Am I Guilty?. Jackie Kabler

       4

       THEA

      ‘I don’t want to do it, Mummy. It’s stupid and boring and I don’t see the point.’

      Nell scowled at me, then slammed her pen down onto the polished wood of the dining table, her dark curls bobbing with the ferocity of the action. At the opposite end of the table, I sighed and closed my laptop.

      ‘The point, Nell, is that you need good grades at school to make a success of yourself in life. And yes, homework can be boring. Lots of things in life are boring, but we still have to do them, OK?’

      She scowled harder, her chocolate brown eyes narrowing to slits.

      ‘Well, help me then. Flora used to help me. You never do. You’re rubbish.’

      I flinched slightly, trying to stay calm. Fighting back never worked with Nell – it only wound her up more.

      ‘Flora doesn’t live here anymore, does she, darling? I do help you, when I have time, but I’m trying to work right now. And please don’t talk to me like that. What would Daddy say? And what would your baby brother think? Come on, let’s—’

      Nell stood up so suddenly that her chair tipped backwards and crashed to the floor behind her. Her eyes flicked to the pram in the corner of the room and back to mine, an expression on her face that I couldn’t read. Anger? Hatred? Something else?

      ‘Well, Daddy’s not here anymore either, is he? And who cares what my baby brother would think? Who cares what anybody thinks?’

      She slapped the table hard with both hands, her face contorted with emotion, then turned and ran from the room. I heard her stomp up the stairs and then a door slammed. I sat motionless for a moment, then sank my head into my hands. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. It was getting to the point where I just didn’t know how to handle Nell anymore when she was like this. What was I supposed to do, how could I help her? Had I ruined her life, as well as my own? She was eight years old, still a baby really, and yet in the past few months she’d changed so much, often seeming more like a raging, hormonal teenager than a sweet little girl. It wasn’t all the time, thankfully – I had no idea how I’d cope if this was a daily occurrence. But these outbursts were regular, and becoming more frequent, and it frightened me that I didn’t seem to be able to reach her anymore.

      I knew exactly what had caused today’s, too. I didn’t often do the school run these days, not since … well, not since. I’d tried to, at first, tried to keep everything as normal as possible for Nell. But I’d had to stop. Too many nasty comments, too many stares, especially in those early days. It upset Nell, frightened and confused her, and I couldn’t bear it. Now, some of the other parents took it in turns, had set up a sort of rota, to pick her up in the morning and drop her off at home again in the afternoon. I knew they were doing it for Nell, and not for me, but I was still deeply grateful. There was the odd day, though, where they couldn’t fit the detour into their schedules, and on those occasions, I’d have to do it myself. And sometimes, just like when I went shopping, it was fine. They always looked, of course they did, but I was used to that. I could cope with the sideways glances, with the mutterings – it was only really the shouts, the loud name-calling, the vile language, that made my heart pound and my head swim.

      But today, one of the fathers, one who’d been particularly abusive in the past, the dad of a little boy in the year below Nell, spotted me. My breath caught in my throat as I spotted him at the same time. I’d grabbed Nell’s hand, trying to steer the pram quickly out of the school gate with the other, get her away before he started, but it was too late.

      ‘Oi! Fucking evil cow! Look at her, the fucking weirdo. Should be locked up. Fuck off out of here!’

      I didn’t look at him, didn’t need to. I knew exactly what his expression would be like, his eyes narrowed with hate, his thin lips set in a sneer. I’d seen the same expression so many times, on so many faces, in the past few months.

      But Nell had looked, her eyes wide, face reddening, tears beginning to roll as I dragged her down the road, out of earshot. I’d asked her if she was all right, told her not to listen, told her not to worry about it, all the things I’d said to her a hundred times before, and she’d nodded and wiped her eyes, and started telling me about the art class she’d had this afternoon where silly Charlie Wilson had spilled an entire jar of dirty water down his trousers, but I’d known then. I’d known by the set of her jaw and the stiffness of her smile that sooner or later today we’d have another outburst, that she would punish me for what had just happened.

      I was making my daughter desperately unhappy, and the thought was almost unbearable. All I wanted to do was run upstairs after her, take her in my arms, tell her everything was going to be all right. But was it? Would everything ever be all right again? Or would that just be a lie, another lie to add to all the others I’d told her? I’m fine, Nell. I won’t drink today, Nell. It’s just water with lemon, Nell. People will soon forget, Nell. It’ll all be OK, Nell. Lies. All of it, lies.

      So no, I couldn’t go upstairs to comfort my daughter, not yet. She wouldn’t let me anyway, would hold herself rigid now if I tried to wrap my arms round her. I knew that if I left her alone for a few minutes she’d calm down, but she’d still be cagey with me for the rest of the day, refusing to let me cuddle or console her, and it broke my heart. I swallowed hard, trying to put her out of my mind for a few minutes, and opened my laptop again.

      I had to order some new stock, had to arrange a photo shoot, had to keep this business on track, had to concentrate. I’d been running Just Enfant for four years, setting it up after Nell started school, and I suddenly found myself with hours of spare time every weekday. I imported children’s clothing from all over the world, quirky, unusual pieces – mini kimonos from Japan, dresses with beautiful Masai beadwork from Kenya, little rhinestone-studded cowboy boots from Texas. I’d had some decent publicity when I launched – Isla had helped – and the business had taken off in a big way almost immediately. Within a year I’d needed to hire a small warehouse to house the stock and some casual help to pack the orders; by the end of year two I’d needed a full-time assistant, which was when Flora had come along. Those were the glory days – my life a whirl of work and motherhood and happiness. Not like now, when life was nothing but greyness and pain. Would I ever be happy again? And would Nell?

      Before she was born I’d worked full-time in London as a fashion buyer for Normans, the department store chain. I adored it – the travel, the trade fairs, the designers, the shows. But motherhood and that sort of lifestyle really weren’t compatible, and so just before Nell was born we left London and moved to the edge of the Cotswolds, to Cheltenham. Rupert’s company had offices in the town, and were happy to transfer him, and we thought it a reasonable place to live, a pretty Regency spa town with decent shops and restaurants and a seemingly never-ending stream of festivals – literature, jazz, food, science, horse racing. More importantly for me it was just two