“I think my dreamcatcher is much nicer than Emily’s.” She gives a smug tilt of her head, smiling her self-satisfaction.
For one moment, I think Effie will ignore her, as she’s quite capable of doing with anyone she deems stupid. But she stops.
“It’s not a dreamcatcher,” says Effie. “It’s card and glue. And it looks like a fairy puked on it.”
“Fairy puke!” echoes Emily, suddenly much happier, an enormous grin across her face.
Goldilocks’s face falls but she doesn’t respond. Effie can be fearsomely brutal in her honesty.
I wince, suspecting Effie’s made an enemy for life. But Effie doesn’t seem to care as she stalks past me. Cheerily, I wave to the rest of the kids and the play workers before catching her up and hauling her back to remind her to thank the carers. She opens her eyes wide with surprise, although we do this every week. After she issues the required words, the play worker beams and I smile weakly.
Effie is too young to realise but I know how important manners are perceived to be. Expressing gratitude, even if you don’t feel it, is rated above non-expression even if you do. Of course, our goal is both.
Effie takes my hand and speeds up, so I appear to be the laggard as she tows me along to our car – a twenty-year-old metallic blue Volkswagen hatchback we call Lucinda. I bought her years ago, before Effie, knowing nothing about cars but liking the colour. She’s been a lifeline since I started at Cerium. London has excellent public transport from the centre to the suburbs and back. But going from suburb to suburb means buses: slow, erratic, and crowded. Without Lucinda, my daily commute from home to school to work and back would be infeasible.
I open the door and stand back as Effie climbs in by herself, settling herself in her car seat. I don’t help. It makes her feel likea big girl to be in control of the little things. Her dark head dips as she concentrates on plugging in the seatbelt. When I hear the click, I ask, “Tablet or book?”
“Book,” she responds. I pass it to her and then her headphones.
When I began working for Cerium Studios, Effie started nursery full-time. Until then, Effie had toddled around as I worked, napping, playing, or watching far too much television. Naturally, I missed her while I was at work and every afternoon, I would pick her up, eager to hear how her day had been. As soon as she was in the car, I would ask her about everything, piling question on question when all I got back was one-word answers. It did not go well. By the time the evening was over, one of us would be in tears.
Until one day, as I was pouring out my tale of woe and tantrums to Nur from Finance, Rob was in the break room watering his pet rat/designated emotional support animal, Peter.
First, he snorted. Then he scoffed, “Parents!”
Nur pinned him with an evil eye, but I was desperate enough to ask, “What do you mean?”
He sniffed before saying, “You want your daughter to behave when you’re not willing to regulate your own feelings.”
“And what precisely do you mean by that?”
He rolled his eyes, and I bit my tongue. He might be irritating but I needed a different perspective; maybe he could give it. “She’s just had a stressful day and yet she has to accommodate your need to hear how it has been. Who’s the grown-up? Give the kid some space.”
He stood, gathering up his rat. “You normies are all the same,” he said. “Think people need fixing when all they need is to let them be.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Nur, mother of two boys, said after he’d left. “He’s a single guy whose closest relationship is with a rat. What does he know about raising kids?”
A lot, it turns out. I took his advice. I stopped pressuring Effie and things got better immediately. Now we have a routine. Effie has the drive home in silence, with her choice of activity and she gets free time at home until dinner. But when we’re both sitting at the table after eating, I ask and she talks.
On Fridays, the drive takes a little longer as Max and Dana live further south. Max is Effie’s best friend and Dana is mine. We met at antenatal classes, where we were constantly paired up because neither of us had partners. Theoretically, I had a partner, Effie’s dad, but Mike never made a class. Dana had no-one. We were a diverse lot of expectant mothers; power-suiters through to rainbow-haired radicals and even one woman touting an electronic ankle tag. It may have been Dana’s very middle-of-the-road normality that drew me to her. But after the first class, she was no longer alone; she had me.
Our lives have waxed and waned since, but we have been there to support each other. Luckily, the peaks of her life have generally coincided with the troughs of mine, and vice versa. Hopefully, we will never find out what it is to hit rock bottom together, but I think we would muddle through.
We get together at least once a week on Friday evenings, alternating between our homes. When the venue is Dana’s house, like tonight, Effie and I sleep over. When it is mine, Dana will head home, leaving Max to sleep over, tucked top to toe in Effie’s bed. She does so much for me. It is a small thing I can do for her. One night, child-free every fortnight.
With Effie happily ensconced in the back, mouth moving as she struggles to puzzle out unfamiliar words, I reflect on my own day and the astonishing proposal from Anders. I try to remember his exact words so Dana feels the same level of shockand incredulity in the retelling as I did. But as I replay it, something isn’t adding up. At the time, I was too busy reacting to his ‘Marry me?’ to considerwhyhe asked the question.
If a man wants to woo a woman, he starts with a few compliments, a joke or two, escalates to flirty comments and culminates in an invitation to coffee or dinner. Anders has had girlfriends. He knows all this. So why did he skip all those steps and go directly to the proposal?
I’d assumed it was nerd-level crassness, a combination of confidence and insensitivity. But Anders runs a successful games studio with dozens of employees; a studio he’d built from nothing. And most of those employees loved him.
I’d seen him extract money from reluctant investors, keep sceptical game journos excited about our upcoming release, and negotiate jaw-dropping discounts from tight-fisted suppliers. The guy is next-level at getting what he wants, amply assisted by his hypnotic blue eyes and wide-mouthed, single-dimpled smile. So why did he abandon all that charm and go for a full-frontal, bald-faced, no-frills proposal? I was bound to turn him down. But then, I’d have turned down an offer of a date too.
To be fair, his proposal mirrored most of his dealings with me. He might wheedle and coax and enchant others but the two of us had usually been up front with each other. He tells me what he wants. I tell him what I will do. Perhaps this exchange hadn’t been any different to others. Except in magnitude.
I’m no nearer to an answer as I turn into the street where Max and Dana live. Finding a spot to park, I slot Lucinda in with practised ease. As soon as the engine cuts, Effie unclips her seat belt and bounces off her booster seat, batteries apparently recharged. She has to wait for me to reach the doorbell, though. Dana opens the door and Effie streaks into their home calling for Max to come and see her latest treasure.
“How do they do it?” Dana asks. “It’s the end of the week. I just want to curl into a ball and watch mindless rubbish on the television.”
