‘But my swimsuit is green.’
‘Oh. Pass me the green one then.’
‘We don’t have any green bobbles.’
‘Yellow?’
‘I have banana ones or lemon. Which do you think, Daddy?’
I look over to where Oscar is listening to our conversation, the scrunch of his nose expressing my own confusion. ‘They’re both yellow. It doesn’t matter, does it?’ I question as Oscar rummages into the hair bobble pot and holds up the bobbles in question in each hand.
Hailey takes a deep breath and I feel the familiar tug of my heart, the pride that sits on my lips as she explains in layman terms the error of my ways.
‘No, Daddy, they aren’t the same. The banana ones go with the bright colours and the lemon go with the pale ones.’ She pushes her glasses up her nose and points to the banana variety.
‘There’re pineapple ones too. What about thems?’ Oscar drops the lemon and dangles the pineapple variety from his finger.
‘Hmmm. What do you think, Daddy?’
‘Well, I think that the tone of your swimsuit is of the lime persuasion so I would go with the pineapple, then you’ve got a tropical theme going on. The banana is a little more pina colada and the pineapple hints at a more refined palate . . . more margarita?’
Girls’ outfits are another thing that I’m finding it hard to negotiate with. It took me ten minutes to work out how to do the straps on Hailey’s swimsuit. They criss-cross her back and attach themselves onto the suit in some weird clip things. Oscar is wearing swimming shorts. One leg through the hole, the other leg through the other. Simple.
Hailey pulls a face that says my dad is weird, then points to the pineapple bobbles. ‘I like the pineapple ones, I think,’ she concludes; Oscar pulls back the elastic and catapults it in our direction, then runs into the kitchen laughing.
I bank this conversation, ready to tell Jen. I find myself doing this, storing the good things into one part of my brain like a filing cabinet. ‘Things that are OK to tell Jen.’ Every night for the past few weeks, Oscar has woken screaming in the middle of the night because he’s had a nightmare. At first, he was easily consoled but last night, try as I might, I couldn’t. It took Hailey to come into his bedroom and snuggle up to him. She sang ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ like Jen does and he soon went back to sleep. That goes into the file marked ‘Things that are not OK to tell Jen’.
‘Can you help me make a volcano, Daddy?’
‘Ouch!’ The pineapple band twangs against my finger. I twist it back into place at the end of Hailey’s plait. ‘A volcano?’
‘Yeah, for the end-of-term science day.’
‘Um . . . OK.’
‘It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to. Rachel Rodriguez always wins anyway.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Her daddy is a gineer.’
‘A gineer?’
‘He makes stuff.’
‘Oh! An engineer. There you go.’ I release the plait and spin her around to face me so I can check that she doesn’t look totally ridiculous.
‘That’s what I said. A gineer.’
‘Well, I got an A in technology so I’m sure we can knock something up that will give Rachel Rodriguez a run for her money.’
‘OK.’ Her face tries to not look impressed, or excited, or anything but nonchalant about the whole thing, but I can see a smile tugging at her clamped-down lips.
I make a mental note to Google how to make a volcano. It’s going to be the best homemade volcano in the history of homemade volcanoes.
I have to make sure of it if I’m going to keep that smile on my daughter’s face.
Chapter Fifty
Jennifer
‘Hi, Jennifer? Jenny?’
‘Just Jen.’ I smile at the psychiatrist.
‘I’m Doctor Popescu. Please, sit down.’
Kerry is watching him, her eyes widening as she mimics me flicking my hair, fluttering my eyelashes and mouthing ‘Just Jen’. I try not to laugh. Dr Popescu is gorgeous and clearly my subconscious is only too aware of this fact. He looks Italian – long nose, dark eyes, thick hair – but his accent is more Eastern European, I think.
Dr Popescu smiles. He has a nice smile, not like Ed’s or anything – Ed’s smile can make me weak at the knees even after all these years – but he’s good-looking, in a carefully maintained gym-and-daily-skin-care-routine kind of way.
‘So, how are things? Dr Faulkner has passed on your notes and explained a little about your situation. I understand you’re taking olanzapine?’
As nothing has changed since taking the antidepressants, my doctor has started to give me some antipsychotic drugs ‘to help control the neural transmitters in your brain’. I baulked at the mention of them, and ignored my husband, this man who was sitting next to me and spouting medical terms like he’d swallowed a whole medical dictionary. I mean, I’m seeing a deceased relative, but does that mean I’m psychotic? I check myself. Nobody has said that. Am I psychotic?
‘And you’re living with your parents?’ he continues.
I nod. ‘Just for a little while, until, well, until . . .’ I look over to Kerry, who is mimicking tying a noose around her neck. He tracks my focus and smiles.
‘And your sister, Kerry . . . How is she today?’
‘I’m very well thank you,’ Kerry replies, perching herself on the end of the desk and grinning at him. ‘Thank you for asking.’
His question has startled me slightly. ‘She’s . . . fine, thank you. She’s sitting on the edge of your desk.’
He tilts his head and smiles at me. ‘You seem pleased that she’s here with you?’
I bite my bottom lip and consider the correct response. He seems to instinctively know that I’m being careful of my words. ‘It’s OK to say you’re pleased she’s here. If I had the chance to talk to my best friend who died of meningitis eleven years ago, I would be smiling too.’ He gets up and gestures to the coffee pot; I nod as he pours me a cup. ‘Milk? Sugar?’
‘Just milk, please.’
He passes me the cup and sits back down again. ‘I’d imagine it must be good to see your sister again after losing her so tragically?’
I nod and take a sip of my coffee.
‘Can you tell me how it feels? To be able to talk to her again?’
I take a moment and try to explain how I feel. The fist of anxiety which is knitted inside my chest flexes as I begin to talk.
‘When Kerry died . . .’
Kerry is miming: her two hands are careering towards each other, fists colliding, as she fakes her own death by closing her eyes, her tongue lolling out of the corner of her mouth. She looks up and grins before giving me a ‘go on’ nod of her head.
‘. . . all I could think about was the logistics of her death. How her chest wouldn’t ever move because her lungs weren’t breathing, how her eyelids would never blink, how I would never hear her laugh. I would think about the gap she had created in our lives, how she wouldn’t be on the end of the phone after I had a bad day or if I heard something funny. For months after she died, these were the things that I thought about. But eventually, those thoughts started to subside and I felt like I was coming to terms with her death, you know?’