The Turn of the Key(35)
They weren’t coming.
For a moment I thought about dragging them out. Ellie was small enough for me to grab her round the waist and carry her forcibly downstairs—but I had just enough sanity left to know that if I started that way, I would never be able to dial it back, and besides, it wasn’t Ellie who was the problem, it was Maddie, and she was eight and solidly built, and there was no way I could carry a kicking, screaming, fighting child down that long, curving staircase all by myself, still less, force her to sit down and eat something once I got her into the kitchen.
In the end I capitulated and, after checking Sandra’s suggested menu plan in the binder, I took pasta and pesto up to their bedroom—though the memory of those meek little heads bent over Jean McKenzie’s chocolate chip cookies was bitter in the back of my head as I knocked on the door and heard Maddie’s fierce Go away!
“It’s me,” I said meekly. “I’ve got your pasta. I’ll leave it here outside the door. But me and Petra will be downstairs having ice cream if you want some pudding.”
And then I left. It was all I could do.
Downstairs in the kitchen, I tried to stop Petra from throwing her pasta on the floor, and I watched Maddie and Ellie on the iPad. My personalized log-in gave me permission to view the cameras in the children’s room, playroom, kitchen, and outside, and to control the lights and the music in some of the other rooms, but there was a whole menu of settings on the left that was grayed out and unavailable. I guessed I would have needed Sandra’s log-in to control those.
Although I still found it a little creepy to be able to spy on the children from afar like this, I began to appreciate how useful it was. I was able to watch from my seat by the breakfast bar as Maddie moved towards the bedroom door and then came back into view of the cameras, dragging the tray of food across the carpet.
There was a little table in the middle of the room, and I watched as she directed Ellie to one seat and put out their bowls and cutlery, and sat opposite her sister. I didn’t have the sound on, but it was plain from her actions that she was bossing Ellie around and telling her to eat up . . . probably making her try the peas I had mixed into the pesto, judging by Ellie’s gestures as she protested. My heart gave a funny little clench, of angry pity mixed with a kind of affection. Oh, Maddie, I wanted to say. It doesn’t have to be like this. We don’t have to be enemies.
But for the moment at least, it seemed like we did.
After supper I bathed Petra, listening with half an ear to the sounds of some kind of audio book coming from Maddie and Ellie’s room, muffled by the splashing of water, and then I put her to bed, or rather tried to.
I did exactly as the binder said, following the instructions to the letter, just as I had at lunchtime, but this time it wasn’t working. Petra groused and thrashed and ripped off her nappy, and then when I put her firmly back into it and buttoned her sleep suit up the back, so she couldn’t take it off, she began to wail, loudly and persistently.
For more than an hour I followed the binder’s instructions and sat there, with my hand patiently on her back, listening to the soothingly repetitive jingle of the mobile and watching the lights circle on the ceiling, but it wasn’t helping. Petra was getting more and more upset, and her cries were raising in pitch from irritated to angry, and from there to borderline hysterical.
As I sat there, stroking and trying not to let the tension in my wrist and hand convey itself to Petra, I glanced nervously up at the camera in the corner of the room. Maybe I was being watched right now. I could imagine Sandra at some corporate event, tensely sipping champagne as she followed the nursery feed on her phone. Was I about to get a call asking me what the hell I was doing?
The binder said to avoid taking Petra out of her cot after the lights were out, but the alternative, just leaving her there, didn’t seem to be working either. In the end I picked her up and put her over my shoulder, walking her up and down the room, but she wailed angrily in my arms, arching her back as though trying to tip herself out of my grasp. So I put her back in the cot and she hauled herself to her feet and stood, sobbing furiously, her little red face pressed against the bars.
It seemed like there was nothing I could do, and my presence was only making her more furious.
At last, with a final, guilty glance at the camera, I gave up.
“Good night, Petra,” I said aloud, and then stood and left the room, closing the door firmly behind me, and listening as the sound of her cries diminished as I walked down the corridor.
It was past 9:00 p.m., and I felt wrung out, exhausted by the effort of battling with the children all evening. I thought about going straight downstairs for a glass of wine, but in reality I had to check on Maddie and Ellie.
I could hear nothing coming from behind their bedroom door, and when I peered through the keyhole, everything inside seemed to be dark. Had they turned off the lights? I thought about knocking, but decided against it. If they were falling asleep the sound of a knock would probably undo all that.
Instead, I turned the knob very quietly, and pushed. The door opened a crack, but then met resistance.
Puzzled, I pushed harder, and there was a toppling crash, as a pile of something—I wasn’t sure what—stacked up against the inside of the door fell with a clatter to the floor. I held my breath, waiting for wails and cries, but none came—apparently the children had slept through it.
Gingerly now, I slid through the gap I had created and switched on the torch of my phone to survey the damage. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. They had piled up nearly all their movable furniture—cushions, teddies, books, chairs, the little table from the center of the room—into a barricade on the inside of the bedroom door. It was comic, and yet at the same time more than a little pathetic. What were they trying to protect themselves against? Me?