The Perfect Mother

‘By the way,’ he says then, ‘I know why I know you.’

‘Oh.’ I feel that I am falling.

‘Aimee Graves,’ he says. His tone is easy, as if it’s the most natural thing.

He hears my quick intake of breath.

‘I’m right, then,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry—perhaps I shouldn’t have talked about it here.’

He turns toward me: he has a frown like a question.

For a moment, I don’t answer, I don’t know what I think. There are two things at once: this fear that makes my pulse so thin and fast and jagged, and a strange voluptuous sense of relief, of wanting to open myself up to him completely.

‘You know her?’ I say.

‘I met her once,’ he says. ‘It was a story I was researching.’

‘She’s alive, then, she’s OK?’

‘She’s OK,’ he says.

‘So you know all about me,’ I say, quite lightly.

‘I didn’t say that,’ he says.

I can see Daisy coming; it’s the end of the conversation. Daisy is with Megan, who has her arm around her. She looks so pale, so different from the other girls. She says goodbye to Megan and comes to me. I hug her, she sinks her face into me. Fergal pulls away a little, but holds his umbrella above us.

‘OK?’ I say, my mouth in her hair.

‘Mmm.’ She’s trembling a little.

I take her bag, as you might with a much younger child. She doesn’t protest at this indignity.

‘Catriona, if you want to talk some time,’ says Fergal. ‘I mean, I could explain.’

I nod. He moves off to find Jamie.

The rain is easing up now. There’s a gleam of sunlight between the patchy clouds, and a rainbow flung across the sky behind us. I point out the rainbow to Daisy, but she doesn’t turn.

We walk back to the car. I feel shaken.

I open the car door for her. ‘Look, I brought Hannibal for you. He’s missed you,’ I tell her.

‘Honestly, Mum, he’s a cuddly toy,’ she says. ‘And what if somebody sees?’

‘Nobody can see,’ I tell her.

She tucks him under her arm.

I watch her in the mirror.

‘So was it OK today?’ I ask her.

‘My stomach hurt,’ she says. ‘I wanted to come home but Mrs Griffiths wouldn’t let me. She said, “Well, what should I do? I can’t send you home when you’re hardly ever here.”’

We drive to the doctor’s through the white shine of the puddles.

‘Did anything interesting happen?’ I say.

‘We had to do our New Year wishes,’ she says.

‘So what did you put?’

‘I put world peace and a cat. We all put world peace, and Kieran put, “For my Dad to get his new kidney.” Mrs Griffiths said if we put world peace we should put it first, but when we came to Kieran she said, “Well, which do you think is the more important?”’

There’s a lump in my throat, but I don’t know why. There are so many things to cry for.

CHAPTER 7

I have never seen Dr Carey before; she must be new, or a locum. She’s wearing a crisp red jacket with shiny buttons, and she has short elfin hair and upward-tilting eyebrows. She seems earnest, conscientious, pretty in a wholesome schoolgirl way—someone who’d always be top of the class and make lots of neat notes.

She greets Daisy as well as me. She has an open smile. I immediately like her.

We sit by the desk, Daisy in an armchair, clutching Hannibal. It’s pleasant in here, for a surgery: the walls are blue, and there are toys on the window sill, and on the doctor’s desk a jug of marbled lollipops in cellophane, bright-coloured as balloons.

Dr Carey looks at me expectantly.

‘Daisy’s been ill for four weeks,’ I tell her. ‘She went to school today, but that’s only the second time this term. It started with flu and she’s never really recovered.’

‘Oh, dear. How horrid for you,’ says Dr Carey to Daisy.

Daisy shrugs, embarrassed.

I breathe out a little; I feel that we are cared for. This doctor is kind, gentle, warm to Daisy. This time at least we will be understood.

‘Well, Daisy,’ she says, ‘we’d better have a look at you.’

Daisy lies on the couch and Dr Carey feels her lymph glands and her stomach.

‘Well done,’ she says. ‘That’s excellent. That’s absolutely fine.’

Then Daisy stands on the scales and is measured and weighed.

Dr Carey sits back at her desk, gets out a weight chart. A little frown pinches the skin between her eyes. I suddenly imagine how she’ll look when she is older, with stern lines round her mouth and glasses on a chain.

‘Daisy’s really rather underweight,’ she says. ‘She’s on the lowest percentile.’

‘I don’t know what that means.’