The Perfect Mother. Margaret Leroy

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      We drive to the doctor’s through the white shine of the puddles.

      ‘Did anything interesting happen?’ I say.

      ‘We had to do our New Year wishes,’ she says.

      ‘So what did you put?’

      ‘I put world peace and a cat. We all put world peace, and Kieran put, “For my Dad to get his new kidney.” Mrs Griffiths said if we put world peace we should put it first, but when we came to Kieran she said, “Well, which do you think is the more important?”’

      There’s a lump in my throat, but I don’t know why. There are so many things to cry for.

      CHAPTER 7

      I have never seen Dr Carey before; she must be new, or a locum. She’s wearing a crisp red jacket with shiny buttons, and she has short elfin hair and upward-tilting eyebrows. She seems earnest, conscientious, pretty in a wholesome schoolgirl way—someone who’d always be top of the class and make lots of neat notes.

      She greets Daisy as well as me. She has an open smile. I immediately like her.

      We sit by the desk, Daisy in an armchair, clutching Hannibal. It’s pleasant in here, for a surgery: the walls are blue, and there are toys on the window sill, and on the doctor’s desk a jug of marbled lollipops in cellophane, bright-coloured as balloons.

      Dr Carey looks at me expectantly.

      ‘Daisy’s been ill for four weeks,’ I tell her. ‘She went to school today, but that’s only the second time this term. It started with flu and she’s never really recovered.’

      ‘Oh, dear. How horrid for you,’ says Dr Carey to Daisy.

      Daisy shrugs, embarrassed.

      I breathe out a little; I feel that we are cared for. This doctor is kind, gentle, warm to Daisy. This time at least we will be understood.

      ‘Well, Daisy,’ she says, ‘we’d better have a look at you.’

      Daisy lies on the couch and Dr Carey feels her lymph glands and her stomach.

      ‘Well done,’ she says. ‘That’s excellent. That’s absolutely fine.’

      Then Daisy stands on the scales and is measured and weighed.

      Dr Carey sits back at her desk, gets out a weight chart. A little frown pinches the skin between her eyes. I suddenly imagine how she’ll look when she is older, with stern lines round her mouth and glasses on a chain.

      ‘Daisy’s really rather underweight,’ she says. ‘She’s on the lowest percentile.’

      ‘I don’t know what that means.’

      ‘I’ll show you.’ She turns the chart towards me, points at it with her pen. ‘The average is here,’ she says, ‘and Daisy’s right at the bottom.’

      ‘She must have lost lots of weight since she’s been ill,’ I tell her. ‘She isn’t eating—she feels too ill to eat.’

      Dr Carey leans towards me. Her immaculate hands are tightly clasped together.

      ‘What does she eat exactly?’

      ‘Today, she had a piece of toast for breakfast and she didn’t have any lunch.’ I know—I’ve looked in her lunchbox. ‘Yesterday was better. She had a bit of rice and some gravy for tea.’

      I want to make it clear I’m not a worrier: that I know that children are tougher than we think, as the other GP told me; that rice and gravy really isn’t too terrible.

      Still the pinched little frown.

      ‘Just rice?’ she says. ‘She should be eating meat. She needs her protein.’

      ‘Of course she does. But rice and gravy was better than before.’

      ‘We’re fortunate to have a nutritionist working in this practice,’ she says. ‘I think I should refer you to her for advice about what Daisy should be eating.’

      ‘But I know what she should be eating. Of course I do.’ I think of all the books I’ve bought on bringing up children, books with cheerful covers and energising titles—Eco Baby, Creating Kids Who Can. ‘It’s just that she won’t, she can’t. She feels too sick to eat. She hasn’t eaten properly since Christmas.’

      She shakes her head a little. I feel this conversation slipping away from me.

      She turns to Daisy, looks at her; there’s something she’s working out. She fiddles with the wisps of hair that grow in front of her ears.

      ‘Daisy, I wonder if you could tell me a bit about school?’ she says then. ‘Is it all right? D’you like it?’

      ‘It’s OK,’ says Daisy.

      ‘Is anything worrying you?’

      Daisy shakes her head.

      ‘You’re sure?’ says Dr Carey. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to talk about these things.’

      Daisy frowns. I see how she’d like to help, to give the answer that Dr Carey wants, but she can’t think of anything. She twists her fingers in Hannibal’s greying wool. He’s dirty; she’ll never let me wash him in case he loses his smell. Here in this blue sterile place, I find his greyness embarrassing. I worry that Dr Carey will think that I never wash things properly, that I am messy, sluttish, not a proper mother. Daisy doesn’t say anything.

      Dr Carey turns to me. ‘You know, Mrs Lydgate, I’m wondering whether we should treat all this as psychological. ’ She says this with a kind of finality, as though it is an achievement.

      Panic seizes me.

      ‘But nothing traumatic has happened to Daisy. It started when she had flu.’

      ‘But, you see, she looks so miserable,’ she says. ‘She looks all pale and hunched up.’

      ‘She’s unhappy because she’s ill,’ I tell her.

      Dr Carey ignores this, leans a little towards me. ‘Tell me, Mrs Lydgate, is everything all right at home?’ Her voice is hushed, confiding: as though she thinks that Daisy won’t be able to hear.

      ‘Everything’s fine,’ I tell her.

      ‘You’re living with your husband?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And how do you both get on?’

      ‘We get on fine,’ I tell her.

      My coat is damp from the rain: I am chilled through.

      ‘You’re sure? You don’t have awful shouting matches in front of Daisy?’

      ‘No, we don’t. We don’t have awful shouting СКАЧАТЬ