‘Ruby wanted them to try to play tennis with her on the Wii,’ said Tiffany. ‘She’s too little for it really, and then I think they forgot Ruby and started to get competitive with each other.’
‘Ruby needs her nappy changed,’ confided Holly to Erika. She waved a hand in front of her nose.
‘They’ll need the bag then,’ said Erika, picking up Clementine’s nappy bag. It was so typical of Clementine and Sam to start playing some computer game while their child needed changing, and they were visiting people they barely knew. They were like teenagers sometimes. ‘I’ll take it up.’
‘It’s the room at the end of the hallway.’ Tiffany’s tone became abruptly sharp. ‘Not on the marble!’ She spun Vid back towards the stove just before he dumped a hot baking dish on the island bench.
Erika put the bag over her shoulder and walked up the softly carpeted curved staircase. At the top of the stairs there was a huge landing without any furniture, like an empty carpeted field. Erika stopped to allow her five-year-old self to relish the feeling of space. She let her arms float from her sides. There was an enormous painting of an eye on one wall, with a four-poster bed reflected in the pupil of the eye (nonsensical!), illuminated by a single low-hanging light fitting, like an upside-down milk bottle. It was like a room in a gallery of modern art. How long would it take her mother to ruin a ‘space’ like this with her crap?
Erika walked down the hallway towards the murmur of voices in the end room. The carpet was so plush she bounced along like an astronaut. Whoops. She swayed a little and her shoulder brushed the wall.
‘She should have asked me in private.’ It was Clementine, speaking quietly but perfectly clearly. ‘Not with all four of us there. With cheese and crackers, for God’s sake. That stingy little piece of cheese. It was so weird. Wasn’t it weird?’
Erika froze. She was close enough to the room to see their shadows. She stood back against the hallway wall, away from the door.
‘She probably thought it involved all four of us,’ said Sam.
‘I guess,’ said Clementine.
‘Do you want to do it?’ said Sam.
‘No. I don’t want to do it. I mean, that’s my first instinctive response. Just, no. I don’t want to do it. This sounds so awful but I just … hate the thought of it. It’s almost … repulsive to me. Oh God, I don’t mean that, I just really don’t want to do it.’
Repulsive.
Erika closed her eyes. No amount of therapy or long hot showers would ever get her clean enough. She was still that dirty, flea-bitten kid.
‘Well you don’t have to do it,’ said Sam. ‘It’s just something they’re asking you to consider, you don’t need to get all worked up about it.’
‘But there’s no one else in her life! There’s only me. It’s always only me. She hasn’t got any other friends. It’s like she always wants another piece of me.’ Clementine’s voice rose.
‘Shh,’ said Sam.
‘They can’t hear us.’ But Clementine lowered her voice again and Erika had to strain to hear. ‘I think I’d feel like it was my baby. I’d feel like they had my baby. What if it looked like Holly and Ruby?’
‘That shouldn’t worry you too much, seeing as you’d rather poke your eyes –’
‘That was a joke. Erika shouldn’t have passed that on, I didn’t actually mean –’ Clementine’s voice rose again.
‘Yes, I know, sure. Look, let’s just get through this thing and we’ll talk about it when we get home.’
‘Daddy!’ Ruby’s little voice piped up. ‘Play again! Right now. Now, now, now.’
‘That’s enough, Ruby, we need to go back downstairs,’ said Clementine.
‘We need to change her, that’s what we need to do,’ said Sam. ‘Where’s the nappy bag?’
‘It’s downstairs, of course, it’s not attached to my wrist.’
‘Jeez, don’t get snippy on me, I’ll get it.’ Sam came out of the room and stopped short.
‘Erika!’ he said, and it was almost funny the way he took a step back, his eyes wide with fear, as if she were an intruder.
chapter twenty-five
Tiffany was searching through the bottom drawer of Dakota’s chest of drawers for an Alannah Hill white cardigan with a scattering of tiny white pearls on the shoulders that suddenly seemed like exactly the right sort of thing for a private school mother to wear to a ‘compulsory’ Information Morning.