Picture of Innocence. TJ Stimson
daughter a chivvying push. ‘You’ll make everybody late.’
‘But I don’t feel well.’
‘What sort of not well?’ Maddie asked.
‘I feel hot, and I’ve got a headache,’ Emily whined. ‘And I’m so itchy.’
‘Don’t scratch,’ Lucas and Maddie said simultaneously.
She handed the cereal bowl to Lucas so he could take over feeding Jacob. ‘Come here, Emily. Let me see.’ She peered down the back of her daughter’s nightdress and immediately felt guilty for her brusqueness. ‘Chickenpox. That’s all we need.’
Lucas looked alarmed. ‘Shit. Am I going to catch shingles?’
‘Don’t panic,’ Maddie said. ‘You can get chickenpox from shingles, but not the other way round.’ She tugged Emily’s nightdress back into place and made a quick decision. ‘I’ll see if Jayne can have her today.’
‘Can’t I stay home with you?’ Emily asked.
‘Sweetheart, I wish you could, but we have a new horse arriving today and I have to be there. You could come with me, if you like?’
Emily shook her head. She was terrified of the horses: their sharp hooves, their huge yellowing teeth, the sheer size of them. Maddie blamed herself: when Emily had been two, she’d put her on the back of one of her most tranquil sofa-ponies, Luna, a wide-backed, sweet-natured grey who’d taught a generation of children to ride. But that particular day, something had spooked her and she’d bolted and thrown Emily off. Her daughter hadn’t been hurt, but the episode had given her a lasting fear of horses.
‘Do you think Jayne could keep Emily overnight?’ Lucas asked Maddie.
‘I doubt it. It’s Steve’s birthday and Jayne’s taking him out for dinner to celebrate. Maybe Emily could spend the day with her and go to Mum’s tonight. I really don’t want Noah getting sick, especially when it’s only his second week at daycare. He’s just got used to his new routine, and I don’t want to disrupt it if we can help it. When you drop the boys off this morning, Lucas, tell them to keep an eye out for spots and call me if either of them run a temperature.’
‘I can sleep over at Manga’s?’ Emily said, brightening. ‘Can I stay there till I’m better?’
‘Yes, good idea,’ Lucas said hastily, thrusting Jacob’s breakfast back into Maddie’s hands. ‘I can’t be getting sick, not with all I’ve got on at the office.’
He was already halfway out of the door. Maddie suppressed her irritation. Lucas was irrationally phobic about illness. A single sneeze was enough to send him into meltdown. Maybe it had something to do with what had happened to him as a child, an association with doctors and hospitals. A trauma like that had to have left emotional scars. Generally speaking, her husband had emerged from the tragedy remarkably sane and well-balanced, but Candace had fared less happily, even though she’d been so much younger when the fire had happened. Lucas was naturally very protective of her, but there was only so much he could do. Maddie didn’t resent their closeness, of course; as an only child, she actually rather envied it, and she adored her eccentric sister-in-law. But Candace had cost her husband many sleepless nights over the years, and there were times Maddie felt that her marriage was rather crowded.
Guiltily, she pushed the thought away. Despite his issues, Lucas had been undeniably supportive when she’d had postnatal depression; she could hardly turn around and complain about his loyalty to his sister now. It was one of the things she loved about her husband: once earned, his support was absolutely steadfast.
But there was only so much any man could take, even one as devoted as Lucas. Maddie had already put him through the wringer once. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him about her strange memory lapses and have him worry he couldn’t trust her with the children. She was sure the doctor was right, anyway. They were bound to stop once Noah started sleeping through the night.
As soon as Jayne opened her front door, Emily pulled away from her mother and ran down the hall to the kitchen. Jayne’s house had an identical layout to their own, although her garden was bigger because she was on the end of the modern housing estate in East Grinstead where they both lived. The resemblance stopped there, however; whereas Maddie’s decorating style could best be described as working-mother-meets-couldn’t-care-less, Jayne’s home was exuberantly themed. She and her husband Steve had gone on a safari in Lesotho to celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary the previous year; the living room was now filled with African masks and zebra-print cushions. Both her adult sons had recently left home and Jayne had turned one bedroom into a Moroccan souk and the other into a minimalist Swedish spa. It was an interesting look for a four-bed semi, but if anyone had the personality to pull it off, it was Jayne.
Maddie dumped Emily’s pink backpack on the retro fifties kitchen table. ‘You’re a total star,’ she said. ‘I literally don’t know what I’d have done without you.’
‘Forget it. I literally can’t think of anything I’d rather do.’
The two women grinned at each other. She and Jayne had met eight years ago at a council meeting about a proposed bypass that would cut through a beautiful section of their West Sussex green belt. The main speaker against the development had had an irritating habit of adding ‘literally’ to almost every sentence; sitting next to each other, she and Jayne had got the giggles and had eventually been asked to leave the meeting, as if they were naughty schoolgirls. They’d been firm friends ever since.
‘Seriously, though, you’re a lifesaver,’ Maddie said. ‘I owe you one.’
‘Don’t be daft. If it wasn’t Steve’s birthday, I’d have her overnight. I’ve got more than enough time on my hands.’
Maddie gave her a sympathetic smile. Jayne had quit her job as a receptionist at a law firm a couple of years earlier to look after her widowed father and his death four months ago had left her at a bit of a loose end while she searched for a new job.
‘Time for a quick cuppa?’ Jayne asked, putting on the kettle.
Maddie glanced at her phone. ‘Go on, then. I’ve got half an hour before I have to leave.’
‘Do you want me to put on a DVD for you, Emily?’ Jayne asked. ‘Or would you rather play in the garden?’
The little girl looked hopefully at her mother. ‘Can I watch Netflix on my phone?’
‘I suppose, since you’re theoretically sick. But not all day,’ she added helplessly, as Emily grabbed her back-pack and shot off towards the sitting room.
Jayne got out a couple of mugs. ‘You’ll be telling me next Jacob has a Snapchat account,’ she teased.
‘Oh, God, am I an awful parent for getting her a smartphone?’ Maddie exclaimed. ‘I am, aren’t I? Lucas was dead set against it, but I wanted her to be able to reach me if there was an emergency—’
‘Give over. You’re a great parent. I was just teasing.
‘It’s not funny,’ Maddie groaned. ‘I can’t keep up with it all. I’ve only just got to grips with Facebook, and now they’re all on Instagram or Pinterest or God knows what instead.’
‘Listen to you. You sound like your own grandmother. You realise you’re technically a millennial, don’t you?’
‘You know you’re way more on the ball than me.’
Jayne set a mug of tea in front of her. ‘That’s a low bar, love.’
At first glance, theirs was an unlikely friendship.