Page 71 of Clever Little Thing

My mind stutters, trying to make sense of this. “What does it mean?”

“Fish stinks from the head,” Irina says impatiently.

“The head…the head of the family? No way,” I say. But Maureen told me about my mother’s depression, and I didn’t want to hear it. I won’t take the easy way now. I will pay attention.

Of course, he made a move on our babysitter. It didn’t matter that Blanka wasn’t sexy. What mattered was the thrill of being able to do it in our perfect home, risking everything.

Stella was at her swim lesson, I’d arranged for Emmy to pick her up because Lulu went to the same class. Pete had to work.

I feel sick with rage at Pete.

What was in it for Blanka, though? Maybe she was in love with him. If nobody had ever tried to seduce her before, she could have mistaken this for love. Could that be why she can’t leave—a lovelorn spirit, unable to forsake Pete’s chiseled cheekbones and ice-blue eyes? But that is ridiculous. You wouldn’t choose that person’s daughter as your vessel—that would guarantee you’d never have any sexual contact.

“He hurt my daughter,” Irina says, spitting the words out. “ ‘I hate that man. I hate that man.’Heis man.”

“But how? By rejecting her?”

“We must talk to Blanka.”

“She’s hard to talk to,” I say, afraid of what we might learn. Butwe have to overcome her reticence. Maybe between the two of us we can make it work.

When I get to Emmy’s, she has a glass of wine ready as soon as I get in the door. “What did that bastard say?” She has crudités and dips waiting on the coffee table. She pats the sofa. “Sit down. Tell me everything.” She sips her wine, eyes glittering. She enjoys my suffering a little bit. She admitted it last time I saw her: “It’s nice not to be the only one in the trenches.” But she also truly wants to help. I don’t mind if her feelings about me are complicated, because she doesn’t hide them. Unlike Cherie.

“He has a girlfriend,” I say. “I think he’s going to try for custody of the kids with his girlfriend. And a divorce, I assume.” We didn’t even get around to mentioning that.

“Shit,” says Emmy. “I’ve always thought he seemed too nice. This is how he gets his kicks. I read an article about sociopaths—I thought Nick might be one. They have a lower resting heart rate, so the theory is they have to break rules and take risks to get stimulation, to feel something.” She pauses. “You don’t seem that bothered.”

“I’m not interested in psychoanalyzing Pete. I’ve got other problems.”

“Bigger than this?” She stares at me. “I thought Luna’s OK. You’re not ill, are you?”

“Actually, it’s something I can’t really talk about.”

Emmy’s face closes. I’ve broken a tacit pact. She will help me to the best of her ability, but in exchange, we’ll feast on each other’s stories. We’ll hold nothing back. I’ve never been good at this sort of thing.

But she confessed to kissing Pete, even though she didn’t have to. She’s letting me stay and doing her best to help me. For once, she’s not trying to hide what her life is really like. So maybe I dare to tell her what my life is like too. But not yet.

“Look, Emmy, I’ll tell you someday,” I say. “OK? We’ll have wine and I’ll tell you the whole story. You won’t believe it.”

“I look forward to that,” she says.

38.

Irina arranges to pick Stella up the following day. She tells Pete she is bringing Stella to her house for a crochet lesson, but really, she brings her to the playground to meet me at 6:00 p.m. We choose the evening because we don’t want other people watching whatever is going to happen.

Stella shuffles along, her walk painfully slow now. Her face is calm, empty. She doesn’t seem like an angry spirit who cannot rest. But when Blanka was alive, she seemed perfectly placid too.

All the time she babysat Stella, I never walked anywhere with Blanka, because if I was paying her, then I was busy with my job. But now I wonder why I never spared half an hour when she was on duty—Why couldn’t I have invited her to go to a café with us?

When we get to the soup pots, it is already getting dark and the playground is deserted except for a couple of teenage boys hanging off the play structure, the tips of their cigarettes glowing. Irina marches over to them and says something, at which they shake theirheads, drop to the ground, and race off. “What did you say to them?” I ask.

“I say, ‘Sexy boys, which one wants snog with Grandma?’ Then I go like this.” She puckers up her lips.

“Nice.”

We climb the steps by the soup pots, and then I take Stella’s chilly hand and stand her next to the biggest one. It is hard to balance on the slope. It is really only comfortable if you are either in a soup pot or you’re clambering around. But Blanka spent hours here.

I give my phone to Irina and ask her to record it. I won’t show it to anyone, because they’d still think I’m mad, they’d think I coached Stella to act like Blanka. But still, even if only for myself, I want proof—as close to proof as I can ever get.

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