LITMIR.BIZ

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love, it’s hot,’ I said, but she shook her head. I moved the teapot to the very back of the work surface. I will not be faulted.

      After shuffling back with me to the table, not looking up, she jumped up and whispered to me that she wanted to show the ballroom to the teddies, and ran upstairs.

      ‘She seems a very affectionate little girl,’ offered Nora. Yes, to me. I murmured a nothing.

      Jim’s face was set again. He too had prepared, and had had no idea what would happen.

      ‘Love’s not automatic, you know,’ I said suddenly. ‘It’s not like eyes meeting across a crowded room. You have to earn a child’s love.’ I stopped just as I realized that my words might come over as a comfort, rather than a gibe.

      Nora took them as comfort.

      ‘I’m sure we will earn it. Won’t we, darling?’

      Won’t we, darling. Won’t we, darling. The mantra of the happily nuclear. I don’t hate their being happy. The happiness they have is not the happiness I don’t have. Anyway, I am happy. Quite. I think.

      ‘Uh, yes, yes,’ Jim said.

      He wanted to see pictures of her as a baby. I pointed to one stuck in the door of a glass-fronted cupboard, then relented and handed it across to him. It showed her grinning and curly-mopped in front of a Christmas tree, a dark pixie aged about six months.

      ‘She’s so beautiful,’ he said. Then, ‘How’s it been? Practically? Financially, if you like?’

      I didn’t like.

      ‘Fine,’ I said.

      ‘You go to work and everything? Who looks after her?’

      Do I have to answer these questions?

      Well I decided I would. My reluctance to do anything civil was apparent enough. I wasn’t going to give them actual ammunition.

      ‘I work from home. She goes to a nursery, and spends some afternoons with a friend’s children.’

      ‘But that can’t give you enough time, surely …’

      ‘It does.’ I work in the evenings sometimes, while she sleeps. But I’m not going to tell him that.

      ‘But you don’t have a nanny or anything …’

      ‘We don’t need one,’ I said. ‘Do you work, Nora?’

      It turns out she is a travel agent. Turns out she is rather high up, actually, in travel agenting. Well, I suppose someone has to be.

      Actually I am glad. Judges don’t take babies away from happy homes to give them to career women.

      Lily’s voice came down the stairs: ‘Mu-um, I need you …’

      ‘Excuse me.’ I went up. She wanted to go to the loo.

      ‘Have the persons gone yet?’

      ‘No, love.’

      ‘Can they go soon?’

      ‘I hope so.’

      ‘I hope so back,’ she said. I smiled. ‘I love you,’ I said. ‘I love you back,’ she said. I wiped her bum and said, ‘Do you want to come down?’

      ‘You’re not my mummy but you are my mummy,’ she said.

      ‘That’s right, honey. Janie was your mummy but she died so I’m being your mummy.’

      ‘Who will be my mummy after you?’

      ‘I’ll always be your mummy if you want me,’ I said.

      ‘I want you,’ she said.

      ‘I want you back,’ I said.

      ‘Do they know my mummy?’

      ‘They did, when she was alive. Well, the man did. The woman is his wife.’

      ‘The lady.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘She’s not my mummy.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Children have daddies,’ she said.

      Not now. Why now? How does she know?

      ‘Yes, love.’

      ‘I haven’t got a mummy or a daddy.’

      I hugged her. ‘You’ve got me and Grandma and Grandpa and Brigid …’

      ‘And Caitlin and Michael and Anthony and Christopher and Maireadh and Aisling and Reuben and Zeinab and Larry and Hassan and Omar and Younus and Natasha and Kinsey and Anna and …’ She was off on the game of listing the ones she loved. Reassuring herself.

      ‘And I love mummy even if she is dead.’

      ‘Of course. And so do I.’

      ‘And so do I.’

      ‘And so do you.’

      ‘And so do you. And she loves me too.’

      ‘Yes she does.’

      ‘And when she comes back to life she can come and live with us.’

      ‘She won’t come back to life, darling.’

      ‘But if she does.’

      ‘Yes, if she does. But she won’t.’

      ‘So I’ll live with you for ever and ever.’

      What do you say?

      ‘Mummy?’

      ‘Yes, hon?’

      ‘If you have a baby in your tummy will it have a daddy?’

      Oh, blimey. Maireadh’s pregnant and so’s one of the teachers, so it was bound to come out at some stage.

      ‘Yes, love. But I haven’t got a baby in my tummy.’

      ‘Can I borrow its daddy? If I want one?’

      ‘Do you want one?’

      ‘Yes.’

      We went downstairs. Jim tried to play with the ballroom with Lily but he didn’t have a clue. Anyway his fingers were too big. After another fifteen minutes or so they left. The tea was cold, untouched. Like Nora, I thought, irrelevantly. Though presumably she wasn’t untouched.

      *

      If he wants regular visiting rights it will be very hard for me to get a court to refuse him. No one will accept now that he was violent. Nobody ever proved anything. He hasn’t been, to my knowledge, since Janie’s death. I could try to find out. Funnily enough, Harry might know. Harry always hated him. He might know. If there’s anything to know. Perhaps there is.

      If he wants parental responsibility he will have to apply for it. Because they weren’t married, he has no claim on anything unless Janie or the courts give it to him. And she’s not going to, is she?

      I have parental responsibility jointly with Mum and Dad. I have three years of looking after her. I have something he doesn’t have.

      I don’t think I frightened them off for good. Each of them, separately, seemed to have something in them that meant they would cling on. The tidiness of her clothes and her dark head hummed with efficiency, achievement, the chosen object in the correct place, priorities listed, and carefully polished successes ticked off. She wouldn’t go for what she couldn’t get. But she doesn’t know everything. She doesn’t know children. Perhaps she is beginning to know the desire for them … mother-hunger. Mother-hunger would eat her alive. And those who are astounded by the force of mother-hunger when it hits them are not usually prepared for the force of the tidal wave that follows: the love of a child. The love of a child can destroy nations. Love for a lover is a game next to baby love.

      Конец

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