The Mistress - Jill Childs Page 0,64

me. Okay? It’s okay to talk about it.’

Anna said, ‘I ate and ate and was sick on the floor.’

I frowned. ‘Pardon?’

‘Miss Fry taught me that.’

‘When? You were sick at school?’

Anna laughed, delighted at having tricked me. ‘I ate and ate and was sick on the floor. Eight eights are sixty-four. Get it? It’s maths.’

I had the sense I’d just lost the chance to make progress with that difficult conversation, to talk with her about Ralph. Her mind was already elsewhere.

She squirmed out of my arms and ran off to play and, for a while, that was that.

The second time, she raised it herself, out of the blue, one evening, about a week later.

I’d just read her two chapters at bedtime from a story about mice detectives and she’d laughed and bounced on her bed and generally seemed her normal boisterous self.

Then she asked, as I bent to kiss her goodnight, ‘Is Daddy back tomorrow?’

I stopped and stared at her, the mood suddenly changed. She was looking at me with such hope, such innocence, it broke my heart. ‘No, sweetheart. I’m sorry. They’re still looking for him, remember?’ What else could I say? I wanted to tell her more. Desperately. But she was too young to understand.

‘In the water?’

That was new. Someone at school must have said something about them dragging the reservoir. I perched on the edge of the bed and opened my arms to her.

‘Everywhere. They’re looking really hard, but they haven’t found him yet.’ I held her close, steadying my breathing, avoiding looking her in the eye.

‘But why did he go out?’ She pulled away, cross. ‘Without me?’

‘He went for a walk, petal. It was very late. Past your bedtime. You were asleep in bed.’

‘Wait a minute! He went for a big walk – in the dark?’ She laughed softly. ‘Daddy, that is so not a good idea!’

I kissed her forehead and she wrapped her arms round my neck and pulled me lower.

‘Silly Daddy.’

I sat in the quietness, thinking about her, wondering at what point she might grieve. I wondered if I ought to launch a new conversation with her about her feelings. Or if, at seven years old, she was better off handling it all just the way she was doing, on her own terms, in her own time.

I picked up a book and tried to read but I couldn’t concentrate. I read the same few paragraphs repeatedly, realising each time that I hadn’t taken them in. I went through to the kitchen and put the kettle on, then sat on a chair and waited for it to boil, wondering what I was doing.

Was this how Miss Dixon had felt, when she realised Ralph was losing interest? This sense of vacancy, of meaninglessness? Is that what drove her to see the doctor and start amassing pills?

I tried to remember how I’d lived before Ralph. I’d been content, hadn’t I, in my small flat, neat and ordered, busy with books and films and meeting up with friends from university? Their lives had changed too. Everyone had married, one by one, then started families. My closest friends had moved away. That life wasn’t still there for me to step back into. It was history.

And the person I’d been then was nothing more than history too. I thought back to her. A more naïve person, a more optimistic one. What had happened to me, since I married?

I hadn’t stopped loving him, never. But I’d stopped trusting him. I’d stopped believing.

He made elaborate excuses, at first, about where he went. He made a fuss about attending a weekly poetry group which, I was sure, only met once a month.

He’d always fancied himself a bit of an actor and started a drama group for the sixth form, putting on a production each year. Not even the Royal Shakespeare Company could need as many read-throughs and rehearsals as he claimed to attend. It gave him an alibi that stretched over months.

I heard rumours, sometimes, about his affairs. Did he really think I didn’t know? The woman who shared his bed, his home – who was the mother of his daughter?

It wasn’t easy.

I remembered lying in bed, muscles taut, listening to Ralph as he rattled his key in the front door lock and banged about downstairs, clearly the worse for the drinks. His footsteps mounted the stairs. When he drew back the duvet and crawled into bed beside me, his breath fell in low, warm puffs against my shoulder.

I kept my eyes closed, my