Page 68 of Clever Little Thing

“I saw it when I was getting out the Christmas decorations,” Emmy says. “No idea why I held on to it. I guess I always thought me and that bastard would have baby number three. Glad I dodged that bullet.” Suddenly her face crumples, and she covers her eyes with her hand.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know her well enough to giveher a hug. And she’s sick of people asking her if she’s OK. Then I think of something. “You’re not OK,” I say.

She stares at me, her eyes red. “What?”

“That’s what people should say to you. Not ‘Are you OK?’ but ‘You’re not OK.’ As in ‘I see it. I acknowledge it. You’re not OK.’ ”

She manages a smile. “You’renot OK, Charlotte.”

“You have no idea,” I say.

•••

I take a long shower. Emmy provides me with leggings and a striped jumper dress. I pump milk and stow it in her freezer. I eat one of her gluten-free mince pies. Then I call Irina. “You again,” she says. She sounds tired. “I take care of Stella for many weeks, I help you at birth of new daughter, I drive in the middle of night to pick you up from sick-in-mind hotel in country. Now you say, help me again.”

“You’re right. But this is not about me. This is about Blanka.”

“She is dead,” Irina says. “What new thing you can tell me?”

“I think maybe Icantell you something new. Well, I need to show you.”

In the end, Irina agrees to call Pete and arrange to go over and see Stella and congratulate her on being a big sister. Pete will take the opportunity to get some work done, he tells Irina, which I now know could mean anything. Apparently, he’s got more important things to think about than tracking me down. Once Irina is sure Pete has gone, she will text me to enter via the back gate.

36.

When Irina texts me, I enter the house through the French doors. I catch my breath when I see her, my darling, my honeysuckle girl, my secret sweetness at the heart of it all. She barely seems to recognize me. Her face is blank, exhausted. She no longer has the sunny, confident manner of a rich white child born into privilege. She seems bloated too. I picture her scoffing food in her room while Pete is with Kia downstairs. I imagine sharp crumbs falling into her sheets, her bed full of tiny daggers, nobody noticing, and as Blanka, she will never complain.

Even though I don’t know if Stella herself can hear me, I speak to her. “My darling, I’m sorry I had to leave you.” I gaze into her eyes, searching for some glimmer of my daughter. But it’s like staring into a well.

“Now,” says Irina, “what do you want to tell me? On phone, you have something special to tell me about Blanka.” I realize she isexcited, hoping I’ve found some new tidbit of information about her daughter. It doesn’t matter what, just that it is something she didn’t know before. Then, for a second, it will be like Blanka is alive again, because she learned something new about her.

“Wait a moment.” I run up to our bedroom, where even though my super-sensitive smell has gone, I can still smell Pete: the citrus zest, the sharpened pencils, a hint of beard balm. I can’t be sure, without my pregnant power of smell, but I think I smell something fresh, sporty, and feminine too. But I have to focus on Stella. The diary is where it was before, Pete didn’t bother to move it. I bring it downstairs. I show Irina that this is the same notebook that she saw a page of on my phone.I hate that man I hate that man I hate that man.

“Now,” I ask Stella. “This is your diary, your handwriting, right?” A nod. “And this is your language,” I say.

Stella mumbles something I can’t understand. It isn’t English. She looks at Irina, and Irina’s whole face changes. The lines melt away. Her eyes shine. She looks almost beautiful.“Blanka jan?”she breathes.“Im gandz.”

“What is that?” I ask sharply. “What are you saying to her?” I longed for Irina to see that Blanka is in Stella, but now that she seems to finally see it, I’m afraid.

“Pet name,” Irina murmurs. Then she speaks in a gentle voice I’ve never heard before, a mother’s lullaby voice, the voice you use when no one is listening but the one who loves you most.“Iskape?s da du yes.”

“Yes yem.”Stella is completely focused on Irina, and when she speaks, her voice doesn’t sound like a child’s voice anymore.“Mamia, yes yem.”

Irina’s face glows with wonder, like she too tastes the secret sweetness at the heart of everything. She seizes Stella and presses her close and murmurs strange words into her hair, the same phrase over and over. I don’t need to understand it to know what she is saying: “My baby, my baby, my baby.”

I back away a little. It feels wrong to watch. I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t want to sit, so I edge over to the corner of the room and stand there. I am the outsider now. Irina is the one who still has her child. I feel sick. I haven’t thought beyond convincing Irina that Blanka is in Stella. I’ve been a fool. I never stopped to ask myself why Irina would want to banish her own daughter, right after getting her back.

Irina will never let go of Blanka. And why should she? It isn’t fair for her daughter to take my daughter’s body. But it also isn’t fair that Blanka lost her father and her home, ending up in a place where she never fit in. Here is a way for life to be a little fairer: we can have the flesh of my child, the soul of hers.

I back farther away, towards the French doors, as Irina continues to murmur to Stella and hug her. She keeps pulling away to look at her face, then hugging her again, as if she can’t decide which pleasure is sweeter.

I slip out through the French doors. “I cannot come anymore,” I think. They don’t come after me to question why. They let me go, as if I never existed.

•••

Once back on the old railway line, a cramp buckles my stomach, a feeling of my uterus being folded and folded into an ever-tighterpackage, no longer needed, and I hunch over. Stella is more lost to me now than ever. I’d been so sure that once I convinced Irina, she would become my ally. But of course, it is Blanka she wants to help.

I make myself walk to the Tube station, put one foot in front of the other. I will get to the hospital and feed Luna, a simple thing that only I can do. I can get a cup of tea and a sandwich there. I have to eat so I can make milk for Luna. I watched Irina crochet her way out of her grief over Blanka: one stitch and then another stitch. I can do the same, focus on the next thing and the next.

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