When I Ran Away by Ilona Bannister (best books under 200 pages .TXT) 📕

than that. I didn’t know how to make him understand that I couldn’t hire a cleaning lady until I cleaned the house.

Help. Help is complicated, Harry. Help is hard to find. Help has to be trusted to see your inner workings, so why don’t you take your help, Harry, and fuckin’ shov— Stop it, Gigi. Aren’t you tired of your own voice yet?

I shudder.

Yes.

I go to the bathroom, wet a corner of the small towel in the sink, get on my knees and start to scrub at the tiles. He wants to help you. Tell him how. He loves you. I need bleach for the mold so can’t really help that, but I can work on the soap scum. He was there once and he helped, remember? The limescale really needs vinegar, but if I keep working on it, scrape it with a fingernail, it’ll go. Stop living like you’re alone. Why did you do all this—the marriage, the baby—if inside you’re just going to keep living alone? I move to the edge of the bath to work on the hard water stains on the tap. If you don’t have limescale spray you can use toothpaste and rub the metal with a cloth. Look, someone left a little travel one behind. Perfect. Tell him to come get you. Tell him you’re tired of living alone. He’ll help you. See? If you’re just patient and keep at it, it shines up nice.

London, May 2016; Baby, 5½ months old

Harry sent me a text this morning: Stefka, Cleaning Angels, 12 pm, 3 hours. I put Rocky down for a nap and got to work. Two hours later and the upstairs bathroom was spotless. The taps polished, sparkling. The hair pulled out from the plugholes, the shower floor scrubbed, the tub shining. The toilet looked like a fucking diamond. You could eat soup from the sink. I used a grout brush for the floors and the tiles were like new. Cillit Bang and Dettol and Windolene—all these cleaners with their funny English names—they made my eyes water but the smell of chemical clean reassured me. I knew this woman would be appalled at the oven and disgusted by the carpets but she would know what I was about when she saw the bathroom.

I’m not sure how long Rocky’s been crying when I finally hear him. But it was too long, I can tell from the volume, the red fury of his face clenched in baby rage, his little features squeezed like a fist. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I repeat quickly and I pick him up out of the pool of vomit he’s been rolling in, unable to get out of it, like quicksand. He’s rubbed it in his eye and his hair, his cries rising from upset to distress. I hook my hands under his little arms and he vomits again as I lift him out of the crib, so I swiftly hold him like a football under one arm, tip his head downward so he can get it out. The baby bile and sour milk leave a small but violent stain on the light gray carpet. I get him to the bathroom and he gets one more shot at the tile.

I wonder if the orange stuff from that last little puddle—I guess it must be carrots—will come out of the grout that I just spent the last hour scrubbing.

The doorbell rings. He’s stopped crying now that he knows he wasn’t abandoned. But there’s no time to change him. I open the door, half expecting it to be Social Services.

“Hello, Meesus Harreeson? I am Stefka.” I wonder if I’ve forgotten that my house was supposed to be used as an ironic setting for a photo shoot for the Slavic supermodel on my doorstep.

“Meesus Harreeson? Can I help you?” Stefka pulls her bleach blond hair with its black roots back into a ponytail, comes into the house, takes off her cool and tiny leather jacket and reaches for Rocky.

I snap out of it. “Sorry, I’m sorry, he was sick, I…come in, come in. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

“Meesus Harreeson?” She looks at me sideways, talking to me like she might to an unconscious stranger who’s just fainted in the street.

“You want give me baby and you change your clothes? I make the tea?” she says, smiling.

“Yes, thank you,” I say. I don’t remember handing her the baby but now she’s holding him with her left arm, filling the kettle at the tap with her right. Rocky’s whimpering but she’s distracting him with the tap and the kettle, talking to him in a language I don’t know. I look down at my shirt and now I see why she suggested I change. She doesn’t know that this is what I always look like.

“Is beautiful house, Meesus Harreeson.” She pops Rocky on the countertop and cleans his face with a dish towel. She starts to take off his wet onesie.

“He was vomiting, no? Where is his clothes, for change?” She keeps one arm on him, keeping him safe, while she stretches to the other counter, pours the hot water into a cup for me. Where the fuck did she find the tea?

“Tea for you. Baby is very hard work. Where his clothes, please?”

“His room is at the top of the stairs, first left. Thank you. Thank you so much,” I say.

“Is OK, I love the babies,” she says, and runs upstairs with him. Rocky is smitten. She could walk out of this house with him and never come back and that kid would be like, “Jeej who?” He would totally take the upgrade to this hot, young, nice, competent mom.

Can’t let Harry meet her. He’ll want the upgrade too.

I sip black tea in the kitchen and wonder what will happen next. I hate tea, we know this, but somehow, her tea is exactly what I need. Stefka puts Rocky in the high chair, gives him some water in a sippy cup.