The Drowning Lesson Read Free Page A

though I wasn’t sure why. Small knots of children of about Alice’s age were beginning to walk across the playground in twos and threes, holding hands, chatting. They looked happy, but perhaps they secretly minded about losing their pencils or scrunchies. They might be plotting revenge. I felt a pang of worry for Alice.
    ‘I’ll talk to her,’ I said. She usually told me about school, though not so much lately. I looked at my lap where my hands twisted together. Surgeon’s hands, like his, Dad had said. Clever hands that could dissect to the problem and cut it out. I ought to have known if Alice had a problem: it should have been something she’d confided to me in whispers at the end of the day when I tucked her in. But I often wasn’t there then. Adam was. Even if I asked her what was wrong, would she tell me? She might have decided on the evidence that I didn’t care.
    ‘I think Alice is self-validating,’ Mrs Philips was continuing. ‘Ten-year-old children who steal may be looking for ways to reward themselves. I wondered if she was getting sufficient positive feedback from … all her caregivers.’
    I felt my face heat. The clock behind her head showed eight. I would be late if I stayed to argue. I stood to go. ‘She gets plenty of feedback at home. We praise her all the time. Perhaps you could make sure that happens at school, too, instead of accusing her of theft.’
    She didn’t reply but I could feel her eyes watching me as I walked to the door. Iridescent lines danced at the corner of my vision: a migraine was approaching. I delved in my bag for paracetamol as I crossed the playground, fine rain driving against my hot cheeks. My heels tapped the tarmac, jarring my head with each step. Bloody woman. I shouldn’t have lost my temper but I was worried for Alice. As I swallowed the bitter tablets I wondered whether any of the sweet-faced children running past me in the opposite direction had retribution in mind.
    The operating theatre was brightly lit, warm and calm. Classical music flowed from speakers in the ceiling. It was easy to empty my mind of everything except what I had to do. The patient lay in front of me, unconscious, intubated, eyes taped shut. Cancer
had invaded the bladder from the uterus. The task distilled and became, simply, careful dissection and painstaking repair. The anaesthetist nodded. It was safe to begin. The theatre sister quietly handed me the knife and I started to cut. The music and murmurs of my team faded into the background as I worked, blinking away the sweat as it stung my eyes.
    Two hours later the skin was neatly sutured, bladder function preserved.
    Back in my room, I took more paracetamol, this time with a palmful of metallic tap water from the basin. I sat at my desk massaging my temples; on the screensaver in front of me Alice and Zoë were laughing on a sunny beach. Alice’s face in the mirror this morning had been bleak. Perhaps what Mrs Philips had implied was true: perhaps there wasn’t enough positive feedback at home – perhaps there wasn’t any. We didn’t praise her all the time; in spite of what I’d said, I couldn’t remember the last time we had. The opportunity never seemed to present itself, or maybe it was simply lack of time. It might be worse than that.
    I got up from my desk and stared out of the window. In front of me was a panorama of north London: sky, houses, roads, the grassy slopes of Hampstead Heath. The hidden ponds behind the trees where the water was green and deep. Had I become like my father in some way that was hidden from me? Did she feel she had to win to make me happy?
    If I worked through lunch I could finish my review paper on intrauterine growth retardation for the
Journal of Reproductive Medicine
. I’d get home earlier for once – I could catch Alice and we would talk.
    In the early-afternoon gynaecology clinic I was called back to theatre to help with an obstructed labour. The monitor showed the baby’s heart rate