Page 5 of Clever Little Thing

At two in the morning, I was wide-awake, feeling as if the sea still pummeled my eardrums. We met Blanka when Stella was four. I’d been looking for a babysitter to pick her up after school. I was going back full-time to my job atDesign Your Life, a lifestyle portal, where I churned out content about entertaining and gave etiquette advice in my column, “Charlotte Says.” I’d worked there since my late twenties, when an editor atDesign Your Lifehad spotted my blog about stress-free dinner parties,The Reluctant Hostess, and offered me a job in San Francisco. Luckily, they let me work remotely when we moved to London. “Everybody already knows all this,” my mother said, nonplussed, when Pete persuaded her to read my column.

“Americans don’t feel they know everything about etiquette,” I said.Design Your Lifehad a primarily US audience.

“Well, they wouldn’t.” Edith was the mistress of the poison dart. A professor of nineteenth-century literature, she spent her last afternoon on earth alone, editing her book on illness and femininity in the mid-Victorian novel. Although Edith thought my job was silly, I loved it. The way I saw it, etiquette wasn’t about what fork to use. It was about making other people feel good—with a handwrittenthank-you note, a wonderful dessert, or maybe a white lie. This seemed simple on the face of it, but judging by the number of letters I received, common social situations tripped a lot of people up, and made them anxious. As an etiquette expert I gave them a road map: a way to navigate any interaction.

Unfortunately, finding a babysitter good enough for Stella was brutal. One applicant wanted to be picked upanddropped off. A second needed to schedule the babysitting “gig” around her shamanic therapy classes. A third said any house she worked in had to be completely free of artificial scent. When I met Blanka at the door, her hair was in two clumsy black plaits secured with elastics decorated with pink plastic bobbles, and her olive-skinned face was childishly round. She was fairly overweight, noticeable in Muswell Hill, with its yummy mummies in Pilates gear, and had heavy eyebrows that needed attention. She slowly lowered herself onto our slender-legged midcentury modern sofa.

I asked, “What do you like about working with kids?”

“I like taking care of kids,” said Blanka.

“What do you likeaboutthat?” She smiled, and I wasn’t sure if she’d understood the question. I decided to move on. “You have to keep everything separate when you serve her meals.” I showed her Stella’s compartmentalized melamine plates.

“Oh yes.” She sounded matter-of-fact, not skeptical like the other babysitters.

Encouraged, I continued. “Also, you have to slice her fruit nicely, or she won’t eat it. Apples, especially.”

“Oh yes.” Blanka nodded vigorously, like nobody in their right mind would expect a four-year-old to tackle an unsliced apple. Iwent through Stella’s whole routine, and Blanka agreed with everything I said. Maybe it was because her English wasn’t very good, but it was relaxing. I went up to Stella’s room and coaxed her out to meet Blanka. As with all the interviewees, Stella marched straight over to Blanka and studied her. The other women had chirped out their names or inquired as to Stella’s favorite color. Blanka just held Stella’s gaze. Several seconds passed. Then, to my astonishment, Stella climbed onto the sofa and nestled up to Blanka’s pillowy body. Our savior.

Now I gave up on sleep and crept into the kitchen. I stuffed a handful of pretzels into my mouth. I’d forgotten about that first meeting with Blanka, when she’d seemed so perfect for the job. Yet somehow things had changed so much that she had left without saying goodbye. That was one mystery I would never solve now. But maybe I could solve the mystery of how she died.

I grabbed my laptop and sat on the sofa. Perhaps she had a Facebook page, which might have more information about her death. But when I typed in “Blanka Hakobyan,” there was no Facebook page. No Blanka Hakobyan on Twitter or Instagram. When I googled her name, I got no results. There was a faint twang in my abdomen, and I felt afraid. In years of trying to get pregnant, I’d miscarried three times. But I kept going, because if Stella had a sibling, it wouldn’t matter so much that she didn’t really have friends and, worse, didn’t seem to care. A sibling, I hoped, would teach her how to get along with others.

I walked to the window, hoping a change of position would help. The whole back wall of the house was glass, showcasing our view over London, a sea of lights with the Shard on the horizon, the dullglow of the light-polluted sky. At night, things looked different than they did in the day, but I always felt like I was seeing things as they really were: the night truth. I was going to lose this baby, and Stella would always be alone.

I went into Stella’s room and listened to the ebb and flow of her breath. Maybe it was my fault she didn’t turn cartwheels on the beach, and I didn’t deserve to have another child.

“Oh yes,” Stella said, quite clearly, and I gave a start. But her breath was deep and regular: she was talking in her sleep. Blanka used to say, “Oh yes,” in response to everything I asked her, always in exactly the same way, like a two-note birdcall. I shivered. It was an innocuous phrase, but still, it was uncanny how perfectly Stella captured Blanka’s singsong tone.

now

3.

I compose my face, trying to appear calm, but not too calm. I must appear exactly as calm as a sane person would in this situation. I am sane, I remind myself. Still, it’s hard to look sane when I’m forced to wear what amounts to pajamas. I sit up straight on the edge of the sofa, feet planted on the floor. Dr. Beaufort, my new therapist, has a round, earnest face, greying brown hair cut sensibly short, and a navy poncho that looks like it has dog hair on it. “Sorry about this old thing,” she says. “I feel the cold. Do you? Snuggle up in the blanket, why don’t you.”

“I’m fine.” A blanket isn’t going to help me right now. On the wall is a painting of a woman standing in a river, facing away from the viewer. She looks like she’s trying to hold her ground, but any minute a mighty current will sweep her away.

“Do you need the tissues?” Dr. Beaufort asks. “I moved them onto that side table there. I used to have them on the coffee table, but then a patient said they made her feel like I wanted her to cry. I don’t want you to cry. That is, not unless you want to.”

“OK?” I say. She’s babbling. Maybe she’s new to this job. Perhaps she got her qualification after her kids started school. To the right of her is a bookcase, which has heavy psychiatric diagnostic manuals, but alsoMind Over MotherandGood Moms Have Scary Thoughts. Is she a mother who has had scary thoughts? On a side table at her elbow sits a misshapen vase of dried spear thistles. There are no family photos, but that ugly vase definitely looks like it was made by a child.

“Charlotte?” Dr. Beaufort has asked a question.

“Sorry?”

“Can you tell me why you’re here?”

I stroke my throat. When I was seven, my mother took me to see a doctor about a persistent cough. Three doctors later, we learned it was thyroid cancer, and I endured surgery and radioactive iodine treatment that left my throat sore, my mouth tasting of dirty coins. Even though they’d cured me, I’d disliked doctors ever since.

“Why are you here?” Dr. Beaufort repeats gently. I stare at the bowl of marble eggs on her coffee table.

“My husband thinks I need a rest.”

Dr. Beaufort nods. “What mother doesn’t, right?”

I chuckle obligingly.

She studies me with her serious gaze. “The intake form says you’re concerned about your daughter Stella.”

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