The Drowning Girl. Margaret Leroy
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but I worry that there’s something rather obsessive about it…’
I remember girls at school who’d mastered horses or brides, who always did the same doodle in the margins of their books.
‘I think she was just so pleased she’d learned to draw houses,’ I say.
She ignores this. She leans towards me across the desk, her fingertips steepled together.
‘Ms Reynolds.’ Her voice is low, intimate. ‘I hope you don’t mind me raising this, but you’re quite sure that this isn’t a place where something happened to her?’
There are patches of burgundy in her cheeks. I hate this. I know she’s asking if Sylvie might have been abused.
‘I’m absolutely sure,’ I tell her.
‘You see, it can be a way that children cope with trauma—this kind of obsession. Reliving the trauma over and over, trying to make sense of it. Beth did try to find out—she asked her who lived in the house. But Sylvie wouldn’t say.’
‘Maybe she doesn’t think about who lives there.’
‘Well, maybe not,’ says Mrs Pace-Barden, not persuaded. ‘Let’s hope I’m wrong. I can see that this is all rather painful for you. But for Sylvie’s sake these things have got to be addressed.’
‘If there was anything, I would know,’ I tell her. ‘She’s always with me, or here at nursery, or playing with Lennie, her friend. There’s nothing I don’t know about.’
‘As parents, we like to think that,’ she says. ‘We think we know all there is to know about our children. I understand that—I’ve got children of my own. But sometimes we can delude ourselves. Sometimes we don’t know everything…’
She takes the coffee pot, refills my cup although it’s still half full. It’s a moment of punctuation. I feel a flicker of hopefulness: that she will come up with some help for Sylvie, some kind of programme or plan.
I see her throat move as she swallows. She isn’t quite looking at me.
‘I hope you don’t mind me raising these things. But we need to get this sorted. Because, to be frank, Ms Reynolds—unless the situation improves, I’m really not sure that we can keep your daughter here.’
I put my cup down. Slowly, concentrating hard, so the coffee won’t slop in the saucer. Suddenly everything has to be done with such elaborate care.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I can see this is a shock for you. But the truth is we just don’t have the resources to cope with a child with problems on this scale. She’s a one-to-one a lot of the time and that’s not what we’re about here—not with the three-and four-year-olds. It’s intended to be a pre-school class—they’re learning independence. We really can’t cater for children as needy as Sylvie seems to be…’
I fix my gaze on the garden through her window. Everything seems to recede from me—the fretted shadows across the bright grass, the wet black branches of trees—and the children’s voices sound hollow, remote, like voices heard over water.
‘But surely there must be someone who could help us?’ I hear how shrill my voice is.
‘Well,’ she says slowly, ‘there is a child psychiatrist I know. We’ve used him before, with children here. Dr Strickland. He works at the Arbours Clinic. It’s possible he could take Sylvie on for some play therapy.’
‘All right. We’ll see him,’ I say.
‘Good,’ she says. Her smile is switched back on again, her hockey-mistress buoyancy restored. ‘I think that’s an excellent decision. I’ll write to him, then,’ she tells me.
Outside, there’s the drip and seep of the thaw, and the sky is blue and luminous. I walk rapidly along the road, through the moist, chill air and the dazzling yellow sunlight. I feel fragile—cardboard-cutout thin, my vision blurred with tears.
CHAPTER 8
I hunt around in my kitchen. I’m out of chicken nuggets, which are Sylvie’s favourite dinner, but there’s cheese, and plenty of vegetables. Tonight I will make something different and healthy, a vegetarian crumble. I fry tomatoes and onions, stir in chickpeas, make a crunchy topping of breadcrumbs and grated cheese.
Sylvie is in the living room, playing with her Noah’s Ark. She has lots of plastic animals, and she’s putting them in long straight lines, so they radiate out from the ark like the beams from a picture-book sun. She sings a whispery, shapeless song. She’s wearing her favourite dungarees that have a pattern of daisies. When she bends low over her animals, her silk hair swings over her face.
While the crumble cooks, I clean and tidy everywhere, so the flat is gleaming and orderly. There’s a rich smell from the oven, a luxurious scent of tomatoes and herbs, like a Mediterranean bistro. My jaw still aches, with a blunt, heavy pain: perhaps this is something more serious than neuralgia. I work out the date of my last dental check-up. Four years ago, when I was pregnant, when you get treated free.
I bring the crumble to the table, serve up Sylvie’s portion.
‘We’re having something a little bit different today,’ I tell her.
I start to eat. I’m pleased. It tastes good.
Sylvie moves a chickpea around on her plate with her fork.
‘I don’t like it,’ she says.
‘Just try it, please, sweetheart. It’s all there is to eat today. We’re out of chicken nuggets.’
‘I don’t want it,’ she says. ‘It’s yucky. It tastes of turnips.’
‘You don’t know that. You can’t know what it tastes of. You haven’t even tried it. Anyway, when have you had turnips to eat exactly?’
‘I do know, Grace.’ She pokes a chickpea with her fork and raises it to her face and smells it with a noisy, melodramatic sniff. ‘Turnips,’ she says.
I hear Karen’s voice in my head, brisk and assured and sensible, knowing just what she’d say. You can’t let her have her own way, just because she doesn’t like vegetables. Children need boundaries, Grace. You can’t always let her get away with everything. She’ll run rings around you…
‘Sylvie, look, I want you to eat it. Just some of it, just a bit. If you don’t at least try it, there won’t be any pudding.’
She puts her fork on the table, precisely aligned with her plate, with a sharp little sound like the breaking of a bone.
‘I don’t want it.’ Her face is hard, set.
‘Sylvie, just eat it, OK?’
My chest tightens. I feel something edging nearer, feel its cool breath on my skin. But I try to tell myself this is just an everyday argument—a child refusing to eat, a parent getting annoyed. I tell myself this is nothing.
Her eyes are on me. Her gaze is narrow, constricted, the pinpricks of her pupils like the tiniest black beads. She looks at me as though she doesn’t recognise me, or doesn’t like what she sees.
‘I don’t like it here,’ she tells me. Her voice is small and clear. ‘I don’t like it here with you, Grace.’
The look in her eyes chills me.
I don’t say anything. I don’t know what to say.
‘I don’t like it here,’ she says again.
I stare at her, sitting there at our table in her daisy dungarees, with her wispy pale hair, her heart-shaped face, this coldness in her gaze.
Rage grabs me by the throat. I want to shake her, to slap her, anything to make that cold look go away.
She pushes the plate to the other side of the table, moving it carefully, not in a rush of anger, but