‘Oh God. How did it get around so quickly?’
‘I told a couple of people. It had to come out eventually and I thought it might be easier for you this way. They’ll be bored of the subject by the end of the week. And you should come to school, Vicky. Let them ask questions.’
‘I came this morning,’ I say defensively.
‘You must think I’m really nosy,’ Jenny says, and I sense the interruption is diplomatic. ‘But I’d love to see what you’ve done to this place. We’re trying to make decisions about our house.’
The hint of flattery lightens my mood and I help her manoeuvre Spike’s bulky pram past Josh’s. The girls, in the meantime, charge upstairs. Magda has been today so the house is positively gleaming.
‘Wow,’ Jenny says, following me into the kitchen. ‘Darling, this place is amazing. Did you design it?’
‘I drew it on the back of an envelope and managed the build, but we used an architect for the technical drawings.’
‘Don’t undersell yourself,’ Amber says, turning to grin at Jenny. ‘Vicky is a brilliant painter and decorator.’
She fills the kettle and switches it on. It’s a curious thing to do. It’s as if she’s telling Jenny something; establishing a pecking order. I transfer Josh to his high chair and Jenny sits down with a gentle sigh with Spike on her knee and tightens the elastic at the base of her thick brown ponytail. I take three mugs out of the dishwasher and nudge Amber out of the way. She sits down.
‘At the moment all we do is pay for the renovations,’ Jenny says. ‘Whenever I mention anything else, like holidays, for instance, Simon just says, “That’ll be your granite worktop, then”, or something equally irritating.’
I glance at Amber. She must hate listening to other people bang on about their houses. But she doesn’t appear to have noticed. Today’s paper is still where Tom left it, in the middle of the table, and she’s been turning the pages idly. I haven’t had a chance to read it because Josh has been impossible to put down all day. Not his fault, I remind myself. It’s mine.
‘Awful, isn’t it,’ she says.
‘What’s happened?’ I try to read the headline upside down and she swivels it towards me.
‘Some poor woman left her two-year-old in the car for five minutes while she popped into her local shop for a pint of milk and a passer-by reported her. They took the child away.’
I reach for the paper and scan the article. There are three pictures; the largest is of a fraught-looking couple, desperation clear in their eyes. Overlapping that is an inset of a smiling toddler clutching a teddy bear, and a picture of the three of them snuggled up on their sofa. They look so ordinary and yet their lives have been picked up, shaken and dropped. The couple have been to court, which is why the case has finally hit the news, and have won the right to have their child back. But it’s taken a year. A year. My God. My hands are shaking as I fold the paper and put it down.
Beside me Josh starts to whinge. I give him my keys and he flings them on the floor. Amber reaches over with a teaspoon and taps him on the nose, making him giggle.
‘It’s unbelievable,’ she says. ‘Big Brother is watching.’
Jenny removes her glasses, pulls the corner of her shirt out from under her jumper, uses it to clean them and puts them back on. ‘I suppose social services would argue that it’s evidence of a behaviour pattern in the family.’
‘She was in a hurry,’ Amber exclaims. ‘God. I’ve parked on Tennyson Street and nipped into the Spar for a can of baked beans without taking Sophie with me. I lock the car, obviously, and always park where I can see her. We’ve all done that, surely?’
I wonder if she realizes how awkward this is for me. I watch her for a moment and feel uncertain. Have things changed between us or not? I know I’ve disappointed her, I’ve disappointed myself, but I thought we were strong enough to get over that.
‘I agree,’ Jenny says. ‘But, speaking as a lawyer, it’s a hard one to call. There are people who leave their children on their own for much longer than that poor woman did, and I’m talking across society, not one section. You’d be surprised. This case is extreme though, but at least it highlights what can happen. Parents find themselves caught in a Kafkaesque situation. A case like this might make someone else think again. To be honest,’ she adds, ‘I can’t understand any woman who would leave her child alone. In my experience it usually means there’s something else wrong in their situation. Either domestic abuse or a failing relationship. Either way, you’re talking about unhappy women who are so completely engrossed in their own problems they lose sight of what’s really important – their children.’
Amber sends me a quick, amused look over the rim of her mug. ‘Right, well, don’t hold back.’
Jenny laughs. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to start lecturing.’
‘In fairness,’ Amber says, ‘sometimes there’s no choice. And anyway, is it really any worse than taking the baby monitor next door so you can get pissed with the neighbours? There are degrees …’
I remember something. I’m waking up in a pool of sweat, opening my curtains and pressing my head against the cold glass, feeling the condensation run on to my cheeks. I call for my mother but my throat is so sore it comes out as a croak. When she doesn’t appear, I go into her bedroom but her bed is empty, although it has been slept in. The flat we lived in back then was tiny, consisting of two bedrooms, a small kitchen and a sitting room. There was nowhere she could have hidden.
I hear myself telling Amber and Jenny about this before I’d even made up my mind to say anything.
‘Really?’ Amber says.
I flush. ‘Yes. But I wasn’t a baby. I was ten.’
I can date it precisely. It was the week before we moved in with my grandparents.
‘Ahh. Still, that’s rotten,’ Jenny says. ‘Where did she go?’
‘I don’t know. I waited for her in the sitting room but when I heard her car pull up I went back to bed. She was crying when she came in.’
I pull at my ear, remembering how it felt, standing inside my door, opening it a crack. When you’re a child a parent in tears is the worst thing in the world. It’s far worse than their anger, worse even than their disappointment. I remember the ball of panic in my stomach, the confusion, the feeling that I had stepped on to quicksand. I wanted to comfort her but I thought she would be embarrassed if she knew I’d heard.
‘I thought you had lodgers,’ Amber says.
I’m confused by her tone. It sounded like a challenge.
‘Not then. That was when we still lived in Streatham. It was right before we moved, actually.’
Amber knows my background already but I find myself telling Jenny about my upbringing, about the chaotic house by the sea and the guests.
‘So how did you and Amber meet?’ Jenny asks.