refrigerators, and the almost audible expectation that she should buy something. From behind the counter a man with big yellow hands was stabbing at buttons on a calculator that sat on an open ledger. He nodded at her over his glasses without smiling. Steph raised one corner of her mouth and turned her back, browsing a rack of biscuits, fly sprays and birthday cards. The man looked down again, and Steph sidled along past shampoo and tins of soup. She couldn’t take crisps without making a noise, the biscuit packets were too big, and the sweets were on display right under the man’s nose. There was a tall, freestanding row of shelves that divided the shop in two, but there was also a round mirror high on one wall that gave the man a view of whoever was behind it. The stuff on the shelves round the back was only light bulbs, soap powder and tin foil, anyway. Unless somebody else came and distracted him, she had no chance. She turned and looked through the door on to the triangle of green grass, willing someone to come in with a long shopping list.
‘You looking for a tent or a lawnmower, you’re in luck,’ the man said, distantly. ‘Four new ones in yesterday.’ Steph turned and smiled cautiously, wondering what he meant.
‘Small ads, four new ones. Good price, the tent. Only got used once, bloke said. Selling it after one go, the wife didn’t like camping, apparently. He’s giving it away at that price, just wants rid of it.’ The man was motioning now towards the door, and Steph saw that he was pointing at a cluster of handwritten postcards pasted over the top half of it. She turned back and looked at them, pretending to be interested. She couldn’t have cared less about a tent or a lawnmower, but if she spent a minute or two reading the ads, something might happen. His phone might ring. He might even go through to the back or something.
‘Tent’s a fantastic price. He was going to put the card in for a fortnight, I said don’t. It’ll go within the week at that price, I said, take just the one to start with. At that price it’ll go in one. Tempted myself, if I’m honest.’
Steph smiled again and turned back. Clipped to the postcard was a blurry photograph of the quite resistible tent. Below it on another card Steph read:
WANTED: Childminder, hrs tbc, for Charlie, four months. Lively baby. Non-smoker. Kind personality req’d. Start IMMEDIATELY. Apply Bell Cottage Green Lane. Or tel (after 6 pm: 583622).
The man looked up again at the ting of the bell and noted that the pale young woman had left without buying anything. He sighed and returned to his ledger. She hadn’t looked the type to buy his tent, and he was beginning to lose hope that he’d ever shift it.
Bell Cottage was a small, double-fronted house down a narrower street that ran parallel to the main one where the shop stood. Steph found it by wandering. The signs on most of the lanes leading off the main street gave also the names of the streets they led to, and there seemed to be no more than a dozen or so at most in the old part of the village. The door was opened by a dark-haired woman in bare feet, who stared at her without speaking. Steph thought she looked too old to be the mother of a baby.
‘Hello… I was wondering if-’
‘I’m just about to go out.’
‘Oh. Oh, but I was just wondering,’ Steph said, sure now that she had got the wrong house, ‘if this is where the job is. The childminding?’
The woman hesitated for a moment without smiling. ‘Oh. Well, I have to go out when he wakes up. But you might as well come in,’ she said, turning back into the house and evidently expecting Steph to follow.
The narrow hallway had been painted some dull, pale colour that had been streaked and scraped black on both sides. The smell reminded Steph of something earthy, cold and none too clean, like mud or certain kinds of cheese. A long, dark bulge of hung-up coats and jackets padded most of one wall. Underneath lay a heap of boots and shoes, umbrellas, a crash helmet, walking sticks, a riding crop and one ice-skate. On the floor next to a low stool that was covered with newspapers sat a telephone directory, on which several milk bottles and a camera had been placed. Next to that stood a folded child’s pushchair whose detached plastic rain canopy leaned against the wall. On the floor nearby was the telephone, a bowl with a spoon and the brownish dregs of breakfast cereal in it, two or three listing carrier bags and an open briefcase with papers fanning out of it.
Steph followed the woman down the passage, past the staircase and into the kitchen at the back. She said, not asking, ‘Coffee’, pulled a kettle clear from a clutter of things on a worktop, filled it and switched it on. Steph wondered where she was supposed to put herself, and decided to stand still. There was nowhere not filled with other things. The worktops and table were laden with jars, utensils, little bottles, a tub of baby wipes and a pacifier, two radios, a toaster, a blender, the kettle, a feeding bottle steriliser, as well as assorted bowls which contained something or nothing: Steph took in papery-looking garlic, pens, bananas, cassette tapes, some pursed-up lemons, rubber bands, an assortment of hair ties, keys, scraps of paper, cut-out coupons, dried up garden bulbs. Only a fraction of space was clear for anything that might be expected to happen in a kitchen, such as cooking or eating. A notice board held curling fragments of cards, lists, takeaway menus, envelopes and postcards of beaches. On a blackboard alongside it were chalked the words
‘I’m Sally,’ the woman said. ‘Charlie’s next door asleep, I’ll show you him in a minute but I’ll go mad if he wakes up again. He’s hell to put down.’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t suppose I should say that, I might put you off. I mean, he’s coming on. The thing is, he’s not such a good feeder. I’ve got to go back to work and he’s still getting used to the bottle.’
‘Oh,’ Steph said.
Sally turned, and as she poured water from the kettle, which had not yet boiled, into the mugs, she said breezily, ‘Still, at least I’ve got my tits back. Not that they’re much use to me now.’
Steph made a small noise that was half surprise, half laugh. That was the trouble with educated people. At some point in their lives they simply managed, somehow, to go beyond embarrassment. Or perhaps they were born incapable of it. Whichever it was they made you take on double the amount because you had your own and theirs on top. They told you things that you could never reply to. What was she meant to say?
‘So.’ Sally was putting milk into two mugs of instant coffee, another thing she hadn’t asked Steph about, shifting stuff- a baby’s jacket, a purse, some keys and half a croissant- off a chair so that Steph could sit down. She didn’t offer sugar, either, but she was watching Steph carefully. Steph, knowing she was being sized up, put on a bright face. ‘Charlie’s a lovely name,’ she said. ‘They’re coming back, aren’t they, the traditional names.’
Sally ignored her, but went on watching. ‘I did have somebody all lined up weeks ago but she rang to say she’s not coming now, less than a week before she’s meant to start. Got a better offer, I suppose. So I’m stuck. I’ve got to go back full-time next week.’ She leaned against the worktop and sipped her coffee. ‘If I don’t get somebody local I’ll have to take this girl an agency’s offering me and they charge a fortune. What’s your name anyway? You’re local, are you?’ She smiled in such a way that Steph could tell she had had to remind herself that smiling was a thing she was meant to do.
‘Yes, I’m staying here. I mean, yes. I do live here now. I’m Stephanie. Well, Steph, really. I’m twenty-three and I’ve had… a lot of experience with children.’
‘Yes, but what about babies. He’s only four months. Have you done babies?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Steph said, ‘I had sole charge of a newborn.’ She took a mouthful of coffee while she tried to assemble the words for the story she had worked out. ‘I took care of my sister’s baby. She couldn’t. She was depressed after it, the birth. You know, post-natal, she got it really bad? So I did everything, more or less, the lot, all the looking after. She couldn’t do a thing, hardly.’ Then, in case the woman might think she was complaining, ‘I really enjoyed it, I had a knack, everybody said. My sister’s husband, he was away at the time as well, so I had sole charge, I held the fort. Then they moved away.’ She paused. ‘To America. Her husband was American.’
That should put the question of references on ice for a bit. She began to feel slightly inspired.
‘And so now I’m staying here with… with my aunt, I live with my aunt.’
She had rehearsed on the walk to Sally’s house the phrase ‘my boyfriend and my boyfriend’s mother’, and decided that it sounded too flaky and impermanent and might make her sound like a hanger-on. And she wasn’t wearing a ring; suppose this woman advertising for the childminder was a religious nut or something, who disapproved of people living together? A niece helping her aunt sounded solid and respectable.
‘I’m staying with her and helping her with the house, she hasn’t been too well. At Walden Manor.’ Risky to give
