Page 9 of Clever Little Thing

The day after my conversation with Irina, I went to the fanciest boutique in Muswell Hill and sifted through gift options while Stella read in the corner of the shop. I settled on an expensive blanket of soft grey recycled wool. On second thoughts, I put it back and bought the larger size.

I dropped Stella off with my friend Cherie, another mom from Stella’s primary school. Her nine-year-old, Zach, was in the year above Stella, though he often refused to go to school. He was an expert on the chemistry of slime but needed a thirteen-point checklist to brush his teeth. When Cherie and I hung out, we didn’t expect the kids to do normal kid things. Stella usually read some hefty tome while Zach stirred non-Newtonian fluids in various mixing bowls.

Then I walked to Blanka and Irina’s place. There was an ache in my low belly that I tried to ignore. It was hunger, I told myself. Or nerves.

They occupied the bottom half of a terraced house. The NorthCircular roared two streets over. A half-dead purple-leaf plum tree strewed dark leaves outside their front window.

I gave a start. A woman sat inside, so colorless and still that I hadn’t immediately spotted her. She wore a grey cardigan, and her greying hair was pulled back in a bun. She sat in a big armchair, staring at nothing.

I raised a hand, but she didn’t react. Still, I was almost certain she’d seen me, and I had no choice but to walk up the front path. I ventured a tentative wave. She rose and stared at me through the glass.

Then she tottered off, and I waited. Nothing. I was just deciding that she couldn’t face visitors when the door opened. She had Blanka’s olive skin and round cheeks. Her face was weathered, her gaze startling in its frank misery. I wanted to turn and run away. But I couldn’t stand the thought that I’d done something wrong without even realizing it. If an apology was needed, I was determined to deliver one.

“I’m Charlotte, Stella’s mother? I came to say how sorry I am and…”

Irina stared at me, and I thought she was going to berate me for daring to show my face. She’d ended our phone conversation on such a hostile note.

But she just opened the front door wide, and waited.

My insides clenched tight. If I was going to lose this pregnancy too, I didn’t want to do it in a stranger’s house. But I could see that the pale garment I’d taken for a skirt was actually a nightgown, and the cardigan over it was wrongly buttoned up. She was a wreck: I couldn’t refuse her.

Inside, the squat, dark furniture was too big for the tiny frontroom. Every surface was covered with an embroidered cloth or crocheted doily, and every shelf was laden with painted figurines, dolls and carved animals. I proffered the blanket, tied with a grey silk ribbon. Its luxe minimalism was out of place here, and instead it looked drab and utilitarian. Irina nodded but didn’t take it.

A black-and-white photo of Blanka in a silver frame stood atop a bureau. She looked about eighteen. She was smiling weakly. The photo made me feel sad. Someone should have told her the thing to do in photos is flash your teeth,Strictly Come Dancing–style. That way you look happy and no one can tell the difference.

Irina cleared a mess of wool and needles off the sofa. “I make tea.” She trudged off. I looked around for somewhere to put the blanket. An icon hung on the wall above the sofa: a saint with a disappointed face. My body upgraded the bad feeling in my abdomen from an ache into pain, and I sank onto the sofa, still clutching the blanket. I examined the pain’s nature and location, trying to discern if it was the same as the pain that heralded my three previous miscarriages. My most recent had been at fifteen weeks. Today, I was fourteen weeks and five days pregnant.

“You like jam?” Irina called from the kitchen.

“Um, whatever you’re having,” I called back. I’d assumed that she’d tell me what I’d done and I’d apologize profusely, and then I’d leave, my duty fulfilled. Her hospitality unsettled me. Perhaps that was her intention. She’d keep me here until I lost this pregnancy all over her velour sofa. Sweat broke out on my chest.

Or perhaps she expected me to share fond recollections of Blanka. I searched my memory desperately.

Irina returned with a clinking tray: gold-rimmed teacups, afloral teapot, a dish of jam. She sat down very close to me, and I realized I had the blanket pressed to my midsection. She held out a plate of small, flaky pastries. “Blanka’s favorite.”

I let her take the blanket and put a pastry on my plate. “Yum,” I said, though I couldn’t eat a bite right now. I crossed my legs and squeezed my thighs together, hoping nothing was going to gush out. The house smelled thickly of frying oil and some kind of spice like cinnamon. Irina studied me. I realized I had one hand on my belly, the back of the other hand under my nose.

“Sick?” she said gently. I nodded, and she said, “With Blanka, I have sickness all day too.”

I was nonplussed. I wasn’t showing. Irina saw the surprise on my face. “Here, I am nurse at hospice. But in my own country, I am midwife. I know pregnant woman smells everything.” She wrinkled her nose. “Like dog.” Then she touched my knee. “But bad smells are good. This means baby is healthy.” She compressed her lips in a way that was almost a smile.

The pain in my belly eased: She didn’t hate me. I hadn’t done anything awful to Blanka. And she was right: smell sensitivity was a pregnancy symptom. I felt a surge of hope, and my eyes filled.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m really very sorry.” My voice broke.

My tears seemed to satisfy Irina, and she nodded. “You do not have to be sorry. I am sorry for not telling you the day Blanka dies. But for three days, I cannot speak to one single person.”

Of course.Griefwas what had made her so bitter when we’d spoken on the phone. She had lost her only child: the worst had happened. What a narcissist I’d been to think her misery had anything to do with me.

But if she hadn’t cursed Stella, what had she meant? “She drown.” Meaning dawned on me. “Blanka drown—I mean, drowned?” I said, as gently as I could.

Irina inclined her head in the smallest of nods. “We run from our home to Armenia. There, we are refugees. Many times, we have only bucket for washing. So after we come here, Blanka loves hot bath.”

“It happened in a bath?” I’d never even seen Blanka allow herself a glass of water. It was a surprise to learn that same woman loved to indulge in long soaks. And I’d never heard of anyone drowning in the bath.

Irina stood up. “I show you.”

Show me what? Though my stomach had mostly stopped hurting, I still felt nauseated. But she took my arm, and her grip was surprisingly strong. I realized she was much younger than I’d thought, perhaps not even sixty. She drew me through the kitchen and into a meagre back garden—mostly concrete, a plastic table. She gestured me towards a narrow gate in the fence between their garden and that of the neighbors. I hesitated.

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