Page 14 of Statistically Speaking
“Maybe so. But I think I might miss my dog too much.”
I realize as I say it that it is true. That I would miss Bill, and I would miss Margie, and I would miss my little flat and its little balcony and its not-so-little views across the edge of the world. I’d even miss Karim and his flirting, and the little pops and sparks I feel when he stands close to me.
I seem to have accidentally laid down the teeniest of roots here already, which is nothing I’d ever planned. Perhaps I’m getting old and don’t have the energy to run anymore. Or perhaps, I tell myself, I should visualize this differently as well—perhaps I am becoming more settled and more willing to tolerate complications. Perhaps, one day, I won’t even refer to adult relationships as “complications.”
“Oh! She’s here! Don’t say anything!” whispers Erin, gazing over my shoulder. Without any further explanation, she disappears from sight and hides under the table. I can feel her head nudging my calves and have no idea what’s going on. She’s very small, but one sneaker-clad foot is peeking out.
“Mum, I can see you!” says a voice from behind me. “You’re rubbish at this!”
I twist around and see a familiar figure approaching. I am momentarily confused before my brain processes the fact that it is Katie—Katie the Suffragette. Katie my new star pupil. Katie, who has called my new friend Erin “Mum.”
“Miss Jones!” she exclaims, looking genuinely pleased to see me. “It’s me, Katie—weird when you see people out of context, isn’t it? What are you doing with my insane mother?”
I say hello as Erin clambers out from her ineffective hiding spot, laughing as she gives Katie a hug. As she wraps her arms around her, Katie remains a good head and shoulders taller, rolling her eyes at me.
“Sorry,” Erin says as they disengage and both sit down. “Playing hide-and-seek is just a silly thing we do. I can’t believe you’re Katie’s teacher—what a weird coincidence!”
It really is, I think—although not in the same scope as meeting your long-lost cousin on Machu Picchu or anything. We do, after all, live in the same neighborhood, served by just this one leisure center.
“To be correct, Mum,” Katie replies, “hide-and-seek is a silly thingyoudo. I wouldn’t have much luck hiding anywhere.”
I glance from one to the other, and I have to agree. Where Erin is petite and pocket-sized, Katie is long and lean, slightly taller than I am, with deep red hair. She usually wears it in plaits at school, but today it is wild and free and framing her face in a wilderness of curls. It is glorious, but I know from experience that she probably hates it.
“I know,” says Erin, seeing me stare at them both. “We’re practically twins, aren’t we?”
There is literally no family resemblance at all—in fact, they couldn’t look more different, which leads me to assumethat Katie must take after her dad—the dad who died. Erin hasn’t mentioned this, which is fine; in fact I’m grateful. It might have been a bit heavy for a first coffee date. It does, though, leave me with a sense of wonder, that she can seem so carefree, so spontaneous, when she is carrying the heaviest of burdens around with her. It takes a lot of strength to be so silly, I suspect.
Katie looks at me, obviously following my mental musings, and says: “Don’t worry. She likes to mess with people’s heads. I don’t look anything like the evil elf that is my mother because I’m adopted. From a long line of Amazonian gingers.”
She steals her mum’s coffee, and the two of them start to chat about their plans for the rest of the day.
I nod and smile but am having some kind of out-of-body experience; the world suddenly shifts a little. My vision hazes over, and the background sounds—the kids in the swimming pool, the chattering ladies, the spluttering of the coffee machine—become white noise. Time seems to drag slightly, and I watch the man readingWuthering Heightsturn a page as though he is in slow motion.
It is a very strange feeling—as though I have been lifted out of time and reality and placed in a bubble, an alternate world.
A world where my logical brain is overruled. Where my normally fact-based fixations fizzle out. Where my grip on what is probable is dissolved by what is possible. The first day we met, Katie told me she would be eighteen “soon.” My baby will be eighteen next month. Katie is tall and slim and has red hair. I am tall and slim and have red hair. My baby had my hair, and the midwife said she was long. Katie is adopted. I gave my baby up for adoption.
After spending my whole life running away from what happened to me that year, that night, could it be that it has finally caught up with me?
Could it be that Katie—this vibrant, happy, confident girl—is the daughter I couldn’t keep but never stopped loving?
Bumping into a student at a local venue is a coincidence. This would be something much bigger. So big, it could swallow me whole.
Chapter 7
Ninety-Six Points in a Pub Quiz, Three Glasses of Dry White Wine, and One Unanswerable Question
The rest of that Saturday passes in something of a fever dream. I do the things I have to do—I run Margie to the shops to get her “bits,” and I sit out with her while we have a cuppa and laugh at the rogue corgi who likes to run up to people for a stroke and then pee on their feet. I do my laundry, obsessively folding and storing random fabric items with no idea what they are or why I have them.
I try to do some lesson planning but find that my concentration simply will not hold that far. I substitute some admin for actual work, organizing papers and Word documents and sourcing some useful online references. I usually find lining up my different-colored highlighter pens very calming, but even that doesn’t work.
I try to watch a TV show calledThe Bridge, which everyone at work tells me I will enjoy, but I struggle to keep up with the subtitles. I do, however, deduce that the female lead character is a clever but prickly woman who has issues with social interaction, and the paranoid corner of my brainwonders if that’s why my work colleagues suggested I’d enjoy it—because they thought I’d identify with her somehow.
Eventually, I go through my herb and spice shelf and make a list of which ones need refreshing. Once I reach the point where I am checking the use-by dates on small jars of cumin, I have to acknowledge that the displacement activities aren’t working. All my tried-and-tested methods are failing me.
In a wild and reckless moment, I simply decide to put all the jars and packets back without bothering to examine them for the tiny printed dates. Lord help me, I might one day die from using expired turmeric, and it will be all that I deserve.
By 8:00 p.m., I give up. I allow myself to collapse onto my big bed in my pajamas, freshly showered, my wet hair streaming across the pillow in a way I know I will regret later. I make an attempt at self-care, lighting a jasmine-scented candle that Margie gave me, putting a Florence and the Machine album on, closing all the curtains so the last of the sunlight is blocked.
