I nodded, liking her for her concern. A car hooted outside and Georgina called up the stairs before she left. “There’s an open pinot grigio, Hatts, so dig in.” Hattie called down her thanks. They seemed more like flatmates than a boss and a nanny both in their thirties.
Hattie came down from settling the children and we went into the sitting room. She sat on the sofa, tucking her legs under her, glass of wine in her hand, treating the place as home, rather than as a live-in domestic helper.
“Georgina seems very nice …?” I asked.
“Yes, she is. When I told her about the baby, she offered to pay my airfare home and to give me two months’ wages on top. They can’t afford that; they both work full-time and they can only just about manage my wages as it is.”
So Georgina wasn’t the stereotypical Filipina-nanny employer, just as Hattie didn’t live in the broom cupboard. I ran through my, by now, standard questions. Did she know if you were afraid of anyone? Did she know anyone who may have given you drugs? Any reason why you may have been killed (bracing myself for the look that I usually got at this point)? Hattie could give me no answers. Like your other friends, she hadn’t seen you after you’d had Xavier. I was now scraping the bottom of my barrel of questions, not really thinking that I’d get very far.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone the name of your baby’s father?”
She hesitated and I thought she looked ashamed.
“Who is he, Hattie?”
“My husband.”
She was silent, letting me have a stab at working it out. “You took the job pregnant?”
“I thought no one would employ me if they knew. When it became clear, I pretended that the baby was due later than he was. I’d rather Georgina thought I had loose sexual morals than that I lied to her.” I must have looked bemused. “She trusted me to be her friend.”
For a moment I felt excluded from the threads of friendships that bind women together and which I’ve never felt I needed because I’d always had you.
“Did you tell Tess about your baby?” I asked.
“Yes. Hers wasn’t due for another few weeks. She cried when I told her, on my behalf, and I was angry with her. She gave me emotions I didn’t have.”
Did you realize that she was angry with you? She was the only person I’d spoken to who’d had any criticism of you; who you had misunderstood.
“The truth is, I was relieved,” she said. Her tone was one of challenge, daring me to be shocked.
“I understand that,” I replied. “You have other children at home that you need to look after. A baby would mean losing your job, however understanding your employers are, and you wouldn’t be able to send money home to them.” I looked at her and saw I was still offtrack. “Or couldn’t you bear to leave another child behind while you came to the UK to work?” She met my eye, a tacit confirmation.
Why could I understand Hattie when you could not? Because I understand shame, and you’ve never experienced it. Hattie stood up. “Is there anything else you’d like to know?” She wanted me gone.
“Yes, do you know who gave you the injection? The one with the gene?”
“No.”
“What about the doctor who delivered your baby?”
“It was a caesarean.”
“But surely you still saw him or her?”
“No. He wore a mask. When I had the injection. When I had the operation. All the time in a mask. In the Philippines there’s nothing like that. No one’s bothered that much about hygiene, but over here …”
As she spoke, I saw those four nightmarish canvases you painted, the woman screaming and the masked figure over her. They weren’t a record of a drug-induced hallucination but what actually happened to you.
“Do you have your hospital notes, Hattie?”
“No.”
“They got lost?”
She seemed surprised that I would know.
“Yes, if that’s okay.”
We go out into reception together. Mr. Wright sees the bunch of daffodils on his secretary’s desk and stops. I see her tensing. He turns to me, eyes reddening.
“I really like what Tess told you about the gene for yellow in a daffodil saving children’s sight.”
“Me too.”
