Page 6 of The Secret Life of Beatrice Alright

‘You know kids, Ellie and Josh had a little disagreement over some building block.’

‘Josh taked the lellow one,’ Ellie explains, her chest heaving now as she refuses to give in to tears. ‘But lellow is my favourite.’

‘But we must share,’ Alannah says. ‘I don’t know how many times I’ve told her this, Bea. She really needs to learn to share.’

I kiss the bump on Ellie’s head and place her down. I take her hand in mine as I look at Alannah. ‘Did Ellie have the yellow block first?’

‘Technically, yes.’

‘Technically.’ My eyes widen.

‘Ellie takes the yellow blocks all the time. The other children are left with blue or green or red.’

‘Right,’ I say, not quite able to believe how serious Alannah is about building blocks. ‘And are the yellow blocks particularly special? I mean, is there something wrong with the red ones, for example?’

Alannah inhales sharply. ‘No. Of course not. But Ellie must learn to share. It’s okay that she likes yellow, but so do otherchildren. You are going to have to talk to her, Bea. This cannot go on.’

Ellie tugs my hand. ‘Can we go now, Mammy?’

‘I’ll talk to her,’ I say, desperate to put an end to this ridiculous conversation.

‘That’s all I ask,’ Alannah says, with a patronising smile. ‘That’s all I ask.’

Outside, I hear the father in a suit tell his little boy that, ‘You cannot hit other children, Josh. I don’t care what colour blocks they have.’

I sigh, hoping the children and, most importantly, Alannah, will have forgotten all about building blocks by tomorrow.

Ellie and I get the bus to the flat. The bump above her eye is going down, although I suspect it will leave a nasty bruise, and she sings the same line of a Taylor Swift song over and over with the same adorably mispronounced lyrics.

‘Shh, chickpea,’ I tell her when her voice becomes too screechy for the shared space of a busy bus and even the guy talking loudly into his mobile phone starts to glare. My mind is on the bottle of wine in the fridge that one of the patients gave Elaine. She passed it on to me because she doesn’t drink white.

‘It’s snowing,’ Ellie announces excitedly as the bus skids slightly at our stop and we hop off.

‘It’s snowing. It’s snowing.’ She throws her arms in the air and tries to catch the measly few flakes attempting to fall but melting before they hit the ground.

‘Be careful,’ I warn her, remembering my fall earlier. Ellie ignores me, too excited by falling sleet that makes Christmas suddenly feel imminent instead of almost two weeks away. I grip her hand tightly and she skips alongside me as we navigate the slippery footpath towards our apartment block. My breath catches when, from the roadside, I notice the light in the kitchenis on. I never leave lights on. The snow begins to fall more heavily and I pick up the pace.

Ellie is a chatterbox in the lift, and down the corridor, and I think my head might explode by the time I open our apartment door. Inside, Ellie kicks off her shoes and runs straight for the couch, hoping to catch the bedtime story on CBeebies. I hear the telly come to life. And then I hear Declan. His voice is carrying from our bedroom and I can tell he’s on the phone.

‘I’m doing it tonight. I know, I know, I should have done it ages ago.’

My heart races and I really, really wish I didn’t have a hole in my tights the night Declan chooses to propose. I need a shower to wash the smell of MrsQuinn in room 108’s vomit from my hair and I still need to have a conversation with Ellie about sharing, but bubbles of excitement are fizzing inside me.

I take off my shoes, leave them beside Ellie’s and go to kiss her on the head.

‘I’m going to change my clothes,’ I tell her. ‘You stay watching your show, okay?’

‘Okay, Mammy.’

I tiptoe to our bedroom and slowly open the door.

‘You’re home,’ I say when I find Declan sitting on the edge of our bed. He’s not in his uniform, as he usually is when he returns from a flight. Instead, he’s barefoot in jeans and a navy knitted jumper that brings out the bright blue in his beautiful eyes.

‘I am.’

‘That was a quick flight,’ I tease playfully, glancing at my watch. ‘New York to Dublin in two hours.’

I’m giggling, knowing he was most definitely not in New York today. I assume he used a delay as a decoy to keep me out of the apartment while he got ready.

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