‘Rosie!’ I called after her. ‘Have you done your homework?’
‘I told her she could do it after a bit of telly.’
My mother poured two large mugs of hot milk.
‘Is the pie in?’ I asked, feeling a throb in my temples.
‘I was just about to put it on.’
Exhaustion rolled through my body. It was already a quarter past six. Supper and homework should have been done by now if we were to fit bath, stories and bed in before midnight. I downed a large glass of tap water.
My mother picked up the mugs. ‘I’ll just take these through and say goodbye to them.’
I had a pang of fear about our separation. I would be alone and I worried about how well I would cope, knowing how bad it could get.
When she returned from saying goodbye, she slipped on her coat and looked into her tiny handbag. ‘Glasses. Phone. Keys. Good, I’ll leave you to it,’ she said.
‘You don’t want to stay for a cup of tea?’
Her gaze slipped across my face. I clicked through my flaws. My black hollow eye sockets, my frizzy black hair, lank at my shoulders, my paper-thin skin that never sees sunlight. When Peter first met me, he said that my features were beautifully unruly, that my smile was all teeth and cheekbones and eyebrows, like a mischievous child’s. I had liked the idea that I might seem to him unrulier and less grown-up than I felt. Though that face, the one that he had fallen in love with, was a little past forty now, and I doubted it held the same charm.
‘You’re looking awfully thin, darling,’ she said.
‘No pregnancy glow then?’ I laughed thinly.
‘Are you working too hard?’
‘I never thought I’d hear you say that.’
‘I’d better go,’ she said.
I hadn’t wanted to be rude, or to throw us back to my teenage years. What I had really wanted was a warm hug.
When the door closed, I could have sworn I heard the sucking of air, as if I were being sealed into a vacuum. My eyes felt dry. A sense of isolation and dread slumped across my shoulders.
I imagined my office, shadowy and quiet. The documents in the centre of my desk, neatly placed by Lisa, ready for my meeting at nine o’clock sharp. Work life was strenuous, but I could predict the outcome, mostly.
In the television room, Rosie and Noah were curled up together in the corner of the wrap-around sofa, cosy under the faux-fur blanket. Their feet rested on the newly upholstered ottoman. They looked warm and comfortable together. Above their heads hung the oil painting I had bought Peter for his birthday last year. The figure’s naked torso was thrust over her thighs, in dance or pain, I didn’t know. The colours clashed. Her back was a series of huge, undisciplined arcs. I imagined the artist’s arm must have tired from the bold brushstrokes. The work expressed something that resonated with me deep down. I wished we had more art across the expanse of white-washed walls in our open-plan house. From the outside, it was quaint and wonky, a stream of sweet peas climbing up the south-facing wall, while the inside was groomed and tweaked: clean lines, honed modernity, sleek, bleak cabinetry and silver-plated fittings.
‘What are you watching?’
Neither of them looked away from the television. An annoying American accent whined out of the flat-screen.
‘Hello, earth to Rosie,’ I said more pointedly.
‘Could you move, Mum. I can’t see.’
A big part of me wanted to leave the two of them there. Peter would have told me to. He would have told me that Rosie could catch up with her homework tomorrow, and he would probably have nestled under the blanket with them. But I couldn’t. Homework was important. Routines were important. Everyone knew they made children feel safe. I was not their friend, I was their mother.
I clapped my hands, making the decision. ‘Upstairs both of you. Rosie, maths homework. Noah, reading books please. Come on, shipshape.’
They groaned and began to roll off the sofa.
‘I hate fractions,’ Rosie said.
‘It won’t take long and I’ll have tea ready for when you’re finished.’ I clapped again, annoying myself as I did it.
But instead of going upstairs to her desk, Rosie nipped past me towards the kitchen, saying, ‘I’ve just got to get something from outside.’
I followed her, leaving Noah, who turned the television back on.
At the back door, Rosie was putting on her wellingtons.
My jaw clenched. ‘Rosie, what are you doing?’
I knew I shouldn’t fear my daughter’s potential to outwit me. A better mother might handle her more adeptly than I; but then again, I’d like to see them try.
‘I’ve just got to get something.’
‘What an earth do you need to get? It’s dark out.’
‘It’s for Charlotte.’
‘What is?’
‘Never mind!’ she called out behind her as she disappeared into the fog.
‘Hurry up!’
Rankled by Rosie’s rebellion, and worried about how I might claw back the lost homework time, I kept a close eye on the kitchen clock, hoping she would come back in of her own accord.
The pie would take three quarters of an hour, which was how long Rosie’s homework should take, if she stopped wasting it by messing around outside.
After fifteen minutes, I shoved my own boots on and stormed out into the gloom, across the uninspiring expanse of lawn, which had always struck me as rather plain and boxy, underused and overshadowed by two high, wax-leaved hedges that blocked out our neighbours on either side. Behind the clumps and wisps of fog, I imagined the hedges as a rigid row of shoulder-to-shoulder sentries, keeping watch as I marched down to the bottom of the garden to do battle in the tangle of woods.
Rosie was sitting underneath the canopy of the oak tree on a sawn stump for a stool with her head-torch lighting her lap.
‘Whatever are you doing?’
She ignored me and continued to work, head bent over a mass of leaves on her lap. Moving closer, I saw how she was twisting wool around dried oak twig cuttings.
‘Come on, don’t mess about, Rosie, I’m too tired,’ I sighed. That overused phrase.
Under Rosie’s spotlight, I watched her fingers work adeptly, her concentration unbreakable. I shivered, feeling the chill air circulate under the cotton of my shirt.
‘Homework time, please, Rosie.’
‘It’ll only take a minute.’
‘You’ve been out here for twenty.’
‘Just two more minutes, please.’
As I waited, wondering if I should go back in or continue hustling her, I looked around at her den, her favourite place to be. I was touched by the care and attention she had taken to build this little world of hers. There was a blue tin kettle resting on a collection of twigs in a circular pit of stones, and an old wooden table laid with bark plates and twig knives and forks. From the tree, a plastic bucket dangled from a climbing rope.
‘Does it still work?’ I smiled, tugging at the pulley-system that connected with Mira and Barry’s garden next door.
For the first time, Rosie’s attention was on me. She looked up. ‘I don’t know.’
Rosie had discovered it on the first day we had moved in; left behind by the little girl who had lived here before us. At first, Rosie had secretly continued the previous owner’s game, sending little posies of sweet peas to Mira in the bucket, which Mira had sent back filled with homemade biscuits in tinfoil and little notes attached. When we found out, I had agreed she could use it occasionally, with permission from a grown-up.
‘Why didn’t you let me use it?’
‘I did!’
‘Hardly ever!’ she protested.
‘I was worried it would bother them.’
‘Why?’ Rosie said, bending to her work again.
The rope was damp and mildewed. As I pulled it, the blue bucket bounced and bopped along the rope towards the shared hedge. Just as the bucket reached the top of the hedge, I pulled the other rope, reversing the movement and returning it safely home.
‘Because people like their privacy, that’s why.’
‘But she lets Beth go through her garden to my camp.’
‘Hmmm,’ I said disapprovingly.
‘She doesn’t mind, it’s the truth, Mum.’