‘You can talk.’
‘Fair point. Look, I understand if you need to get home for Isla.’
Briefly I mention Ruki.
‘Well, I’m going to stay here and finish off a few bits and pieces and grab some takeaway, so if you’re not going out tonight on a hot date and fancy some company…’
I hesitate, before hearing Lizzie’s voice again. ‘Aren’t you fascinated to know what is going on behind closed doors, because believe me, there’s a story.’ And now I know from Jeremy that Lizzie is right.
I call Ruki to see if she can stay on. When I say something’s cropped up at work I sense she’s convinced I’m on another date with a mystery man.
‘I’ll tell you about Dan on two conditions,’ I say, when I hang up. ‘One, you tell me what’s really going on between you and Spencer.’
‘And two?’
‘I want Thai.’
He smiles. ‘Sure. But I asked you first. What made Dan come back?’
20
2006
Isla is three. I hold her up to the window as we wait for Rosie, our friend from the portage team to arrive. We’ve been seeing Rosie for over a year now, she visits us once a week. People like Rosie want to encourage a child’s development by playing, communicating and learning in a fun interactive way. I was sceptical at first; the idea of someone coming round to teach me how to play with my child felt awkward, insulting even. However, I was wrong; it’s not like this at all.
The first time Rosie visited us, she burst into our sitting room, a bundle of energy, carrying a box bulging with toys. She was dressed in a red tracksuit, long black hair scooped into a high ponytail. Isla had clung on to my legs saying, ‘Don’t want her here.’ She’d probably feared it was yet another of those physios who was about to pull her legs. When I asked Rosie if she wanted a cup of tea, Isla followed me into the kitchen, crawling on all fours, telling me to make her go away. But Rosie quickly won her over.
‘Yay!’ Isla waves when Rosie parks outside our house, beeping the horn inhonour of her arrival. ‘Toot toot.’ Isla giggles. ‘Orange car!’
Soon Rosie and Isla are playing in the sitting room. ‘Do you want to look in my box, Isla?’ Isla plunges her hand deep inside. When she lifts her hand out it’s covered in foam. ‘Ha ha ha!’
‘There are lots of special things in the box,’ Rosie continues.
Isla puts her hand in again, clearly enjoying the sensation of foam against her skin. She pulls out a rubber snake, throws it across the room. ‘Hiss hiss,’ she says, ‘ha ha!’
Next Rosie puts up a little washing line that extends from the top of the television to the armchair. As I rejoin them with a tray of tea and squash, I watch as Isla takes a peg from the basket and wobbles her way to the line to hang up a pair of stripy socks. A part of me dies inside every time I see her walk. When we are out and about she needs a small walker frame, similar to a zimmer frame, only it works back to front. Isla can’t walk at all with feet flat on the ground because her knees and feet roll inwards too much; instead she moves on tiptoe, the rest of her foot almost curling into a ball and her hips swing because her muscles are so tight. Sometimes the nerves in her legs spasm and Isla wallops her leg with frustration, as if to say, ‘You’re not to do that!’ Itbreaks my heart the way she looks at me as if to say, ‘Make it go away, Mummy.’
Rosie stands close behind, watching as Isla zigzags across the room, clinging on to furniture and anything else she can grab, to steady herself. ‘What happened here?’ Rosie asks Isla, pointing to her lip, which is cut.
‘Fell,’ Isla says, giggling. ‘Splat!’
Isla crawls so fast now that often she falls flat – ‘splat’ we call it – on the ground. She has a blackened front tooth from a previous fall.
‘Oh, look at you!’ I say, when she turns to me, the socks now hung wonkily on the line.
‘Proud, Mummy?’
‘Very proud.’ When she smiles I catch a glimpse of Dan. I don’t want to, I can’t bear to be reminded of him, yet Isla is becoming more like her father every day.
Isla and Rosie are now playing with an animal puzzle. ‘Baaaaa!’ she says when Rosie holds up the sheep. Gently she places her hand over Isla’s and together they fit the piece into the right slot.
As they carry on playing with the puzzle, my mind drifts to the conversation I had with Granny last night. I’d told her about an operation I’d researched on the internet. ‘They do it in America. Missouri. It’s called a selective dorsal rhizotomy. They cut the nerves in the spine, the nerves that are sending the wrong messages to Isla’s muscles.’
‘It sounds interesting,’ Granny had said cautiously.
‘I’ve read all these stories of children who can now take part in sport, they can walk, run, dance.’
Granny stopped me. ‘And what happens if it doesn’t work?’
