I feel my heart beating just a little too fast.
I can hear his footfall on the stairs, he calls my name.
‘You want another coffee, Megs?’
The spell is broken, I’m awake.
Evening
I’m cool from the breeze and warm from the two fingers of vodka in my Martini. I’m out on the terrace, waiting for Scott to come home. I’m going to persuade him to take me out to dinner at the Italian on Kingly Road. We haven’t been out for bloody ages.
I haven’t got much done today. I was supposed to sort out my application for the fabrics course at St Martins; I did start it, I was working downstairs in the kitchen when I heard a woman screaming, making a horrible noise, I thought someone was being murdered. I ran outside into the garden, but I couldn’t see anything.
I could still hear her though, it was nasty, it went right through me, her voice really shrill and desperate. ‘What are you doing? What are you doing with her? Give her to me, give her to me.’ It seemed to go on and on, though it probably only lasted a few seconds.
I ran upstairs and climbed out on to the terrace and I could see, through the trees, two women down by the fence, a few gardens over. One of them was crying – maybe they both were – and there was a child bawling its head off too.
I thought about calling the police, but it all seemed to calm down then. The woman who’d been screaming ran into the house, carrying the baby. The other one stayed out there. She ran up towards the house, she stumbled and got to her feet and then just sort of wandered round the garden in circles. Really weird. God knows what was going on. But it’s the most excitement I’ve had in weeks.
My days feel empty now I don’t have the gallery to go to any longer. I really miss it. I miss talking to the artists. I even miss dealing with all those tedious yummy mummies who used to drop by, Starbucks in hand, to gawk at the pictures, telling their friends that little Jessie did better pictures than that at nursery school.
Sometimes I feel like seeing if I can track down anybody from the old days, but then I think, what would I talk to them about now? They wouldn’t even recognize Megan the happily married suburbanite. In any case, I can’t risk looking backwards, it’s always a bad idea. I’ll wait until the summer is over, then I’ll look for work. It seems like a shame to waste these long summer days. I’ll find something, here or elsewhere, I know I will.
Tuesday, 14 August 2012
Morning
I find myself standing in front of my wardrobe, staring for the hundredth time at a rack of pretty clothes, the perfect wardrobe for the manager of a small but cutting-edge art gallery. Nothing in it says ‘nanny’. God, even the word makes me want to gag. I put on jeans and a T-shirt, scrape my hair back. I don’t even bother putting on any make-up. There’s no point, is there, prettying myself up to spend all day with a baby?
I flounce downstairs, half spoiling for a fight. Scott’s making coffee in the kitchen. He turns to me with a grin and my mood lifts instantly. I rearrange my pout to a smile. He hands me a coffee and kisses me.
There’s no sense blaming him for this, it was my idea. I volunteered to do it, to become a childminder for the people down the road. At the time, I thought it might be fun. Completely insane, really, I must have been mad. Bored, mad, curious. I wanted to see. I think I got the idea after I heard her yelling out in the garden and I wanted to know what was going on. Not that I’ve asked, of course. You can’t really, can you?
Scott encouraged me – he was over the moon when I suggested it. He thinks spending time around babies will make me broody. In fact, it’s doing exactly the opposite; when I leave their house I run home, can’t wait to strip my clothes off and get into the shower and wash the baby smell off me.
I long for my days at the gallery, prettied up, hair done, talking to adults about art or films or nothing at all. Nothing at all would be a step up from my conversations with Anna. God, she’s dull! You get the feeling that she probably had something to say for herself once upon a time, but now everything is about the child: is she warm enough? Is she too warm? How much milk did she take? And she’s always there, so most of the time I feel like a spare part. My job is to watch the child while Anna rests, to give her a break. A break from what, exactly? She’s weirdly nervous, too. I’m constantly aware of her, hovering, twitching. She flinches every time a train passes, jumps when the phone rings. They’re just so fragile, aren’t they? she says, and I can’t disagree with that.
I leave the house and walk, leaden-legged, the fifty yards along Blenheim Road to their house. No skip in my step. Today, she doesn’t open the door, it’s him, the husband. Tom, suited and booted, off to work. He looks handsome in his suit – not Scott handsome, he’s smaller and paler, and his eyes are a little too close together when you see him up close – but he’s not bad. He flashes me his wide, Tom Cruise smile, and then he’s gone, and it’s just me and her and the baby.
Thursday, 16 August 2012
Afternoon
I quit!
I feel so much better, as if anything is possible. I’m free!
I’m sitting on the terrace, waiting for the rain. The sky is black above me, swallows looping and diving, the air thick with moisture. Scott will be home in an hour or so and I’ll have to tell him. He’ll only be pissed off for a minute or two, I’ll make it up to him. And I won’t just be sitting around the house all day: I’ve been making plans. I could do a photography course, or set up a market stall, sell jewellery. I could learn to cook.
I had a teacher at school who told me once that I was a mistress of self-reinvention. I didn’t know what he was on about at the time, I thought he was trying it on, but I’ve since come to like the idea. Runaway, lover, wife, waitress, gallery manager, nanny, and a few more in between. So who do I want to be tomorrow?
I didn’t really mean to quit, the words just came out. We were sitting there, around the kitchen table, Anna with the baby on her lap, and Tom had popped back to pick something up, so he was there too, drinking a cup of coffee, and it just seemed ridiculous, there was absolutely no point in me being there. Worse than that, I felt uncomfortable, as if I was intruding.
‘I’ve found another job,’ I said, without really thinking about it. ‘So I’m not going to be able to do this any longer.’ Anna gave me a look – I don’t think she believed me. She just said, ‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ and I could tell she didn’t mean it. She looked relieved. She didn’t even ask me what the job was, which was a relief, because I hadn’t thought up a convincing lie.