When I Ran Away by Ilona Bannister (best books to read now .TXT) 📗

or we don’t doesn’t matter; she asked. I’m grateful just for that. I almost smile. “Yeah. Thanks. See you next week,” I say and push Rocky out the door, my scar pulsing with every step.

London, May 2016; Baby, 5 months old

“Hey, Jeej, how does the water in the sea stick to the Earth even when it’s on the part that’s upside down?” Johnny doesn’t say hello when I pick him up from school. He unleashes a wave of questions from the minute I hug him hello. A day will come when he’ll stop talking to me like this and I won’t know about all the corners of his little world. I wish his energy would infect me, make me burst into a smile when I see him, but instead I feel drained, exhausted by the walk home before it starts. I’m so heavy but he’s a little cloud of wonder. I try not to weigh him down.

“Jeej? How does it do it?” He looks at me with his big dark eyes. His buttons are askew after changing for gym; there’s a blotch of ketchup on his shoe.

“Gravity,” I say, taking his schoolbag. I hook it on the stroller and start the slow walk home.

“What’s gravity?”

“It’s the force that keeps things on the ground.”

“Where does it come from?”

“The Sun.”

“How?” He holds the handle of the stroller like a surrogate hand.

“Radiation and magnetic waves or something, I don’t know, ask Harry when he gets home.”

“Did you know that Saturn is just gas and it’s so light that if you put it on our ocean on Earth it would float?”

“What?”

“Do you know how?”

“No, do you?”

“No, I mean, do you know how it does that, Jeej?”

“Listen, you’re going way over my head here. I never heard that before in my life. Have a cookie.” They don’t say “cookie” here. They say “biscuits,” which never sits right in my mouth. Biscuits are white fluffy things that people eat with gravy in movies about the Deep South.

“And also did you know that Pluto is a micro-planet?”

“What? It’s not a regular planet anymore?”

“Jeej, why isn’t it a planet?”

“I don’t know, you’re the one who brought it up.”

“Jeej, you don’t know very much about space.”

“Yeah, well, sue me. What else happened today?” And he goes on and on. Who chased who, who played spies, who wouldn’t let go of the ball.

“What’d you have for lunch?”

“I don’t know. Jeej, I got a sticker for perseverance!”

“Wow, that’s cool. What’d you do to get that?”

“I dunno. Jeej, what’s perseverance?” As I explain it to him and he thinks of another ten questions to ask me, Rocky, who’s been sitting up, listening, gurgling his own answers to Johnny, drops his giraffe somewhere. Johnny stops mid-sentence and says, “Jeej, where’s Jeffrey?”

It’s one of those beige, rubber, French ones. Johnny named it Jeffrey. I don’t really get it, some retro toy trend. It has brown oval spots for eyes and orangey dots for its giraffe skin. People kept giving them to us when Rocky was born. We got three of them. A prerequisite for babies in a certain tax bracket. I picked one up in a store to see how much it cost—£15. It’s ugly, it doesn’t do anything, it’s not cuddly. They’re supposed to chew on it but the only part that fits in a baby’s mouth is the ear. I thought about sending one of the extra ones to Stacy for her baby, except I knew that she would open the box and the next text would be: WTF? What is this thing? I wouldn’t have even kept this one, would’ve dropped it off at the charity shop with the others, but Johnny opened the box and showed it to Rocky. It’s really more for Johnny that we kept it; something he could be in charge of for the baby.

I don’t mind that Rocky lost it. It has no sentimental value. It’s just another thing we have because there’s a rule book somewhere about these things we’re supposed to have so people don’t think we’re poor; not actual poor, but rich-person poor: Bugaboo stroller; Range Rover/Land Rover and Fiat or Mini for zipping around town; Rolex for the man; Cartier for the woman; Chloé Marcie cross-body saddle bag for daytime or, if you work, Mulberry Bayswater; a cleaning lady; a Burberry trench; matching Boori nursery furniture with an ergonomic sliding feeding chair; Orla Kiely bedding, or at least the set of kitchen jars in three different sizes with matching tea towels and/or oven mitts; Diptyque candles (£47 each, and that’s not even for a big one); a skiing holiday; an au pair; Sophie Conran Portmeirion dinnerware; a Stokke high chair; Taittinger on standby in the fridge; tonic in the cabinet always ready for G-and-Ts, and preferably Fever-Tree, not some store brand; a regular window cleaning service; a Micro scooter for Johnny and an Islabike at £350 a pop; an Ocado grocery account; highlights touched up every six weeks; a regular gardener; wine that’s £15 a bottle minimum on a rack or preferably in a mini wine fridge built into the newly renovated kitchen; a personal trainer; a cashmere beanie hat with a faux-fur pom-pom; and a weekly fresh flower delivery.

And this French, rubber giraffe.

I’m relieved that it’s gone. I felt pressured by it, like I just couldn’t live up to its English middle-class standards of clean, uncluttered homes and landscaped gardens and a knowledge of how to roast lamb. And Rocky doesn’t care. But Johnny’s here and to him, like any child, the loss of a toy is tragic and urgent. God, please let it just be on the sidewalk somewhere so we can go home.

Johnny runs back down the block to look for Jeffrey before I can stop him. The houses on this street are the same attached, narrow, three-story houses that line every street, but so far this part of the block has resisted the finance power couples and their children—families like my family. These houses are skipped over