Chapter Seventeen
Rosie was standing there under a film of drizzle in her red-and-white striped nightdress, slap bang in the middle of Mira’s driveway, staring up at their house. Her black hair was slick and shiny, a neat strip in front of each shoulder, as though it had been combed one-hundred and two times.
Mira, who had been about to pull her own nightdress off to get dressed for work, leapt to the side of the window out of sight.
‘Barry,’ Mira whispered. ‘Look, Rosie’s out there.’
He poked his head over his newspapers and peered out of the window.
‘Whatever is she doing?’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s seven in the morning.’
Mira looked on at her, reluctant to go out to her, worried about what the child had to say. It was a chance to study her face. She was pretty, in a pale and interesting way, not unlike Gemma Bradley in terms of colouring, Mira thought. But that was where the similarity ended. Rosie’s features were refined and in proportion, like Peter’s quiet, self-contained handsomeness, while her mother’s features were attractive, but less settled somehow, less refined – thicker brows, wider smile. More like a child’s than Rosie’s, Mira thought.
‘I’d better go see what she wants,’ Mira said, pulling her dressing gown down from the hook on the back of the door.
When she opened her door, Rosie scarpered, disappearing as though she had never been there.
Mira stood with her back leaning into the door, like it were a barricade, long enough to hear Gemma’s car crunch out around the roundabout and out of the cul-de-sac.
Had Rosie been coming to ask for help? A sense of responsibility for her burrowed its way into her soul. Whatever was going on next door, Mira was inextricably involved now. Rosie had come to her house for a reason. If Mira didn’t respond, she would be letting her down.
Most days, Rosie and Noah came home through the back gate at around four o’clock. Their nanny would arrive at their house at about a quarter to four. There were after-school clubs – which Mira could find out the times for if she watched carefully – but essentially, there would be a ten-minute slot when Rosie would be alone, with Noah of course, walking across the recreational ground from the back gate of their school. If Mira intercepted their journey, Rosie would be able to talk to her freely without her mother’s input. It would provide Rosie with some time at least for her to communicate with a trusted grown-up. There was no crime in bumping into someone randomly was there?
‘Did you speak to her?’ Barry said, coming down the stairs dressed in his gardening scruffs.
Mira moved away from the door. ‘She ran off before I got the chance.’
‘What an odd bod.’
‘Children who are going through a lot at home often do strange things.’
Barry stopped midway through tucking his shirt in. ‘Are you okay, love?’
‘Oh, for goodness sake, of course I am. Stop asking me all the time,’ Mira snapped.
Once Mira had thought of this plan to help Rosie, she became quite set on it. Throughout her normal Monday at school – hearing the children read, clearing up the learning tools, writing accident reports, monitoring dinner – she was clock-watching. She was reminded of how she used to clock-watch at school throughout double Biology on Thursday afternoons, when every minute felt like a lifetime before she could escape to meet Craig. The clock face above the blackboard had had a white face and black numbers and the second hand was red, moving forward in slow motion.
She looked up to a similar clock in the Year Two classroom. It was five past three, and twenty seconds. Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, she counted, almost willing the clock to take her back in time.
The children had been walked out into the playground for pick-up and it was quiet at last. She felt inside her skirt pocket for the little square photograph nestled there. Before leaving the house that morning, she had peeked into the dining room to check everything was in order for her work on the album later. The photograph of Craig had been lying there on the top of the pile. It had struck her that it was a bit like leaving a text message from your lover on your phone display for your husband to read. Barry hadn’t known about her involvement with Craig, and she didn’t want him to find out now. So, she had pocketed it.
Occasionally, its corner pricked her thigh through the material of her skirt as she moved about, reuniting named coats and shoes to their corresponding pegs, slowly clearing the space. Every now and again, she would slip her fingers into her skirt pocket to feel for the photograph. Working her fingertips across the smooth surface, sliding them across the edges, imagining his face was a comfort to her, like flicking through worry beads. The image of Craig in his white T-shirt was crystallised in her memory.
‘You feeling okay?’ came a voice from outside of her head. Patricia’s voice.
Mira realised she was sitting down on the low gym bench with a trainer resting in her lap.
‘Oh, sorry, I felt a bit light-headed. I’m fine now,’ Mira lied, unable to explain why she had stopped to sit, why the dreams of the past had taken over her like a temporary blindness of the present.
‘You sure? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘It’s the pong of this, probably!’ Mira joked, stuffing the trainer into her gym bag.
‘Off you pop home, Mrs Entwistle!’ Patricia said.
* * *
By a quarter to four, Mira was parking up in her drive. A few minutes later, the Bradleys’ nanny’s blue hatchback whizzed around the roundabout.
Mira changed quickly into an old tracksuit and trainers.
Her route to the recreational ground was more convoluted than it would have been from the Bradleys’ back garden. This fact had always irked her. The houses on the close with access to the grounds via their back gates were considered more desirable than the houses without access. An estimated fifty thousand pounds was added to the value of those privileged few on the other side of the road. It was a microcosm of the social divide in their town. Those on the west side seemed to drive bigger cars, tended to send their children to the same private school and shopped in Waitrose over Tesco.
Mira had to walk to the top of the close onto the main road, walk a few hundred yards down the B road (which lacked a pavement), round the corner into the small gate on the other side, through a small car park and finally onto the large expanse of green at the brow of the town’s hill. The views beyond the tennis courts and the playground encompassed thickets of trees over rolling hills dotted by beautiful large Arts and Crafts houses that she imagined belonged to millionaires. The view reminded Mira of the fairytale The House with the Golden Windows, where the little girl in her simple house dreamt of living in the house she could see across the valley whose windows shone gold. When the little girl finally made the trip to visit the house she had coveted, she realised the windows were broken and dirty. Looking back over the valley to her small house, she was amazed to see that the windows of her own home were shining golden as the sun reflected upon them, and she understood that her home was where she had always been happy and loved.
There were no golden windows on the millionaires’ houses today. The sky was a suspended ceiling of grey.
Mira began to run for a few paces along the lines of the football pitches, and then stopped to walk, and then began to run again, her lungs shouting at her to stop this unfamiliar activity, shocked by how unfit she had become.
A handful of children emerged from the chicken-wired back gate of New Hall Prep, inadequately secured by a keypad with the pass code 1066 known widely to all.