Chapters (28)
‘But just as they get to the entrance gate, the mother bumps into an acquaintance, another doctor, who is leaving the park. They stop at the gate to chat about the bad nights. This other doctor has been trying a new herbal remedy that seems to be working and she starts looking up the name of it to share when the toddler – who is justifiably furious with her mother for stopping right here to chat, so tantalizingly close to their destination – starts whining and trying to get out of her seat, but she can’t because she’s strapped in. The mother tells the toddler that she will just have to wait. Well, the toddler won’t wait, she is a toddler after all, and she wants to go on the swings. She starts to scream now and the mother, who has had enough of this and, who knows, is perhaps eager to demonstrate that she has some authority over this crazy screaming miniature human being, tells her child with a firmness she has no energy for to Stop it! But the toddler kicks off – she goes purple in the face and screams like a demon. She is now having a full-blown tantrum and the mother, beside herself with exhaustion and some embarrassment now at her own utterly useless parenting, loses it completely. “Shut up! I’ve had enough of this, Abigail!” And she manhandles the stroller, roughly swivelling it one hundred and eighty degrees to face the opposite direction so that the toddler can no longer see the playground. And then the mother turns her back on the child, pointedly ignoring her, teaching her a lesson that she will not always get her own way by screaming.
‘It seems to work. She’s aware, as she chats with the doctor, that the tantrum is subsiding. They talk about one of the families in the playground whose children sleep through the night. But what neither the mother nor the doctor notice is that the pavement is on a gentle slope and the stroller is moving, and right at that moment a lorry is speeding round the crescent. And when the brakes screech and the mother turns around it is too late. It takes for ever for the lorry to stop, dragging the stroller in its front wheel as it spins across the road. And when it does eventually come to a halt maybe fifty yards away, the stroller is tipped forwards and there is no movement at all. There are no more tantrums.’
I stare at Dr. R. She’s gazing out of the window without looking at anything, eyes glazed, tears all shed.
‘You didn’t put the brake on?’ I say.
Dr. R turns to me and very slowly she shakes her head. ‘No. I didn’t put the brake on.’