The Silk Factory Read Free

childminder?’
    Rosie shook her head. ‘Too pricey. Anyway, I don’t want a stranger. Sam’s a bit stirred up by it all; he can be difficult sometimes.’ She frowned. ‘I’ll just have to pull in my horns.’ Rosie’s settlement had included the flat when she and Josh split but she had soon found that she couldn’t manage the mortgage payments on her own and had been forced to make a quick sale. The buyer’s surveyor had found dry rot and pushed her right down on price so that she’d made hardly anything on it. She’d had to move to a cheaper area and now rented a flat in Streatham: a tiny place on the second floor above a coffee shop and the landlord’s first-floor flat. The noise of the high street and the lack of a garden meant it was a lot cheaper but she still found herself struggling by the end of each month.
    Corinne, as always, took her side. ‘I don’t suppose bloody Josh could up the maintenance to help out?’
    Rosie snorted. ‘I could be dressing the kids in the curtains like a regular family von Trapp before he’d even notice.’
    Corinne gave her a hug. ‘Do you want to stay over tonight?’
    ‘Better not. I’m trying to keep the kids in as much of a routine as I can. Anyway, it would only be putting off the evil hour.’
    She had piled the kids into the car, driven home and carted Cara’s buggy up two flights. As she turned the key in the door of the flat, she’d gritted her teeth and stepped into quiet emptiness, the children trailing behind her.
    Rosie had sunk for a while, hiding away from the world. After moving flats, she gradually fell out of touch with her other friends and colleagues apart from Corinne. She found herself unable to work up enough interest to reply to emails full of staffroom gossip that she no longer felt part of, and felt that they would have no interest in her everyday round of childcare. She couldn’t seem to muster any energy and did no more than the bare essentials at the flat. Her doctor prescribed anti-depressants. They made her feel muzzy; they gave her dizzy spells and sometimes blurred her vision or resulted in vicious headaches that left her drowsy and washed out the day after. But when she went back for her review he had shrugged these off as common minor side effects, telling her that it would take a few weeks before she started to feel better and impressing upon her that she was not to come off them without consultation.
    She took the children to the park, as her mum used to on her regular visits to help out, pushed swings and spun roundabouts, her arms going through the motions, her mind blank. Corinne came over once a week after work and they ate takeaway and drank a bottle of wine together. Rosie gave vent to her feelings about Josh and Tania – Tania of the impeccably tailored suits and impossibly slim waist, Josh’s one-time colleague, one-time mistress and now full-time partner. Corinne told her the latest on her complicated relationship with Luc, who she hoped would come and join her in England but who seemed wedded to Paris and his job. Corinne brought things from the outside world: books and games for the children, stories and laughter, but when she left it felt even lonelier than before.
    Sometimes Rosie cried at night, quietly, so that the children wouldn’t hear. She visited the cemetery and replaced flowers that had dried brittle-brown in the heat. Standing at the foot of the grave she tried to tell her mother how much she missed her. It was no good; her mother wasn’t there.
    Rosie passed her hands over her face and roused herself. She would make a cup of tea and then go and cuddle up with the children on the sofa. She felt the need of their soft, warm bodies against her. As she ran the water into the kettle, she looked once more at the garden through the old small-paned window. She thought again about the stranger child, still bewildered about how she could have got in. A breeze had risen and was stirring the leaves of the shrubs and