Margaret Leroy - The Drowning Girl

She strokes the cat with a gentle, scrupulous touch, and it rubs against her, purring hugely.

‘He likes me, Grace,’ she says.

I watch her as she pets the cat. Just like a normal child.

At Karen’s, the girls go up to Lennie’s room. They’ll probably play their favourite hospital game with Lennie’s Barbies—this always seems to involve a lot of amputation and bandaging. We sit in the kitchen, where there’s a scent of baking and citrus, and Karen’s Aga gives out a welcome warmth. Leo and Josh have gone sailing today, as they usually do on Saturdays. You can hear the liquid sound of chatter and laughter from Lennie’s room—Karen has left the kitchen door open. I notice this, and briefly wonder whether she leaves the door ajar when other, more predictable children come to play.

Karen complains about homework. Josh has been given an alarming Maths project to finish by Monday morning.

‘It’s the poor old parents who have to do it as usual,’ she says. ‘Why can’t they just give us a break for once?’

She puts the coffee pot to perk on the hob.

During the half-term holiday, she tells me, Josh’s homework project was to make a model castle. Karen found cereal packets and paint, and he put together something with a vaguely medieval look, though the turrets kept collapsing. But when she dropped him off at school at the end of the holiday, there were far more fathers than usual accompanying their children, and all of them carrying the most complicated constructions, one complete with a miniature cannon that fired.

‘All Josh’s mates laughed at him and said his castle was crap,’ she says. ‘What’s the point? It’s nothing to do with kids actually learning stuff, it’s just competitive parenting…’

Karen’s coffee has a kick to it. I drink gratefully. She takes muffins out of the Aga and puts them to cool on a rack.

‘Let’s have one now,’ she says, ‘before the little vultures get at them.’

The cakes are still hot to the touch, and taste of butter and orange, with a glittery crust of vanilla sugar on top.

I tell her about my phone call, and her eyes are bright and excited. I’m touched she’s so pleased for me.

‘And you’ve been out with exactly how many guys since being ditched by the Rat?’ It’s her usual name for Dominic.

‘Nobody else. Not properly,’ I tell her.

She has a satisfied smile.

‘You’re ready, you see. It’s like I always said. You’re ready to move on now. Guys can pick up on that.’

Karen is one of those people who live in an ordered universe: her world is like a tidy house where everything matches and fits—where you meet the right man once you’ve achieved some special state of preparedness. Which I always feel leaves out that whole scary, unnerving randomness of who you meet when: of what happens. But just for now, I like the theory. It makes me feel it’s all meant to be.

‘I’ll babysit,’ she tells me.

I hug her.

‘You’re an angel. Thank you.’

‘Well—it’s important,’ she says. ‘A fresh start. Someone completely new. Just what the doctor ordered. And he’s taking you where?’

‘To Welford Place.’

‘Oh.’ She fixes me with a rather analytical gaze. ‘It’s classy, Grace, you need to look the part.’

‘Karen, what are you trying to tell me exactly?’

Her eyes move across me. Today I’m wearing jade fishnets, a little black skirt, cowboy boots from Oxfam and a cardigan I knitted from some wool I found in the corner shop, which I loved because it’s the exact sooty blue of ripe bilberries.

‘You always look lovely,’ she says placatingly. ‘It’s just that it’s all a bit kooky . He does what, your Matt?’

‘I can’t remember exactly. Something financial.’

‘Well, then. I think you ought to come with me.’

I follow her upstairs. As we pass Lennie’s room, we glance in through the door. It all seems happy. They’re busy with Lennie’s toy cooker: they seem to be cooking a naked Barbie in a saucepan, and Lennie has a plastic knife in her hand. Both girls are smiling gleefully.

Karen’s bedroom has a scent of rose geranium, and a sleigh bed covered in white with crocheted flowers. On the dressing table are silver hairbrushes, handed down from her mother, and family photographs in leather frames. It all speaks of continuity, of her sense of where she belongs. I envy her this sense of connection: it looks so solid, so comforting.

She opens her wardrobe and rifles through her clothes. Karen likes classic things—trench coats, silk shirts, cashmere. She pulls out something pale blue, with a sheen—a satiny blouse, with long full sleeves and buttons made of pearl. She holds it against my face to see if the colour will suit me. I feel it’s all wrong for me—too cool, too grown-up—but the feel of it is wonderful, the fabric smooth and fluid against my skin.

‘Well, go on,’ she says. ‘Try it.’

I pull off my cardigan and put it on. It’s low in front, in spite of the demureness of the sleeves, and cut to pull your breasts together: I’m surprised to see I have a proper cleavage. Karen puts her hands on my shoulders and turns me towards the mirror. We look at my reflection.

‘Mmm,’ she says. ‘I like it. And you could put your hair up.’

‘I always wear it down.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, I don’t know—because I always have done probably.’

She gives me a sceptical look. I feel my face go hot.

‘OK. I confess. It’s because it’s how Dominic likes it.’

‘ Liked it. He’s in the past, Grace.’ She wags her finger, with mock severity. ‘Remember: no more father figures,’ she says.

I told Karen once about my father. Just the outline—well, there isn’t much to tell. I told her how I remembered him—how big he seemed, and his warm smell, and the thrill I’d felt when he’d carry me round the streets on his shoulders, and I couldn’t imagine what it was like always to view the world from such a height. And my mother just saying, one day, when I was three, ‘Your father’s gone’—and not knowing what she meant by that, thinking she meant he’d gone but would come back again; so for years when I heard a taxi stopping in the street I’d rush to the window, a little bud of hopefulness opening up inside me. Karen was fascinated. ‘Well, there you are, then,’ she said—convinced that my passion for Dominic is all tied up with this loss, that it’s all about recovering my lost father. She’s probably right, but knowing doesn’t help much; I can’t untie it.

She sweeps up my hair in a twist at the back of my neck, fixes it with a sparkly clip from her dressing table. I look somehow more definite—as though I’m more clearly drawn in.

‘Fab,’ says Karen. ‘Kind of Breakfast at Tiffany’s . And maybe some earrings—just little ones…’

I grin at my reflection, the cleavage, the new hair. It’s fun, this dressing-up. I half notice and then dismiss the sudden silence from Lennie’s room. I feel a light fizzy excitement.

She opens up her jewel box. A ruby glows with a dull rich light. I watch her careful fingers move the jewels aside.

‘I’ve got some sweet pearl earrings somewhere…’

There’s a sudden scream from the playroom, a rush of steps on the landing, a bang as the door is thrown back. Lennie erupts into the room, flings herself on her mother. Her face is blotched with furious red. She’s sobbing, outraged, she’s crying too passionately to speak. I think, Oh God, what’s happened? What did Sylvie do?

I can see across the landing through the open door. Sylvie is still in Lennie’s room, wrapping a Barbie in a blanket. She has her back to us. She seems quite unconcerned.