We went to Orlando ’s on Bowditch Street, and Lucy had spaghetti bolognese. For once she ate everything on her plate. Then we held hands and walked to the theatre, and she sat through the whole performance transfixed, as still as a statue, eyes as wide as plates. Afterwards she said, ‘That was great. Thank you for taking me to the theatre, Mummy.’ She said she loved me and I said I loved her and we held hands again all the way back to the car. I thought it was a turning point. I decided to do grown-up things with her whenever I could, try to treat her more like a twelve-year-old than a five-year-old.
I must have been stupid or desperate or both to think that would work. An hour ago, when I was tossing and turning in bed and wondering what Lucy and I might do together next-a manicure, the National Portrait Gallery, the cinema-I felt someone tugging on my hair. I thought it was an intruder and screamed, but it was Lucy. Normally when she wakes at night, she doesn’t get out of bed; she yells for me and expects me to come running. But there she was, and she wasn’t upset. She was smiling. ‘Mummy, can we go to the theatre again?’ she said.
‘Yes, darling,’ I promised. ‘Very soon. But you’ve got to go back to sleep, Lucy, it’s not morning yet.’
Could I have handled it better? No doubt my mother would say so. If Lucy had asked her, she would probably have leaped out of bed, even at four in the morning, and searched on the Internet for suitable shows, bleary-eyed but insisting she was full of energy. I’ve asked her, often, how she managed not to feel permanently exhausted when I was little. She puts on a smug little smile, waves her hand dismissively and says, ‘Being tired has never killed anyone. You don’t know how lucky you are!’ Then she tells me an anecdote about someone she met in town whose daughter has triplets, no husband and seventeen low-paid manual jobs that she must do simultaneously in order to feed her family. And I envy this down-trodden labourer that my mother has almost definitely invented for the sole purpose of shaming me, because it sounds as if her life has probably always been appalling. Whereas I had a brilliant life before I became a parent: that is why I find it so hard to cope.
‘I want to go to the theatre again now,’ Lucy insisted. ‘I want to go out for dinner again, with just you.’ I repeated that it was night-time, that no theatres or restaurants were open. She began to scream and howl, hitting me with her fists. ‘I want to go NOW, I want to go NOW,’ she wailed. In the end the only way I could shut her up was by threatening her. I said that if she didn’t quiet down and go back to sleep that instant, I would never take her anywhere again. She stopped punching and yelling, but I couldn’t get her to stop crying, no matter how patiently I explained the situation. In the end I had to sit by her bed and stroke her hair while she cried herself to sleep, and I cried too because my stupid special treat had ended up causing her more pain than if I hadn’t bothered.
Still, at least now I know. Whether I’m kind or utterly selfish makes absolutely no difference. Even if I try my hardest, I cannot avoid the misery, inconvenience, frustration and futility that make up nine-tenths of the experience of having a young child. It is simply not worth it. Even from an investment point of view, for the sake of having grown-up children who visit you when you’re senile and lonely, it’s not worth spending the best years of your life entangled in put-your-coat-on-I-don’t-want-to-put-my-coat-on-but-it’s-cold-I-don’t-like-that-coat-I-want- another-coat-you-haven’t-got-another-coat-well-I-want-one-but-we-have-to-go-out-now-get-into-the-car-I-don’t- want-to-sit-in-the-back-seat-I-want-to-sit-in-the-driver’s-seat-well-you-can’t-sit-in-the-driver’s-seat… That, or a version of it, is the conversation I’ve been having ever since Lucy learned to talk. Why can’t she simply say, ‘Yes, Mummy,’ and do as I ask? She hates it when I’m angry, and I’ve told her over and over again that this is the way to make Mummy happy.
I have never hit her. Not because I disapprove of hitting children-I have pinched and flicked Oonagh O’Hara several times without Cordy noticing-but because sometimes I want to hit Lucy so much and I know I would have to stop almost as soon as I started, so what would be the point? It would be like opening a box of delicious chocolates and only being able to eat one.
In an ideal world, parents would be able to give their children a good, satisfying kicking-a really thorough, cathartic battering-then snap their fingers and have the effects of their violence disappear. Also, it would be good if children, while being beaten, didn’t feel pain; then there would be no need for guilt.
Instead they are delicate and vulnerable, which of course is their most effective weapon. They make us want to protect them even as they destroy us.
14
8/10/07
Sellers knocked on the back of the computer Gibbs was using. ‘Come on, we’re late.’
‘Don’t wait for me, or you’ll be even later.’
‘You don’t want to miss this one.’
‘Why? Something happened?’
‘I’ve just spoken to Tim Cook,’ said Sellers.
‘Is he still shagging that granny?’
‘I doubt it. They’ve been living together for nearly ten years.’ Silence. ‘You’re supposed to laugh at that. I suppose you haven’t been married long enough.’ No response. Sellers tried a new approach. ‘The dental records were a match. The two skeletons are Encarna and Amy Oliva. Were,’ he corrected himself.
Gibbs looked up. If Sellers was right, he might as well stop what he was doing. But since he’d got this far… ‘You go,’ he said. ‘I’ll catch you up.’
‘There’s more. Amy Oliva’s nanny finally-Why do I bother?’ Sellers broke off, impatient. ‘If you’re interested, stop surfing porn sites and come to the briefing. You know they can find out what sites you’ve logged on to?’
‘I’m in Yahoo Mail at the moment.’ Gibbs grinned. ‘Porn sites? How do you know about those, then?’
Sellers gave up.
Once he’d gone, Gibbs typed in his ID and password. Amy Oliva was dead. Her body had been found in Mark Bretherick’s garden. It was optimistic to assume she might have replied to the e-mail Gibbs sent her yesterday.
She hadn’t. The only new message was from Gibbs’ sister. He opened it, saw that it had to do with arrangements for Christmas and closed it again without replying. It was August. Christmas wasn’t until December. You had to draw the line somewhere.
Porn sites. He sniffed contemptuously. Sellers had to be one of those sex addicts he’d read about, like… was it Kirk Douglas or Michael Douglas? The HTCU lot probably had a file on Sellers twenty inches thick. Gibbs thought about Norman Grace, who wore pink shirts and thin stripy scarves wound round his neck. And slip-on shoes. Kombothekra had entrusted the hard disk of Geraldine Bretherick’s laptop to a man who dressed like a woman. Once, Gibbs had seen Norman in the canteen reading a fashion magazine. If he was gay it wouldn’t be so bad, but the dickhead was straight, had loads of girlfriends-fit ones, too. So what was he playing at?
Gibbs was about to get up when he had an idea. Another job for Norman. Come to think of it, he probably didn’t need Norman. He could have a stab at it himself. He went to the Hotmail site. When the sign-in box appeared, he typed in Amy Oliva’s e-mail address, amysgonetospain@hotmail.com. Then he clicked on ‘Forgot your password?’. If it was anything like Yahoo Mail…
It was. Gibbs smiled when he saw the security question: ‘Who wrote Heart of Darkness?’ He typed in ‘Blondie’ and swore under his breath when it didn’t get him in. He tried Debbie Harry, Deborah Harry and Debra Harry before remembering that the Blondie song was called ‘Heart of Glass’. Bollocks. He went to Google, typed in ‘Heart of Darkness’ and discovered that it was a book by a bloke called Joseph Conrad. He clicked back to the Hotmail screen and gave this name he’d never heard of a try.