‘Has he texted again?’
‘It’s not him.’ Her frightened eyes stare into mine.
I glance over my shoulder and see Aisha and Sophie at the kitchen door holding subdued children in their arms. ‘Cait needs some space. She’s got another text, that’s all,’ I lie.
I turn back to Cait, look her dead in the eye, and whisper, ‘Did you go into the living room?’
‘There’s... something... in there,’ she says, her voice rasping.
‘You’re overwrought,’ I say. ‘It’s just the horrible shock about Owen.’
‘No, no,’ she says quietly. ‘There’s blood everywhere...’
Cait’s hair is tangled and her top lip is lined with sweat. She looks slightly post-coital. I take her hands in mine. They feel like porcelain against my warmth. I sense she’d break into pieces with the slightest pressure.
‘Listen to me carefully, Cait. The mind plays tricks sometimes, especially when we’re scared.’
‘Please just look!’ She withdraws her hands and wrings them like a child.
I have no choice. I open the living room door and peer into the room.
‘Oh,’ I say, then shut the door quickly, my mind racing through ideas, a slot machine of turning possibilities. I know something will turn up.
‘I told you!’ says Cait. ‘What is it?’
I wait for the reels. They stop turning, one by one.
‘It looks like Purdy disembowelled our pet rabbit.’
‘A rabbit?’ says Cait.
‘Just a rabbit,’ I say. Her brow wrinkles in disbelief, but I remain firm. ‘Please don’t mention it or Nathan will be inconsolable.’
Cait’s expression changes again. She nods conspiratorially, as if she’s understood something.
‘Now let’s get you a cup of tea. Not a word or we’ll have the worst birthday ever.’
With Cait’s distress ruining the party mood, everyone finds their children and party bags, and starts packing them away. We smile and hug, even though we’ll meet at school pickup in an hour. Aisha supports Cait with a motherly arm, and agrees to take her home, so she can arrange to have the locks changed and call the police.
I head to the living room to tape a hastily constructed sign on the door to repel Aimée, our faeces-intolerant nanny – Cat Shit – Do Not Enter
Chapter6Hamster
The school playground is pitted with unrepaired tarmac and crisscrossed with faded lines. I stand along with another thirty mothers and three fathers, two of whom have found each other and are talking about the best route to Lord’s Cricket Ground. Sophie, Aisha and I are waiting by the classroom doors for our elder children to be personally delivered back to us by their class teacher. Cait, we discover, has gone to her mum’s to wait for the police to call back. As far as I can tell, she has not yet spilled the beans about the ‘rabbit’.
Sophie’s partner’s annoyingly precocious daughter, Ellie, runs out first; her long, light brown ponytail swishing as she shows us all a rather good copy of a Matisse. Sophie opens her arms and hugs her like a woman who hasn’t seen her child in several years. I squeeze Nathan’s hand at my side. He shows me a worm he’s carried all the way to the school.
‘Don’t eat it,’ I say.
‘Can I play for five minutes please, Sophie?’ asks Ellie, patting Jethro on the head.
‘Of course you can,’ says Sophie, who can’t take her eyes off Ellie as she runs across the playground, and within a moment is hanging upside down on a bar alongside two other girls.
‘She’s so talented,’ says Aisha, looking at the painting in Sophie’s hands. I sigh inwardly.
‘No sign of Tor,’ says Sophie, spotting Tor’s nanny waiting for Hero.
‘Healing takes time,’ I say.
