‘What about Harriet?’
‘Peter and I thought it would be best to give her paid leave until it’s all over.’
There was a long pause. ‘Mum, are you still there?’
‘You know, I would feel quite terrible about letting my postgrads down, but it isn’t beyond the wit of man to find a substitute to take over my course for a few weeks. In fact, I have a retired lecturer friend who’d love the work.’
‘Really?’
I was fully aware of what a serious abdication of responsibility it would be for her to abandon a course midway through the term.
‘Yes, darling. Until you know what’s happening,’ she said.
I sucked my breath in, inhaling deeply, a rush of gratefulness making me unsteady on my feet.
‘Are you sure? We’ll probably argue all the time...’ I flapped my fingers at my eyes, to stop the tears.
‘This is a family emergency,’ she choked, and cleared her throat. ‘The bigger problem will be getting rid of me.’
‘We’ll throw you out, don’t worry,’ I smiled, imagining I might want to live with her forever I was so grateful. ‘Thank you, Mum. Thank you so much, you are a total life saver. I can’t even describe how relieved I am.’
‘Let me know what the social worker says and if it all goes ahead as that solicitor woman predicts, I’ll pack a few things and get down to you on Monday. I’ll collect the rest of my stuff when I pop back in the week.’
I thought of Rosie’s return home later, the dread of it brewed in the pit of my stomach. But with my mum arriving soon, I knew I could cope. Until Mum had said yes, I hadn’t realised quite how much I had needed her.
* * *
Now that the call to Mum was out of the way, I had a whole Saturday to myself, with nothing to do. The quiet in the house was eerie. Many other weekends, I had longed for time away from ferrying the children around to clubs and parties. Weirdly, I craved the mad rush to football club with Noah, the damp pitch-side conversations, the hectic drive to Rosie’s tap class, and then the arguments over homework.
I decided on a long bath. My body felt lighter in the water and I marvelled at my popped-out stomach. My baby was cradled safely in there for now. I talked to it of all the plans we would make once this nightmare was over, and I talked about how much it would love its big brother and sister. I promised I would make everything right. I promised with all of my heart. Then I closed my eyes and rested my hands there, using the powers of touch and thought to send a message of my true love and devotion.
Soothed after my bath, I read the newspapers over breakfast, but I missed the hugs from Noah and the chats in the car about books with Rosie. When Peter and I decided to go for a roast at the local pub, I missed the spilt apple juice and the fidgeting and the interrupting that would infuriate me so much. I missed them. I missed them even more given the circumstances of our separation.
I couldn’t imagine what it was going to be like to see Rosie. I was nervous about how she would react to me. A whole lifetime had been lived since I had seen her last. My concerns about her were bad on a good day, but now they were on a whole new scale. The worry had grown exponentially with every twist and turn of the last twenty-four hours.
In the hour before they arrived, Peter had taken a nap, but I felt too jittery to catch up on the sleep I’d missed. I ended up watching bad television as a distraction, which, thankfully, seemed to host a world of troubled, disaffected people with much bigger problems than mine.
Noah had banged on the door and shouted through the letterbox, ‘MUMMY! It’s us! LET US IN. LET US IN!’
I raced upstairs to wake Peter and then raced down again to open the door.
Noah’s head bulldozed into my middle, sending a cramp right through my womb that made my eyes water. Over his head I saw Rosie. I smiled at her, probably with an edge of sadness, and she looked away and bolted past us, up the stairs and slammed the door of her bedroom.
‘That went well,’ Vics said, stepping forward and hugging me while Noah was still clutching my legs.
‘Hi Vics.’ I squeezed her tightly, holding my chin on her shoulder, smelling the familiar scent of orange-blossom in her hair and hearing her bracelets jangle.
‘I rode on HENRY, Mummy!’ Noah cried, breaking us apart. His mud-splattered glowing face was a picture of health and fresh air.
‘And who’s Henry, my darling?’ I asked, bending down to his level, feeling torn by how gripped I was by his beauty and excitement and how my mind wandered up the stairs to Rosie shut away in her room.
‘He’s the Shire,’ Vics explained.
‘He’s massive, Mummy, seriously he’s so massive and I was so high up from the ground.’
‘Goodness me, were you scared?’
‘No!’
‘Good boy,’ I said, and then wondered why this should be praised. Fear was a normal reaction to sitting on top of a seventeen-hand beast like Henry at six years old.
‘I’ll get the kettle on, go on up to Rosie,’ Vics said. ‘Come on Mischief, let’s get you a biscuit.’
Vics took Noah’s hand and I was free to go to Rosie, reluctantly.
I knocked on her door first.
There was no response.
I opened it. ‘Rosie?’
‘Go away,’ she mumbled from under her stripy pink pillow. Her red wellington boots had left a patch of mud and straw on the end of her duvet. However difficult it was for me to leave the mess, I did.
‘Come on,’ I said, sitting down on the bed next to her. ‘Come here for a cuddle.’
‘No.’
I was willing to sit there all day and all night if that is what it took.
Quite a few minutes later, she burst out from under the pillow and collapsed into my lap, clasping her arms around me.
She smelt of bonfire smoke and horsebox.
I had a million questions for her and none of them were appropriate for this moment. If I’d had a wish, it would have been, of course, that she would tell me why she had lied, that she would promise to tell DC Miles the truth. She had the power to put an end to this hell as quickly as she had started it, while I could forge the beginning of a new phase of understanding between us. If I could get to the bottom of why she had been so angry with me, then we would have a hope. And in that moment I had a lot of hope, and huge amounts of faith in her, in us. We had four weeks.
‘How was Rising Star?’
My jumper muffled her reply. ‘I cantered.’
‘Wow. That’s incredible. Good girl. Well done, darling.’
She squeezed the breath out of me and I held her tight to me.
‘Oh Rosie, you must have had the most horrible day yesterday.’
There didn’t need to be any pretence between us. In however many ways I might have failed her, she knew I didn’t slap her. She knew I knew. And she now knew that I still loved her, in spite of the lies she had told. That was what unconditional love was like between a mother and a daughter. My mother had once told me that even if I had murdered someone, she would still love me. And I had believed her.
She wept, and whimpered, heaving great sighs between the sobs, and I held her to me close. ‘Sorry Mummy, I’m so sorry,’ she murmured, exhausted.
Peter emerged from around the door. ‘You okay?’ his expression said, and I nodded my head at him, and shooed him away.
As she cried, I knew that none of my recriminations could be worse than the ones she would be telling herself. Her contrition was all-encompassing. It would all be over soon, I thought.
‘Do you want to come downstairs for a bit?’
‘I’m just going to write in my diary,’ she said, sitting up, looking me in the eye for the first time, hangdog eyes, pitiful sadness.
‘That’s a good idea,’ I said, cupping her tear-stained face and kissing her on the forehead. ‘And you know, any time you’re ready, you can tell me or another grown-up, like Daddy, or Grandma Helen, or anyone, all about why you said all that to DC Miles, okay?’
Rosie’s expression turned instantly sour. ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ she snapped.