, grateful. ’