Arranged inside are screwdrivers of various sizes as well as pliers, a monkey wrench, a hacksaw, a collection of spanners and numerous useful small tools. I dip my head in, work my tongue around the gag and hook it into the handle of the hacksaw. It hurts as I strain the muscles in my mouth, but I get it to lean against the side of the box then tip it out with my chin. I nudge it to the edge, turn myself round and stand on tiptoes until I can get my fingers inside the handle. My satisfaction is short-lived. It hangs for maybe three seconds before dropping with a metallic clang to the floor.
I hear a noise and drop, slithering back against the wall. The door opens and Amber comes downstairs. In the darkness, her eyes look huge and haunted and out of nowhere I’m overwhelmed by a sense of déjà-vu. There have been few things I’ve done – or at least there were before David North and leaving Josh – for which I am truly ashamed, few things I’ve had to mentally block because acknowledging them makes it hard for me to respect myself. But this is one of them and now that fissure has opened, the memories spill out, one after the other, relentless and nightmarish:
Walking home, feeling miserable with a temperature and sore throat and Mum telling me that she was looking after a child for the afternoon and that the girl might be a little upset.
A little upset. That was an understatement.
Mum saying, She thinks you’re called Emily. It’s best she doesn’t know your real name.
The girl hovering in the cramped hallway of our Streatham flat, shivering like a frightened rabbit.
Mum using all kinds of inducements to get her into the car.
Driving her to a prissy little bungalow in a dead suburban street that looked more like the set of a sitcom than real life.
The girl in the back sobbing like her heart would break.
Feeling embarrassed for her, repelled by the sheer volume of tears and snot that smeared her face. She didn’t have a hanky and was using the sleeve of the cardigan Mum had lent her. My cardigan.
Mum going to the door and that man coming out.
The girl saying, Help me.
Looking away.
To my shame, I recognize that. I’ve done it countless times over the years. It’s what I do when I walk past a homeless person.
Mum saying, You’ll be fine, Katya. You can phone me any time and come and see me. Don’t worry, I’m not abandoning you. You are important to me.
The man putting his hand on Mum’s shoulder and moving her out of his way.
Trying to ignore what was going on.
Help me.
Pretending I didn’t realize she meant me.
Why did I behave like that? It would have been so easy to hold out a hand, to add my pleas to hers.
Her pathetic, comic ungainliness as she fell out of the car into the road.
Him turning to wave us off as she yelled and kicked, flailing her fists at him.
Mum changing the subject when I asked questions.
Now I know what she did and who she did it with, those two hours when she left me alone in the flat take on a powerful significance.
Amber says, ‘You remember me now, don’t you?’
I try to speak and she pulls the gag out of my mouth. I spit out the filthy residue that has collected on my tongue.
‘Yes, I do.’ Stay calm. ‘Amber, we need to get Tom seen by a doctor.’
‘What has Maggie told you?’
‘That you killed your foster father. But he was abusing you. You can stop this now. If you let Tom die, things will be so much worse for you.’
She gets up off the floor, brushes the dirt from her trousers and wanders round the cellar, touching our things, humming the tune to one of the children’s favourite songs, picking up tools and bike pumps, twisting paint pots to see the labels.
‘Amber!’ I shout. ‘Tom is dying.’
She keeps singing. She isn’t going to respond to anything immediate. She’s in the past. I have to keep her talking, to keep her conscious of me, of what’s important now.
‘What happened afterwards?’ I ask.
She scratches at the work surface with a screwdriver and then puts it down. ‘What do you mean, afterwards?’
‘After you … after your foster father died. What did my mother do?’
She comes and crouches opposite me, stares straight into my eyes. When I look into them I can see that terrified child and my stomach turns over. My mother helped make her what she is, but I refuse to shoulder the blame. I was only ten years old and I was sick. And what could I have done anyway? The outcome would have been the same.
‘I phoned her,’ Amber says. ‘I said, please come. Please come. So she came. She took one look at Luke and called the emergency services. Then she waited until they arrived, gave a statement and left. I never saw her again. Nice, don’t you think?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I thought you would click years ago. And Maggie as well. Shows how much I meant to you.’
‘I only met you that one time and you were crying.’
‘Pathetic, wasn’t I?’
‘Amber. Tom—’
‘I expect you’re wondering how I found you. The amazing thing is, I wasn’t looking. Can you believe that? Bumping into you that day was a complete coincidence. I promise you, the penny didn’t drop until you showed me your wedding photos.’ She pauses. ‘I shouldn’t have come back to the class the next week.’
‘Why did you?’
‘Because I wanted to so badly. I thought I was strong enough.’
‘Please, Amber,’ I say wearily. ‘Let me go to Tom.’
‘We’ve had some good times, haven’t we? Sophie and Emily are like the sisters we could have been.’
I make a sound between despair and exasperation and she pats my thigh.
‘Why didn’t you help me? You could have, but you didn’t; you shrank away from me like I was vermin. Why? No, don’t answer that. I know why it was. You were spoilt. So wrapped up in your own little world with your toys and your mum and your schoolfriends that you didn’t want to acknowledge I existed in case you had to share. I didn’t want your things. I wanted your help.’
I don’t know what to say to her. Nothing is going to make it better.
‘I’ve never been happy,’ she says.
She lowers herself on to the floor and stretches out her legs, leaning back against the cold brick wall. Our shoulders touch but I don’t shift. If she wants physical contact, she’s welcome to it. I turn towards her. In the dimness of the cellar her profile is softened.
‘Will you accept an apology?’
‘It depends what you’re apologizing for,’ she says.
‘For everything. For ignoring you. For not listening.’
‘Listening was Maggie’s job.’ She twists abruptly to face me. ‘I’m not evil.’
‘I know that.’
‘Maggie isn’t very bright, is she? And she’s so bloody vain. I thought I was important, but, actually, it was all about her.’
I bite my tongue. Am I as bad as my mother? I have looked to another man to give me a sense of self-worth. I am guilty of more than one act of pure selfishness.
Amber hasn’t finished. ‘I imagine Maggie went into social work because she had a picture of herself saving children, being a hero. But when things turned nasty, she wasn’t equipped to handle it. She ran away.’
She smiles and reaches for my hand and I let her take it. She even raises it to her lips and kisses it.
‘I wish I could turn back time,’ I say. ‘I wish I had said something.’
‘What would you have said?’
‘I would have told Mum that we shouldn’t send you back, that it was wrong. I’d have said, Can’t you see she’s scared?’
‘But you didn’t.’