My fingers ache from all this writing. My teacher says I should be a tortoise not a hare when I write, but I feel like a hare scrambling through the woods to watch you be killed by dragons. How would I save you in my story? If I told the truth to Daddy he would hate me and I think Daddy is the only one who really loves me in the whole world. I will always love you more than you love me, but I think Daddy loves me more than I love him or maybe just the same. I love you more than anyone. If I told that pretty police lady that I lied she might send me to prison and I would get so told off and I don’t want anyone to be angry with me anymore. I want everyone to be happy and I want to be a good girl so that you love me more than I love you, so that I can love you even more than that, and then you will want to be my real mummy ALL THE TIME even when you are cross with me. Mrs E was so nice – not a Mrs Shithead at all – and I think she will understand. I think I want to ask her what to do. She won’t tell me off for lying. I wonder if I can creep out of Vics’ house like a tortoise and go to Mrs E’s house to ask her?
I’m going to save you from the dragons. You watch.
Love,
Rosie
PS I am only a bit scared of the dark. If I see a fox with shiny eyes I am going to hiss at it like a snake and it will run away.
Chapter Thirty-Three
She was knocking on the door. Mira knew it was Rosie.
Next door, the child’s beautiful home had been evacuated, as though it, too, like Gemma, was a danger to the children, in spite of its velvets and silks. It loomed empty and imposing. No lights. No chatter. No screams.
Mira herself had once knocked on a door in the middle of the night. A red door.
Cold and shivering. Knock, knock. Shuddering. Freezing. The night had closed in on her from behind. The door had been the last obstacle. Behind which there would be safety, if not love.
Bang, bang, bang. ‘Mum! Deidre! Please! It’s me!’
No reply.
On the night bus on the way there, a blue sign had instructed passengers to give up their seat for pregnant women. Mira wasn’t a woman, she was a girl. Did this make a difference, she had thought? It didn’t matter on a night bus in suburbia. It was empty. Strip-lit but sheltered at least. She couldn’t relate to The Thing – and that was what she saw it as at that stage, a Thing – inside her that would give her a huge belly like in the blue sign.
Again, at the door, she had called for them. ‘Mum! Deidre! Mum! Let me in!’
As she had pounded her fists, she wanted to be back on the bus, where a little bit of hope had still been alive, where she had imagined her mother and sister would forgive her for what she had done with Craig. Denial was better than this rejection; being on the bus was better than being shut out, with a home but homeless, at fifteen years old and pregnant.
Had her mother lain still in her bed listening? Had Deidre sat by the window watching? Had Craig tossed and turned on the bed that they had shared? Had he felt bad for sending a pregnant fifteen-year-old girl away? Had any of them felt bad?
Mira lay still in her bed. She felt bad. Rosie would be cold, too. Goosebumps would be prickling her skin, her breath would be gauzy, her feet would be damp.
She imagined how a ten-year-old might sneak out of the house after lights out. It would be easy. If her father and friends were still awake, she would most likely have to escape through a back door. Mira imagined Peter Bradley’s face covered by his hands as his friends consoled him, talking in circles, weary with worry about Rosie and the damage Gemma had inflicted, while Rosie quietly slipped away unnoticed. It was not easy for Mira to know she had been the cause of this. But if Barry had hurt her baby, she would have wanted to know and she would have killed him for it.
The yellow dot of Barry’s earplugs, lodged safely in place, reassured Mira that Rosie’s knocks would not be heard.
She climbed out of bed and down the stairs, grabbing her coat and torch on the way.
Rosie was frowning at the door, her arms crossed over her towelling pink robe, her sheepskin slippers, wet at the tips.
‘Sssh, come this way,’ Mira whispered with her finger to her lips. She led Rosie around the side of the house, past the chickens, right to the bottom of their long garden where her potting shed sat, near the compost heap.
The padlock to the door was stiff and rusty, and it took a few tries to unlock it. The lightbulb hung at the centre of the shed, illuminating the pine shelves of tins and pots and tools and casting a dull light on Rosie. Mira was shocked to see how her skin was as white as the mist and her eye sockets as black as her hair.
‘Sit yourself down there,’ Mira said, pointing at the metal stool, bracing herself for the child’s tirade. But Rosie sat as timid as a mouse.
‘I’ve an old kettle in here and some malt drink. Fancy some?’
Rosie nodded. ‘Granny Helen has that.’
‘Does she make it for you when you go and stay?’
The plastic kettle rushed, steaming up the small window above the workbench. Mira brushed some old soil away, wondering how long it would take for Rosie to say what was on her mind, reminding herself of the sweet peas she wanted to pot for Rosie. She thought it would be good for the child to do some gardening, and if she potted sweet peas, Rosie could add them to the charming collection that Gemma and Peter’s gardener tended to so beautifully on their south-facing wall.
‘We don’t really stay at Granny Helen’s for sleepovers we just go for tea or lunch or something.’
‘Is she nearby then?’
‘She’s in London.’ Her teeth were chattering as she spoke.
‘That’s a long way to go for tea.’
‘Mum says she is best in limited doses.’
‘Ha. Families are a bit like that. Everyone goes their separate ways when they’re grown-up. It’s hard to imagine that at your age.’
‘I don’t ever want to move out of home.’
‘You think that now, and then suddenly you’ll be dying to get out.’ Mira stirred the two tin cups of malt drink.
‘I won’t.’
Strange, Mira thought, that a child clings to a dysfunctional home. Strange that Mira had longed to see her mother’s face again after the period away from her at Craig’s house. Even her wrath was preferable to no mother at all.
That closed door had been an injury. The fear that she would never again talk to her mother had brought her to her knees on the doorstep, where she had curled up all night, with her bag clutched to her middle, until her mother had finally let her in.
‘How’s your mum doing?’ Mira asked pointlessly. The silences were awkward. They reminded Mira of how wrong it was to have Rosie here when she should be tucked up in bed.
‘I don’t know,’ Rosie murmured, barely audible. She hung her head. When Mira passed her the hot drink, Rosie’s big eyes were shot through with veins, and Mira’s guilt spiked, knowing she had been responsible for separating this girl from her mother.
‘It’s going to be very hard for your mummy but it has been very hard for you too, hasn’t it?’
Rosie’s little hand let the cup slip slightly and the drink sloshed a little onto her dressing gown.
‘Careful love,’ Mira said, straightening the mug, feeling how cold Rosie’s fingers were around the warm metal.
Mira waited for Rosie’s understandable anger towards her, and felt ready to withstand it, knowing her motivations for breaking her trust and telling the police had been true.
‘It’s all my fault,’ Rosie said finally.
Mira was taken aback.
‘How so?’
‘When I cut my hand on the picture I told that first police lady that Mummy shouted at me all the time and so today they came back to my school to ask me more questions and then I told them some stuff about what we had talked about when I had cake with you and now Mummy is in big trouble.’ Her chin dimpled and her eyes blinked rapidly.
‘You were a good girl for telling them the truth.’
Rosie took a sip of her drink, sniffing and then wiping away a tear. ‘But what if I didn’t tell them the truth?’
‘Of course you did, pet,’ Mira said, her heart breaking for Rosie. She supposed a period of denial was inevitable after opening up for the first time. It was apparently common for many abused children. She had read about it in the newspapers.
‘You don’t understand, Mu—’ she stopped, a flash of much-needed pink on her cheeks, and continued with more measure in her voice. ‘You don’t understand, it’s just I got into this big story in my head and I started to imagine all these horrible things because I was so angry with Mummy.’
‘Of course you were angry with your mummy.’
Rosie was looking up at Mira with her eyes wider than ever, her drink growing a milky film. ‘What would the police do if I told them it was all a big, fat lie?’
Mira felt suddenly cross. ‘For goodness sake. Has your mother frightened you that much?’
‘Mummy gets really, really cross when I lie.’