What Alice Forgot

“And why am I hosting it?” asked Alice. It seemed extraordinary. Why would she even think of doing such a thing?

Dominick raised his eyebrows. “Well, because you and your friend Kate Harper are Class Mums.”

“Like classy mothers?”

He smiled uncertainly. “The Class Mums arrange social events for all the other mothers, and communicate with the teachers, organize the reading roster, and, ah, that sort of . . .”

Oh Lord. It sounded horrendous. She’d become one of those volunteering, involved type of people. She was probably really proud and smug; she’d always known she had a tendency toward smugness. She could just imagine herself swanning about in her beautiful clothes.

“You do a lot for the school,” said Dominick. “We’re very lucky to have you. Speaking of which, it’s the big day coming up! Wow! I hope you’re going to be well enough for it!”

That man on the treadmill at the gym had mentioned a “big day,” too. “What do you mean?” asked Alice with a sense of foreboding.

“You’re getting us into the Guinness Book of Records.”

She smiled, ready to laugh at his next joke.

“No, really. You don’t remember at all? You’re baking the world’s biggest lemon meringue pie on Mother’s Day. It’s a big event. All the money raised is going to breast cancer research.”

Alice remembered her dream about the giant rolling pin. Ah. The rolling pin wasn’t a symbol at all. It was just a giant rolling pin. Her dreams were always so disappointingly obvious.

“I’m baking it?” she said in a panic. “This huge lemon meringue pie?”

“No, no. You’ve got one hundred mums baking it,” said Dominick. “It’s going to be amazing.” He knotted the end of another balloon together. Alice looked up and saw that the ceiling was now covered with blue and silver balloons.

Tonight she was hosting a party and next weekend she was planning to break a world record. Good Lord. What had she become?

She looked back down and saw that Dominick was staring at her.

“I’ve worked it out,” he said. “What’s different about you.”

He sat down beside her. Much too close. Alice tried to move unobtrusively away from him, but it was too hard on the squishy leather sofa without making a production of it. So she sat passively with her hands in her lap, schoolgirl style; surely he wasn’t going to do anything, with his son just a few feet away.

He was so close, she could see tiny black whiskers on his chin and smell him: toothpaste, washing powder. (Nick smelled of coffee, aftershave, last night’s garlic.)

Up close, his eyes were the same liquid chocolate as his son’s. (Nick’s were either hazel or green, depending on the light, the irises were rimmed with gold, and his eyelashes were so fair, they looked white in the sun.)

Dominick leaned in closer. Oh sweet heavens above, the school principal was going to kiss her, and it would be wrong to slap his face because she might have already kissed him before.

No. He pressed his thumb in between her eyebrows. What was he doing? Was it some sort of weird middle-aged-people ritual? Was she meant to do it back to him?

“You’ve lost your frown,” he said. “You always have this little frown right here, as if you’re concentrating, or worrying about something, even when you’re happy. Now it’s . . .”

He took his thumb away. Alice exhaled with relief. She said, “I don’t know if you’re meant to tell a woman she has a permanent frown.” It came out sounding flirtatious.

“Either way, you’re still gorgeous,” he said, and put his hand to the back of her head and kissed her.

It was not unpleasant.

“I saw that!”

Jasper stood in front of them, his helicopter dangling by a rotor from one hand. His eyes were wide and delighted.

Alice put her fingers to her mouth. She’d kissed another man. She hadn’t just let him kiss her; she’d kissed him back. Out of nothing more than interest really. Politeness. (Maybe the teeniest flicker of attraction.) Guilt blossomed like heartburn across her chest.

Jasper chortled. “I’m going to tell Olivia that my dad kissed her mum!” He danced on the spot, punching his fists in the air, his face screwed up in an ecstasy of pleasure and disgust. “My dad kissed her mum! My dad kissed her mum!”

Goodness. Were Alice’s own children like this? Sort of . . . demented?

Dominick touched Alice gently and respectfully on her arm, and stood up. He grabbed Jasper and held him upside down by his ankles. Jasper shrieked with gasps of laughter and dropped his helicopter.

Alice watched them and felt a weird sense of dissociation. Did she really just kiss that man? That shy school principal? That jolly dad?

Maybe it was her head injury that made her do it. Yes, she had a medical reason. She was not herself.

Then she remembered there was no need to feel guilty, because of Nick’s affair with that Gina girl. Right. Now they were even.

Jasper noticed that a part of his helicopter had broken off and he yelled and squirmed as though in terrible agony. Dominick said, “What? What is it, mate?” and turned him upright.

Alice’s head began to ache again.

When was Elisabeth coming back? She needed Elisabeth.

Elisabeth’s Homework for Dr. Hodges As I was driving back over to Alice’s place, I thought about Gina. I often think about her now. She has acquired an aura of mystery. Once upon a time I just found her irritating.

I’m not sure why I disliked her so much from the beginning. Maybe it was just because it was clear that she and Michael and Alice and Nick had formed such a cozy foursome. They used to be in and out of each other’s places all the time. No need to knock. Lots of private jokes. Feeding each other’s kids. Gina would walk straight over from her house in her swimming costume—no T-shirt, no towel wrapped under her armpits—just entirely unselfconscious, like a child. She had a softish, round, mocha-colored body. Beautiful jiggly br**sts that dragged the men’s eyes along with them. I think I remember some story about them all getting drunk and swimming naked in the pool one summer’s night. So very seventies of them.

She and Alice were all bright and giggly and swilling champagne, and I was a stiff cardboard cutout. My laugh was forced. It seemed to happen so quickly that she knew my sister better than me.

Gina’s kids were IVF pregnancies. She asked lots of expertly interested questions. She would sympathetically rub my hand (very touchy-feely type, soft, sweet-smelling kisses on each cheek every time you saw her; I once heard Roger say to her, “Oh, I do like the way you European ladies kiss hello!”). Gina said she understood exactly what I was going through. And quite probably she did, except that it was all behind her now. I could tell her memories were rose-colored because of the happy ending. You’d think I would have been inspired by her—she was a success story. She’d traveled across the infertility minefield and got safely to the other side. But I found her patronizing. It’s easy to think the minefield wasn’t that bad once you’re safely watching other people get blown up. She couldn’t imagine her children not existing. They were too real, filling up her mind. I felt like I couldn’t complain to Alice because Gina was probably in her ear, telling her, with the benefit of experience, that it wasn’t that bad and I was just whinging and being melodramatic.