Perdita and the dolls are shaking their heads, and Prim speaks up: “Are you saying this to make Perdita feel like a filial slacker? Perdita’s a loving daughter too, OK?”
But Perdita raises her hand and draws a line across the air, separating her opinion from Prim’s. She’s either sticking up for Harriet or saying she could do without this talk of loving daughters. Then, as if realizing she hasn’t made her position clear enough, Perdita Lee leans on her mother’s shoulder, gives her three brisk nods of encouragement, and even suffers her forehead to be kissed. To Perdita, and only to Perdita—the dolls can stay out of this—Harriet says: “Yes, I loved it when my ‘take you for granted until the very end’ mother suddenly seemed to have had a true heart for me all along and told me I should have a child just like me. But that really is a curse no matter who you say it to, so I’m thankful it flopped again. Do you think that could be our family legend . . . that curses just bounce off us? But what I really want to say is—why should you be loving anyway? Yes, you’re a daughter—that’s just how things have worked out. But it’s like I was saying about me and my own mum—because of Margot, I’m a daughter too, and if you love or even like the person who put you in such a situation, then that loving or liking is happening inexplicably.”
Perdita shrugs . . . you pour your heart out to Perdita Lee and she shrugs. The girl drops back onto the mattress so she’s fully horizontal and tucks handfuls of her hair behind her head so her neck is well supported. She closes her eyes, opens them again, taps Harriet’s knee with her foot.
“So I go on,” Harriet says, looking around at the dolls, who immediately begin talking among themselves and making it clear that if some listeners are going to keep being left out like this, there doesn’t have to be a joint bedtime story at all, that there can be one for the dolls and one just for Perdita and her mother, no problem.
“But, dolls! Dolls and Perdita! Are you really going to be like this? What about the scare Gabriel gave me . . . ”
The dolls took a vote. Three to one in favor of hearing about the scare, which was given around the beginning of the fourth month of Harriet’s pregnancy. She no longer went up to see Gabriel at university, but they talked on the phone—argued, really. He had end-of-year exams to take, and what was she trying to do to him, and so on. She booked two appointments at that same clinic in Bradford, the site of all her other no-shows—she used her middle name and his surname this time, so Araminta Kercheval, and she sent him a notification for the first of the two appointments necessary for a medical abortion and hoped the arguments would stop for a while. Her appointment was at a date and time that meant Gabriel couldn’t go with her. She told him she’d go with her mum (Your mum knows???) and he should just take his exam and there was nothing to worry about.
And the scare went like this:
Gabriel called her just after she’d got home from school that afternoon—if she’d gone to the appointment, it would have been about an hour after she’d taken the first round of medication and begun the procedure. How did it go? Are you OK? “How did it go” seemed a bit of a casual way to ask what he was asking, and she told him so.
She looked at the clock and thought, But his exam won’t be over for another half hour, and just as she was thinking that Gabriel said, I’m asking how the other thing went . . . the thing you skipped the appointment for. And he asked if he could come and see her. Gabriel. Are you telling me you missed the first exam of your Law Mods to make sure I was at the appointment? He continued to ask if he could come and see her, and she asked where he was.
Still at the clinic, Gabriel said. Can I come and see you? Don’t you think we should talk?
Yeah, we should, and I do want to. But you sound a bit . . . I don’t know. Let’s talk tomorrow?
No, today. It’ll be OK, Harriet. We’re good in person, remember? Where are you? At home?
No, she said. I’m at the shop. Got to go—bye.
After they hung up she went out of the flat, took the lift down to the ground-floor entrance to the building, and looked out of a window that faced the street. Gabriel was there, and when he saw Harriet, he came up to the security door and pounded on the glass until another tenant stuck her head out of her front door and asked, in very reluctant tones, whether Harriet wanted her to call the police. It didn’t look like the kind of lovers’ tiff that ended with the couple kissing and making up—the man’s face exhibited no emotion whatsoever . . . he had none left. Or he was no Romeo, but a debt collector.
Thanks but there’s no need, Harriet said. She couldn’t wait for the lift to come, so she ran up the stairs, and when she got back inside the flat, she bolted and chained the door. As per prior arrangement, Margot wouldn’t believe this, so Harriet sent Rémy a very long text message.
* * *
—
RéMY ARRIVED ON A MOTORCYCLE. He’d bulked up a lot since she’d last seen him out on the window ledge at Kercheval House, so when Harriet looked through the peephole, she saw a rugged young man in a leather jacket carrying a bouquet of sweet peas. Under any other circumstances she’d have been tickled to receive such a tribute, but when she let him in, she asked him what the flowers were for.
Oh, is this a bad time to woo you? He laughed at her expression. Harriet, a man can never get tired of winding you up. They’re not “for” anything—I just wanted to give you some flowers.
Oh. Thank you. How are you?
I’m well, thanks. Learning the ropes at work. Oh, I’ve got a pet tortoise, and I’m learning a lot from her.
What are you learning?
How to eat lettuce as if it’s caviar. Tell me about your text message . . . what’s all this about wanting me to ask Gabriel where your body is if you go missing?
For once she was reassured by his concentration in reading her lips and hearing all that she said and didn’t say. She confessed that it seemed to her that almost all of this had arisen from her not knowing how she felt. Willful ignorance, in fact. He touched her face—that light touch that almost toppled her—and he uttered a single, regretful Hmph. Then he became business-like. OK, we’re taking this out of his hands. The longer it’s a secret, the more difficult it will be for that cousin of mine to get a grip. By the way, after this you’re never to ask me for anything again.
That’s fair, Harriet said.
I mean really, never, ever.
Yes, I understand.
Of course any de-escalation plan devised by Rémy “fuck this family” Kercheval involved preliminary escalation. It involved calling a family meeting, during which everybody’s face was a masterwork of unsuccessfully concealed emotion except for Ari’s. Ari couldn’t have been more surprised and interested and looked like he was on his first trip to Disneyland. Rémy leaned on her for a moment, his head on her shoulder; she raised her hand and didn’t let it fall; it was less than a moment, really, but he laid his cheek against the cloth of her ragged antiques-shop robe before he took her hand and spoke to them all. Harriet’s pregnant, and we didn’t want to hide that from you anymore. Mum, Dad, Margot, Uncle Ari, Aunt Tamar, I know we’ve already had so much help from you, but we’re going to need even more . . .
Nobody knew how to begin asking what they wanted to ask—what, when, how . . . Tamar’s eyes were on Gabriel, though, and the shallow breaths he drew, as if the air had turned foul. Then he spoke as if he, Rémy, and Harriet were the only three in the room:
You sure it’s yours, Rémy? Really sure?