‘By email,’ I say. ‘It’s attached to an email I sent you.’
Gerald looks at his computer like it has personally affronted him. I leave him to it, thinking that I really need to find a job in an accountancy firm that has moved into this century.
It’s lucky that I warned Gerald, because things start going wrong almost immediately.
First, I can’t find the bloody school. It’s a well-known, exclusive girls’ school, and I think I know where it is. As it turns out, I don’t. So I have to put on my satnav, but the entrances to a whole lot of roads have been closed off that my satnav knows nothing about, and I keep almost going through stop signs hidden behind ridiculously leafy vegetation. I’m ten minutes late when I arrive, and of course the security guard needs to stop me to ask what I’m doing there. When I say I’ve come to fetch Mackenzie, he looks me up and down and tells me that I’m not Mackenzie’s mother. Like I didn’t already know that. So I hiss that I am Mackenzie’s father’s girlfriend, and he gives me a completely different look – not a very nice one. I had no idea school security guards were so judgemental. On a positive note, he lets me in.
Then I don’t know where to go, so I start popping my head into all the classrooms – most of which are still full of older girls. The teachers glare at me, and finally one steps outside and asks if she can help me.
‘I’m here to fetch Mackenzie Marshall,’ I say. ‘She’s in grade 1.’
‘Which grade 1 class?’ asks the teacher, but I don’t know.
She sighs, and gives me a list of instructions like ‘go up the stairs and turn right at the statue’, which seems to make perfect sense except that the school is brimming with both stairs and statues. I finally make my way to a classroom where Mackenzie is the only child left waiting and the teacher looks stony-faced.
Mackenzie takes one look at me and bursts into tears and says she’s not getting into a car with me. Rich coming from the child who watched Frozen with me seven times the last time she visited us. This leads the teacher to phone Claire, who is not available, and then Daniel, who is not available, and then we have to sit there because the stupid teacher refuses to let Mackenzie leave with me until one of the parents has confirmed.
‘It’s not like she even seems to know who you are.’
‘She knows who I am,’ I hiss, trying to sound calm.
The teacher raises her eyebrows. I know that I shouldn’t be, but I’m fed up, and the whole thing should be out in the open by now, and I’ve already told the security guard, who’s probably sent out some sort of all-points school-security bulletin, and anyway what did Daniel think sending me here. ‘I’m her father’s girlfriend,’ I say.
The teacher raises her eyebrows again, and this time she looks faintly amused by my claim, but then her phone rings and it’s Claire so she takes it, and moves outside where I can just hear her saying, ‘There’s a woman here claiming . . .’ before she’s out of earshot. And I know Claire’s going to be furious, and so is Daniel, and I want to cry.
At last the teacher comes back in, and she won’t make eye contact. She gives her phone to Mackenzie, and apparently Claire persuades her to go with me, because Mackenzie gets up but also won’t make eye contact with me, and we leave. I try to chat with Mackenzie in the car, but she sits in total silence. Which takes quite an act of will, because usually she talks a lot. Utter nonsense, to be honest, but right now I’d take her inane chatter.
When I drop her off at Claire’s place, Thandi, the domestic helper and childminder, holds out her hand as if I’m supposed to give her something.
‘What?’ I say.
‘School bag.’
Thandi knows who I am. It’s clear what she thinks about me.
I sigh. ‘I’ll go back and get it.’
I drive back to the school where the bag is parked outside the classroom door like an accusation.
By the time I get back to work there are three urgent messages for me. None from Daniel.
Helen
From the moment we met, we became Mike-and-Helen. We both had two types of friends: those who wanted to be friends with Mike-and-Helen, and those who didn’t. Before I met Mike, I didn’t think I would be one of those couples. I thought I’d be able to have friendships separate from my husband. I thought he’d have friendships separate from me – maybe he’d play golf with his friends, or poker, or go and watch sport in bars. And I would meet friends for a drink or coffee or lunch, and have a book club and maybe a sewing circle or something. That’s the sort of married person I thought I would be. But it didn’t turn out that way.
We liked each other. We liked doing things together. Mike did play golf – but I took lessons and we made up a four-ball with another couple. I did join a book club – but it was one that couples belonged to, and Mike sat next to me. We did all the things we both wanted to do, but we did them together. And so we lost friends. Because there were people who didn’t really understand us, and Mike had friends who didn’t like me and thought that Mike was henpecked, and I had friends who didn’t like Mike and thought he was controlling. Kerry, who was responsible for us meeting, she was one of them, even though she was a bridesmaid at our wedding. She told me eventually she didn’t like that
