Chris Cleave - Little Bee

“He’s still in my address book. Do you see?”

The screen of her telephone said ANDREW, and then a number. Just ANDREW-there was no surname.

“Will you delete him for me, Bee? I can’t do it.”

I held her telephone in my hands. I had seen people speaking on mobile phones, but I always thought they would be very complicated. You will laugh at me-there she goes again, that silly little girl with the smell of tea in her skin and the stains of cassava tops still on her fingers-but I always thought there would be a frequency to find. I thought you would have to turn some dial until you found the signal of your friend, very small and faint, like tuning in to the BBC World Service on a windup radio. I supposed that mobile telephones were difficult like this. You would turn the dial through all the hissing and the squeaking sounds, and first you would hear your friend’s voice very strange and thin and nearly drowned out by howling-like your friend had been squashed as flat as a biscuit and dropped into a metal box full of monkeys-but then you would turn the dial just one tiny fraction more and suddenly your friend would say something like, God save the Queen!, and tell you all about the weather in the shipping areas around the offshore waters of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. After that, you could talk.

But actually I discovered that it was much easier than this to use a mobile telephone. Everything is so easy in your country. Next to the name, ANDREW, there was a thing that said OPTIONS, and I pressed it. Option three was DELETE, so I pressed that, and Andrew O’Rourke was gone.

“Thank you,” said Sarah. “I just couldn’t do it myself.”

She looked down at her phone for a long time.

“I feel so bloody frightened, Bee. There’s no one to call. Andrew was absolutely unbearable sometimes but he was always so sensible. I suppose it was crazy of me, to send Charlie straight back to the nursery, after yesterday. But I thought it would be good for him, to get back into the routine. There’s no one to ask anymore, Bee. Do you understand? I don’t know if I can do this on my own. Make all the right decisions for Charlie on my own. Years of it, do you see? The right behavior, the right schools, the right friends, the right university, the right wife. Oh god, poor old Charlie.”

I put my hand on her hand.

“If you want, I can come to the nursery with you,” I said.

Sarah tilted her head and looked at me for a long time. Then she smiled.

“Not dressed like that,” she said.

Ten minutes later I left the house with Sarah. I was wearing a pink summer dress she lent me. It was the prettiest thing I had ever worn. Around the neck it had fine white flowers stitched in, very delicate and fancy. I felt like the Queen of England. It was a sunny morning and there was a cool breeze and I skipped along the pavement behind Sarah and every time we passed a cat or a postman or a woman pushing a pram I smiled and I said, How do you do? All of them looked at me like I was a crazy girl, I do not know why. I was thinking, That is no way to greet your monarch.

I did not like the nursery. It was in a big house with tall windows, but the windows were not open even though it was a fine day. Inside, the air was stuffy. It smelled of toilets and poster paint, and this was exactly the smell of the therapy room in the immigration detention center, so I was feeling sad from the memory. In the detention center they did not open the windows because the windows did not open. In the therapy room they gave us poster paints and brushes and they told us we must express ourselves. I used a lot of red paint. When the therapeutic assistant looked at what I painted, she said it would be good for me to try to move on. I said, yes madam, it will be my pleasure. If you will just open a little window for me, or even better a door, I will be happy to move on right away. I smiled, but the therapeutic assistant did not think it was a good joke.

In Charlie’s nursery, the play leader did not think I was a good joke either. I knew she was the play leader because she had a badge on her green apron that said PLAY LEADER. She stared at me but she did not speak to me, she spoke to Sarah. She said, I’m sorry, we can’t have visitors, it’s policy. Is this the child’s carer? Sarah looked at me and then she turned back to the play leader. She said, Look, it’s complicated, okay? The play leader frowned. Finally she let me stand by the door while Sarah went into the room and tried to calm Charlie.

Poor Charlie. They had made him take off his Batman costume-that was what had started it. They had made him take it off because he had urinated in it. They wanted him to be clean, but Charlie did not want to be clean. He preferred to be stinking in his black mask and cape than to smell fresh in the white cotton overall they had put him in. His face was red and dirty with poster paint and tears. He was howling with rage. When anyone came near him he hit at them, with his small fists banging into their knees. He bit and he scratched and he screamed. He stood with his back pressed into the corner. He faced out into the room and he screamed, NO NO NO NO NO!

Sarah went up to him. She knelt down so her face was close to his. She said, Oh darling. Charlie stopped shouting. He looked at Sarah. His bottom lip trembled. Then his jaw became firm again. He leaned toward his mother, and he spat. He said, GO AWAY I WANT MY DADDY!

They were making the other children sit cross-legged on the floor, in the far corner of the room. They were having story time. The other children were facing away from Charlie’s corner, but they kept wriggling around to look over their shoulders with pale, scared faces. A woman was reading them the story. She wore blue jeans and white trainers and a turquoise sweatshirt. She was saying, and Max tamed them by the trick of TURN AROUND AND FACE FRONT, CAITLIN by the trick of staring straight into their eyes and saying EMMA, PLEASE CONCENTRATE, JAMES, STOP WHISPERING of staring straight into their eyes and saying WILL YOU FACE FRONT, OLLIE, THERE’S NOTHING GOING ON BEHIND YOU.

Sarah knelt on the floor and she wiped Charlie’s spit off her cheek. She was crying. She was holding her arms out to Charlie. Charlie turned around and hid his face in the corner. The woman reading the story was saying, be still.

I went toward Sarah. The play leader gave me a look which meant, I told you to stay by the door. I gave her a look back which meant, How dare you? It was a very good look. I learned it from Queen Elizabeth the Second, on the back of the British five-pound note. The play leader took one step back and I went up to Sarah. I touched her on the shoulder.

Sarah looked up at me.

“Oh god,” she said. “Poor Charlie, I don’t know what to do.”

“What do you normally do when he is like this?”

“I cope. I always cope. Oh god, Bee, I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’ve forgotten how to cope.”

Sarah covered her face with her hands. The play leader took her away and sat her down.

I went into the corner with Charlie. I stood next to him and I turned my face into the corner too. I did not look at him, I looked at the bricks and I did not say anything. I am good at looking at bricks and not saying anything. In the immigration detention center I did it for two years, and that is my record.

I was thinking what I would do in that nursery room, if the men came suddenly. It was not an easy room, I am telling you. For example, there was nothing to cut yourself with. All the scissors were made of plastic and their ends were round and soft. If I suddenly needed to kill myself in that room, I did not know how I was going to do it.

After a long time Charlie looked up at me. “What is you doing?” he said.