“Cheers,” said Rachel. “I think about the people who didn’t make it all the time.” She did. She knew his school had lost seven students. Seven. Not eight.
The other two nodded.
“You know Shana in their class?” said Emma. “She’s got it. No idea how ill she is. Other than that, people are coming back. Or not.”
Everyone talked about the pandemic all the time. They had for months. People would talk about it, Rachel thought, forever. She wondered whether this was how it had been during the Black Death. Three women sitting together in a kitchen, swapping stories.
The children dashed into the room. The sight of the six-year-olds, Billy, Lola, and Seth, made Rachel catch her breath. It was so precious, so unlikely. Billy looked strong and bright, with long limbs and boundless energy. His hair was falling into his face, and his eyes shone. Lola stood in front of a clear patch of wall and did a handstand, her feet on the wall and her black ponytail brushing the floor. Seth, who was cuddly and rosy cheeked, snuggled up to Emma. They were like a litter of puppies, tumbling in play.
Beth shrieked and pointed at Lola upside down. Billy knelt on the floor next to his sister and said: “I know, Bethie. Lola is upside down because she’s good at gymnastics. She keeps her center of mass above her wrists, but the wall is there for balance, so it doesn’t matter if she does get it a bit wrong.”
“What?” said Emma. She looked at Rachel and back at Billy. “That’s a bit scientific, Billy.”
“Billy’s been spending a lot of time on the iPad,” said Rachel, “researching things for Delfy’s benefit.”
“Do you guys want a biscuit?” said Sami.
“Oh, yeah!” said Lola, dropping back down. The children followed Sami to the cupboard and stood around her while she opened a tin and held it out.
“One each,” she said. “Homemade, for better or worse.”
Billy ignored the tin and looked behind Sami. “There is a spiderweb in your cupboard,” he told her. “There are lots. Lots of spiders live there. Up at the top. They like it there.”
Everyone looked. Billy was right: there was a silky tangle of web at the very top of the cupboard. Sami laughed. “Jesus, Billy! Don’t tell everyone. Do you want a cookie or not?”
“Billy!” said Rachel, who hated spiders. “Don’t be so rude!” She decided not to eat anything that came out of that particular cupboard. Sami was already standing on a chair and sweeping the cobwebs away.
“Delfy likes spiders,” said Billy. “She says they’re interestin’. They like her, too.”
Rachel held out her arms and pulled him onto her lap. “Don’t talk about spiders,” she whispered. “And don’t be rude about people’s houses. OK?”
“OK, Mummy,” he replied. “Sorry. It was true, though.”
She snuggled his hair, smelled him. She was going to appreciate every atom of him forever, even if he was a bit too forthright sometimes. Rachel loved Delfy because she was part of the recovery. Rachel supposed Delfy would go now that Billy was back with his real friends. She would miss her, but soon Billy wouldn’t need her anymore.
After a while Sami said: “Do you want me to make some tea for the kids? If my hygiene standards are acceptable, that is.”
Rachel winced; Sami was offended. Of course she was. Anyone would be.
She looked at the clock and realized they couldn’t stay anyway.
“I wish. I have to take Billy over to Henry’s. He’s barely seen him for eight weeks and this is the first time Billy’s staying over. He’ll be getting home from work now.”
Henry had, of course, wanted to have Billy to stay as soon as he was well enough to leave the house. Rachel had clung to him for as long as she could, had restricted it to weekend outings, messaging extracts from the government convalescence instructions as backup, but today she knew she had to let him go. He had recovered enough to stay at his dad’s house, and that was a fact.
“Oh, right,” said Sami. “Well, fair enough. Good luck.”
“Thanks.” Rachel closed her eyes for a moment. “I know I have to do it. It’s going to be horrible. But I have to. Billy, what do you say?”
“Sorry I said about the spiders,” said Billy.
“I meant, ‘Thanks for having us to play,’” said Rachel. “But yes, that, too.”
It was cold and dark outside, and Rachel didn’t like it. She hated being out in the dark. That was one of her things. She particularly hated it when she was with children, because she could never make the dark night in the city feel safe. She hated spiders because they were creepy and evil. She hated shower curtains in people’s bathrooms in case they had murderous clowns waiting behind them. She hated seeing homeless people because they made her acknowledge how close she and Al were to having nothing. She had a history of spiraling anxiety, and she clung to sanity as tightly as she could.
“It’ll be nice for you to see Dad,” she said carefully as she pushed Beth along, with Billy walking beside her.
“Delfy hasn’t seen Dad’s house yet,” Billy said. “She didn’t like Dad when we saw him before. She said he was a silly man. I wonder if she will like him today. Nina says it doesn’t matter if she thinks he’s silly.”
“I’m sure she’ll like him,” said Rachel, even though she kind of hoped Delfy would be as rude to Henry as she had been to Sami.
“Delfy likes you and Al and Nina and Beth.”
“And we like Delfy, because she helped you get better.”
They walked quickly round the corner, across the road, and up a few more streets until they got to the far smarter road on which Henry still lived. Here there were trees, neatly pruned, and security lights that snapped on outside most houses as they passed. The houses themselves were spacious, and a few of them even had cars in their drives.
When Billy saw his dad’s house, Rachel expected him to run toward it, but he didn’t. He dropped back, and she saw in the light from the flickering streetlamp that he was frowning, deep in thought.
Rachel was happy to take the last bit slowly. She hated her visits to this house because she had lived in it for ten years and it had not been a happy time. Henry had kept the house because Rachel was the one who wanted to leave. Now she scraped by in their rented place, which was held together with Scotch tape and willpower, while Henry had probably paid off his mortgage. Nonetheless, she didn’t regret a thing.
The security light snapped on as they walked up the crunchy path. Billy pressed the bell on the blue front door, which had been repainted since Rachel last visited. Henry opened it at once and looked her up and down very quickly, as he always did. She felt exposed in the bright light and was glad of the pushchair as a shield, though Henry, as ever, acted as if Beth didn’t exist, and Beth ignored him right back.