The two little girls don’t talk to her and she doesn’t talk to them either. She sits on a chair in the corner while they do whatever it is they do. She reads a magazine. When they fight it is harder to concentrate on reading. The magazine is in English. The words are like little pieces of grit in her eyes.
The woman keeps coming into the room and going out again. She seems to be looking for something. There are frown lines on her face. The children put out their arms as she passes, like drowning people. Sonia, she says. Sonia.
In the evening she hears the man and the woman talking. Their conversation never stops. She wonders how they could possibly have so much to say to one another. And in English, too — she knows that isn’t a problem for them, but it makes her feel tired. She has started to take three pills at night instead of two. All day she is exhausted and then at night she is flung about in a whirling kind of chaos, all the lights on in her head, spinning and spinning in the splintered darkness. Kurt says her mind is having trouble processing all this new information. He says it will pass. He asks if she’s thinking in English yet.
The woman isn’t pleased with her any more.
Sonia, she says, we need to have a talk.
Maybe later, Sonia says.
It is first thing in the morning and her head is so stuffy with pills she can barely see the coffee grains she is trying to spoon into her cup.
I’m taking the children to school, the woman says. There is the sound of broken glass in her voice. When I come back I want to talk.
Sonia sits at the kitchen table in her pyjamas, waiting. She has found an over-sized cup in one of the cupboards and that is what she makes her coffee in. It is as big as a bowl. She fills it right to the top, the hot milk frothy and sweet, just a few coffee grains stirred in. It takes her a long time to drink it. Sometimes, when she’s finished, she makes another one and takes it back to the table. The kitchen is a nice room and she likes to sit here, drinking coffee. A whole morning can pass like that.
The woman returns. She is frowning. She says, you have to get dressed in the mornings. You have to get up and dressed.
I’m tired, Sonia says.
I want you up and dressed and downstairs by eight o’clock in the morning, she says. I want you to help me.
Sonia says nothing.
You need to make friends with the children, she says. It’s not up to them. It’s up to you.
Sonia says nothing.
I want you to cook, the woman says. I want you to cook dinner. I want you to do the laundry. I want you to tidy up around here.
Sonia stares at her. Her eyes feel very wide open. She can’t close them or look away.
You need to do these things, the woman says, or you’re going to have to go home.
The man goes away. The woman says he will be gone for a week. In the evening Sonia sees her through a crack in the sitting-room door. She sits alone, smoking and staring into space.
Sonia takes four pills and in the morning is woken by the sound of banging on her bedroom door. She is too far away to answer. She can hear gulls screaming somewhere outside. She drifts back into a black-edged sleep. Later, the banging starts again.
Yes, she says hoarsely.
Get up, the woman says through the door. Get up now. Downstairs Sonia finds her in the kitchen, washing the floor with a mop. She plunges the mop in the bucket and bangs it against the floor. She chases it into the corners. She is all hard angles and frowning lines. For the first time since she came here Sonia sees something she recognises: anger.
What’s wrong with you? the woman says. Why can’t you get up? Pills. I take some pills, Sonia says.
What pills?
From the doctor. They make me tired.
What are they for? Why does the doctor give you pills?
I stayed in hospital, Sonia says. It was a long time ago.
Why were you in hospital?
Sonia stares at her wide-eyed. She feels suddenly soft, against this hard anger. She feels relieved.
I hurt myself, she says.
On purpose?
Sonia is silent. She wants to smile, to laugh, to dance, but she feels so beautifully soft that all she can do is yield. She gives a little nod.
How long were you there for? In the hospital?
One year, Sonia says. My sixteen year.
OK, the woman says, shaking her head. OK.
The man had entered her compartment on the train. She was going away to boarding school because her mother said she couldn’t be at home any more. At this school you slept and ate your meals, and that was where she was going. The man talked to her while darkness fell outside the windows of the speeding carriage, wadding the flat wastes like a kind of black fog through which the spectral forms of darkened factories sometimes loomed and then vanished. He reminded her of her father, with his steel-framed glasses and his hair with bits of grey in it. He locked the carriage door and he took her long ponytail in his hand and twisted it through his fingers. Then he yanked it so hard she thought her neck would break.
I should have been told this, the woman says. Her arms are folded tight against her chest. She stares out of the window at the garden. Don’t you think I should have been told this?
The man went to prison eventually. Her mother said it was a terrible thing, to ruin a man’s life. She said Sonia must have provoked him. So one evening Sonia cut her wrists, and her arms too for good measure. She was put in a psychiatric hospitaclass="underline" that was where she met Kurt.
I’m going to have to phone the agency, the woman says. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to go home.
I can’t go home, Sonia says. I have nowhere to go.
I’m sorry, the woman says again. She looks at her watch. God, I’m late, she says. I’ve got to pick up the children and I’m going to be late.
She rushes away and Sonia hears the front door close. After a while she goes outside to smoke a cigarette. The sky is iron-grey and heavy. A gust of wind makes the door to the kitchen slam. While she smokes a kind of darkness seems to gather over the garden, to tower over it, growing and leaning like a black cliff. She puts out her cigarette. The rain comes hard and fast. It’s only a few paces back to the house from the garden but by the time she gets in she is wet.
A little while later she hears the front door open, the sounds of footsteps and voices in the hall. Sonia comes out of her room. The woman stands in the hall with the two children. Water drips from them on to the hall floor. The woman wears only a T-shirt: it is so wet that Sonia can see her skin through it. She sees that the younger child is wearing the woman’s coat; the older one has her umbrella. Water runs from the woman’s hair. She is shaking so violently that Sonia can hear her teeth knocking together. She tries to speak.
I, she says. I.
Then, very slowly, her body racked by tremors, she begins to climb the stairs, leaving a trail of water behind her. She passes Sonia without speaking on the landing. The children are still standing, staring up at her, in the hall. She goes into her bedroom and closes the door.
Sonia makes the noodles in cream sauce that her grandmother used to make for her when she was small. Her grandmother lived in a big house in the countryside and Sonia would spend the school holidays there. Sonia loved her grandmother. She puts lots of grated cheese on top of the noodles. She is frightened they won’t like it but the children eat it all.
The woman does not come down. After dinner Sonia goes up and knocks at her door. There is no reply. After a while she opens the door a little. The woman is lying in bed, asleep. Her tangled hair spread over the pillow is still damp. Sonia takes the children upstairs and runs the bath for them. She finds their pyjamas in their rooms. When they try to go into their mother’s room she stops them. Mummy’s sleeping, she says. At midnight she looks in again. The woman is exactly as she was, sleeping, except that the covers are pushed back. She is still wearing the clothes she got wet in.