‘Hi, darling,’ I say cautiously, as she opens the back door of the car and lets herself in, shooting Liam an angry glance at the very nerve of him for sitting in the front seat, her seat this time round.
‘Fine,’ she snaps. I wait until she and Caitlin have put on seatbelts and Teddy resumes the conversation about buns, dogs, Peppa Pig, Mattie, what she did in camp today and how tortoises look nice painted orange. Lexi sits there in stony silence, staring out the window.
‘How was it, Caitlin?’ I ask.
‘Fine.’
OK. Monosyllables. Never good.
‘Did you have an OK day, darling?’ I ask Lexi, knowing that whatever happened it was not an OK day.
‘Fine,’ she repeats.
‘OK,’ I say. Two fines from two girls. Not good.
I drop Caitlin off with a mention to her mother that something happened in ballet camp but I don’t know what. Then, I head for home.
After I unhook Teddy, the three of them escape into the house and Lexi races upstairs to her bedroom and slams the door so hard that I wonder if we have ever checked the hinges on the doors in Kellinch House. Knowing I’m relying on the television babysitter, I plonk Teddy in front of it, turn it on to something she likes, stick a load of Sylvanians on the floor in front of her in case the TV isn’t interesting enough, give her two biscuits to add to my parental guilt, and belt upstairs at high speed. The house is pretty muchchild-proof, but still you have to keep an eye onfour-year-olds or else give them things to amuse them totally for the five minutes you look away. One moment for catastrophe is all it takes.
Lexi’s door is shut and I knock.
‘Lexi, honey, you OK?’
‘Fine,’ says the voice again, only this time it’s shaking.
‘Darling, what’s wrong?’ I ignore all the recent rules about knocking and privacy and just push open the door. My beautiful little girl is sprawled on her bed face down and she’s crying. Her face is stained with tears and the look of utter misery in her eyes makes my heart break.
‘What is it,’ I say with horror, ‘what happened?’ I sit beside her and gather her to me. ‘Tell me, tell me, Lexi, did somebody hurt you, were you bullied, what, what is it?’
‘No, none of those things,’ she says, ‘none of those things.’
‘You have to tell me, Lexi, it’s really important. Did anybody hurt you?’
The things that are going through my head are horrific. There’s rage boiling up inside me. Someone has hurt my daughter and I just want to find out who they are and rip them apart with my bare hands.
‘It’s, it’s nothing,’ she says.
‘Itissomething because you are lying here sobbing,’ I say.
I hold her close to me and let her cry until she’s cried out. I stroke her hair the way I used to when she was little and I croon her name and kiss her head until the shuddering stops.
The joy of motherhood is exquisite but the exquisiteness has an equal match in pain and the pain of being a mother is sometimes just too much to bear. I’d be mugged ten times over, I think at that exact moment, as long as Lexi goes through life without pain. But everyone has pain and I have to teach her how to cope with it.
Right now, I need to know what happened.
Finally, she straightens up and looks at me, her lovely facetear-stained and blotchy, her eyes swollen.
‘Just one of the girls in the class, she knows about Elisa and that I have ... that she’s ...’
‘Your birth mother,’ I fill in before it gets even trickier.
‘Yes,’ nods Lexi. ‘She showed me this thing on an entertainment site and it’s got Elisa on it and some guy she’s going out with and ...’
‘Yes ...?’ I say hesitantly. What has Elisa done now?
‘And there’s an interview with her and she’s so happy, she said, she’s never ever been happier in the whole of her life. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to her,’ Lexi is saying and the tears start to flood again.
‘What’s the best thing that’s happened to her?’ I ask tentatively, having a sick feeling that I know the answer to the question.
