A Good House for Children

A Good House for Children A Good House for ChildrenKATE COLLINS First published in Great Britain in 2023 bySERPENT’S TAILan imprint of Profile Books Ltd29 Cloth FairLondon EC1A 7JQwww.serpentstail.comCopyright © Kate Collins, 20231 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2Typeset in Tramuntana Text by MacGuru LtdDesigned by Nicky Barneby @ Barneby LtdThe moral right of the author has been asserted.All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.ISBN 978 1 78816 930 1eISBN 978 1 78283 913 2Audio ISBN 978 1 80081 609 1 For Shirley and Phil,best beloved BuddingAwake, arise, pull out your eyes,And hear what time of day;And when you have done, pull out your tongue,And see what you can say.English nursery rhyme, traditional 12017 IT’S POSSIBLE TO LOVE SOMETHING too much. It’s even possible to love something to death, and when Sam was seven weeks old and screaming himself scarlet with an existential fury particular to small babies, Orla McGrath stood over his cot and thought, I love you so much I could kill you. It was only a quick thought and it passed into that humid night soon enough, but from time to time over the years she would remember that she had once had it, and adrenaline would race up her spine.As Sam grew older, he grew less angry, and, gradually, silent. His early infant babble never really formed past a few words and soon those sounds, too, ebbed away out of his red mouth full of pearl-barley teeth, until one day, when Sam had just turned three, it occurred to Orla and Nick that their son hadn’t spoken a single word for almost a week.‘Should we take him to the doctor?’ Orla peered into his mouth as he stood obediently in front of her in the kitchen.‘I don’t think there’s anything wrong with him, really.’ Nick, arms folded, leaned against the oven and looked interested but not exactly worried.‘Sam, darling, can you tell me if your throat hurts?’ She cupped his cheek in her palm. Sam shook his head. ‘Do you mean you can’t tell me, or that it doesn’t hurt?’ Sam nodded. Orla sighed, frustrated, and pulled her son on to her lap so that his little head rested against the hollow between her breasts and she could feel the heat of his blood through her shirt.‘I suppose an appointment couldn’t hurt,’ Nick said. ‘I’m not here much next week, though; I probably won’t be able to come with you.’When Orla was pregnant with Sam, heavy and slow and cow-eyed, she developed a thirst that couldn’t be put out. She drank no more than usual, but would descend into a panic if she found herself without water to hand, and so she developed a habit of collecting. Her nightstand became a fortress of half-filled tumblers, the boot of the car perpetually weighed down by cases of bottled spring water. Litres of sparkling water filled the cupboards, gathered dust stashed neatly behind the toilet cistern, rolled about beneath the sofa. Outside, buckets and pots stood in rows to catch the rain and slowly turned green. Sometimes, when she felt the thirst, just looking at her water suppressed the need for it, and she’d smile and touch the bottles lightly with her fingers. The biggest saucepan was called into service as a doorstop holding open the French doors from the living room into the kitchen, full of beautiful water and serene as a mirror.Her mother-in-law came to visit during this time, saw the depths of Orla’s sickness and took her to the GP to test for gestational diabetes. Nothing – she was perfectly fine. Her GP, a kind man who looked a little like a heron, held Orla’s hand and said, ‘If it makes you feel better, you may go on collecting.’ Orla smiled and was grateful.When Sam came, tearing his way into the world, Orla and Nick brought him home to their house full of water, where Orla saw it all and decided she didn’t need it any more. Out it went – the buckets splashed into the grate in the garden, the endless green bottles in their creaking plastic cases given away to neighbours. Orla stood with her son in her arms and emptied all the places in which she had collected herself.Bridie, three years later, was an easier pregnancy. She was such an undemanding foetus that Orla occasionally forgot she was pregnant at all, especially in the early months, and when she finally delivered a hefty baby after a gasping ninety minutes of labour, she was almost startled by the appearance of a living thing. Although Bridie was a more relaxed baby, Orla found her less rewarding than Sam had been at that age. Nick said it was only natural, that first babies were always special, and Orla nodded along.Orla worried that Sam might take against the new arrival – she’d heard enough horror stories of toddler siblings putting babies into the washing machine on the spin cycle, or pushing them out of prams. But Sam was enchanted by his sister – by her dark duckling fluff and satin lips and the way she lay curled up like a woodlouse on its back. He stroked her toes when Orla bathed her in the sink and insisted that he be the one to hold the bottles when Orla finally gave up on breastfeeding, after six exhausting weeks of under-producing a thin and unsatisfying milk.The GP, after a thorough examination through which Sam sat patiently, declared that he couldn’t see anything obviously out of the ordinary and referred them to a child psychiatrist. Orla and Sam endured three sessions, during each of