The pink curtains were ripped back by Mira’s mother. The grey light from outside settling onto the sad scene.
Craig shoved Mira away. ‘She came onto me. You know what she’s like,’ Craig said.
He leapt up and scampered away, Deidre charging after him, leaving Mira lying crumpled into the corner of the sofa, her arm covering her burning face. The shouting between Deidre and Craig continued outside.
Mira’s mother stood by the window where she had drawn the curtains. She was silhouetted. A grey lumpy mass.
Mira uncurled herself, her heart racing, her body cold. She ran to the door, to get up to her bedroom where she could hide her shame away. Then her mother made a sudden movement, darting in front of her, stopping the door with her foot, trapping Mira.
The front door banged. Deidre stamped upstairs. Craig’s car hurtled and screeched out of the driveway.
When Mira first felt her mother’s slap, she hadn’t realised what the pain in her lip was or where it had come from. Then she saw her mother massaging the palm of her right hand with her thumb. Mira had tasted the blood seeping onto her gums. She looked into her mother’s eyes. With the light from the windows now illuminating her face, Mira could see the mottled pallor of her mother’s skin. Her eye sockets sunken, her breath reeking of cigarettes. Mira read years of confusion and regret in her eyes; unless she had been seeing her own confusion and regret reflected back at her. Whatever her mother was thinking or feeling in the moment, it wasn’t hatred. For the first time, both Mira and her mother were fused, with something that felt like misplaced recognition. A smile had formed on Mira’s lips, designed to acknowledge some kind of love, or connection to her mother, at least. Her mother’s slap. The only time in their life that her mother had touched her physically with violence. The engagement of sweaty hand to face almost flattering. Years of disinterest brought into focus; one moment of attention and truth, so sharp and specific.
‘Get out of my house,’ her mother said.
There was no smile on her mother’s face. But there were no tears in Mira’s eyes. She felt nothing. Mira had not been frightened to leave home. She was fifteen years old but she felt older. She caught a bus straight to Craig’s flat. He had opened his door wearing only a pair of tracksuit pants, and looked to the floor, snorting, as though at a private joke.
‘Shit, this is all I need.’ He had pressed the heel of his hand into his forehead.
But strangely, Mira didn’t sense the unkindness.
‘I’ll go.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ he sighed, standing aside to let her in.
His flat was pokey and over-heated with magnolia-painted woodchip walls and curtains at the windows that reminded Mira of hospitals. The steady flow of traffic from the main road out of town rumbled through the double glazing.
‘Your sister’s a fucking nutcase.’ He had pressed the volume down on the television with the remote control and then pulled on a T-shirt that had been slung over the back of a chair.
They had perched on the edge of his nylon sofa opposite his television, a football game flickering away on mute.
‘Mum slapped me,’ she had said, touching her split lip.
Their eyeballs had followed the little red and white footballers running around the pitch.
‘Did Deidre go mental at you?’
‘She stayed in her room.’
‘I feel bad for her, if I’m honest.’
‘D’you still love her?’
He had taken a swig of beer before he answered. ‘Nah.’
A strong urge to slap him had come over her, just as her mother had slapped her an hour before.
She hadn’t, of course. To be allowed to camp out there with him, she had to play nice. She would have done anything to put off going back home.
At this point, there was still hope. Hope. Pain. In her lip, in her shoulder, hunched in her jaw. Where was she?
A low ceiling, green walls, the carpet on her cheek, a table leg in front of her face. She was under the dining room table, her knees up to her chest, with the fourteen photographs of Craig bent in half in her smarting right hand. The edges were cutting into her skin. Although there was nobody to see her like this, she was ashamed of herself. A grown woman curled under the table like a dog. How had she not remembered moving from the chair to the floor? Had she been sleeping?
On all fours, she crawled out from the table through the chairs’ legs and stood up. The prints were like razorblades. She had to get rid of them. It might be the only way to stop the trundle of memories rolling over her hard-won sanity.
She checked her watch. Barry would be home any minute. She nipped out of the back door and down to the bottom of the garden.
The smell of the compost heap made her gag. Her knees were wet through. She pressed the photographs deep into the stinking pile. The unwanted reminders of him would be gone tomorrow when the bonfire was lit. She imagined the edges of his face curl and melt, burst into flames and end as black satin cinders that would blow away in the wind and leave her be.
When she took PC Yorke’s card out of the cubbyhole in the bureau, she turned it over and over. Her fingers smeared the card in soil. She stared at the filth smudged across the embossed writing, obscuring the numbers. She spat on it to clean it away, and dialled. She had to save that little girl.
‘Save who?’ Barry said. He had glue dots in his hand. ‘Are you all right, love?’
Oh God, Mira thought, had she said those words out loud?
‘Hello, PC Yorke speaking,’ she heard in her other ear.
She hung up. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t say it. If she said it out loud, with Barry listening, it would be real, and Mira wasn’t ready for it to be real yet.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The hill up from the station had seemed steeper than ever. It was later than usual. After a meeting over-running and a delayed train, it had been a long Thursday; longer still due to four nights without sleep. It was the fifth night since I had vomited up and swallowed back down my long-held secret, and I feared life would never return to normal again. Because I’m not your real mummy. I’m not your real mummy. I’m not your real mummy, echoed round and round in my head. Every time I thought of Rosie’s face afterwards, my chest constricted, and every minute of every day holding back the truth from her felt like trying to drag a rollercoaster back from the brink of a monumental drop.
I forced myself through the front door.
Harriet unpacked the dishwasher as she listed the afternoon’s events.
‘Noah finally got his handwriting pen,’ Harriet said with a motherly pride.
‘About time,’ I said, just to cancel out her misplaced satisfaction.
‘And Rosie popped round to see Beth.’
‘Was that in the diary?’ I glanced over to the whiteboard schedule, knowing I would not see a play date with Beth written down.
‘It was a last-minute thing. But I think they must have raided the sweet jar because she was a little hyperactive when she got back.’
‘They should have that sweet jar under lock and key when Rosie goes round,’ I said light-heartedly.
But paranoia set in like a ticking time bomb. Why had she been hyper? Had Vics seen a change in Rosie? Had they talked? Had Rosie told Vics about what I’d had said? Rosie’s visit to see Beth should not have been particularly noteworthy on any other week. It was home from home for Rosie over at 2 Virginia Close. Surely Vics would have called me straight away if she had been worried. Unless Rosie had sworn her to secrecy?
I went up to kiss them goodnight.
Noah was already asleep.
Rosie had her teddy tucked under her chin and her book close to her face.
My assessment of Rosie began: the rings under her eyes were as black as night and she wouldn’t look up from her book.
I was not her real mummy.
‘Night, Rosie.’ I kissed her on the forehead.
I was not her real mummy.
She flashed me a fake smile and returned to her page. ‘Night Mum.’
I was not her real mummy.
‘Good day at school?’
‘Fine.’
‘Love you,’ I said and I blew a kiss to her from the door.
How would I ever tell her?