‘No. I’m sorry, she hasn’t. Is she important to you?’
Maybe they were keeping Maggie from her. Maybe this was part of the punishment. She felt furious at the injustice of it, but suppressed her anger in case it went against her. It seemed so unfair that she was stuck in this dump, practically in prison, all because she couldn’t say the right words and no one even bothered to find out the stuff in her head. She glanced up from her hands to find Adam waiting.
‘I will be good,’ she said. ‘If you let her come.’
‘Katya, if Maggie wants to see you, she knows she can contact your supervisor. No one is keeping her away.’
She had thought Maggie was her fairy godmother but it turned out she was just an ordinary grown-up. But even that didn’t hurt as much as Emily’s silence had. Why didn’t she say something? Perhaps she was scared too. Maybe she thought that Katya wanted to take Maggie away from her. She wished she’d had a chance to explain that all she wanted was to belong to them and Maggie loving her wouldn’t mean she loved Emily any less. She started to cry. It was such a relief to let the tears flow; to be comforted; to be allowed to be a little kid again.
4
JOSH BELLOWS FROM behind his bedroom door and I lean against it, my hands pressed to my face. If I give in he won’t sleep and he’ll be bad-tempered and miserable for the rest of the day. The crying is merely a symptom of his tiredness.
Downstairs I shut the kitchen door, switch the baby monitor off – I don’t need help hearing him – make myself a black coffee and take it to my computer, where I enter my favourite property site with a click of the mouse. This is my guilty pleasure and something of an addiction. Tom rolls his eyes whenever I call his attention to an interesting opportunity but I have perfectly valid reasons for keeping my eyes open. When we bought this house it was a wreck, but it meant that we could afford to live in an area that was already on the up. We were lucky, coming in before prices went stratospheric. I would do it again like a shot, never mind the upheaval. It’s to do with increasing our equity and creating a cushion if anything ever goes wrong; like Tom being made redundant or me not being able to go back to work after my maternity leave ends.
Tom doesn’t really get the point about security because he’s always had it, but I know how precarious life can be. He’s more like his mother-in-law than he realizes. Their mantra is, Don’t worry until it happens. Mine is, Plan against it happening. I’ve had my life turned upside down in the space of a few days, my belongings thrown into binbags. No warning and no chance to say goodbye. The feeling that there are forces beyond my control has never left me.
Things happen. We can’t assume that the good times will last for ever.
I sip my coffee. Upstairs, Josh’s cries are fading, the gaps between each howl lengthening.
He goes quiet.
I hold my breath. Count to ten. Nothing.
I let it go with a sigh of relief.
Two minutes later I’m scrolling through estate agent’s details when I spot a candidate five minutes away in Browning Street. My antennae twitch. It has NEW LISTING! splashed in red across the corner of the photograph and it’s being marketed by Johnson Lane, the agency Amber works for. It’s completely unmodernized and I know it well. The house is cheap for where it is, which means it needs a lot of money spent on it and months of dust and toil; but the long-term potential is huge. If we budget carefully, we could make it amazing. Adrenaline kicks in as I reach for the phone.
Sarah, Amber’s boss, answers. ‘You’re not the only one,’ she says. ‘To be honest, Mrs Seagrave, it’s not going to hang around. Developers, you know?’
I did know. We had to fight developers for Coleridge Street. ‘Can I see it today?’
‘We’re booked up, I’m afraid. You know what it’s like after the holidays finish. People start putting their houses on the market almost immediately. My phone literally has not stopped ringing. It’s the Christmas Curse.’
‘The what?’
‘Statistically, more marriages fall apart at Christmas than any other time.’
‘Oh.’ I ponder this depressing statistic. ‘Surely Amber could squeeze me in.’
‘Give me a minute.’ She sighs and I imagine her bright-pink fingernails tapping the desk as she checks her diary.
I take a pen and scribble Browning Street on a scrap of paper and underline it. This is the one. I feel it in my bones.
‘OK,’ she says. ‘Amber’s there now. If you can make it in ten minutes she can zip you round between viewings. I’ll give her a call.’
I glance up at the ceiling. ‘Can she do any later?’
‘Not today, sorry. Take it or leave it, I’m afraid.’
I hesitate. Bloody Magda.
‘Are you still there?’
‘Yes. That’s fine. I’ll run round now.’
And I do … I do just that. I make the worst mistake of my life.
5
THE RAIN IS torrential. I force my umbrella up and as the wind catches it and turns it inside out I look back up at the house, at the gabled window to Josh’s bedroom. He’ll be fine. I’ll hurry. By the time I reach the end of my road I’m already lost in a developer’s fantasy; picturing myself with plans and builders, opening out spaces and letting the light flow in.
This is a great area; sprawling enough not to feel claustrophobic, limited enough to be a cohesive community. It isn’t the best part of south east London, but it has the usual signs of gentrification; a ‘village’ label shamelessly bandied about by estate agents, a couple of niche cafés, a specialist wine shop and a gastro pub beside the Common, which boasts a playground and a duck pond. A McDonald’s, KFC and kebab shop still do a roaring trade on the London Road and make for a jolly, mixed community. I spent my early years in Streatham, so it was the obvious place for us to begin the search for our first home. We moved outwards from there – hoping for a bargain – and chanced on a cluster of streets named after English poets where big houses that had been converted into flats in the seventies and eighties were gradually being turned back into family houses. It’s also handy for getting out of London to visit my mother on the coast.
When I turn up, Amber is saying goodbye to a couple with a child in a pram and a little girl of about two sitting on her father’s shoulders, her rainhood pulled down over her eyes and nose. Amber shakes their hands and they set off towards me, obviously discussing the house, the woman excited, the man more circumspect. As they cross over the road and pass me I glance down at their baby. He’s older than Josh, fast asleep, slumped in that sack-like way that only babies manage, his chin tucked into his chest, his arms and legs lolling, utterly relaxed.
‘Oh God, I want it, Nick,’ the woman says. She reminds me of me.