Page 33 of All Our Missing Pieces

I gave Emily a brief recap of the Gary story. Beatrice had never mentioned it afterwards and neither had I. At first, I’d assumed she was ashamed of what had happened –snogging a man she couldn’t possibly fancy just because she was drunk and it seemed like a good idea.

But every time I remembered that evening – which I did often, because it had been the start of everything between Luke and me – it left me feeling strangely unsettled. It had shown me a side of Beatrice I hadn’t realised was there – a kind of wanton destructiveness, like a child breaking something precious without thought for the consequences.

‘So she gets pissed and snogs randoms with her beer goggles on?’ Emily offered by way of analysis. ‘I don’t see the problem – been there, done that.’

I grinned. ‘Me three. But she – I’m not sure she likes me very much.’

‘Do you think she fancied Luke too?’

‘I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s more – you know, like I said, Orla and I get along. And I think it’s that that Beatrice doesn’t like.’

‘She’s jealous of your landlady? Weird.’

‘It’s not like she even seems to like her. She just doesn’t seem to like her liking me. If that makes any sense at all.’

‘Not really.’ Emily pushed her sunglasses back and frowned up at the sky. ‘It all sounds a bit crush-on-the-games-mistress to me.’

‘Maybe that’s it,’ I agreed. ‘Beatrice is – well, she’s kind of young in some ways.’

‘Well, if she wants to sulk, let her sulk. And if she gets nasty, you can always sack the whole thing off and move in with me.’

‘So long as Luke can stay over.’ I grinned.

‘Course he can.’

But, I realised, that wouldn’t solve the problem, because it would mean leaving Orla behind with Beatrice. I couldn’t begin to tell Emily how that made me feel – how I felt about Orla. It was unlike anything I could have imagined feeling about a woman so much older than me, seemingly so self-possessed.

I felt protective. And what I wanted to protect her from was Beatrice.

‘The sun’s going in,’ Emily said. ‘Typical English summer. Shall we decamp to a pub before it pisses it down?’

‘Yeah, let’s.’ I stood up, pulling my top back on and rolling up the blanket. Strolling away through the park with my friend, I was able to put my unformed worries behind me for the moment.

TWENTY-FOUR

Back in the States, when Beatrice’s mom had suggested she take a job as a nanny, it had seemed like a great idea: her mom would be happy because she wasn’t working in a bar (dangerous) or in retail (tacky), and she’d be happy because – well, how hard could it be? She’d have loads of time, she’d thought, while the kids were at pre-school or napping or whatever. Investigating her past would be easy to do.

But the only downtime she ever seemed to get during the day was the all-too-brief window around lunchtime when Parker had her nap. At home in the evenings, now that her quest to sift through the papers and files on the first floor of the house had ended fruitlessly, she sometimes shut herself in her room and got on her laptop, but the dial-up internet connection was glacially slow and none of the websites she’d managed to find had yielded any useful information.

By the time she’d read some old lady’s account of her experiences in the East End during the Blitz – respect to her, learning to use WordPress in her eighties, which was more than Beatrice could do at twenty-two – it was almost midnight and she could no longer keep her heavy, scratchy eyes open. An online forum dedicated to local history had proved similarly unhelpful, being full of misty-eyed nostalgia, recipes for fruitcake and in-fighting.

She’d been in London for almost four months, and she was no further in her quest than she’d been when she’d stepped off the plane at Heathrow. And what was more, her patience with the children, with the endless, grinding sameness of every day, was wearing thin. She didn’t know how much longer she would be able to stick with this job before she gave up and headed off to Paris for the next leg of her gap year – but that would mean leaving unfinished business, abandoning the whole purpose that had brought her here in the first place.

She needed to try a different approach – perhaps a more analogue one.

‘Are you not eating your sandwich, Parker?’ she asked.

The little girl was poking without enthusiasm at the peanut butter and jelly, which had, until today, been her favourite thing.

‘No.’ Parker’s bottom lip stuck out obstinately.

‘Are you not hungry?’

‘Don’t like it. Don’t want it.’

Feeling the familiar surge of annoyance, Beatrice eased the knots of tension from her shoulders and walked over to the window. It was raining and the view of London was obscured in a heavy, grey haze.

Barring the weather, every day was the same as the previous one, with only more of the same to look forward to.