‘Ouch, Mummy, you’re hurting,’ he says as I climb the steps to Mrs Bailey’s classroom.
‘Sorry, baby,’ I say, letting go of his hand.
‘I’m not a baby. I’m a big boy.’
‘Yes, of course you are.’ I force a smile. Please God let them not say anything to their children about me. They wouldn’t, would they? I try not to imagine Dylan surrounded by a group of kids chanting, ‘Your mummy’s a murderer’.
‘Dylan, welcome!’ exclaims Mrs Bailey with a saccharine smile. That’s right. I’d forgotten he came here with Theo for the induction, so she already knows him. Dylan hesitates, his fingers digging into my hand.
Mrs Bailey stoops over so she’s at his eye level. Her eyes glitter blue in a soft, faded face, her grey hair coils artfully over her neck. She has a wispy baby voice which seems incongruous in a woman of her age.
‘Do you think you can you find your name on the board?’ she whispers to him, as if they’re sharing a secret, and Dylan smiles shyly, nods and heads to the corkboard where laminated name cards shaped like butterflies are Velcroed.
‘That’s right, well done!’ she exclaims as he pulls one off. Then she straightens up, looks at me for the first time and does a double take.
‘Have we met before?’ she asks, frowning.
‘No, my husband came to the induction. My ex-husband,’ I correct myself.
‘Oh, okay,’ her eyes narrow thoughtfully. ‘I could have sworn . . .’
Her voice trails off and she fiddles with the glasses on a chain around her neck. Then she turns to another parent, a hassled-looking father in jogging gear, and beams at him. How long will it take her to connect my face to the photofit she most likely saw last night? I wonder. More parents and kids are arriving. A little girl is screaming, trying to drag her mother away. I feel like screaming too. I just want to get out of here. The walls seem to be closing in and I feel exposed, as though everyone’s staring at me, whispering about me. At least Dylan seems fine. He’s trotting off hand in hand with the teaching assistant without so much as a backward glance.
‘See you later, Dyl,’ I call, but he doesn’t hear me, and I duck out of the classroom while he’s distracted.
I scurry out of the playground, head down, hoping no one else will recognise me. I’m staring at the concrete, trying to avoid eye contact as I turn out of the school gate and I don’t notice the woman right in front of me, rushing in the other direction, clutching the hand of a little boy. We collide and her handbag drops, the contents spilling out.
‘I’m so sorry!’ I exclaim, helping her to scoop up the purse and lipstick and various scraps of paper and receipts.
‘No, no, it’s my fault,’ the woman says breathlessly. ‘We shouldn’t have been running. We’re late. You wouldn’t believe the morning I’ve had!’ She stands up and smiles at me benignly. She’s tall and pretty, with bright red lipstick, sleek black hair and friendly grey eyes. I steel myself for a change in her expression, a flicker of recognition or for her features to harden into suspicion. But they don’t. She clearly hasn’t seen the news, I think, breathing with relief.
‘We’re looking for Butterflies classroom,’ she says. ‘Weird name for a class, isn’t it?’
I nod and grin. ‘It’s over there,’ I tell her, pointing to the new one-storey block. ‘My son is in Butterflies too.’
‘Is he really?’ She seems to take more of an interest in this fact than it merits. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Er, Dylan. Dylan Bayntun.’
‘Mummee,’ the little boy tugs at her arm impatiently.
‘I’m sorry. I’ve got to go,’ she laughs as she’s dragged away. ‘But I’m sure we’ll get to know each other later. I’m Georgia, by the way.’
Georgia seems nice, I think, as I walk back through the centre of town. It would be useful to make friends with some of the mothers at Dylan’s school. It will help him make friends too . . . but how likely is it that Georgia will want to socialise with me after she sees that photofit?
Halfway home, on impulse, I stop outside Curl Up and Dye and look at the list of prices pinned on the door. It’s always struck me as an amusingly bad name for a hairdresser. I mean it’s not exactly encouraging, is it? Is that how you will feel after your haircut, like you want to curl up and die? But I can’t feel much more like curling up and dying than I currently do. And it doesn’t matter if my hair is cut well. I just want to look as different as possible from the way I look now.
The salon smells of ammonia and the radio is on, playing a jangling tune. A skinny assistant with jagged blonde hair and a nose ring sashays up to a sort of podium with an appointments book on it and gives me a chilly smile.
‘Yes?’ she says.
‘I’d like my hair cut and dyed, please.’
She takes up a pen and sucks the end. ‘When would you like to come?’
‘Er, now, if possible.’
She looks around the empty salon. ‘Um well . . . okay. Take a seat,’ she says reluctantly and bustles away into a back room. So I sit and wait, flicking through a magazine, reading a story about a woman who had an affair with her daughter’s husband. I don’t get to the end of the story to learn what the daughter did when she found out, because the assistant bustles back with a stylist who introduces herself as Cheryl and ushers me to a chair in front of the mirror.
I stare
