Page 10 of All Our Missing Pieces

This was a home emerging from a long sleep like a butterfly from its chrysalis, not yet perfectly formed but on its way.

‘You’ll take it, then?’ Orla looked startled, as if this was the last response she’d been expecting.

‘Yes. Yes, I really will. If I can, that is. How much were you thinking…?’

Orla told me. The rent was lower than I’d expected – lower than I’d been paying before.

‘And there’s no deposit, of course,’ she added. ‘We couldn’t charge you for damages – it’s already damaged enough!’

‘Yes,’ I said again, without hesitation. ‘Yes, please. I’ll need to get my things and probably take a taxi over.’

I paused, my mind racing. It was Sunday, almost lunchtime. If I hurried, I could be here by evening, sleeping tonight in this room.

‘Unless that’s too soon?’ I added.

‘I could help.’ A deep voice startled me and I turned around.

In the doorway stood a man who made my breath catch. He was tall and lean with olive skin, wearing paint-stained jeans that clung to his narrow hips. A grey sweatshirt with a hole below the neckline revealed a glimpse of his collarbone. But it was his eyes that held me – grey or palest blue, startling against his dark complexion. When he smiled, the warmth of it reached those eyes and his voice was warm too.

‘I could take you back to your place in my van,’ he went on. ‘Help carry your stuff. Unless you travel light, that is.’

‘I’d love some help,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

Unusually for me, I didn’t hesitate at all. And I didn’t feel as if I was being rushed into something – quite the opposite. I felt as if I was rushing – hurrying eagerly towards a future that might hold anything at all.

Except it would definitely hold Orla – Orla and Luke.

At least, that’s what I believed then.

NINE

‘No, Bibi!’ Her face scarlet and tear-streaked, Parker squirmed away from Beatrice and set off across the room as fast as her toddler legs could carry her, her whimpering turning to screaming. ‘No, no, no!’

Beatrice watched her for a second, hands on hips, then set off in pursuit. It was Friday afternoon and she was more exhausted than she could ever remember being before – not when she’d been up all night studying for her final exams at college, not when she’d got back from three nights at Burning Man and couldn’t let on to her parents that she hadn’t spent the weekend chilling at a friend’s place in the Hamptons, not after the first night she’d spent with – what was his name again? – and struggled through a day of lectures dazed with sex and lack of sleep.

In a little over two weeks working as Slate and Parker’s nanny, she’d had one day off. Strictly speaking, her weekends were meant to be free unless she was accompanying the family on a trip out of town, which had happened the first weekend. On the second, Frances had pleaded with her to come and help out at Slate’s fourth birthday party, offering to pay her so handsomely that Beatrice had been unable to refuse. After spending the morning blowing up balloons and making sandwiches, the afternoon wrangling twenty-five sugar-hyped pre-schoolers and the evening clearing up, she’d barely left her hotel bedroom the following day, only to have to get up at six on Monday morning and face another week of children.

In her worst nightmares, she couldn’t have imagined it would be so full-on. From the moment Frances left for work until the moment she returned home, there was no let-up. Even after she’d dropped Slate off at preschool, there were Parker’s tantrums and demands for play and snacks to deal with. Even when Parker was having her nap, there were countless tiny socks to be paired and put away, food splatters worthy of a Jackson Pollock painting to be wiped up, the next meal to be thought about before the kids became totally unmanageable with hanger.

Even her identity was no longer her own – it hadn’t taken long to realise that Beatrice was too difficult a name for Parker’s two-year-old tongue, and once she’d started calling Beatrice Bibi, her brother and even her parents had followed suit.

Thank God, she said to herself, thank baby Jesus and all the angels I no longer believe in for a day off tomorrow and another the day after that.

‘Parker, honey,’ she said. ‘Come on. We’ve got to go get your brother from school and that means you’ve got to put on your coat.’

‘Nooo!’ Parker howled, flinging herself to the floor, her arms and legs thrashing. ‘I don’t want to!’

At least she, having no emotional connection to the children whatsoever, was able to deal with them as dispassionately as if she’d been charged with looking after someone’s pet snake.

Still, it was already three thirty. Slate needed to be picked up by four, otherwise a hefty fine would be added to Frances and Peter’s bill and – worse – Beatrice would look incompetent. It was time for some UN-level negotiation.

She squatted down next to Parker, who ignored her and kept screaming.

‘Now, Parker,’ Beatrice said calmly. ‘We’re going to get your brother. It’s cold out, so you can’t just wear your fairy dress. You can choose whether you want to put on your pink or your silver rain boots – how about that?’

Parker stopped screaming and opened her eyes. Beatrice’s mind flashed to the tin of chocolate-chip cookies she and Parker had baked earlier that morning – more fucking splatters, not to mention Parker knocking over the jar of chocolate buttons, which had skidded across most of the apartment. But resorting to bribery was a high-risk strategy – next thing she knew, the kid would be refusing to get dressed at all without large doses of sugar. Which Beatrice didn’t mind in principle, but would be liable to make Parker even more hyper.

Plus, she might tell her mother.