‘When you feel ready, open your eyes, Milly.’
I stay still for a minute or two. A feeling of wet under my chin. I open my eyes, look down at the cushion, tie-dyed with tears, the velvet mottled. I look over at Mike. His eyes are closed, he pinches his fingers above the bridge of his nose, massages a little. Making the switch from psychologist to foster dad. He opens his eyes when I speak.
‘I must have been crying.’
‘Sometimes remembering does that to us.’
‘Isn’t there another way?’
Mike shakes his head, sits forward in his seat, says, ‘The only way out is through.’
I open Saskia’s present when I get back to my room. The first thing I see inside the small square box is: gold. A chain with a name. Milly, my new name, not Annie. I run my fingers over the edges of the letters, the sharp points, wondering how much a name can change a person, if at all.
I finish off an essay for French and am about to do some drawing when I hear Phoebe’s door open, close again, footsteps on the stairs as if she’s dumped her stuff and gone back down. I follow a few minutes later. I want to see if Saskia is home so I can thank her.
I find her in the snug with Phoebe, a cosy room full of soft sofas, a cinema screen mounted on the wall. The TV’s on but Saskia flicks it off when I come in. She cradles a drink against her chest. The clink of ice cubes, a heavy short glass, crystal. A slice of lime. Phoebe’s slouched over her phone, doesn’t look up.
‘Hi, Milly, are you feeling better? Mike said you had a migraine.’
‘Much better, thanks, and thank you for my present.’
I hold up the necklace, she smiles, foggy. She likes her drink strong and, when it’s mixed with the tablets she takes, lethal. Phoebe looks up, pushes herself off the sofa, walks over to me.
‘Let me see,’ she says, but doesn’t wait for me to show her, grabs the chain from my hand. Saskia untucks her legs, puts the glass down on the low table in front of her, piles and piles of interior design magazines. She’s about to stand up, I think, but before she can Phoebe turns towards her and says, ‘Unbelievable. Special you said, you had mine made for passing my exams last year. What’s she done that’s so special?’
‘Phoebs, don’t. It’s a welcome present, it was supposed to make –’
‘I know exactly what you meant to do.’
Phoebe turns back to face me, says, ‘Don’t think you’re special, because you’re not.’ She thrusts the necklace into my chest, shoves past me.
I turn to Saskia and say I’m sorry, but she says it’s her fault not mine, then picks up her drink, finishes it, sinks back into the sofa and stares at the blank television screen.
7
The next morning I try to ignore the nerves I feel about Phoebe, the way she views me as another unwelcome intruder, the newest on a long list of foster kids. As I go down the stairs I vow to find a way to make it better, make it work with her. I pause on the first-floor landing, listen to the conversation going on between her and Mike.
‘Why does she get to miss school again?’ she asks. ‘Why don’t I?’
It’s obvious by the jovial, teasing way Mike responds to her that Miss Kemp hasn’t told him about the poster on my locker. She must be dealing with it in her own way. Handling it ‘on the quiet’.
I feel through my shirt for the ridges across my ribs. The familiar pattern of scars hidden high. A language only I understand. A code, a map. Braille on my skin. Where I’ve been, what happened to me there. You hated it when I cut myself, a filthy disgusting habit you’d say, but try as I might, I couldn’t stop.
Footsteps above me jolt me into the present, I lower my hand. One floor up, Saskia walks on to the landing, makes her way down towards me.
‘Morning, everything okay?’
A pang in her voice, desperate to be trusted, to do a better job with me than she has with Phoebe. I nod my head. Withhold. The reality is, most people can’t handle the truth, my truth. A padding sounds across the marble below. Rosie. She circles a few times, collapses on to the tiles, a shaft of September sun. I watch her breathe. Her scruffy underbelly rises and falls. I think about my dog, Bullet, a Jack Russell we rescued from the pound, another attempt to look normal, and to rid the old house we lived in of rats. They soon moved on, you called him a good boy until he turned his attentions to the cellar. Scratching and sniffing at the door. Instinct told him, he knew what was in there.
He could smell it.
You drowned him in a bucket when I was at school. Left his body rigid, sleek wet fur. I wrapped him in the blanket from his basket, buried him in the garden. I couldn’t bring myself to put him in the cellar. Not there.
It took less than a week for the rats to come back.
Saskia smiles, says, I know it’s a big day today, let’s get a good breakfast into you. I follow her and the scent of her expensive body oil into the kitchen.
The radio is on, the headlines.
You.
The star attraction for all the wrong reasons. It’s subtle, but I hear it, the edge in the presenter’s voice as she details the charges against you. Saskia and Mike glance at each other. Phoebe doesn’t know, but pauses anyway, toast swaying at the entrance to her mouth.
‘Psycho bitch, they should hang her,’ she says.
A knot in my stomach. I make contact with the nearest thing, swipe it off the counter. A splintering as it hits the slate tiles, a red ooze of jam colours the floor. I kneel down, my hand meets the glass. More red, this time from my finger. There’s a scraping of chairs and someone switches off the radio. Sorry, I say. Sorry. Phoebe looks down at me, mouths ‘freak’ and walks out, I hear Rosie yelp as she passes her. Mike crouches next to me. We shouldn’t have had the news on, we didn’t want you to hear that, he says.
Your name. The charges against you, Mummy.
My reality spelled out in public.
I shrug. All I see is red, I’m used to it. The spillages and seepages, how red trickles into the cracks of the floorboards, and no amount of scrubbing erases it. I remember the hours spent in the secure unit, where ‘they’, the professionals, tried to prepare me for life after you. How to answer questions like where I’m from, what school I used to go to, why I live in a foster family. What they didn’t prepare me for, couldn’t prepare me for, is how much I look like you. And although you’re in the news most days, when the court case is in full swing it’ll be worse. So much worse. You will be everywhere.
I will be everywhere.
You’re the spit of your mother, they used to say at the women’s refuge you worked at. That’s what I’m afraid of, I replied in my head.