‘Oh, give me a break,’ she says, standing up from the sofa suddenly. ‘You swan in here when I haven’t seen you in years and think you can start telling me what to do? We’re not kids any more, Kate. I make my own decisions now.’
She takes the mug and goes into the kitchen. I hear her pouring out another drink and my heart sinks.
‘What about Hannah?’ I say as she comes back into the room. ‘If you tried to get back in touch, hold out an olive branch, then maybe you could sort things out.’
‘Ha,’ she says, with a grin on her face that is so much like my father’s it makes me go cold. ‘You think Hannah gives a shit about me? That’s a joke. She couldn’t stand me. Said I’d ruined her life. The last thing I need is that girl coming back making trouble. All I want is to be left in peace.’
‘But she’s your daughter,’ I say, taking a sip of water to calm myself. ‘Surely you want to know she’s okay?’
‘Oh, here you go again,’ she cries, banging her fist on the arm of the sofa. ‘She’s fine. Off sunning herself on some bloody island. We know she’s okay because you did your big investigation, remember? Honestly, you’re such a nosy cow, Kate.’
I sip my water again as we sit in silence. She’s right, I did look into things when Hannah left because, unlike Sally, I was concerned. Hannah could be a handful but she was still only sixteen and not particularly worldly wise. I needed to find out where she was, to put my mind at rest. Sally wouldn’t listen to me so I asked Paul to dig around, ask her friends if they knew where she’d gone. At first none of them would speak to us – like most teenagers they were afraid of landing her in it – but then one of them saw sense and gave us Hannah’s address. She was living in a squat in Brixton, so I told Paul that I would go and meet her, check she was all right. When I arrived she looked rather dishevelled and had put on quite a bit of weight, but she assured me she was happy, that she was living with friends and that she needed space away from Sally. I couldn’t blame her for that. I gave her a hundred pounds and told her to keep in touch, but that was the last I heard from her. I went back to the squat a couple of times but they seemed to have moved on. Just as I was beginning to worry again I got a letter in the post from Hannah telling me she was off to Ibiza to work as a rep.
‘But still you couldn’t help putting the knife in, could you?’
I look up at Sally. The drink is kicking in and bits of spittle flick from her lips.
‘Telling me it was my fault, that I drove her away with my drinking. You’re just like our bloody mother. Self-righteous hypocrites the pair of you.’
She stands up suddenly and goes to the kitchen. Perhaps I should leave. I look at my watch; it’s coming up to five o’clock. Paul will be home soon.
‘Mum said it was all me,’ she says as she comes back into the room, clutching a refill. ‘That I’d driven her darling granddaughter away; that I didn’t know how to be a mother. Ha, that’s a laugh. I told her I’d learned everything I know from her, a woman who let her kid drown. I told her that she was the disgrace and that I would never speak to her again for as long as she lived. And I didn’t.’
‘How could you? David’s death broke her,’ I say, watching as Sally slumps back on to the sofa. ‘In her letter –’
‘What letter?’
‘The one from Mum,’ I reply tentatively. ‘The solicitor gave me it.’
‘Oh, really? How nice,’ she slurs. ‘And did they have a letter for me?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose if they haven’t given it to you then no.’ I take another sip of water, wishing that Mum could have just done the decent thing and left something for Sally, anything.
‘Well, why doesn’t that surprise me,’ she says. ‘Christ, even in death she puts you first. The woman was unbelievable.’
She pauses to take another gulp of her drink.
‘So what did she say in this letter then?’
‘She said she wanted to explain everything,’ I say, my hands trembling. ‘About David’s death and the fact that it was her fault. But I don’t understand why it was just me she wanted to explain it to. Why not write a letter to both of us?’
‘Because you were her favourite,’ says Sally, watching me over the rim of her mug. ‘And she wanted your sympathy. She didn’t care what I thought about her. I was the disappointment; the teenage mother. You were this bloody beacon of light; someone who could do no wrong. Everything she wasn’t. Christ, her precious Kate would never let a child die.’
She stares at me so hard it’s like she knows.
‘Mum was a liar,’ she says. ‘And I know that for a fact. She was also a rotten, neglectful mother.’
As she takes another drink of wine I put my head in my hands. I can’t take much more of this.
‘Oh, sorry,’ she says. ‘Am I upsetting you?’
‘It’s just unnecessary, Sally,’ I say, looking up at her. ‘All this animosity and vitriol. Yes, Mum made a mistake, but my God she paid for it. She had years of Dad beating her up, night after night, and you just sat there saying nothing.’