The Girls in the Garden Page 16

  He pulled back from her and for a terrible, remarkable moment she thought he would, that he was going to kiss her, and she tried to decide what she would do and she really didn’t know, because she’d had two huge glasses of wine and she was a mess and he was so good and so handsome and she felt hot blood fill her head and sheer panic course through her and then suddenly he was walking away from her, back to his zucchini, and she felt limp and broken.

  “No,” he said coolly, picking up a zucchini and slicing it into rounds, as if nothing had just happened. “You didn’t marry a monster. Of course you didn’t. And of course your trust feels broken and maybe that will never mend. But the really important thing here is the girls.”

  She nodded, fervently, as though the girls had been the only thing on her mind all along.

  “Maybe it’s time to think about letting them see him. Or at least, to give them the option?”

  She nodded again. She would agree with anything he said, just so long as he kept talking to her in that steady, calming voice, just so long as she had his attention.

  “Obviously in a highly regulated environment. You could do it here, if you’d like. Or maybe talk to Cece. I mean, you know she’s a social worker? She’ll probably know about those sorts of things.”

  “Is she coming?” she asked, her hand covering the blotches on her throat. “Tonight?”

  “Oh.” He looked up at her and smiled. “I doubt it. She has an aversion to nice people. She’d much rather hang about with lowlifes and scum.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. She collects them. I think she thinks it makes her real. I think she thinks hanging out with people like us is some kind of bourgeois joke. Tries to avoid it in case some of our niceness rubs off on her and she ends up remembering that she’s middle class too . . . heaven forbid.” He smiled wryly. “So, no. She avoids the summer party like the plague and she certainly won’t want to come and sit and eat organic meat and vegetable kebabs with us. You won’t be seeing Cece tonight, that’s for sure.”

  As he talked she noticed the blade of his knife catching the light as he hacked at another zucchini and the bony, pointed mounds of his knuckles tight and white skinned. She saw a muscle flicker in his cheek and she felt suddenly as though she should not be here.

  “Thank you,” she said, putting her empty water glass down on the kitchen table. “Thank you for listening to my woes. And thank you for the water and thank you for the hug.”

  He snapped back into his normal shape, his eyes bright once more, his grasp on the knife looser. “Anytime, Clare. Anytime.”

  She went back to the terrace, where Pip and Adele were still busy drawing, and she poured herself another glass of wine.

  20

  The terrace was rammed; all the teenagers were here, sitting cross-legged on floor cushions, ketchup-smeared paper plates balanced on their laps. Leo stood at his monstrous American-­style gas barbecue, turning over the next batch of chicken pieces, filling the air with the aroma of burning herbs and spices. Adele passed Gordon a paper napkin. His jowls were slick with chicken grease and there were clots of mayonnaise in the creases of his mouth. She mimed wiping his face and he rolled his eyes at her but did as he was told.

  Beyond the terrace the park was emptying out. The jazz band had finished their set and the PA system was being dismantled. Voices echoed from the communal gates as people corralled their children, called out good-byes to friends. The park was being reclaimed for its residents. Small children appeared in their pajamas, some with teated bottles of warm milk, some with freshly shampooed hair.

  It had been a great party. The weather had been gorgeous. And here, on their own terrace, the party still continued. An extraordinary amount of alcohol had been consumed by all the grown-ups and the conversation around the table now was loud and bombastic—probably, Adele suspected, horribly annoying to the more sober people trying to get on with their evenings in the open-windowed flats above.

  Clare, in particular, was a revelation. Brought to some kind of unnerving life by white wine, she was being chatty, almost flirty, leaning in toward Leo with exaggerated interest every time he talked, tipping back her head and then reaching across the table to cover his hand with hers every time he made her laugh. Which was disproportionately frequently.

  Her words now were beginning to bleed into one another and Gordon was teasing her. “Another vat of wine for you, young lady?” he said, tipping the wine bottle in her direction. “Or could I interest you in a trough?”

  The teenagers drifted away into the park after they’d cleared their plates. But Willow stayed behind, expressing a desire to get into her pajamas and chill out. She took Pip into her bedroom, in her usual somewhat forceful way, and then, as the sky began to darken and the park started to empty, it was just the grown-ups left on the terrace.

  Clare got to her feet, her hands gripping the table. “Going to the loo,” she said, slurring her words. “I will be right back.”

  Adele jumped to her feet to help her on her way. As they passed into the hallway Clare turned suddenly to Adele, her Bambi eyes wide and sincere; grasped her arms; and said, “You are so, so pretty. I mean, I’m not just saying that, you really are. And you’re such a good mother.” She took her hands from Adele’s arms and pressed them against her own heart, wobbling slightly, enough to give Adele cause to hold her upright. “Such a good mother. I wish I could be such a good mother. I’m a shit mother.”

  “Oh, Clare, no. Of course you’re not.”

  “No. I am. I really am. I married a shit man. A dangerous man. I did that. I did that to them. And now, I’m just useless. I mean, seriously, look at you. You’re teaching your children. You’re giving them yourself. What do I do for my children? What kind of role model am I?”

  “Clare! For goodness’ sake! You’re a single mother. You’re doing everything you can. And your girls adore you. Be kind to yourself.”

  “I don’t deserve them,” she said. “I don’t deserve my children.”

  “Oh, Clare. Come on. This is just the wine talking. Let me make you a nice big mug of coffee and we can have a little chat.”

  “You’re so lovely. And Leo’s so lovely. You’re so lucky to have him. Do you know that? Do you know that?”

  Adele smiled. “We’re lucky to have each other.”

  “You know, Adele . . .” Clare swayed gently and grabbed hold of the wall. She squinted into Adele’s eyes and then held a pointy finger out toward her. “I am almost jealous of you.” She swayed again, this time nearly falling over completely. She righted herself. “Nearly jealous of you. But I can’t be because you are so fucking nice.”

  Adele took her elbow and began guiding her toward the bathroom. Clare stopped halfway, spun around, and said, “I used to be you, Adele. I used to have a big strong handsome husband and a rickety-rackety house full of old things and people. I used to be you.” She jabbed Adele in the ribs with her pointy finger and then stumbled into the bathroom.

  Adele stood for a moment outside the bathroom door, wondering what she should do. Should she oversee Clare’s toilet visit, make sure she was okay? But there’d been something in the tone of her voice, something harsh and unpleasant. It had felt, in some bizarre way, as if Clare hated her.

  So she left Clare to it, went to the kitchen, and made her a big strong coffee instead.

  On her way back onto the terrace she passed Pip and ­Willow.

  “Where are you two going?” she asked.

  “To the playground,” said Willow, pushing her bare feet into filthy, battered trainers. Behind her Pip smiled uncertainly, looking as though she had no desire whatsoever to go into the playground with Willow. “We’re going to play the circus game again.”

  Adele smiled. “That’s nice,” she said. “But remember, Pip’s your guest. Make sure it’s what she wants to do too.”

  “Of course it’s what she wants to do,” said Willow, grabbing Pip by the hand and yanking her outside.

  On the terrac
e Adele placed the mug of coffee on the table at Clare’s empty place and sat down next to Leo. “A bit of a mess,” she whispered into his ear, “you might need to take her home soon.”

  Leo nodded knowingly, and put his arm around her, squeezed her, loved her. My man, thought Adele, weirdly, unexpectedly, violently. My fucking man.

  Even by Willow’s usual levels of hyperactivity, tonight she was entirely crazy. The circus game kept building up layers of surreal detail, going off at alarming tangents and developing increasingly complex rules and subrules, all issued by Willow in a breakneck staccato. Pip tried to go along with it, but her head was spinning and she was growing tired of being bossed about.

  “No!” snapped Willow. “When the lion tamer takes off his hat you have to jump up like this”—she jumped to demonstrate—“and say I am Delilah Detroit and I am your daughter and then you have to jump down again and run toward the fire eaters!”

  Pip had reached the end of her capacity for Willow’s particular style of play and sat down on the bench. She smiled sadly and said, “I’m quite tired now. I don’t think I want to play anymore.”

  Willow’s face dropped. “But you have to! Or we won’t get to the end of the story!”

  “But, Willow, I don’t actually think there is an end to the story.” She smiled again, apologetically. She was a tiny bit scared of Willow.

  But before Willow could respond Fern appeared. She looked perturbed and distracted. She didn’t say anything, just sat on a different bench to Pip and stared into space.

  Willow looked at her curiously. “Fern, will you play with me? We’re doing circus orphans and you can be the ringmaster.”

  Fern glanced at her. “Er, no. Thanks.”

  “Please, Fern, please!”

  Fern didn’t reply, got to her feet, stared over the boundary hedge toward the top of the park, and then sat down again.

  A moment later Tyler appeared. Her pointy face was extra-­pointy, her eyes flashing with some kind of terrifying rage.

  “Tyler, will you play with me?” Willow wheedled.

  But Tyler didn’t even respond. She sat next to Fern and the two girls began talking to each other in hissy whispers, both turning every now and then to look behind them.

  “What’s going on?” Pip asked Tyler.

  “Nothing,” said Tyler.

  “What’s going on?” Willow asked Fern.

  “Nothing,” said Fern. “Go back to your game.”

  The two older girls started hissing and whispering again. Stray words appeared through the impenetrable fog of their conversation. Bitch. Slag. Whore.

  “Watch your language in there, young ladies!”

  All four girls turned as one at the sound of Gordon’s voice.

  He stood at the gate to the playground, leaning on his weird wooden stick, smiling alarmingly.

  “What are you all up to?” he asked with narrowed eyes. “You all look highly suspicious.”

  “Nothing, Puppy,” said Fern. “Just hanging about.”

  “Just hanging about, eh? Well, keep yourselves out of trouble, young ladies. Your parents are all pissed as farts and totally useless so you’ll need to keep your wits about you.” He tapped the side of his swollen nose and continued on his way, turning just once to throw them all an amused look, his eye catching Pip’s for just a beat too long.

  Pip shuddered. She thought of what Tyler had said about thinking that Gordon had killed Phoebe. She thought of Rhea slapping Gordon around the face for being inappropriate with her daughter. Then she watched him limping across the park, stopping every few feet to mop his brow and take a breath. Harmless old man, she thought to herself, shuddering again, just a harmless old man with a metal foot.

  His interruption had punctured the strange tension hanging about the older girls and as he walked away Tyler turned to Willow, smiled, and said, “Okay, tell us about this game.”

  So for a while Pip sat on a bench watching Tyler and Fern play circus orphans with Willow until the game became so twisted and weird—the older girls had somehow managed to persuade Willow that they were child sex traffickers who had infiltrated the circus to steal the orphans and transport them in the back of a truck to be child prostitutes in LA—that she began to feel uncomfortable. Tyler in particular was being very physical with Willow, snarling in her face about how she was going to get what she deserved and twisting her arm up behind her back when pretending to bundle her in the truck.

  Nobody noticed Pip leaving the playground and heading back to Leo and Adele’s terrace. Nobody said good-bye. And even from here she could hear the sound of her mother’s voice, loud and jarring, slurred as though heard through the hull of an upturned boat.

  “Pip!” she said when she saw her return. “Listen. We’ve been talking and it’s been decided. Leo is going to be your new daddy.” She stretched her arm around the back of Leo’s chair and pulled him to her. He smiled awkwardly. “Would you like that, Pip? Would you like him to be your daddy?”

  Pip shrugged, stepping from foot to foot.

  Leo unpeeled Clare’s arm from his shoulder and said, kindly, “Time to take you home, I think.”

  “I can do it,” said Pip. “I’ll take her home.” She’d never seen her mother drunk before. She’d barely seen her mother have a drink. She wanted to be away from here now, away from eyes and looks and neighbors and people. She held out her hand to her mother. “Come on,” she said, “time for bed.”

  Her mother smiled at her, crookedly, blearily, almost gratefully, and took her hand.

  AFTER

  21

  A watery dawn crawled slowly up the walls of the waiting room, turning them from deathly gray to oyster-shell pink. Clare uncurled herself from a fetal ball and stretched herself straight. She hadn’t slept, not really, just skated about that ethereal plane just under the surface of consciousness where fleeting fragments of dreams come and go, where you can believe for a few seconds at a time that everything is okay.

  Pip was awake already. She smiled bravely and moved closer, enfolding Clare’s hand inside hers. “Did you sleep well?” she asked.

  “Not really. No. How about you?”

  Pip shook her head. She looked like a ghost, haunted and hollow eyed. “How’s your head?” she asked.

  Clare nodded. “It’s fine,” she said. This wasn’t quite true. Her brain felt like a desiccated, throbbing lump of lava rock. Her stomach swirled. Her hands shook. She was clammy, confused. Thinking back to the moments after Pip appeared in her room last night, shaking her bodily, shouting into her face, “Mum! You have to wake up! It’s Grace! Something’s happened! Wake up!” she was having trouble piecing it all together in her mind. She remembered trying to find shoes, failing; she remembered running, barefoot, across the park, adrenaline temporarily canceling out the alcohol, the faces in the windows, the circle of people atop the hill, dark and unsettling, a hand against her arm, She’s still breathing. As though there’d been a moment when maybe they’d thought she wasn’t. Then: An ambulance is on its way.

  Pushing her way past bodies to get to her. Her baby. Bleeding: from her nose, from her lips, from her mouth. Her skin corpse-white. Her breath hubble-bubbling. Her eyes wide and glassy. Then the blue of the on-off lights, someone standing at the gates, already waiting, They’re here! through cupped hands. The soft thud of footsteps and fluorescent yellow glow of paramedics, oxygen mask, torchlight. Please move away. Kind hands on her shoulders. And then at some point during the ride to the hospital in the back of the ambulance the adrenaline had run out. Nausea had encroached. She’d been sick in a paper bowl.

  Her greatest shame.

  And now she tried to recall events but the memories wouldn’t line up in any meaningful order. She knew this much, though: Her daughter was in intensive care. She had a possible head trauma. She was in a coma. We’ll let you know when you can see her. Not yet though, I’m afraid. Not yet.

  The police had arrived last night, alongside the ambulance. They’d taken down n
ames and addresses and were due again this morning to talk to Clare and Pip. Clare was dreading it, having to admit to the level of her negligence. When she thought how obsessive she’d been about protecting her girls all this time. Then—the very first time she’d let her guard down, done something for herself, behaved selfishly—look what had happened.

  A man appeared in the doorway then. It was Mr. Darko, the consultant looking after Grace. He wore a suit and a serious expression. Clare’s gut clenched so hard that she had to massage it with her fist.

  “Good morning,” he said. “Not much change, I’m afraid. Grace is stable, but still in a coma. So as far as Grace is concerned we’re still looking at highly intensive care. More of the same. Indefinitely. But . . .”

  Clare kneaded at her stomach.

  “There have been other developments. And I think, Mrs. Wild, that maybe it would be better if we could talk in private?” He looked at Pip, who looked at her. Clare nodded and Pip went outside.

  Mr. Darko sat down and indicated that Clare should do the same. “Well, we’ve studied the MRI we took last night and we can’t actually see any damage from the head trauma consistent with Grace’s comatose state. And about an hour ago we had the results back from our blood tests and, well . . .” He pulled down a pair of reading glasses and studied the notes in his hand. “Would Grace have had access to sleeping pills? At home?”

  “No. I don’t think so. I mean, I might have some Nytol somewhere, but—”

  “I’m talking about prescription sleeping pills. Specifically Ambien—zolpidem, that genre of drug. Very heavy-duty. In small doses it causes euphoria. In larger doses it can cause unconsciousness. In an overdose situation”—he sucked in his breath—“well . . . it can bring on coma. And that’s the situation we find ourselves in, Mrs. Wild. Grace has experienced an overdose.”