Nessa reaches for my hand and gives it a squeeze. I stroke her thumb in thanks, putting on a brave smile, and ask Hailey to help me; I glue the wrapping paper onto the inside of the cardboard box. Nessa, Erica and Hailey are making it into a house for the woodlice that have been collected and deposited into a Chinese takeaway container. I glance over to Ed, who is towelling Oscar down; my son’s fingers are pruned and there are grass cuttings sticking to his bare legs. He is completely naked, but Oscar hasn’t a care in the world. I try to catch Ed’s eye, to communicate without talking the way we always used to. But he doesn’t look at me; instead, he averts his eyes. His gaze is fixed to where Nessa and my hands are entwined.
‘Did Kerry really like to do this when she was a little girl?’ Erica asks as I smile and pass her the glue stick.
‘She did.’
‘What else did she do when she was a little girl, Mummy?’ Hailey waits for Erica to finish gluing her wallpaper.
‘Hales, time to go, sweetheart,’ Ed interrupts. Erica quickly passes the glue stick to Hailey. My time with them has gone so quickly, and the tug of longing for my old life almost takes my breath away.
‘Well . . .’ I reach forward and wipe a blob of jam away from Hailey’s cheek.
‘I liked to blow bubble gum.’
‘She liked to blow bubble gum,’ I continue, trying to hold on to the last few minutes before Ed takes them home. ‘Great big bubbles, not your usual ones. She would try out lots of different types and record them in her notepad. There were pictures of the wrappers and a chart of how big the bubbles were, if they popped on her nose they only scored a five. If they hit her nose, that was a ten, and if they made it all the way to her cheeks, they got fifteen. She even started mixing them – adding quarter of a stick of Juicy Fruit was her winning combination.’
‘You never let me have bubble gum, Mummy.’
‘Ah . . .’ I tap the end of her freckled nose and she wrinkles it, her freckles hiding beneath the creases, ‘that’s because once . . . just once, she scored a twenty. She blew and blew, but because she was concentrating so hard on blowing her bubble, she couldn’t speak and she wanted to show me. Aunty Kerry ran towards me, her cheeks were red and the bubble was bouncing up and down, but she tripped and fell. Her face hit the slabs and the bubble gum was all over her nose and she couldn’t breathe. I remember pulling it and pulling it free . . . I was so scared.’
‘What did Aunty Kerry do?’
‘Well . . .’ I pull Hailey onto my knee and stroke her face. ‘She was really scared too, and her chin was all grazed and bleeding, but do you know what the first thing she said was?’
‘Did you see? It was a twenty,’ we say in unison.
‘Did she get another twenty?’
I shake my head. ‘No . . . Grandma wouldn’t let us have bubble gum after that. She loved making those lists, there was one about her insect houses, whether her ladybirds preferred purple or pink.’
‘Hales!’ Ed shouts again, and again disappointment pinches the edges of my smile.
‘Right then, poppet. Let’s put this somewhere to dry and next weekend we can paint the doors with proper grown-up paint. What colour would you like?’
‘Yellow, please.’
‘Yellow it is.’ I kiss the top of her head as she shimmies off my knee and runs over to her dad. I follow her, passing the cardboard house to Ed, careful not to let it fall into the chasm. I hop over and bend down to give Oscar a nose-to-nose kiss. He smells like summer, like plastic, water and cheap ice lollies.
‘Be good for Daddy and I’ll speak to you later. Shall I read you the rest of A Dinosaur Ate My Homework?’
‘No, it’s OK. Daddy has read it to me and tonight he’s reading me . . .’ he cups his mouth and leans into my ear, ‘Captain Underpants.’ And then he dissolves into a fit of giggles.
I stand, and Ed gives me a brief kiss on the cheek, the type of kiss he would give my mother, both of our feet teetering close to the edge of the rift that slices the ground between us. My skin feels cold where his lips have been.
‘I’ll see you at the doctor’s on Wednesday?’ he asks.
‘Oh, um I thought we were going for lunch on Tuesday?’
‘I can’t, Jen. I’m taking too much time off work as it is.’
‘Right, yes, of course. What time shall I be ready?’
‘Can I meet you at the doctor’s?’
‘I can go with her if you want?’ Nessa offers. ‘I’ve got a screening at eleven but I’m free after then?’
‘No.’ The abruptness of his tone smashes through the sounds of summer, through the pop music on the radio, through the wind-up sound of the crocodile who is lopsidedly circling the inside of the pool.
Nessa holds her hands up defensively. ‘Oh-kay . . . I was just offering.’ She rolls her eyes and after the kids hug goodbye she takes Erica inside to get changed, ready for when Daniel picks her up.
‘She was only trying to help,’ I say quietly, folding my arms across my chest.
‘I know. Sorry, I’m just tired and . . .’ I can’t see his expression behind his sunglasses. ‘Never mind. I’ll see you Wednesday.’ The cold kiss is applied again as I watch my family walk away from me, pulling a part of me with them.
Nessa’s hand lands on my shoulder as the gate closes and I reach up to hold it. Daniel arrives moments later, early for once, and I excuse myself, lock myself in the bathroom and cry. I hear the engine of Daniel’s car quieten down the road, blow my nose and return to the garden.
I should have died.
The words float amongst my blurred vision, the end of the sentence becoming hazy, the words becoming weaker, disintegrating and scratching against the inside of my eyelids.
I blink.
‘Do you fancy a beer?’
I turn to face her. ‘I’m not supposed to drink with the tablets.’
‘One won’t hurt!’ Kerry replies. She’s sitting in the pool with a cocktail in her hand and pulls her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose as she shouts over.
‘Sure,’ I say, turning back to Nessa, who has already begun walking back into the house.
A few hours have passed and we’ve had more than one beer. ‘Club Tropicana’ is playing on the radio and Nessa and I are sitting either side of the pool. I lean back against the plastic and watch the distorted image of my legs shimmer beneath the water. I begin chuckling as I talk about how Oscar pulled off his shorts and played in the pool earlier completely naked, without a care in the world.
Kerry is carrying a drinks tray towards us. She takes a glass and passes it to me. In my alcohol-fuelled state, my hand reaches out to take it from her.
‘Nuts,’ I say as I grasp the air.
‘Sorry?’ Nessa asks, swigging deeply from her bottle. I feel embarrassment heat my cheeks, but I giggle at the ridiculousness of my action nevertheless.
‘I’ve just tried to take a cocktail from Kerry.’ I shake my head and let the bottom of my body slide along the pool until my face submerges beneath the water. I hold my breath and watch as pockets of air escape my mouth before I push myself back up.
Nessa watches me with interest and then shakes her bottle. ‘Refill?’