I Spy. Claire Kendal
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one. ‘She’s very pretty.’ It occurred to me that other than the incident of Peggy and the apple tree when I was four, I had never knowingly been caught snooping.
‘Not as pretty as you.’
‘That was the right thing to say. Was there a second one?’
‘A second what?’ He pressed one hand over my breast and the other over my throat, tilting me flat again.
‘Wife.’
‘The divorce of the first only came through at the start of this year, so not yet.’ His mouth was against mine. ‘The grounds were desertion. She left me.’
‘When?’
‘Three years ago.’
I thought, but didn’t say, that three years ago wasn’t a great time for me either, with Maxine and that glass table and the line I was stupidly ready to cross.
‘What’s her name?’
‘Jane.’ Zac went on. ‘The end of that marriage – it’s the worst thing that ever happened to me. If you know that now, it will help you to understand.’
‘Understand what?’
‘Understand me. The way I am. The care I take, now, to cherish what I value, to make sure I don’t lose it.’
‘The way you are is perfect.’ I pulled him on top of me.
He laughed. ‘That was the right thing to say too. And to do.’
‘Except for the arrogance thing and the god complex thing.’
‘That not so much.’
‘I find it hard to imagine any woman wanting to leave you.’
‘Good recovery. Smoothly done.’ He kissed me into forgetting about his first wife. When I next opened his bedside drawer, the photograph was gone.
Now The Girl with the Two-Coloured Eye
Three years later
Bath, Monday, 1 April 2019
I am at work, based now in the paediatric unit of a hospital in Bath. This place is so different from my old job in Cornwall. I am concentrating hard on inputting patient details, when the sound of a crying child makes my attention waver.
A woman is in a deep knee bend beside a pushchair, fumbling with a manicured hand to pick up a stuffed kitty that the child must have thrown. One of those women who spends her morning in designer activewear, then transforms into a lady who lunches. Her expensively jewelled fingers are tipped with blue-black manicured nails that for most mothers would not be compatible with a toddler. Those fingers curl around a takeaway coffee cup that she is struggling not to spill.
The child’s small hand shoots out to grab the edge of the woman’s techno-fabric sleeve. Trying to protect the child from the hot drink, the woman loses her balance and falls. The cup lands beside her, the lid pops off, and the steaming coffee splashes onto the linoleum as well as the woman’s blossom-print leggings. The child stops screaming, arrested by the spectacle of her mother on the floor.
‘Can’t she read?’ Trudy, who is the ward manager’s assistant and senior to me, is hissing from behind her computer screen. ‘Tell her. Get out there now, Helen, and tell her about the sign.’
‘Isn’t it a bit late for that?’
‘Go,’ Trudy says.
In my cardiology ward clerk job, I wore a dull-red smock with off-white polka dots. The spots on this paediatric smock are mint green. The background is strawberry-wafer pink. I will look like a walking cupcake as I approach the polished woman.
‘Okay, okay. I’m going.’ I grab the roll of blue paper towels we keep on a nearby shelf for such emergencies, then emerge from the shelter of the curved reception desk.
I squat in front of the woman. ‘You’re not burnt, I hope?’
She shakes her head no.
I offer her some paper towels and she begins to dab at her clothes while I wipe the floor. Trudy has marched across to direct this little scene and glower at the woman. I wouldn’t have imagined that somebody with curlicue hair like Shirley Temple’s could be intimidating, but Trudy is, despite being a mere one and a half metres tall. I know about Shirley Temple because my grandmother loves her, and endlessly watched her films.
‘No hot drinks allowed in Paediatric Outpatients,’ Trudy says. ‘Did you not see the signs?’
The woman stands, elegant and willowy beside Trudy. ‘I’m sorry. I was desperate for caffeine.’
The child is watching all of this with quiet fascination.
‘Children can be scalded by hot drinks. That is why there is a bin by the entrance,’ Trudy says.
‘I was tired,’ the woman says, ‘but that’s no excuse.’
Trudy softens, but to detect the softening you would need to be accustomed to monitoring every gradient of the human anger scale.
‘Come with me,’ Trudy says to the woman. ‘You need to book your daughter in and have her details checked.’
‘Let me grab her first.’ The woman moves towards the front of the pushchair to unfasten the child, who immediately begins to squirm.
‘Helen will watch her for a minute,’ Trudy says.
I am on my knees, mopping coffee. I straighten up, so my shins are resting on linoleum that is printed to resemble a giant jigsaw puzzle, and my bottom is on my heels. The little girl is staring at me, pursing her lips as if she is about to blow out birthday candles. Her hair is the colour of copper, the same shade mine used to be before I soaked it in black dye. It is baby fine, and her mother has arranged the front in a ponytail-spout above her forehead, to keep it out of her eyes. The spout is a white jet, and adorable on this child, though I wonder if her hair colour is a symptom of whatever medical condition has brought her to the paediatric unit today. Her skin is ivory perfect, though perhaps a bit too pale.
I glance at the mum, whose own hair is dark and artfully highlighted. It reaches the bottom of her neck. She pushes it behind her ears and says to me, ‘Is that okay?
‘Absolutely,’ I say, and she follows Trudy.
The child is frowning, uncertain as she scans for her mother, who is now out of her sightline. I expect her to start to cry again, or scream, or kick. But she doesn’t do any of these things. She blinks her eyes several times, so I look more closely at them. They are surrounded by long, red-gold lashes that match my own, though I wear mascara to hide the colour. One eye is four-leaf clover green, again like mine. The other is blue as a dark sky in the top half-circle, and brown as the earth at the bottom. The only other person I have seen with such an eye is Zac. It is one of the most beautiful things about him. Again, though, I wonder if the child’s eye is a symptom of something medical, the same as her white forelock.
I fantasise about picking her up and holding her close, pretending that she is mine.
To others, I must appear to be a normal woman. I alone know that I am a creature stitched out of pieces that don’t fit and never will, with some of them missing and others stretched too thin and in the wrong shape. My seams show vivid and red like those of Frankenstein’s monster.
I say to the child. ‘You are very pretty. What’s your name?’
She opens her mouth, then smacks her lips together.
I laugh. ‘I bet your name is pretty too. Can you tell me how old you are?’
She shakes her head.
‘Let me try to guess. Are you two?’
She holds up one finger.
Her mother