While he was pulling his school trousers carefully up, Beth started to shout, and Rachel ran downstairs to find her wailing with her arms up, demanding the spoons that she had hurled to the floor. Rachel picked her up and snuggled her. The baby took a big handful of Rachel’s hair and pulled. Sometimes Rachel didn’t feel there was enough of her to go round.
* * *
• • •
They left the house in the end, and it felt like a triumph. Billy’s school was a ten-minute walk away, and she told him to stand on the back of the buggy, even though he was too big to do that, so she could jog through the streets, trying not to slip on patches of ice. Against the odds they arrived just as the bell was ringing without falling over, and she hugged him, kissed his head, and gave him a push and said: “Run!”
All the classrooms opened out onto the playground, but the parents weren’t allowed past the fence. She stood and watched as Billy sauntered over to his class, turning to give her a double thumbs-up as he took his place in the line and entered the building with the other children as if he had never been away. He was happy to be at school. She could see that from his face.
Miss Lu, his teacher, looked at Billy and smiled. She came striding over to Rachel. She was so young. Impossibly young.
“Hi there!” she said. “Amazing to have Billy back! I’m so, so pleased.” She touched Rachel’s arm to emphasize this fact. “We’ll take good care of him, I promise. How is he?”
“Fine,” said Rachel, and out of nowhere, she started to cry. She mopped her eye with her sleeve, pleased that she wasn’t wearing makeup. “He’s absolutely fine.”
She was composing herself to tell Miss Lu about the imaginary friend, but she missed her moment, and the teacher rubbed her arm again, said, “Wonderful!” and walked briskly away.
Rachel flashed a watery smile at the other parents and spun around. Sami wasn’t here and neither was Emma, and there wasn’t anyone she wanted to stop to chat to, because she would cry again.
She noticed the absences, the parents who weren’t here because they were at home with their sick children. Yesterday she had been one of them, and today she was not.
“We did it, baby,” she said to Beth, and Beth looked up and grinned, her cheeks dimpling. Although Rachel was longing to take her for coffee and feed her froth from the teaspoon and look into her beautiful little face, they had other plans. (Also she knew that she could not even remotely afford frothy coffee.) They were going to do a practice commute. They were going to catch the Tube to Orla’s flat, and Rachel would leave Beth there for a bit so she could get used to it.
Going back to work was going to be difficult. However, the money would start to get them back on track, and it would have been worse if she were going back to her old professional job. She had trained as a lawyer, and she still believed the anxiety had almost killed her. When she had given it up and started working as a receptionist instead, life had become immeasurably better.
They wandered home, pausing to look at icy puddles and to smell the wintry air. Rachel pointed out three different delivery drones and swore at a cyclist who came past them with no warning, riding on the pavement even though there was plenty of space on the road. He swore back enthusiastically, without slowing.
“What a dick,” Rachel said to Beth, and Beth laughed.
* * *
• • •
When they were home, she called Al, and unusually, he was able to answer.
“All done,” she said. “I ran, but I got him there. And he went in happily. So that’s good.”
She could hear things going on in the background. Al worked at one of the biggest homeless shelters in London, and Rachel knew that his days were frantic, that this cold winter had been almost unbearable. There was a flu-quarantine zone within the shelter, and policing it was all but impossible, but Al and his colleagues tried. Al wasn’t allowed into the zone: it was staffed only by people who had come through the flu and so were immune to it, and even then they all wore the suits. There was apparently going to be a vaccine, but so far nothing had happened.
Rachel felt guilty about stopping him from doing his work. She always felt guilty when she called during the day. But she needed to hear his voice.
“How’s my Betty?” he said, raising his voice above the clatter of whatever was going on around him.
Rachel looked at Beth sitting on the kitchen floor, sucking her fingers, looking equably around at everything. Al liked to call her Betty and told her she could call him Al, though Rachel thought that he wouldn’t like it if, one day, she actually did.
“She’s blissful,” she said. “Perfect. Wonderful. Oh, God, I’m going to miss her. Stupid work.”
“I know,” he said. “But, darling—everyone will be fine. I hate being away from her and you, too. It’s shit, but that’s the world we live in. We’re lucky to have jobs. You know that, my darling. Maybe one day Nina’ll make a fortune, and we’ll all give up work. Or she’ll create a new utopian society in space and invite us to live in it. And meanwhile your mum will dote on Beth. You know that.”
She smiled at the phone. “Of course. We’re heading off now. I’ll leave her there for a bit and see how they get on without me. I love you.”
“I love you, too! Shit! Stop that, mate! Got to go.” The line went dead.
* * *
• • •
After a coffee and a shower, they set off again. Rachel had wet hair because she couldn’t be bothered to dry it even though it was freezing outside; the fact that she knew she was going to have to be attentive to that sort of detail when she went back to work made her keener to neglect it now. She just pulled a warm hat over her hair. She had Beth in a sling because it was easier for the Tube, and it hurt her back because the baby was eight months old with chubby thighs and round cheeks and she was gloriously bulky.
It still amazed Rachel that she and Al had created Beth. They had made a person, and right now she was untainted by the world. She had been subjected to a deadly virus, and the worst it had been able to inflict on her was a few hours of fever in the night, a distracted mother, a brother with an imaginary friend, and too much television.
It was impossible, though, to imagine Beth’s future. While Rachel felt that everyone who saw her should love her, she knew that they wouldn’t. There were racists and misogynists everywhere, and they were emboldened enough now to say all sorts of things. It broke Rachel’s heart to think it, but it was true. Beth was innocent and perfect, but the world was harsh. She had something about her, something a little bit magical. But, Rachel thought, it was easy for her to see it because she was Beth’s mother. Other people might not.