The Playground Read online

  ‘She’s had a wonderful morning and just one little accident,’ Miss Meredith said, handing me her wet knickers in a bag.

  ‘OK, what’ll we do?’ I said, with a sudden surge of energy and love and enthusiasm and that strange childhood excitement that gave me a metallic taste at the back of my throat. I picked her up and swung her around in the air.

  ‘How about the playground?’ she suggested. ‘That’s a good idea,’ she said, complimenting herself.

  ‘Or we could take your bike down to the beach front?’

  ‘No. The playground,’ she whined.

  She won as she always did. We returned home to collect her bike and some gingerbread men biscuits to share (if we met anyone we knew).

  All the school kids had gone and the playground was quiet. Billy Flynn was the only one there, standing at the top of the gardener’s hut with a supermarket trolley: sweaty-haired, red-cheeked, a hand down the front of his shiny grey tracksuit. He let the trolley career over the edge when he saw us, jumped down and landed by our feet.

  ‘Hey, are you the mam that lost the toy?’

  ‘Yes. Addie’s toy rat. A few weeks ago.’

  ‘I think I know where it is. Will I show her?’ he asked, offering Addie his hand.

  ‘OK, great! Thank you. Where did you find it?’ I said, keeping up with them.

  He led us to the sandpit, kicked off its plastic cover.

  ‘There you go now. There’s your ratty.’

  We peered in at a rotten carcass. Its stomach was oozing purple, black, grey. Its mouth was open; sharp, yellow teeth exposed. Maggots scattering. Addie sought out my arms.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. That’s disgusting, you twisted little bastard!’ I pushed my child backwards. God, my language. I was going to have to bring this up with Belinda; he couldn’t go on terrorising Addie like this.

  He burst into laughter, backed off grinning.

  We made our slow, ambling way around the square. Most of the windows of the houses were dark, their driveways empty of cars. I’d never seen a single person come or go out of the new colonial-style homes in the small estate at the corner. With its white pillars and Tarmac driveways, it was like a cardboard facade of a developer’s vision.

  I got ready to smile at the small Filipino nurse who I recognised from the Cherry Glade. She was shuffling towards us, accompanied by a large man with a handlebar moustache and beige slacks belted too high. I recognised him, I’d seen him from my bedroom window smoking and pacing like a depressed polar bear outside the garden shed next door. And on sunny days, out with his fellow inmates, propped beside the picnic table, under a lopsided sunhat. I put my hands on my child’s shoulders and tried to direct her out of their way.

  When they reached the gates of the nursing home, the nurse held him under the elbow and attempted to guide him back indoors. ‘Fuck off!’ the man shouted, flailing his stick at her. ‘Get off me. I’m not going back into that fucking place.’ He pulled away from her and made his way, limping, spitting, bilious, towards us while the nurse ran across the concrete drive of the home, pressed the bell and banged on the door shouting, ‘I need help. He’s really bad this time.’

  I carried Addie and her bike across the road and away from him, to the far side of the square. My nerves were jangled already, I really didn’t need this. I eased her down on the pavement outside number five and felt the warm sweat of clean clothes on my face, heard the comforting drone of a tumble dryer. I glanced through the yellowy light of the basement window: Sophie was at the kitchen sink with her back to us, in loose-fitting Levi’s, a dusty-pink sweater and trainers. Her little girl, Lauren, was dancing about behind her in a tutu.

  As if sensing our presence, Sophie turned around at that moment and looked towards the window, lifting her chin. I gave her a smile, a half-wave, but then she ran her hand through her hair. She was only examining her reflection.

  ‘Come on, Addie, let’s go,’ I said, ushering her ahead of me. Then we heard a door open and Sophie calling after us.

  ‘Hi, Addie’s Mum!’

  ‘Oh, hello. Hi.’ I turned and walked back towards her, holding my hand out behind me without looking to beckon Addie in that absent-minded way of mothers.

  ‘Lauren wants to know if Addie would like to play?’

  ‘Now?’ I glanced at my watch, which wasn’t in fact there – it had begun to cause a rash on my wrist so I’d given up wearing it – but I took a few seconds so it would look as though I was deliberating over appointments and routines.

  A kerfuffle had broken out opposite us. At the gate of the park the man who’d escaped from the Cherry Glade had been cornered by three male members of staff, two of them had hooked their arms around his elbows, the third was standing in front of him, pressing his hand against the old man’s chest. Humiliated, all his energy gone, he allowed them to lead him back to the home without any further struggle.

  ‘Look at the chocolate cups Mummy’s made for dinner,’ Lauren said, leading me by the arm over to the fridge: a double-doored, chrome-coloured American monster decorated with kids’ paintings and photos. She pulled it open with some effort and there on the top shelf were a row of small, gold-rimmed china cups in pale-blue, pink and vanilla, all filled to their tops with chocolate. She went to shut it again, soon distracted as little girls are, but I held it open with my foot to study the cups further. Six of them, the chocolate settling on top, glistening with a layer of frost. I complimented Sophie and she laughed, readjusting the bra strap that had slipped over her shoulder.

  ‘They’re for a dinner party we’re having tonight. Work colleagues of Mark’s and a sort of birthday celebration for me. I’ve no idea what they taste like!’ Was it then that I noticed that her eyes were wet, as if she’d been crying? Though not the sort of crying I did which left my eyes small and swollen and my cheeks spotty and raw; if anything, their wateriness made her look even more attractive, in a vulnerable, waif-like way. I wished her a happy birthday and asked her age. ‘Thirty-seven,’ she said with a groan.

  Addie was so at home in Sophie’s house; we both were – it was like getting into a warm bubble bath. The kitchen smelt of cinnamon; the playroom was filled with colourful toys and tents and dolls’ houses and princesses’ castles and a table for colouring and another with animal-shaped cookie cutters and playdough. The walls were covered in framed photos of the children and weddings and parties, and curled in the corner was their giant poodle, Buddy.

  Sophie explained that Buddy belonged to an old lady who could no longer care for him because she’d had to go into a home. ‘I told the vet that I’d take anything,’ she said, watching Addie and Lauren kneel beside him. ‘That I love all dogs. I forgot to say, except poodles that is.’ We laughed together, I knew just what she meant.

  ‘Oh, she’s so juicy,’ she said, watching my little girl.

  While the children played together, we drank tea and bitched about Irenka and Sophie told me all about a drama class that she was going to sign Lauren up for (‘though it’s quite expensive, but on the other hand they sometimes get picked to do TV ads which would be quite exciting, wouldn’t it?’) and about a little chefs’ cookery class that she’d heard about in Greystones. I wasn’t sure if she was telling me about these classes just so I’d know or if she was suggesting that we enrol the kids together. I didn’t want to be too forward, so I nodded and enthused but didn’t commit. Then we got on to the problems with Billy Flynn.

  ‘Gosh, he’s completely wild! I heard that he drank the contents of a fish bowl at a party for a dare last Christmas – the whole lot, including the two fish and the ants’ eggs. Isn’t that vile?’ Sophie said, crinkling her nose and giggling.

  ‘What are you saying about that boy, Mama?’ Lauren asked, looking up from her playdough ice cream.

  ‘Oh no, nothing, sweetheart. Just that he has issues.’

  She considered this for a moment, came up to the kitchen table. ‘No he doesn’t. He has black shoes.’

  ‘Would Add
ie like to stay for tea?’ Sophie asked then, moving the clothes horse that was positioned in front of the Aga out of the way.

  ‘Look at these,’ she said, without waiting for my answer, holding up a tiny pair of black lace knickers that had been drying beside some rather large white M&S ones.

  ‘The au pair’s. Unbelievable, aren’t they? Don’t mine look grotty beside them?’

  ‘Not at all. They look comfortable.’ I said, all middle-aged and mumsy. I considered my own ‘panties’ as Joy referred to them, the word making me wince every time she uttered it. She’d surprised me one evening by washing them for me, then ironing and folding them in a tidy stack on my bed. A few days later she’d asked if the cheap material they were made from ‘didn’t chaff my skin?’ As if she’d given it some serious thought.

  ‘Do you think it would be rude to ask her to move them into her bedroom to dry?’

  ‘Of course not. I’d move them myself if I were you.’

  ‘Would you? You know this morning I couldn’t find her or Mark, do you know where they were? Sharing a cigarette in the back garden. And she wasn’t even wearing a bra under her sweater.’ She pulled out the chair beside me, took a Ben 10 toy car off it, and sat down. ‘Do you think I could ask her to start wearing one? I’m so sick of Mark ogling them over breakfast, but I don’t know how to say it without offending her.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask him to keep his eyes on his breakfast rather than on her poached eggs?’ This made her laugh.

  I told her we’d be delighted to stay for tea. Then I reassured her with flattery. Beatriz was certainly no more beautiful than she was. I’d seen her with the kids a few times. She reminded me of a gymnast, always in the same pale-blue tracksuit, thin, blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, sunken eyes, no make-up. Although I was surprised she’d got the job; au pairing was surely the only profession where being too good-looking counted against you.

  ‘Mama!’

  Addie was in the downstairs toilet, tights around ankles, door open.

  ‘Are you so proud?’ she asked, her voice strained as she pushed. She’d been constipated for the last two days.

  I told her I was extremely proud of her and turned to leave.

  ‘Will you stay with me?’ she said.

  I leant back against the radiator and waited.

  ‘Lauren says her dada’s getting her a black Furby for her birthday.’

  ‘Lucky Lauren.’

  ‘Can I have one? Except only a pink one with purple ears?’

  ‘We’ll see, Furbies are very expensive. Are you nearly finished?’

  ‘OK, I’ve got a deal! How about I ask Dada to get it for me for my birthday?’

  ‘Maybe, sweetie.’

  ‘Can Dada please just come home for a sleepover and a playdate?’

  ‘We’ll see about that too. Now call me when you’re done and I’ll wipe your bum bum, OK?’

  ‘Mummy stop asking me that, it’s so embarrassing. When can he? In one sleep or two sleeps?’

  ‘I’m not sure when.’

  ‘Mama, don’t tell anyone I said this, but is Dada going to be in our house again, every day properly?’

  ‘No, sweetheart, you know he isn’t. It’s you and me now, OK?’

  Her face got serious, little eyebrows arched.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone I said that, OK?’

  ‘I promise I won’t. You know I love you up to Jupiter and back, don’t you?’ I rested my hands on her knees.

  ‘Well, I love you up to Jupiter and back a thousand and one. Can you go now, please?’

  I offered to help lay the table but proved useless, having to ask Sophie where everything was and setting a place for myself too, which was a little awkward when it became clear that she’d only meant tea for the children. Of course, she would be eating at the dinner party later, with her adult friends. I had become so used to having tea with Addie at five in the evening that this hadn’t even occurred to me.

  ‘No. I insist! There’s enough for all of you, and to be honest I’d love the company. Mark’s been away in Europe for most of the week. It gets quite lonely. God, I hope he’s not late tonight. I’ll kill him if I’m left entertaining his friends on my own,’ she said, lifting a bunch of white hydrangeas in a huge glass vase off the kitchen table and over to beside the sink. They were so perfect they looked plastic and something about them seemed a little desperate, as if they had been put there to convince you that all was well. They reminded me of the ones I’d bought when I was selling the house in Sandycove, to give the impression that our home was a happy, fragrant, positive place, not that I was moving out because Joe had abandoned us and I could no longer afford to pay the mortgage, or that things were so bad I’d had to borrow fifty Euro from my mother to pay for the flowers in the first place. The American couple who fell for them, and for the house, had two blonde children with huge eyes and smiles. I’d since heard that they’d got married. Getting married after kids, when you knew each other, seemed so much more romantic than doing it in the early days, when everything was easy and you were both still in love.

  ‘Listen, I’m taking the kids for a picnic tomorrow if you’d like to join us?’ Sophie said as we ate our ice cream and jelly. ‘I have to go to the dentist to get a crown first thing but I could meet you around twelve?’

  ‘Oh we would love to, thank you, but poor you!’

  ‘I know. Lauren’s got to come with me and she’s far more excited about it than I am.’

  ‘She may have a very different idea of what a crown is to you. Did you clarify that it’s not a princess crown?’ I said, making her laugh.

  There was another awkward moment that nobody saw, when Addie tried to hug Ben who was lying on the sofa, watching Fireman Sam. He kicked her hard in the stomach with both feet, and I whispered a warning at him – ‘you must never, ever do that again’ – surreptitious but sharp.

  ‘Can I tell you a secret?’ Addie asked, taking my hand as we walked home, both of us with a spring in our step, loving the idea that we had new friends that lived just across the square. ‘I like Ben only a tiny bit.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  I sat in front of the mirror and examined myself, stroking the single black hair growing from the mole on my chin. I wished it wasn’t there and yet there was something pleasurable in its vileness. I liked to try to catch it and pull it between my thumb and first fingernail, but it would always slide away, until trying to catch it became unbearable, made me nauseous.

  I rummaged about in the chaos of my dressing table drawer for tweezers, found them, turned my head to the side so that I could see what I was doing in the mirror, angled the prongs and tugged at the hair until, with a sharp little sting, it came free. And as I sat there, poking and pulling, my mind was whirring, preparing trial runs of possible conversations, trying to think of things Sophie might find interesting, stories that might make her laugh, and wondering what to wear, what she had seen me in before, the sort of thing she might like. I dabbed a generous amount of Preparation H on my eye bags and rubbed it in.

  The outing began quite perfectly. It was a beautiful, clear, unseasonably warm October day. A strange time of year for a picnic on the beach, you might think, but we often had picnics in the winter growing up, and anyway, the children needed airing, as Sophie said. And Billy Flynn had defecated on the picnic bench in the playground the other day so we didn’t want to go there.

  I found the second last parking space, and was easing into it when I spotted my new friend driving into the last one, two cars down from mine. We waved at each other, then she disappeared into the darkness of her car to sort out her children.

  I felt animated, aware of the small smile on my face as I helped Addie out of her seat, but shy too with the sense that I was being watched, which of course I was not. This was just what I wanted for me; just what I wanted for Addie. A lovely, warm, straightforward, easygoing new friend we could depend on, who lived nearby, with children Addie could become close to. I imagined sleepover
s, shared childminders, maybe even holidays together in the future. If we spent enough time with Sophie’s kids, perhaps Addie wouldn’t feel so much like an only child. And Sophie’s husband was away so often; we could do lots of things at weekends too.

  I unpacked the boot, worried again that the picnic blanket and rucksack full of food was a little too much, but I needn’t have fretted because the very first thing Sophie said was: ‘Oh brilliant, you’ve brought a blanket.’ We hugged hello and I crouched down to Ben who ignored me and my smothering embrace. What she didn’t yet know was that it was even better than that: I had a wicker basket full of goodies and under that pile of goodies was a wrapped belated birthday present for her which I’d alternated between thinking was very kind of me and the appropriate thing and far too much and a little bit creepy.

  ‘Oh, hi,’ Sophie shouted, turning and waving at a passing jeep.

  ‘You always know everyone,’ I gushed, loading my arms with buckets, spades and a fishing net that I thought might be good fun.

  ‘Oh no, that’s just Nicola. Lauren wanted to go in their car. They’re going to join us for a while. I hope you don’t mind?’

  I tried to hide the feeling I had of being winded in the stomach. Nicola. Dull Beige Nicola was coming to our picnic with her horrible pink-clad, whiny kids. She was a cardboardy woman I’d met in the playground a couple of times who spoke in a sleepy monotone and had a habit of letting her voice trail off at the end of a sentence, as if she weren’t expecting anyone to be listening, which we weren’t. And she was so boringly diplomatic and fair about everything: I’d once complimented her daughter’s brown eyes, ‘but Addie has nice eyes too,’ she’d said, sounding irritated, as if I should know never to compare children. But the very worst thing about all of this was that Sophie’s kids knew and liked her girls a lot more than they knew or liked Addie, and now my child would be left out.

  Out the kids came, whining already as Buddy bounded over to sniff them. Oh, for fuck’s sake, they were both frightened of dogs. Brilliant. I just couldn’t be bothered even saying hello to this woman or her girls, but of course I did, amazed at how adept I was at sounding sincere.