Conversation has stayed on track, and I find myself starting to relax, but Hailey isn’t fooled.
‘Why is Mummy acting all—’
‘All what? It’s Saturday, she’s in a good mood.’
‘I guess.’ I reach up and loosen her foot from the netting connecting her way towards the fireman’s pole part, the bit that she is always scared to do. So far, I’ve managed to get her to lean forward and hold it, but she never lets go. ‘Do you think she is feeling better?’ Hailey sits down and reaches her feet forward, crossing her pink trainers over on the other side of the pole.
‘I think so. She’s trying really hard, it’ll take time but yeah, I think she’s feeling a bit better. Now come on . . . you can do it.’
Her hands reach forward as she grips the pole.
‘Good. Right, we’ve got this.’ I clap my hands and rub them together. ‘Come on, Hales . . . you can do it.’
Her bottom shimmies closer to the edge, her eyes peeking over the top of the frame of her glasses.
‘OK. Three, two, one!’
Her eyes screw shut as she pulls her bottom away from the edge and slides down the pole.
‘Yeah!’ I pick her up and swing her around, plonking her back onto her feet and giving her a high five.
Jen and Oscar arrive by our sides, a smile fixed on Jen’s face.
‘I did it, Mummy!’
The smile remains and Jen tells her how proud she is. Hailey’s face is reddening with pride. ‘Well done!’ Jen beams. ‘You did it, you got through the tunnel.’ Then the joy in Hailey’s face drops like a stone.
‘Silly Mummy!’ Oscar giggles and begins swinging Jen’s arms forwards and backwards. ‘Hailey got through the tunnel ages ago!’
Jen flaps her hand, as though there is a fly.
But as the day goes on, I can see it. I can see that she is acting . . . Jen is just playing a part on a stage.
Chapter Forty-Three
Jennifer
‘Harder, sweetheart,’ I say, glancing over to Hailey, who is hitting a plastic bag containing ginger-nut biscuits. ‘Think of something that makes you really angry. Look.’ I take the rolling pin from her hand and begin walloping the bag with gusto, my voice raising so she can hear me above the banging. ‘See? I’m thinking about the woman who pushed in front of us at the ice-cream van!’
Hailey giggles, covering her rosebud mouth with her hand, as though she’s afraid of letting me see that she’s happy.
I pass the pin back to her. ‘Got it?’
She nods and begins hammering the bag, biting down on her lip as she does.
‘That’s it!’
Her eyebrows pull together as she continues. I ignore Kerry, who is licking her finger and turning the pages in the recipe book. I turn away from them and begin breaking up the white chocolate into a pan.
‘You’re doing it wrong, you’re going to burn the chocolate.’
I’m not going to burn the chocolate.
I ignore her. Kerry never baked, she wouldn’t have a clue about the best ways of melting chocolate, but she continues to berate me, telling me the gas is on too high, that I should be using a bain-marie.
You don’t even know what one of those is!
Kerry wouldn’t have known a bain-marie if it bit her on the arse. I grind my teeth, resisting the desperate urge to tell her to fuck off.
Once finished, Kerry has gone and the biscuits inside the bag have been reduced to rubble. ‘All done?’ I ask, but Hailey has started crying. I take the rolling pin from her while tears stream down her face. ‘What’s wrong?’ I ask.
She doesn’t answer but instead runs to Ed, who is standing in the doorway, his face pale. She buries her head in his stomach, wraps her frail arms around him and holds on tightly.
‘I think she’s caught her finger with the rolling pin.’ He nods, concern etched in the lines around his mouth. ‘I’ll grab an ice pack.’
Chapter Forty-Four
Ed
If someone were to walk in right now, they would see the clean tidy house, they’d see my beautiful wife making a cake with our cute daughter, and they might be envious. They would see my chubby, cupid-like son slurping the last of his spaghetti and putting his bowl into the dishwasher. But what I’m about to do would change that. It would show them the cracks.
I want to pretend that everything is OK, I want to believe that she is getting better, but she isn’t. My fingers swipe the screen and I select the video-camera icon. I point my phone in their direction; it doesn’t seem weird that I’m filming them, why would it? From the outside it looks like a happy occasion, mother and daughter baking together.
Hailey is bashing the contents of a plastic bag and Jen is smiling at her. She turns her back and begins breaking up chocolate into a pan but as she does it, she takes furtive glances back towards Hailey. And then goose bumps run up my body. She looks into air and shakes her head, her mouth opening and closing. She is having a silent argument with herself, her hand landing on her hip, a gesture of annoyance.
‘Just fuck off!’
Hailey has stopped bashing the biscuits and is staring at her mother. There is fear in her eyes. Jen turns back to Hailey, oblivious to what has just happened.
Jen doesn’t know what she has done wrong, that much is clear. Or she’s pretending she doesn’t know; fussing around fetching an ice pack, consoling Hailey about her hand, making jokes about how strong Hailey is and how hard she must have been bashing the biscuits.
But Hailey’s hand isn’t hurt. Hailey is hurt. My daughter is hurting because she has seen the same thing as I have filmed on my phone: she has just witnessed her mother acting like she’s crazy and shouting ‘Fuck off’ at the top of her voice. But I let the charade carry on; I let Jen carry on acting and then I take the kids upstairs for their bath. I put them into their swimming gear and empty a packet of Jelly Bath into the water, turning it into green goo while Jen carries on cooking our ‘romantic dinner’ as though everything is normal. I can hear her now, humming away while the smell of garlic rises up from the kitchen.
Hailey’s eyes are red, even though she is giggling as I tip a cup of green slime onto Oscar’s head. I stay in the bathroom as long as I can, keeping the kids . . . keeping the kids: keeping the kids away from their mother.
She comes upstairs as they climb into bed and I try to ignore how my body tenses when I hear her feet on the stairs.
‘Mummy! I haven’t had any pudding!’ Oscar folds his arms.
‘You had pudding first, remember, you had ice cream then dinner.’
She winks at me and I smile back, but I can tell by the way Jen is looking at me that I haven’t quite pulled the smile off.
‘You can have some cheesecake tomorrow.’ She ruffles his hair, kisses him on the forehead and touches his nose with hers.
I follow her out of the room but put my hand on her shoulder as she walks towards Hailey’s room, turning her towards me. I sniff the air dramatically. ‘Is something burning?’ I ask.
She sniffs too. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘I’ll say goodnight to Hailey, you’d best just check.’
I try the smile again. It’s met with uncertainty by Jen, but she nods and goes downstairs.