Read The Playground for Free Online Page B

out of bed and locked the bedroom door. This caused Addie to sit up in her sleep; she felt for her sucky blanket, found it, turned the other way and lay down again. I slipped back in under my duvet and tried to soothe myself with the statistic I’d read that houses with dogs are rarely targeted by thieves. I counted backwards from a hundred in sevens. Just knowing I had to stay still made me desperate to move. I wanted to cough and to turn onto my other side – into the recovery position – but resisted in case the rustle of sheets would wake her.
    In my half-sleep I was a child again, back on the wooden changing bench of our local pool, whimpering as Mum pulled a brush through my hair; the girl sitting beside me had a verruca on the underside of her foot that she was examining with great concentration; the largewoman opposite us was towelling herself, one leg propped on the bench, a talc-y imprint of her foot on the tiles, too many wobbly bits on view. ‘No running. No diving. No jumping. No petting’ the laminated poster above the pool had read. I’d obeyed the first three, and the fourth, though I wasn’t sure what it meant. An older boy had told me that the shallow end was where the deep end was, just for a joke, and I had sat on the edge and slipped in and down and underwater for too long, limbs flailing, my screams unheard and unseen.
    â€˜Let’s dance, Mama,’ Addie was standing up in her bed opposite me.
    â€˜Shush.’ I whispered, inwardly cursing.
    â€˜How about you be a crocodile?’
    â€˜Back to sleep now, sweetie.’
    â€˜It’s too boring! How about
Where’s Wally?
That’s a good idea.’
    â€˜That’s a very bad idea.’
    â€˜Is it morning time?’
    â€˜No, it’s the absolute middle of the night.’
    â€˜But my tummy says it needs a cartoon.’
    I glanced at the clock; ten past three. I got up, sat on the edge of her bed and sang ‘Mocking Bird’ over and over. Then I rubbed my thumb along her forehead the way she liked me to. I listened to her breathing become deeper, crawled back into my own bed and lay utterly still in the darkness, fighting the urge to scratch an itch on my leg.
    â€˜Wakey wakey!’
    â€˜Damn! Addie, I mean it. Mama is sleepy.’
    â€˜Wake up, Daddy,’ Addie would say, giggling, whenever Joe played dead. And the longer he stayed there, tongue lolling, still, the more she would giggle. ‘Daddy, Daddy, wake up,’ her voice getting thin and sharp with expectation because she knew what was coming.All at once he’d pop his eyes open, sit up, grab her, pull her into his chest, hug her and tickle her and she would roll around screaming with delighted protest while he’d blow hot raspberries on her soft, warm coiled-up little neck.
    As a boy he used to play dead to scare his parents when they went out for an evening. He’d lie just inside the front door in a sort of broken position with ketchup on his head and face for ages until they got home, whereupon his mother, a busy, no-nonsense Women’s Institute woman, would step over him, saying ‘Oh, don’t be so silly, Joseph. For goodness’ sake, get up.’
    â€˜
Mum
my
!
’
    I was now in a sleep-deprived rage. I was talking in warnings and capital letters. I got up and searched for Calpol in the boxes still to be unpacked in the kitchen and bathroom, not the manufacturer’s intention but it generally made her drowsy. It turned up in an old wine box marked ‘Xmas’. I was only halfway there. I held the bottle under the bedside light to read the dosage, my fingers sticking to its tacky sides.
    â€˜Some delicious pink medicine,’ said Ratty – she only obeyed orders when they came from her toys. She whipped her head away just as the spoon reached her mouth, spilling Calpol all over her pyjamas.
    â€˜Christ!’ I was lashing out, brittle. I lifted her out to