The Babysitter(37)

Twenty-Five





MELISSA





‘So, what do you think?’ Mel asked Poppy, turning from the front door after waving off Poppy’s little friend and her dad, who’d kindly delivered Poppy safely home. He’d clearly appreciated her new look. Mel might have been out of circulation for a while, but she could still read the signs. Poppy, however…

Peering over Baby Annabell, clutched to her chest, she looked up at Mel uncertainly. ‘You look like Jade,’ she whispered, her huge chocolate-brown eyes filled with awe.

‘Do I?’ Mel fluffed up her new blonde locks, courtesy of a mad dash to the supermarket. ‘Well, there’s a compliment.’

Smiling, she held out her hand and waited for Poppy to take hold of it. Poppy hesitated for a second, which was only natural, Mel supposed, on finding a different-looking mummy greeting her at the front door. She actually wasn’t trying to look like Jade. She’d been going more for the Lisa look, on the basis that Mark obviously preferred blondes. She’d stopped short of cropping her hair short, although she’d felt like it, closely followed by slicing into his shirts.

She toyed with the latter idea. But no. She was going to rise above it, she’d decided. She wasn’t even going to question him about it. She was going to be the epitome of calm. Sitting in the corner sobbing like a baby wasn’t an option. She had cried, bitter tears of hurt and soul-crushing humiliation. She felt too tired for this, too tired to fight it. And then she’d caught sight of herself in the mirror, looking pathetic, looking exhausted, and thought fuck him. And Lisa, her so-called friend. She wasn’t going to scream and shout, she didn’t want to hurl raging accusations in front of their children, she just wanted to get back to where she was a few short weeks ago. She wanted to feel well, to feel in control again. And to that end, she did need to fight. She’d stocked up on vitamins, throwing them in her shopping basket arbitrarily. Starting tomorrow, she would set her alarm and make sure to get up early. Eat sensibly, exercise, and then get back to work in earnest. She wasn’t going to go down the medication route. There was absolutely no way was she going there again, so far down the bottomless pit she’d had to claw her way out of it by her fingernails. Wouldn’t Mark love that, his wife comatose to the point of oblivion, enabling him to do what he liked, who he liked? But… She swallowed back a tight lump in her throat. He wouldn’t. Not the Mark she knew. He’d always been dependable, there for her, the one solid thing in her life when everything else seemed to be sliding away from her. Her rock.

But he was human, wasn’t he? Perhaps he was tired, too. Emotionally depleted. Perhaps he needed support, and she just hadn’t seen it. She wouldn’t fall apart, Mel promised herself. She wouldn’t accuse him or attack him. She would wait. She would watch. And she would see. Because, if her worst fears were true, if he no longer loved her, which was possible – love wasn’t forever, was it? – it would be there in his eyes.

Deep in her thoughts, Melissa hadn’t realised Poppy was tugging on her hand. ‘Mummeee,’ she said, scowling up at her, ‘why are you standing in the middle of the hall crying?’

‘I’m not,’ Mel said, blinking quickly.

‘Yes, you are. You’ve got wet cheeks,’ Poppy pointed out, her innocent eyes wide and now dark with worry.

‘I’m not crying, sweetheart,’ Mel assured her, quickly bending to pick her up. ‘I got shampoo in my eyes when I washed my hair, that’s all.’

Pressing her close, she gave her world-wise seven-year-old a firm hug, and tried to quiet her own rising panic. Poppy had looked at her as if she were mad. Was she? Or on her way to being? There had been a time when her grip on reality felt as elusive as sea slipping through sand. Simple, everyday tasks had been beyond her.

She couldn’t allow that to happen again, to be so emotionally dysfunctional she couldn’t care for herself, let alone her family. Her chest tight, she studied Poppy’s confused little face and steeled her determination. She would not to drift off to that faraway place and abandon her children.

Poppy leaned back, searching her face curiously in turn, as if she didn’t quite know what to make of her. ‘Where’s Jade?’ she asked.

Mel mustered up a smile. She couldn’t blame the child for that, she supposed, given her own odd behaviour lately. ‘On her way,’ she said. ‘She popped out to see a friend, but she’ll be back before Daddy and I go out. Let’s go and get your jim-jams on, shall we? And then you can help Mummy put some make-up on and make herself beautiful. What do you think?’

Poppy studied her for a second longer. ‘But you are beautiful, Mummy,’ she said, her expression concerned and earnest all at once.

Mel swallowed hard.





Twenty-Six





MARK





Mark drove home fast, cursing his thoughtlessness all the way there. He’d gone behind Mel’s back. There was no point in denying it. The whys and wherefores wouldn’t matter to Mel. He had. And he was sorry. But if Mel imagined, for one minute, that he would ever use anything that had happened between them as an excuse to… No way. Mel must know him well enough to know he would never risk losing his family, losing her.