‘Hello?’
Katya stared out of the window, pretending not to listen while Maggie spoke to Emily’s school. The windows weren’t clean. She ran her finger on the glass, drawing a line in the dust.
‘Emily isn’t well. I have to fetch her.’
Maggie looked torn, like she didn’t know what to do with her uninvited guest now that Emily was coming home early. A bit like Gabriella really, Katya thought. Darting off when someone better comes along.
‘Can I come too?’
They both glanced out of the window at the same time. The wind was punishing, the rain almost horizontal as it lashed against the glass.
‘Best not. You’ve already been soaked once. I’ll run. I’ll only be ten minutes.’ She switched on the television, put in a video and pressed play, then guided Katya on to the sofa and arranged a rug over her. ‘There you are. All lovely and cosy. I’ll work out what to do when I get back.’ Maggie glanced at Katya’s blotched face and smiled ruefully. ‘It’ll be OK. You’ll see.’
It didn’t take a big brain to work out that she didn’t want Katya to know where Emily went to school.
As soon as the door closed behind her, Katya threw off the rug and jumped up. She looked around. The sitting room was square with most of the space taken up by the sofa with its exuberant ethnic scatter cushions. On the windowsill a plant with bright-red flowers and rubbery leaves sat squashed into one corner with a sprinkling of spilt earth beside it. There was a small dresser with photographs arranged along it, mostly of Emily at different ages.
In Emily’s room there was a white bed with a Snow White duvet cover and a painted chest of drawers with little silver hearts dangling from the handles. A row of dolls and soft toys, bunched shoulder to shoulder, filled the entire length of the windowsill, their glass eyes staring at her. On the bedside table there was a light, a book and a glass half-full of water and fogged with fingerprints. She was enticed by a shelf filled with little objects: a chunk of fool’s gold, a piece of amber, a pottery cottage, a couple of glass-blown animals, some rubber cartoon characters and an ivory elephant with one tusk missing. Katya picked up the amber and held it so that the light shone through it. Deep inside was an insect, a mosquito. She stared at it, fascinated. As she rocked it from side to side the raindrops rolling down the window made it look as though it was struggling to get out. On impulse she popped it into her pocket and rearranged the shelf so that the theft wasn’t immediately obvious.
She was on the lookout, watching from the sitting-room window, when they appeared squashed together under Maggie’s brolly. Emily looked miserable. Maggie spotted Katya and raised her hand in a little wave.
‘Are you sick?’ Katya asked.
Maggie replied for her daughter. ‘She’s running a temperature and she’s got a horrid sore throat, haven’t you, Emily? There’s no point taking you back to school now, Katya. Let’s see if Luke’s home, shall we?’
Katya held her breath and prayed but it didn’t do any good, because he was there. She listened with disgust as Maggie punctuated the conversation with chuckles that sounded false and made comments about silly girls and said he was a saint to be so patient. Katya glanced at Emily, catching her eye, but Emily didn’t react, didn’t seem to see anything strange in her mother’s flirting.
‘Oh, shush,’ Maggie said. ‘I’m hanging up now.’
‘A fortnight, Katya. Then I promise you, if you still want to move, you can move, even if I haven’t found you a family.’
Maggie was rapidly losing patience. She had sent Emily to her bedroom while they talked and they were sitting on the sofa together, Maggie twisting round, Katya with her arms wrapped tightly round her shins and her chin pressed into her knees.
Katya snuffled and looked up. ‘I won’t cry any more.’ Her chest felt rock hard and her stomach ached.
‘Good girl. You can come here if there’s nowhere else. But only as a last resort and only if you stop making such a fuss.’
‘I’m not making a fuss.’ She paused, then took a deep breath and forced the words out. ‘I don’t like Luke. He’s a bad man. He touches me.’
Maggie’s face darkened. ‘You mustn’t say things like that, even to get something you want. I know that when you were with your mum you saw things and learnt things that no little girl should. But you mustn’t let that colour your view of the whole world. Most people can be trusted. Most people are good and have your best interests at heart. I know that it’s hard for you to see men as anything but a threat, but for your own sake, you have to try. Luke is a lovely person. He’s honourable and generous and he takes things to heart.’ She sighed and tears welled up in her eyes. ‘If you knew what that man is going through … but you’re far too young and I won’t burden you with it. He’s had to make difficult choices and he’s done the right thing.’
Katya pulled her hand out of Maggie’s clasp and dropped her head.
‘This is very, very important, Katya. You must not repeat false accusations about respectable men. You could do an incredible amount of damage. Look at me.’
She lifted her eyes to her face and looked. Maggie was as white as a sheet. ‘Promise me you won’t go spreading lies about Luke Bryant.’
Katya nodded listlessly.
‘Good girl. I am very fond of you, but if you hurt Luke you do understand that we won’t be able to be friends any more, don’t you? And I’d hate that. I would miss you.’
32
Wednesday, 14 April 2010
‘ARE YOU SURE this is all right?’
‘It’s fine.’ Amber checks her watch. ‘I don’t have to be back at the office for an hour.’
She turns the key and I enter the house on Browning Street for the second time. I don’t have to pick up the kids from Mum until tomorrow, so I can look round it with an easy conscience, if not joy. I’m not sure why I’ve come; whether it’s genuinely to support Amber, or out of curiosity, to see how far she will go. She’s lost my trust.
The sun shines through the large front bay, the air alive with dust motes. Amber throws open the French windows with a flourish and I join her on the wrought-iron balcony.