city coming into view. “Ålesund!” Gaia shrieked, making Coco start. I reached back and popped her pacifier in her mouth and she quietened. “Can we go to the park?”
I told her yes, though in reality I had no idea where the park was, nor whether we could feasibly reach it. Ålesund was a beautiful archipelago of colorful buildings surrounded by twinkling blue fjords and dramatic, white-tipped mountains. I thought of Aurelia coming here to visit her grandparents, perhaps when she had been as young as Gaia was. How excited she must have been to be building a home here, now.
So why did she kill herself?
* * *
—
I was perhaps the proudest nanny there ever was at Coco’s choice of party theme—octopuses, which she pronounced “puss puss” with pouted lips while fervently clapping her hands. We were learning about them in our Montessori lessons. Well, actually we were learning about sea life, but both Coco and Gaia had developed a stealthy fascination with octopuses—all due to their having three hearts and blue blood—and so I improvised around that. I found some household items that had a sucker pad—a dish scrubber from Ikea, a soap dish, and a toilet plunger—and demonstrated the strength of an octopus’s suckers along its arms. At least until Coco got her face stuck in the toilet plunger, and then Gaia tried to inject herself with biro ink to make her blood blue; thus we moved hastily to safer octopus facts, such as their tendency to chew off their arms when bored.
For the party, I managed to make octopus decorations out of balloons suspended from the ceiling with eight streamers attached to them. I drew faces on clementines and cut the peel to sit outward like tentacles. I even made an octopus cake topping by rolling purple icing into a ball, sticking some goggly eyes into it, and then rolling eight smaller tube shapes for arms. Finally, I made Coco a little octopus costume by repurposing an old green bedsheet and some of her old tights stuffed with foam for the legs. Tom had some round white stickers in his office, and I stuck them all along one side of the legs as suckers. Coco was over the moon, clapping her hands and trying to suction all her toys.
The party, however, was a little dreary. Once everyone had given their gifts—which took all of two minutes—Gaia leaned over and whispered in my ear: “I think it’s really sad that Coco doesn’t have any baby friends at her party.”
“We’re her friends,” I said.
“I’m not her friend.” Gaia scowled. “I’m her sister.”
Gaia had a point: the party was a little staid. Tom looked miserable, studying his cup of organic apple juice. Clive and Derry sat in armchairs staring into the abyss of their phone screens. Maren made herself scarce—I don’t think Coco minded too much—and while I had figured that my job was done after organizing the party and hand-sewing the octopus costume, it seemed that the other three adults were expecting me to play host, too. So, for the girls’ sake, I put on a great show, getting everyone up to play Twister, which ended with Derry ramming her foot in Tom’s eye. After that, we played pass the parcel, pin the tail on the donkey, and sleeping lions. By this point Coco was falling asleep, and I told Tom I’d take her up to bed while everyone else enjoyed the cake. She hadn’t even blown out her candle.
As I gathered Coco up against my shoulder and made for her bedroom, Tom approached me.
“Sophie.”
I braced myself for a lecture about the Epic Fail that was my attempt at an octopus cake, or a curt remark about the rubbish Twister game.
“. . . I wanted to say that I really appreciate you making this birthday so special,” he said. “I was dreading this, but Coco looked so happy in her costume and . . . thank you. Really.”
He sounded so sincere, so moved, that I didn’t know what to say. “It’s a pleasure,” I said.
He looked at Coco asleep on my shoulder. “Maybe I’ll put the girls to bed tonight.”
“Are you sure?” I said, and he nodded.
“Well.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll give it a go.”
He took Coco from me and cradled her in his arms, before turning to reach out for Gaia’s hand.
“What’s Daddy doing?” she asked me.
“Daddy’s putting you to bed,” I explained.
“Come on, pudding,” Tom rejoined. She looked from me to her father, gave a shrug, and