I pick up a shiny book with thin pages off the coffee table and flick through it. I can’t read the words because I don’t go to school that much and the pictures are rubbish, like photographs of people looking sad and a whole page all about make-up. I like it best when Mummy tells me stories with her mouth and face. She says she just ‘makes it up as she goes along’, but I think she’s a better storyteller than Roald Dahl. Monty and Mary is my favourite. It’s about two twin monkeys who get into mischief. My most favourite of all is a story where Monty and Mary get accidentally locked in the ball pool at Ikea, and have to stay there all night, playing among the multicoloured balls. When Mummy is having an Eeyore day, she says Monty and Mary have gone on holiday and will be back soon. She never tells me where they’ve gone on holiday though.
My belly begins to crumble into tiny pieces and so I go into the kitchen and switch on the light. My eyes flick up towards the calendar, which hangs by its neck from a rusty nail stuck into the kitchen wall. I don’t understand what the numbers mean, but I like looking at my tiny brown handprints, which are supposed to be Rudolph’s antlers, and the picture of me in the middle which Miss Pearson took with her camera at Christmas time. She put some red paint on a paper plate in the middle of the blue table and I was allowed to dip my pinky finger in and dot my nose, which was really fun.
After I look at the calendar, I stand on the kitchen stool, which is a little wobbly, and stretch really far into the cupboard until my hand skims a plastic bag. The bread is a little green in places, like snot, but I pick it out and pop two slices into the toaster. Peter, the man who comes sometimes to check on me and Mummy, said I should never boil water in the kettle, but Mummy never seems to mind, and she always says ‘ta, love’ whenever I give her a cup of tea, even if sometimes she says it’s ‘as weak as piss’. She smiles though and ruffles my hair so I think she’s only kidding.
A few moments later, I juggle the hot cup of tea and a plate of toast in both hands as I make my way towards the stairs. It’s a little hard to carry both things at once but I stick my tongue out and make my eyes really wide so I can concentrate. As I pass the living-room door, I notice The Wizard of Oz on the television. Mummy says The Wizard of Oz is a classic, and that they ‘don’t make ‘em like that any more’. I like it too, but only the colourful bit, and not the witch who tries to hurt Dorothy or the enormous green Wizard who is just a head.
Once I reach the top of the stairs, I put the plate of toast in the bend of my arm and turn the doorknob to Mummy’s bedroom with the other. Mr Moon has gone to sleep now and switched on his bedroom light. This means Mummy’s room is now bright and colourful, like when Dorothy’s house falls from the sky and lands in Oz.
At first I think Mummy is playing a game. But Mummy doesn’t play games very often.
Especially not with my skipping rope.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Louisa
Now
A sharp hammering peels open my eyelids. I squint up at the shaft of bright light which shines directly on me through the slender gap in the bedroom curtains, dust particles floating around as if trapped in a twister. Surely I haven’t slept all night? A quick glance to the right tells me that James isn’t by my side and the memory of him storming out of the bedroom several hours ago is like a slap in the face. The shrill knocking gains momentum, matching the headache which rests just above my eyes.
Reaching over to the bedside table, I rummage around for my phone and, finally locating it, peer at the time. 9.50 a.m. ‘Shit, the health visitor!’
I sit bolt upright, another thought hollowing out my insides. ‘Cory!’ I peer into the Moses basket, which is positioned to the side of the bed, exhaling a shaky breath when I realise he’s only sleeping. ‘Oh, thank God.’
The knocking gains momentum, increasing in volume and speed. Shit, shit, shit. I look down at my pyjama top, the silky fabric stuck to my skin, dark patches spreading around my nipples from where milk has leaked out during the night. A quick glance over at the mirrored wardrobe reveals dark bags under my eyes, my hair like copper wire. Just ignore her. Ignore her and she’ll go away.
‘Mrs Carter. It’s your health visitor, Carol. Please answer the door.’ The letterbox clatters shut, causing Cory to wake, his cry like a flare in the middle of a desert. ‘Okay, I’m coming,’ I shout, before scooping him up and making my way down the stairs.
The blurred outline of Carol behind the frosted glass sinks my stomach. Plastering a smile onto my face, I open the door wide, an icy-cold chill sweeping past me as I do. She looks me up and down, her expression unreadable. ‘You’re early!’ I say, my words emerging more hostile than I intend.
She looks down at her watch and taps it twice. ‘I think you’ll find I’m right on time.’
As she steps over the threshold, I notice a single card on the mat. The scrawled handwriting is solely addressed to ‘Louisa’.
‘Aren’t you going to pick that up?’ says Carol, her voice now coming from behind me as I make my way down the hallway towards the lounge. I chance a glance back at her, her appearance and manner reminding me of a pissed-off Susan Boyle. Her greying hair appears to grow outwards instead of down and her mottled green cardigan tries and fails to hide enormous breasts. ‘Well?’ she says.
A wall of worry stops me from answering. I can’t allow myself to think about the card right now. Somehow, I have to get through this home visit; at the moment that’s all that matters. ‘I’ll see to it later. If you’d like to come through.’
Seeing the lounge through Carol’s eyes as I nudge open the door causes me to wince. A creased pile of washing balances on the arm of the leather sofa, Cory’s changing mat discarded in the middle of the carpet. On the glass coffee table, several stained mugs fight for space. I turn around to look at her, watch in horror as her nose begins to twitch.
‘I’m sorry,’ I mutter, absolutely mortified. ‘He’s been awake most of the night and we just slept in.’
She pats down her cardigan, her eyes rolling over the width of the room. ‘Perhaps you ought to see to him… poor mite appears to have soiled himself.’
A pungent aroma hits the back of my throat as she finishes speaking. Nice one, Cory, way to make an impression!
‘I really do apologise for this,’ I say a moment later, as I lay Cory down onto the changing mat, inwardly pleading with him not to kick his legs and arch his back like he normally does. I pop open his Babygro, Carol’s hot stare burning one side of my face, her incessant humming fraying my nerves. I hold Cory’s legs together at his ankles and slide the soiled nappy out from underneath him, doing my upmost to stick it together with one hand before discarding it into a nappy bag. Carol clears her throat loudly, her shiny black court shoe wordlessly reprimanding me as it taps incessantly on the carpet. ‘I bet you always catch mothers unprepared, don’t you?’
‘Not really.’
‘Oh.’ Panic wedges itself into my throat as I continue to fiddle around with the sticky tabs of the clean nappy. Cory is now shrieking, his face an unhealthy shade of red. I know his nappy’s on too loosely the moment I pick him up; it hangs down like a heavily laden shopping bag, earning me another tut of disapproval from Carol. His clean Babygros are upstairs in the nursery and I’m not sure if it’s appropriate to leave him screaming while I go upstairs and get them. I know his feed is long overdue and the bottles are sitting empty in the steriliser. Why did you choose today to have a lie-in, Cory? Why, baby, why? ‘I need to make up his bottles, he’s hungry,’ I say to Carol, looking up in order to judge her response.
‘Evidently!’
‘Shall I go and prepare his feed then?’
‘Well, I think that would be wise, don’t you?’ She raises her wiry eyebrows as if I’m stupid. ‘And while you’re doing that I’ll carry out my checks. I haven’t got all day, you know!’
A hot flush spreads into prickly heat under my pyjama top. Picking up Cory’s worn Babygro, I place it down on the carpet, ready to dress him.
‘Leave it!’ she sighs. ‘I’m hardly going to weigh him with his clothes on. Or with a nappy on come to that!’