Dot (Araminta Hall)

right.
    Alice was filled up with her plans for Dot’s party for the next two weeks, so much so that she didn’t notice when Tony spent more time than usual with Silver. Even Clarice seemed to have entered into the spirit of things and one evening Tony came home to find the two women huddled over a book, discussing recipes. Maybe they weren’t mad, he found himself thinking, just different and so removed from his own experience that he found it easier to let himself think that they were unhinged.
    ‘D’you want me to give Dot her bath?’ he asked.
    ‘Oh, would you?’ said Alice, turning her smile on him, which was still capable of taking his breath away.
    Tony scooped his daughter into his arms, bounding up the wooden stairs as relatives who would never belong to him watched their every move. He ran the bath higher than Alice did and filled it with bubbles, shutting the door so that the steam filled the room. Tony hung his jacket over a chair, rolled up his sleeves, took off his tie and shoes and helped his podgy daughter out of her clothes. Her arms and legs were like pillows and her skin mottled as he placed her into the bath. She splashed at the water, clutching at the bubbles which dissolved in her hands, her fiery hair sticking to her scalp as it got wetter and wetter.
    Tony knelt on the floor, resting his arms on the side of the bath and staring so intently at his daughter that he stopped seeing her; he started to doubt her reality. The thought rushed through him that his actions were going to affect her, that how he managed the next few weeks, months, years would determine the person she would one day become and the responsibility seemed awesome.
    ‘I love you, Dot,’ he said.
    She looked up and smiled. ‘I love you, Daddy.’ She reached over to him, chasing the tears he was crying down his cheeks with her fingers.
    ‘We’ll get a nice flat, Silver and I, and you’ll have a beautiful pink bedroom and I’ll fill it with toys and dolls and you can stay whenever you want.’
    ‘Dolls,’ she squealed.
    ‘Whatever you want, angel. We’ll all be happier this way, I promise.’ But the words sounded hollow and tasted stale and a sickness rose in him that made him retch over the toilet until he was hot and trembling.
    Dot woke them on the morning of her birthday as she did most mornings, her warm body between them from some indeterminable point in the night when she’d cried and Alice had left the room and reappeared with her. The day was bright and the sun poured over his wife and daughter, so that they looked unearthly. He’d made love to Alice the night before and the memory shamed him. He’d kissed those perfect lips, run his hands over her blemish-free flesh, held her tightly, moaned into her neck. And, worse than all of that, he’d meant it. As Dot tore at her presents he knew that his mind only had a few more hours left in it, that the route he was travelling only led one sure way and that was madness. He knew that better – or maybe worse – men than him could split themselves, but it was tearing at his soul. He decided to call Silver that night and say he was going to talk to Alice tomorrow and that they should leave on Monday. Silver had a job lined up at a pub in Cartertown and they could stay in a B and B until they got a flat sorted.
    The day dragged him towards it. Everywhere he turned he felt as though he was at a ghastly fairground in a hall of mirrors showing him what could have been. Dot was amazing, bounding around in her delight like a puppy. He heard Clarice laugh; he marvelled at the plates of food Alice produced. Even the house felt warm and friendly as balloons brightened dark corners and music pierced the silence.
    After lunch Tony took Dot into the garden and spun her round by holding her hands so that she shrieked with joy. They fell into the grass together and Tony noticed how the roses in the border were the same colour as her hair. Pieces of his daughter fell all around him, shredding his heart and mangling his brain. He lay on the lawn with Dot resting on his stomach and looked back at the tall house with its dark windows and magical turret and realised that he no longer knew right from wrong. He felt sure that the right thing to do would be to walk away from Silver and yet even the thought was impossible. He tried to imagine his future without her as he stroked his daughter’s hair and it felt as empty as death. He had maybe minutes to save himself. He now knew