Pippa stood apart from the groups of parents, in the shadow of a tree. Faded yellow flowers on her dress peeped out from under a heavy brown coat. She tuned in and out of conversations about overseas holidays and toilet training, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Lara Wranitski, with a casual blonde ponytail and shorts over leggings, complained about student nannies.
“If only they were all like you, Pippa.” Jeannie Banks said, stretching her calf muscles. There was a chorus of agreement.
Pippa receded further into the shadow and stared at her shoes. Her big toenail was poking out of a hole in her left shoe, thick and grey like a wart. The one on the right was the real problem, the skin around it red and puffed up; it ached during the night. The parents turned away and continued their conversations. Pippa sometimes felt embarrassed about how much she knew. She had lost count of how many families she’d worked for in the neighbourhood.
“Not that I go snooping, Harriet. They leave all their stuff lying about. Their pill bottles, their doctor’s bills, their bank statements. I can’t help what I see when I’m tidying up.”
“Oh, I know you wouldn’t snoop. And you’re very discreet. I bet you’ll carry their secrets with you to your grave.”
Pippa smiled. She poured her neighbour another brandy and topped it up with a little hot water. She toasted some more bread for dipping. Harriet lifted her feet off the stool and closed the fire door. Her socks were starting to smoke.
At that point of the evening, Pippa usually caved in. It was thoughtful of Harriet to come and spend the evening with her. Harriet came on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the nights that her husband was at choir and book club. Pippa was nevertheless grateful for the company. So she would release a piece of information. Like a sigh that escaped. Something small, usually trivial, but not always. About people who lived on the other side of Wellington and who Harriet wasn’t likely ever to meet. A short sentence that might fit on a small piece of paper or a playing card. Harriet accumulated the facts; they floated around inside her head, jumbled up lines of a story trying to find each other in the dark.
Joe Simmonds has been refused a bank loan. Lynn and Mike Norton sleep in different rooms. The Suttons have an infestation of rats. Jeannie Banks is on lithium. Professor Banks gets his eyebrows tinted. Lara Wranitski has to have her ears syringed every 3 months. The Simmonds children have scabies. Jeannie Banks owns The Karma Sutra and The Joy of Sex. The Govinds have a room in their house devoted to model trains. Matthew Sutton sleepwalks. Lynne Norton is a member of the Communist Worker’s Group. Amy Chin wears a G String to work. Tommy Govind is seeing a child psychologist. Jasmine Beale’s Farmers Club card was lying under Joe Simmond’s bed. Dr Ryan Moorehouse and his mates smoke pot in their garage on Fridays after work.
Jamie Moorehouse zoomed past on his scooter, startling Pippa. His mother yelled for him to come back. Children trickled down the hill in pairs, scattering as they found their parents. Sophie took Pippa’s hand and pulled her along the road. “I’ll miss out on the swings.” Unless it was raining, Pippa took Sophie to a nearby playground until the others got home. Ruby and Matthew had struck a deal with Pippa soon after she began looking after them. “If you let us make afternoon tea, we won’t tell Mum and Dad that you don’t get us any afternoon tea,” said Ruby. It had seemed easiest to agree. Pippa read the paper in the sunroom while they ate. Cleaning up took half an hour most days, puddles of pink and brown milk on the table and floor, biscuit crumbs, cheese gratings and trodden-on pieces of fruit. Almost a dishwasher-load of cups, plates, bowls and spoons. She’d refill the kettle and leave the milo out. Ruby made copious cups of milky tea and milo which she slurped with a tablespoon.
That afternoon, it was unusually quiet when Pippa and Sophie came home from the park. Ruby was nowhere in sight and Matthew was fidgeting in the hallway.
“What’s happened?” asked Pippa. “Isn’t Ruby home yet?”
“What’s for afternoon tea? Why is your face all red, Matthew?” asked Sophie.
Matthew unclenched his fist. A piece of broken pottery lay in his palm, which was bleeding.
“Pippa’s mug!” Sophie ran into the kitchen. In the corner was a heap of broken pottery, glazed purple and yellow fragments. Pippa trembled as she took the fragment from Matthew and placed it on the kitchen bench.
“I’d better clean you up.” Her voice came out in a whisper. She searched for the first aid kit. Light bulbs, candles and a mass of rubber bands were crammed onto one shelf. Several opened boxes of Band-Aids stood in a line on the shelf above; Sophie helped herself to them at the first sign of a scratch. Hiding behind the Band-Aids was an ice-cream container full of cotton wool, gauze and betadine. She had to reach up high; her toe was throbbing.
Matthew sat on a bar stool and rested his elbow on the table. Normally he had a few spins in the chair, but he wasn’t in the mood. It was his month to have the spinning stool; he had an extra day to make up for Ruby’s extra day when he was away at school camp. The other four bar stools were a matching set and didn’t spin but they did go up and down. Pippa cleaned the blood from his cut with some gauze and betadine and it really stung. Sophie kept sticking her head right up close to his hand.
“Don’t, Sophie. You’re blocking the light. Pippa can’t see.” The bright red stripe across his palm kept filling up with blood. Pippa pressed on it with the gauze one more time. Matthew held his hand as still as he could while she stuck a Band-Aid on. It was one of Sophie’s Dora the Explorer plasters; for a moment, he thought about asking Pippa to put a plain one on instead. He looked up at her and changed his mind. He would put a new one on the next day before school. Pippa’s face was a strange colour and her lips were squashed together. He wished Ruby hadn’t run off and hidden in her room. Ruby was a whole year older than him but she often left him to do the explaining when something went wrong. Matthew felt pretty stink about Pippa’s cup breaking. Ruby knocked it off the shelf while she was trying to get another cup. He knew straight away that it was terrible and that Pippa would be really sad.
Pippa put the broken pieces on a sheet of newspaper. She bent over to open the drawer full of supermarket plastic bags. A year ago, Sophie used to whack her across the bum whenever she bent over like that. Now Sophie just stared, sticking her tongue through her gap and eating crackers straight out of the tin.
“Don’t throw it away, Pippa!” said Sophie. “I might use it to decorate my vegetable garden.”
“Hey! We could try gluing it!” said Matthew. Why hadn’t he thought of that before?
Pippa shrugged her shoulders. She flopped down on a kitchen chair and closed her eyes. Poor Pippa. Matthew used to think she looked a bit like a witch but now she seemed more like that lady at the bus stop who smelled bad and was always yelling at the man with the puffy cheeks and the red beanie. He sighed. “Sophie, go and get Ruby.”
“But I haven’t finished my afternoon tea!”
Typical. As always, the world revolved around Sophie. The world seemed to revolve around Ruby too, although she did say that they should all put in some of their pocket money so that Pippa could buy a new cup. Sophie straight away said she couldn’t do that because she was saving up for something really important; she wouldn’t say what. Matthew wasn’t sure about buying another cup. He understood about sentimental value. They learnt about it at school. It would be more upsetting to lose your photo albums than your TV.
When Ruby came back upstairs, Matthew was digging around in the freezer. He couldn’t feel the tips of his fingers anymore. It was like he’d been there for hours, his hands stuck underneath bags and bags of frozen berries. He started taking things out of the freezer so that he could get to the stuff at the bottom. “I’m trying to find something for dinner.”
Pippa was sitting like a statue at the kitchen table. Ruby put her hands on her hips. “Ok. Chicken cordon bleu for Mum and Dad, chicken nuggets for us and chips for everyone. Matthew, you sort out the temperatures and the times. Sophie, you can microwave the peas a bit later.”
Matthew hauled out an unopened tub of goody-goody gum drops ice-cream and a packet of frozen pastry. He had reached the chips; he could see the packet of chicken nuggets under the cheesecake. They would have to be right at the bottom. Matthew stared at the pile of food that he had to load back into the freezer. “Aren’t you going to help?” They were just standing there watching him.
“Hey, I didn’t know we had goody-goody gumdrops ice-cream!” Sophie disappeared down the hall.
“I’m doing the cooking.” Ruby switched on the oven. She shoved a note onto the table in front of where Pippa was sitting. Matthew rolled his eyes. Why couldn’t Ruby just say ‘Sorry’ like everyone else?
Pippa stood motionless at the window with her coat buttoned up and her bag on her shoulder. She watched Annie and Rob Sutton arrive home. Ruby and Matthew were doing their homework and Sophie was colouring in on the floor, kicking her legs in slow motion. The whole house smelled of chicken nuggets. Rob flopped onto the couch, engrossed with his phone. Annie cast a wary glance at Pippa and kicked her shoes off. She walked into the middle of the room. “What’s happened?” Her voice had an accusatory tone.
Matthew nudged Ruby. She gave him a withering look. “Pippa’s cup was so near the edge that it fell off and broke.” The sentence was over almost as soon as it began.
“You’ve cut your hand, Matthew. Let’s take a look.”
Matthew hid his hand under the table. “It’s ok, Mum. Listen, it was that special cup. The one Anthony made.”
Annie sat down, her eyebrows drawn together as if she was trying to remember something. She shook her head. For a moment, Pippa felt sorry for her.
“Have you seen this?” Rob passed Annie his phone. “Head lice at the school. We’re meant to examine the kids regularly. Perhaps that’s something you could do on your days, Pippa?”
Matthew walked over to Annie. “You know, Mum. The purple and yellow one.”
Pippa stared. They looked shrunken and pale, as if she was seeing them from a distance, through a screen. Their voices were muffled. Ruby boasted that she’d never had nits because she had short hair. She pointed at Sophie’s long brown hair.
“So? All my friends have them. I saw one today, in Angus’ hair.”
Annie said something about her head feeling itchy. She stripped off her bag and coat and began talking to Rob. Matthew was holding Sophie’s legs while she did a headstand. Pippa slipped out the front door without being noticed. She hobbled up the path and read Ruby’s note on her way to the car.
Dear Pippa
We are so sorry about your cup. I know you loved it very much because Anthony made it for you. It was a beautiful cup. He is very artistic. Can you please give us his email address so that we can ask him to send you another one?
From Ruby, Matthew and Sophie.
She hadn’t seen Anthony for ages. They lived in Auckland. Sometimes, she thought of flying up during the school holidays. She could look after the boys while Anthony and Lisa were at work. She went as far as deciding on dates and enquiring about flights. The thought, only ever a fragment, dissolved as if it never happened. Her daughter in law didn’t like her; she once saw Pippa give Giles a smack when he had tipped a whole container of sugar over the kitchen floor. How else would the child learn not to do naughty things? It was obviously not an accident and he had meant to do it. She never laid a hand on the children she was paid to take care of. They’d report her to the police. As she made her way home through the traffic, she thought back to when Anthony was a child. Had she ever hit him? She pondered this, pretending to herself that there was some real uncertainty. How could she ever forget the look in Anthony’s eyes?
A box of handmade cards in a drawer by her bed, thirty eight of them, with watercolour paintings done in intricate detail. Pippa had spent hours working on them in the evenings when Anthony was small. One was of a girl with her hand across her chest, wearing a blue and gold bracelet like the one Pippa’s grandmother gave her when she turned 16. In another a hunched woman, resembling Pippa’s mother, stood in front of a dilapidated cottage. There were a few landscapes. She couldn’t remember the others. She had thrown them all away the day she found Anthony with them. She could still picture him on her bedroom floor, the cards scattered around him as he wrote in one of them with gold ink, “Dear Mr Wright, Thank you so much for teaching me these year.” Anthony flung his pen across the room and pounded his fists on the carpet. Pippa picked up the cards. All contained a misspelt greeting to Mr Wright followed by a scribble of frustration. Pippa felt rage building up inside her. She grabbed Anthony by his shoulder and smacked him hard on his backside. That wasn’t the only time.
Someone’s brakes screeched; cars tooted. People were shouting through open windows. Maybe she forgot to give way. She drove on, taking a wrong turn before eventually reaching home. As she opened the door to her flat, the wind whistled through the sparsely furnished rooms. She kept her coat on while she ate heated up leftover soup at a small Formica-topped table. Anthony had made the cup for her after he graduated from the fine arts school where he came top of his pottery class. It didn’t have a single chip or crack after more than thirty years of taking it to work every day. It wasn’t like her to leave it behind; she had been preoccupied with cleaning up muddy footprints and the leak in the laundry. She managed to get hold of someone to come and fix the leak, but Annie’s cream-coloured silk dress was completely ruined. Why on earth was it hanging up in the laundry in the first place? Annie was careless like that.
Pippa left the dishes in the sink. There’d be time to do them in the morning before her doctor’s appointment. Pippa would try to tell him about her toe while he’d go on about her blood pressure and weight. At least he had stopped checking her down below. What a waste of time that was. Harry left her when Anthony was three years old and there hadn’t been anyone since. Still, she had better put on respectable underwear and clean stockings. Her usual dress with the yellow flowers might not be up to scratch.
She limped along the narrow passage to the spare room. She hardly ever went in there. It was cold and smelled like a suitcase of old clothes. At one end of the room beneath a small high window, was a bed with a bare mattress on it, and next to it a set of drawers. A clock, which stopped years ago, was the only ornament. The drawers contained old papers and exercise books from Anthony’s school days. Half a dozen children’s books were neatly stacked on shelves by the window. Pippa had once imagined a room filled with toys and books for when her grandchildren came to stay, a colourful rug on the floor with a picture of a train or a fairy, walls covered with children’s paintings and drawings, little scribbles and tears in the wallpaper, the guilty look in a child’s eyes. Pippa opened the wardrobe. It was empty apart from a pile of sawdust on the floor. She faced the mirror and inspected her dress. It would do well enough.
Annie Sutton couldn’t sleep. It was probably that third glass of pinot. She thought it might take the edge off; the last straw was finding nits in Sophie’s hair. She didn’t have the energy to do anything about it. What the hell was the matter with her? Why was everything so out of control? What was the point of having a nanny and a cleaner?
Then there were the piles of unopened mail, unfinished projects around the house and the ever-increasing list of ‘things to do’. Sometimes Annie’s head felt so empty, as if she had shoved everything that was there into the back of a cupboard that nobody ever opened. One day, it would all come tumbling out.
“Mum, Matthew’s sleep-walking. He just climbed out my window.”
Annie put on her dressing gown and rushed out to the swing outside Ruby’s window. He usually ended up there. He was sitting with his back towards her, right leg tucked underneath him, holding onto the swing with his right hand and his bear under the left arm. His head was resting against his right thumb. There was something world-weary about his pose. Annie guided Matthew back to his bed and tucked him in. She made sure Ruby’s window was locked shut and went around the house checking all the doors before climbing back into bed.
What on earth was she going to do about Pippa? Annie had snapped at her when she called at her work the previous day. Hadn’t she heard of leaving messages? She took forever explaining about the laundry, like she was afraid of telling Annie about the dress. Her voice sounded like dry leaves. And now the cup. Matthew acted like it was some sort of frigging heirloom. Why the hell did she bring it to work? Pippa looked bloody terrible when they got home from work. One minute she was standing at the window in the lounge, the next minute she was gone and no-one had noticed her leave. Robbie had laughed in Annie’s face when she suggested they shout Pippa a plane trip to Auckland. They had to do something. A special gift, perhaps, although she had no idea what Pippa would like. She had never had a decent chat to Pippa. She simply didn’t have the time for that sort of thing. Rob’s mother thought differently; she thought Annie cared about all the wrong things. Janice was weird, the way she held Annie at arm’s length. You’d have thought she’d be pleased to have her as a daughter-in-law. She always looked offended when she came over, as if Annie was showing off about all the things they had. “Bloody Janice,” she said out loud. Rob didn’t wake up. Annie reached over him and grabbed his bottle of sleeping tablets. She took one before sliding back into bed.
“Harriet, this is Annie Sutton and her children, Matthew and Sophie. My neighbour, Harriet.”
Harriet held a finger of toast in the air and looked thoughtful. She dipped the toast in her glass of brandy and stared at Annie.
“Pippa, guess what, we have nits,” said Sophie. She ran to the mantelpiece and spun the miniature globe. Harriet looked at Pippa and mouthed, “Rats.” Pippa glared.
Annie was carrying a large basket tied up with cellophane and pink and purple ribbons. “Lovely to meet you, Harriet. Pippa, we’re so sorry about your cup. No rush, but let us know when you’re feeling up to looking after the kids again.”
Annie paused. “I hope they’re ok, the treats, I mean. Sophie, stop touching everything and come over here! I was going to get you something different, but I ran out of time, didn’t really get my act together....”
“It’s beautiful, thank you, Annie. So many wonderful things.”
As they were leaving, Matthew handed Pippa a box. “Ruby helped me. She really wanted to come today, but she’s at a sleepover.” He looked up at Pippa, his eyes full of doubt.
“It’s ok, Matthew. I’m ok.” She rested her hand lightly on his shoulder for a moment. She followed them to the front door and watched them leave. When she returned to the lounge, Harriet was unpacking the basket.
“Lots of really fancy stuff, Pippa! I’ve seen these sauces before. They’re on special at the moment. Oh no, these chocolates have expired, but only just....”
“Why don’t you take it all? You know I don’t eat that kind of stuff.”
“Really? But you’ll keep the basket....?”
Pippa smiled and shook her head. “You can have that too.” She recognized the basket from the Suttons’ spare bedroom ensuite.
After Harriet left, Pippa tidied away the dishes and wiped the toast crumbs off the table. She took her antibiotics and came back into the lounge. The wallpaper was 1960s, pale blue, grey and brown stripes, stained and faded like an old man’s suit. Matthew’s box was made of stiff cardboard and decorated with interlocking shapes cut out of shiny, coloured paper like a mosaic. What an imaginative boy, she thought, settling into her armchair. He reminded her of Anthony at that age. She sat a few moments before she opened the box, enjoying the fact that she knew what would be inside.
It was beautiful. The pieces had been put together so carefully –it must have taken him hours. She traced the lines of the joins with her fingers. It was like a wild weed had grown all over it. There was one small piece missing. Pippa peeked through the hole and saw the inside of the cup on the other side, shiny white, with a pale brown tea stain, shaped like...something. She leaned back in her chair and put her feet up. She closed her eyes. Probably a bird, or maybe a tree.