‘You might have the others fooled with your Florence Nightingale act but not me,’ she muttered before hauling herself up the stairs, one step at a time. She stopped halfway and turned her head to look down at me. A triumphant smile spreading itself across her clammy, round face. Madeline always had a real way with words, but I heard the ones she chose that afternoon long after they were spoken.
‘I see straight through you, Amber. Never forget it. Work-shy and clueless, just like the rest of your generation. It’s why you’ll never amount to anything.’ With that, she turned to continue her ascent up the stairs I had once known and sat on. The house looked completely different since the fire twenty-five years ago, of course it did, but the new stairs were still in the same place and, if I turned my head to the right, I could almost still picture Claire turning on the gas. She should have inherited this house after her birth parents died, she was sure it was what her nana would have wanted, but her godmother, Madeline Frost, saw to it that she never got a penny.
I thought about what Madeline had said to me as I filled up the car and again as I bought the petrol cans and filled them up too, before putting them inside the boot. I thought about what Madeline had said as I paid using her credit card and I heard her words repeat themselves inside my head as I cleaned the steering wheel and everything else I had touched with a cotton cloth.
As Paul and I walk together but alone past the road where Madeline lives, I turn to get a quick glimpse of her house. I realise for the first time that it looks just like any other. There could be a family inside, pulling crackers, playing games, creating memories with and of one another. There could be children, grandchildren, pets, noise and laughter. There could be, but I know that there isn’t. There is only one person inside, I’m sure of it. One sad, lonely, miserable mess of a person. A person who is only loved by strangers who believe in the version of her they hear on the radio. A person who will not be missed.
Before
Thursday, 7th January 1993
Dear Diary,
It was the funeral today. It was strange because there weren’t many people there, not like the funerals you see on TV. My Aunt Madeline was invited, but she didn’t come. She’s the only family I have left but I don’t even know what she looks like. Doesn’t matter. I have a new family now. I cried when I saw the coffins because I know that’s what you’re supposed to do, but I don’t miss Mum and Dad. I’m glad they’re not here any more, things are much better without them. I’ve been living with Taylor’s family since the fire and it’s great. It’s as though my life before was all a big mistake, like I should have been born into this family. The only thing that makes me cry real tears is that I can’t ever go back to Nana’s house. I can’t sit in her favourite chair or sleep in her bed. All I had left of her was there. They said Aunt Madeline owns it now, what’s left of it.
I’ve got lots of new clothes and books and I even have my own bedroom at Taylor’s house. I started off sharing her room, but she kept waking me up in the middle of the night. She has dreams about the fire all the time and wakes up screaming. It’s really annoying. Sometimes she just can’t sleep at all. I sing her the song that Nana used to sing me when I couldn’t sleep: The wheels on the bus go round and round. I’m not sure it helps.
Taylor has been acting really strange in lots of ways since that night. I don’t know why, she wasn’t injured and nobody she cared about died. She said she’d tell on me, but she won’t. I told her what would happen if she did. She keeps doing weird stuff though, like just standing in front of the oven and staring at it. And she’s started picking the skin off her lips, sometimes she picks them so hard that they bleed. It’s disgusting. Taylor’s mum said that different people deal with things in different ways and just to give her time. She took her to talk to someone at the hospital about how she is feeling, she thinks that might help. I’m not convinced.
I’ve had to talk to lots of people too since the fire. I had to talk to doctors at the hospital and then the police and twice a week I have to talk to a woman called Beth. Beth is a social worker, which means she tries to help people. She has big, sad eyes that forget to blink and a hairy dog called Gypsy. I’ve never met her dog, but her clothes are always covered in its hair and when we talk she pulls the hairs off and drops them on the floor. She talks very slowly and quietly as though I might not understand and she always wants to know whether I’m OK without actually just asking me if I’m OK.
It was Beth who told me about Aunt Madeline. I think my aunt might be poorly because she couldn’t come to the funeral and she can’t write her own letters. A solicitor writes them for her and then Beth reads bits of them out. Sometimes her big eyes keep reading but her mouth stops speaking and I wonder what words she doesn’t want me to hear. I didn’t really know what it meant when she said that Aunt Madeline was my godmother. Her eyes looked away and explained to the floor that it normally meant someone who would look after you if your parents couldn’t any more. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to be looked after by anyone except Taylor’s mum. Then Beth said that Madeline loved me very much, but that she didn’t think she could take care of me. Beth carried on wearing her extra sad face, but I was feeling very relieved, until she said that I might have to live in a home for children until a foster place became available. When Grandad went to live in a home that wasn’t his, he died. I don’t want to die. I didn’t like my Aunt Madeline very much for not wanting to look after me then. She doesn’t care whether I live or die but I don’t know who she is, so my crossness grows inside my tummy instead of finding a way out and it hurts.
Beth left me alone in the room and told me to play with some toys. I didn’t want to, I’m not a child, but she said I should then left. I knew she was watching me through the mirror, I’ve seen the films where they do that, so I got up and walked over to the toy box. There was a doll inside, it looked expensive, not like the plastic stuff. I sat her on my lap and told her how sad I was about my mum and dad and how grateful I was that Taylor’s parents had been so kind to me. Then I said a little prayer; I even said ‘Amen’ at the end because I thought Beth would be the sort of person who would like that. She did. She came back in and said I could go, she even said I could take the doll with me, For being so brave. I decided I’d give it to Taylor. Tell her the doll was watching her, even when I wasn’t. I liked that idea a lot, it made me smile and that made Beth smile because she thought she had made me happy.
I’m not stupid, I knew what I had to do. I started crying in my room that night, just loud enough for Taylor’s mum to hear me. She opened the door without knocking, but I didn’t mind because it’s a different door in a different house and she is a different mum. She tucked me back into bed properly, the way Nana used to and then she sat with me and stroked my hair for a while. She was wearing a white robe and she had taken her make-up off, but she still looked beautiful and smelt of that pink shower gel she uses. When I grow up I want to be just like her. I told her I was scared of going to live with strangers and cried a bit more. She told me I mustn’t worry and kissed me on the forehead before leaving the room and turning out the light. I heard them talking for hours after that, not shouting like my mum and dad used to, just talking quietly in the same bedroom as each other, like a proper married couple. The next day I saw the fostering paperwork on the dining-room table, so things really have worked out for the best.
Now
Monday, 2nd January 2017
I’m still alive.