‘I handled that about as badly as it’s possible to,’ Jess said to Matt after Zoe had grabbed a piece of toast and left to meet Emily.
‘Hmm, you could be right.’ There was amusement in his voice, though for the life of her Jess couldn’t think what there was to laugh about. He went on, ‘I guess you could have approached Natasha with the talking option rather than the shouting one.’ He was infuriating, she thought. He’d gone back to studying England’s prospective test match team for that summer. He was, she thought, more concerned with whether Ramprakash would be fit enough than with whether his daughter was turning into a complete little tart.
‘It’s difficult to talk rationally when you’re this angry. How could she do this? I thought we’d brought her up to be straight with us. Oliver worked out all right, I mean what went wrong? Or is it girls? I really don’t want to think it is …’
‘Well you’re the expert,’ Matt pointed out. ‘You’re the one who writes about the delights of family life. And aren’t you always telling me about the disasters people write to you about?’ Oh thanks so much, Jess thought, go ahead, remind me I’m supposed to know all this stuff.
‘From my point of view though, I’d say nothing went wrong.’ Matthew folded the paper and drank the last of his tea. ‘Natasha genuinely thinks she was doing the right thing. He hasn’t got anywhere to live.’
‘Well she didn’t have to move him into her bed. And anyway, why didn’t she say?’ Jess started loading the dishwasher. ‘We might have been able to help him find somewhere. And what about these foster people he’s supposed to be with? He’s only young, I realized when I saw him with her this morning, he can’t be much older than she is.’ She felt herself shiver at the thought of her child in bed with the boy. Natasha was still a child in many ways. And so were her friends. If you looked past the tummy-revealing little tops they wore, the trousers slung so low on their hips you could see the lacy edges of their minimal knickers, they were still barely touched by life’s deeper and more dangerous dramas. Natasha was nothing like some of the schoolgirls you saw at the bus stops, smoking and snogging and swearing and trading flirting obscenities with undeserving, unappealing and barely coordinated boys.
‘Things go wrong with foster people,’ Matt said. ‘You read about it all the time. And she says she did tell you. She says she asked you if he could have Oliver’s room.’
‘Oh on the Selfridge’s day. I didn’t take her that seriously. You can bet your life if he’d moved in she’d have gone off him in about twenty-four hours and then we’d have had to think about how to get him out again. Surely even you can see that was never going to be a goer?’
Matt sighed and picked up the pile of paper. ‘Yeah well. It’s all done with now. He’s gone and she’s angry but she’ll get over it.’ He frowned at Jess. ‘The point is, will you? Are you going to keep beating yourself up for being a less than perfect parent or are you going to let it drop? Because I know which we’d all prefer.’
From the back of her wardrobe, Natasha pulled out her Reef backpack that she’d used for school books till Claire had hinted (very gently but acutely) that surfer stuff wasn’t too cool in London any more, and crammed in a few pairs of knickers, spare trousers, a couple of extra tops and her sponge bag. She added her make-up bag and a hairbrush and her old pink fluffy rabbit that was still good for cuddling on a thundery night or when stuff was going wrong. There was no way she wasn’t going to see Tom again. No way she was staying in this house with its horrid new layer of atmosphere hanging around like a thick November fog. Being grounded was for kids Zoe’s age. You couldn’t keep a fifteen-year-old in, it wasn’t natural. And they were about to find out it wasn’t even possible. She opened her bedroom door and looked back into her room. Something wasn’t right. She shut the door again, put down her bag and went to make her bed and put all her books back on the desk. It was a gesture, quite a clever one she thought, her mother would get it, even if Dad and Zoe didn’t notice.
She could hear them in the kitchen, talking quite loudly which meant they were still going on about her. The door was still shut. Zoe must have closed it after her when she went to get ready to go out with Emily. She felt bad about Zoe – she shouldn’t have dropped her in it – none of this was her fault. After all, she had kept the secret, she hadn’t actually dobbed her in to the parents.
It was easy, just walking quite normally, though perhaps a bit more consciously quietly, down the stairs and out through the front door. It wasn’t as if her parents were actually going to lock her in: if they said she was grounded it meant they had to trust her a bit – otherwise she’d just walk out when she felt like it, like this, wouldn’t she? Working this out, she felt a small twinge of guilt: if the idea was for them to trust her again then even she, even in this pent-up fury, could see this wasn’t the way to do it. So that the door wouldn’t bang she left it slightly ajar, wedging it, to stop it slamming shut, with the free paper full of ads for in-your-dreams-priced property and visiting massage women that a year-seven kid from Briar’s Lane chucked through the door every Saturday morning. This wasn’t really running away, she thought, as she sprinted down the path and along the road towards the square. It was just putting a bit of space between her and the parents for a while. When you cared about someone you had to make a stand. All the same, she had to try quite hard not to feel tearful. She also wished she’d brought her big snuggly old puffa jacket with her. It might be horribly dated and Claire would pull that face she did but it would at least keep her warmer and dryer than her fleece.
She increased her pace almost to a run as she passed Eddy’s house. Fearfully, as if he was about to rush out and accuse her of taking men in, of lying on his bed with Tom and creasing his duvet cover, she glanced at his window. It hadn’t mattered the evening before when she’d seen him on home ground, but out here in the Grove she had that feeling that all the blank house windows knew and told all that went on. Eddy’s house, having no curtains or blinds, could see more than most. At the end of the road she crossed the square and slowed her pace a little. No-one had followed her. Her dad hadn’t come racing down the road ordering her to stay in her bedroom till she promised eternal celibacy, or until she was twenty-one, whichever was sooner. Nor was her mum magically waiting there to trap her and look disappointed and tell her how much she’d let them down and how bloody perfect Oliver would never have behaved like that. How would they know? she thought, Oliver was a bloke – they communicated mostly in grunts and the parents were grateful for each precious whole word. For all they knew he might have been chucked out of more girls’ beds by more parents than any of them had had burnt barbecue sausages. She was almost at the allotments now. Tom would have gone back there: he’d be waiting for her. She passed the row of shops, turned the corner by the bus stop and opened the allotment gate. There was the Sierra.
‘… looking for surf that has no bluebottles (Portuguese men-of-war). They are everywhere, even the little ones give a bad sting and a rash … Off for three-day surf camp in Straddie with Canadians & couple of English tomorrow. Must go, it’s sangria night at the hostel again and a didgeridoo lesson. Love (I suppose) to Girls, tell them to mail me with any goss. Ol.’
‘Well Oliver sounds like he’s still having a good time anyway,’ Jess commented as she printed out Oliver’s latest missive. ‘No cares in the world. I feel quite envious.’
‘We haven’t got much in the way of cares either, not when you put it into a world-scale context,’ Matthew said from the sofa. He’d almost disappeared under the many sections of the paper. Only one, Appointments, as immaculately folded and untouched as it had arrived, lay on the floor beside him. It would look exactly the same when it went into the recycling bag. As she watched, he flung down the TV listings and stretched, yawning luxuriously. ‘What do you fancy doing today?’ he asked. ‘Shall we see a movie? I quite fancy that one about the woman growing dope in her greenhouse in Cornwall.’
Jess laughed. ‘You would! It sounds like some scheme you and the bunch up at the Leo would dream up over a few beers!’
Matt looked rather shifty at that and he had a strangely secretive smile as he over-scrupulously rearranged and refolded all the newspaper pages, confirming that this particular scam certainly had been discussed. ‘Well I suppose at least if you were in prison you’d have food and accommodation provided,’ she told him. ‘Anyway, I think I’ll go up and talk to Natasha, see if we can see a way of getting back towards normal.’
Natasha’s empty room was a shock. Somehow Jess had assumed the girl would be slumped on her bed either sullenly pecking out text messages to Claire on her mobile or pretending to sleep. The neatly made bed and the carefully reorganized desk looked like a statement about being adult, about Natasha refusing to be quashed. She would organize her own life, thank you, Jess interpreted from the doorway, praying Natasha would somehow materialize magically from the wardrobe.
‘She’s gone!’ Jess hurtled down the stairs and back into the sitting room.
‘Oh, hi Jess! Who’s gone?’ Jess hadn’t heard Paula arrive. She was sitting on the sofa next to Matthew, looking as if she hadn’t had a lot of sleep. She was, Jess managed to note, still in last night’s clothes and had a look on her face as if she was trying hard not to keep breaking into a very broad pleased-with-life grin.
‘Natasha’s gone? Where?’ Matt asked.
‘God, Matt, how the hell am I supposed to know? She’s just not there. She must have gone off out straight after we told her she was grounded.’ Jess leaned across her desk and peered out of the window into the drizzle as if Natasha might still be waiting on the front doorstep, like a small child who runs away and daren’t go further than the garden shed. It even crossed her mind to check the shed: she’d noticed Natasha and Tom lurking close to it the night before.
Paula’s smile was a lazy, mildly curious one. ‘Oh dear! Have there been words? Your loyal readers will want to know all about it!’
‘I don’t think I’ll be writing about this one, Paula.’
‘Oh? I thought your column was all about sharing both the pleasures and the pains of family life. You always have before! Come on, tell me what your delicious daughter has done now? Is it a boy?’ Paula had scrabbled in her handbag and was brushing her hair now. Longish blond strands floated from her brush and landed on her leather trousers. Paula, with exaggerated delicacy, gathered up the stray bits between her lavender-painted thumb and index fingernails and dropped them over the side of the sofa onto the floor, assuming, Jess thought, that a cleaning fairy would deal with them in due course.
‘It is a boy, but it’ll sort itself out.’ Jess didn’t want to be so disloyal to Tash as to start telling the world and its friends what she’d been up to. Stuff the column, she thought, this one’s private. She was worried too. If Natasha had flounced out in a teenage huff, she might decide it was too difficult to creep back in again and simply not come home.
‘Anyway, I was just telling Matt …’ Paula went on, eager to get back to the more enthralling subject of herself. ‘I’ve come for a character reference. Your friend Eddy is quite the sweetest man I’ve come across in ages – oh sorry that sounds so rude! – and I want you two to tell me all about him and what the score is. He says he’s single, but then he would, wouldn’t he?’
‘Oh he’s single. I think you could say he goes in for serial singleness.’ Matt laughed. ‘There’s three ex-wives, several children and a couple of grandchildren and I gather the old royalty cheques don’t go so far these days.’
‘Oh I’m not bothered about the money aspect,’ Paula said airily. ‘I just want to know if he’s a Nice Person, someone I could think of in terms of more than, well just, sort of sex. Grandchildren though,’ she frowned, ‘that must make him … how old? … too old?’
‘I expect he started young,’ Jess cut in. ‘Living the rock dream life, you know, married an early pregnant girlfriend, dumped her later for literally a younger model, that kind of thing. He’s OK these days, pretty settled. He was very kind to Clarissa when she was burgled.’ She smiled a warning at Matt not to elaborate on the nature of the ‘kindness’. It was actually quite cheering to see Paula looking so happy.
‘What, though, does he actually do?’ Paula went on. ‘I mean I asked him, of course, but he just said “this and that” and went on about expecting to make a million any day now, just like Del Boy used to in Only Fools and Horses, remember? I mean he must do something, he’s too young to live like an old retired bloke, pottering about all day, don’t you think Matt?’
Jess held her breath, wondering if Matt was actually going to slap Paula for her profound tactlessness or laugh at her for putting her foot so far into her mouth she’d practically digested it.
Matt stood up and headed for the door. ‘All I can say, Paula, is that Eddy is full of ideas,’ he said with mock solemnity. ‘As are all of us who are released early, and mercifully in my opinion, from the stifling grind of daily employment.’ He left the room and Jess heard him climbing the stairs. He didn’t sound unhappy or unduly insulted for he was leaping up them two at a time. She heard Oliver’s door open, then after a few seconds close again. Then there was the faint sound of slower steps heading for the attic.
‘Oh I’m so sorry. Me and my huge mouth.’ Paula put her fingers across the offending feature for a second and looked penitent.
‘Oh don’t worry about it,’ Jess reassured her. ‘He’s only gone up to watch the sport on telly in peace. Just because he’s out of work, he can’t expect the rest of us to pussyfoot round the issue. He doesn’t seem unhappy about it.’
‘No? Isn’t he desperate to find another job? I know I would be.’
Jess perched on the edge of her desk from where she could talk to Paula and also keep an eye on the Grove in case Natasha was on her way back. ‘He thinks of it as a great opportunity,’ she said. ‘It’s like he’s finding himself, the way hippies used to.’
‘Some of them still are, you should see my aunt Eileen, still seeking personal space by way of bits of art therapy and rune reading and strictly middle-class university-level spiritual retreats where she gets her karma sorted. Never done a hand’s turn as my mother used to say.’
‘Yes well for that you need someone who’s prepared to keep you in meals and mortgage. I guess Matt thinks it’s my turn and he’s probably right.’
‘Aunt Eileen married a merchant banker and lives near Sissinghurst, so there you are. Are you jealous?’
‘What, of Matt? Of all that free time? No, it’s not that. It’s as if now he’s opted out of work, he’s sort of opted out of everything else in our lives as well. I feel very much on my own at the moment.’
Paula got up and gave her a quick hug. ‘Write it all down, sweetie. Your readers need to know you’re not perfect.’
‘I’m not sure I need them to know that though!’ Jess laughed.
Tom wasn’t in the Sierra. There was nothing in it at all, nothing to show he’d ever so much as opened its door. The steering column was smashed around the area where the ignition key should go, Natasha noticed as she peered in through the dirty window, so it must have been stolen at some time and dumped there. It couldn’t have been Tom though, she told herself, squashing her suspicions, he wouldn’t be so stupid as to sleep in a car he’d stolen. Someone else must have done it. The city was full of nicked cars.
‘Hello sweetheart, what are you doing up here? Looking for that boyfriend of yours?’ George, with inevitable hoe in hand, was watching Natasha from his scarlet shed. She grinned at him. Her grandad was cool. How wonderfully mad did you have to be to stick so fervently to political beliefs that were on their way out half a century before? And how crazy to paint your shed bright red and declare it the People’s Palace of Mortlake Road?
‘Hi Grandad, how’s the carrots?’
‘Plagued with root fly but at least they grow straight and not twisted. If only people were like that.’
‘People? Why?’ For the first time she realized that George looked quite severely old. She’d always taken it for granted that he was an Old Person, that’s what grandparents were. But he’d always looked well, acted as if age wasn’t something that was a problem. Just now she realized that he wasn’t that far away from death. He even looked as if he’d been thinking about it.
‘Bloody vandals and thieves, that’s what I’m talking about. Val’s shed was broken into a couple of nights back, all her tools stolen. She had good stuff too, not the cheap sort you get down the market that don’t last five minutes. Someone had a go at Dave’s as well but he’s got a lock on it that would do the job on Fort Knox so they didn’t get in. If people want to go nicking they should do it from those who’ve got it to spare, not from the likes of us. Anyway, enough gloom and doom. Come and have a cup of tea. Tell me what brings you down here. That lad hasn’t been around today, not that I’ve seen.’
Natasha was impatient to leave, there was still time to meet Claire and she needed somewhere to sleep for the night. The idea of camping out in the Sierra had seemed romantic, daring and exciting but only combined with sharing it with Tom. Now her resolve faltered seriously at the idea of a chill and frightening night in it by herself. And whoever was doing the shed-burgling might come back. She caught herself thinking about how much her mother would worry and almost grinned at the thought that she was, deep down, feeling quite responsible, though her family wouldn’t see it that way.
She followed George into the shed, dumped her heavy bag on the floor and sat in one of his battered old floral picnic chairs.
‘You were lucky they didn’t get in here,’ she said. ‘You’ve got a lot of stuff and it’s all so clean and polished. The burglars wouldn’t even get earth all over them.’
Her grandfather gave her a long look as he stirred the two mugs of tea. ‘I hope it was just luck,’ he said. ‘I don’t like to think badly of people, not people I like. Car boot sales, I blame them.’
‘What do you mean?’ Natasha was mystified. Car boot sales were what her school PTA had every summer to raise funds for a new minibus or a new filter system for the swimming pool. Parents turned up in their Mercedes estates and set up clothes rails with last season’s Donna Karan skirts on them and boxes full of CDs that had barely been played. Clothes their smallest children had grown out of were eagerly snapped up, for the top-of-the-range quality guaranteed that wear and tear would be absolutely minimal. There were picnics during the day, too much wine was drunk and the takings were ludicrously vast compared with the Sunday morning boot sales in aid of the local hospice.
‘It’s where your local crook takes his swag and flogs it to the unsuspecting punters. It’s all too easy. You don’t even need a car boot, just rent a table-top space and hope the cops aren’t on the lookout,’ George told her. ‘You can shift any amount of gear that way. You should ask your mate Tom.’
‘Tom? Why would Tom know?’
George laughed. ‘Hey lass, he may be straight, he may not. But he sure as hell knows people who aren’t.’
Later, as Natasha walked back towards the bus stop to go to Claire’s house, she thought about what George had said. Tom did know how to get into houses. But he didn’t take things, she was sure of it. She wasn’t sure, though, how he lived. He always had money for cigarettes, never seemed to be that hungry, and admitted he lived on junk takeaways, which were cheap enough but still didn’t come free, not like food at a parent’s house. She huddled against the bus stop, wishing she hadn’t bolted from home. It was a huge disappointment not finding Tom waiting for her. That was what was supposed to happen, surely? If he cared about her? She couldn’t recall that he’d said he did. Now she felt foolish that she’d assumed, because he was happy to kiss her, to touch her, that what he’d been feeling was real affection.
She could see the bus in the distance, waiting at traffic lights. She picked up the bag and stepped closer to the pavement, ready to put out her hand for it to stop. A VW Polo swooshed round the corner, too close to the kerb, and splashed water all over her feet and the bottoms of her trousers. Chill wet fabric clung against her already cold legs. The car window was open and she heard raucous laughter. Mel, her so very long-ago best friend, was in the car, dropping a cigarette end out of the window. The driver, she could just make out, was Tom.
Matt sat on the old Lloyd Loom sofa in the bedroom and thought about Natasha. He needed to be by himself to do this, to let down the puppyish façade he’d been keeping going since Jess had shrieked at the girl in her room. There was no way he’d wanted to rush in and throttle Tom, that would have meant he’d have had to see them, get too accurate a picture that would stay with him, no matter what. He’d done very well so far, quite determinedly keeping the idea a bit hazy, not picturing Natasha wound around the boy, not tangled and tumbling on the bed with him. He didn’t have any of those rather dodgy ‘she’s my little girl and always will be’ feelings that he’d heard were harboured by some men, the type who shuddered at the thought of their daughters growing up. But still, he could have done with a bit more time, a few more leisurely years in which Natasha went through the usual dating process, dragged one or two home for inspection perhaps, before he had to come to terms with her as a grown-up sexual being. This way it was all too horribly sudden. He didn’t see any great value in virginity for its own sake, scorned the usual idea that it was something that was ‘lost’ as if it was a particular treasure. But fifteen, who on earth had a clue what they were doing at fifteen?
He picked up the remote control and switched on the TV. A couple of the usual punters, two British ex-footballers and a Dutchman were discussing the FA Cup Final. The Brits, he thought, looked so awkward, trussed up in stiff, dull suits and with ill-matched ties that looked as if they’d been chosen by their children and had to be worn to avoid upsetting them. By contrast, the Dutchman was easy and relaxed in a polo shirt and a beautifully cut jacket. We Brits can’t do casual, Matt thought as he allowed the discussion to drift into focus and shift his brain’s attention away from Natasha. In fact the Brits couldn’t seem to get their heads round the concept of leisure at all. He thought about men in summer, on the hottest days wearing shorts that tended to be that bit too short, with the wrong sort of shoes or the old cliché of socks-with-sandals.
Perhaps, he thought idly, I’ll set up a consultation for companies, try to teach them how to grasp the dress-down concept of office-wear, and kick-start the unthinking design-ignorant desk-man into confidence in his own taste, rather than clinging to the dreary comfort of a suit-and-tie uniform. At this point Matt tried very hard to concentrate on the football: somehow, he worried, the idea of an actual occupation had taken root in his brain. Of all the daft ideas he and the others at the Leo had been coming up with, this was one he actually thought he could pick up and run for goal with. It was too frightening.
‘So can I stay with you? Just for a little while?’ Natasha watched Claire putting on her lipstick. She observed closely the way Claire’s mouth parted slightly and pouted, and had to stop herself copying. Claire and make-up were made for each other: mascara never flecked like dead baby flies onto her cheeks. Eyeshadow never disappeared into creases and blusher didn’t make her look as if she was trying to resemble the kind of dolly you won at the fair.
‘I suppose. I’ll have to ask Mum though.’ Claire wasn’t as welcoming as Natasha had thought she’d be. Perhaps it was because of what she’d done. She’d told her about being found with Tom and hoped Claire would help the mood to lighten, perhaps think it was funny. But Claire didn’t. It crossed Natasha’s mind that perhaps she was jealous, as if it wasn’t what she’d had in mind, Natasha getting ahead of her like this.
‘We weren’t even having sex,’ Natasha had felt the need to explain when Claire had been a bit cool, the cold sort not the good sort. ‘I just, well he needed somewhere to stay.’ It sounded lame, put like that. She half-expected Claire to ask, ‘Why didn’t you have sex? You might as well have done.’ She didn’t know what she’d say then; she’d have to admit that what she meant was ‘We didn’t do it in the house’ which had been because she was in her own home, with other people around. She didn’t want to tell her about when they were down by the railway, she didn’t want Claire being all condemning and spoiling it. The picture of Mel in the car with Tom flashed through her mind. She hadn’t mentioned that to Claire either and she was glad now that she hadn’t. It involved too many more awkward questions, like whose was the car? How come Tom, who was actually only sixteen, was driving it? And was he doing all that sex stuff with Mel too?
Jess wished she and Matt had gone out now, then she wouldn’t have had to spend the day wondering when Natasha would return. If they’d gone out, taken the car, it would have made it easy for Tash to come back in the house, just be there as if she’d never been away and they could find some way of all muddling along again. Instead, she’d spent the rest of the day doing mindless chores: cleaning the kitchen (including taking everything out of the fridge, washing every shelf and reloading) with one eye on the clock, another on the job in hand.
‘Has she just stormed out for a while to show that she can or has she run away?’ she asked Matt eventually, when at nearly seven that evening there was still no sign of her. ‘I mean suppose she’s run off somewhere with Tom, should we call the police?’
Matt opened the pristine fridge and upset the symmetry by removing a couple of bottles of beer. ‘And say what? “We’ve got a fifteen-year-old daughter who’s been out most of the day”? I think they’ll want it to be at least an all-nighter before they get interested, especially round here. This bit of London is full of girls of her age staying out: the middle-class ones with over-liberal parents and the others. Covers almost everyone. And Zoe isn’t back yet either, they’d want to know why you’re not just as worried about her.’
Jess opened one of the beers and drank straight from the bottle. Cleaning was thirsty work but had been suitably mind-numbing when she needed it. Certainly in the kitchen she hadn’t left much for Monica to do on Monday. There was even a lamb casserole in the oven, one of those comfort-food items that was supposed to stick families, as well as your ribs, together.
‘Tasha’s probably at that friend’s house,’ Matthew suggested. ‘Claire, the one I saw her with the other day.’
‘I just wish she’d ring if she is. I want her to know we want her to come home. She hasn’t taken her mobile, she said last week that it had run out of time – I think that was a hint that I was supposed to buy her a voucher.’
Matthew hugged her. ‘Don’t worry, she’ll turn up. Nights are still cold. She won’t be out on the streets. Give her a call at Claire’s, I’m sure she’ll be there.’ Just then the front door was slammed shut but it was Zoe, not Natasha, who came running in.
‘Mum, Dad, come quick! Emily has collapsed and I can’t get her to wake up! Angie isn’t there, she’s gone out with the bloke who delivered the new fridge and …’ She stopped, gasping for breath. ‘Come now!’
Emily was lying in her mother’s kitchen, sprawled out on the floor with her legs at strange angles like a corpse in a bad TV drama.
‘Shall I get an ambulance?’ Zoe stood hopping from foot to foot, biting her thumb. ‘Emily! Get up!’ she yelled, prodding at the girl with her toe.
‘No, don’t kick her, that won’t help,’ Matt said. ‘Let’s put her in the recovery position and see how she goes from there. An ambulance might be a good idea.’
‘No!’ Emily opened her eyes and groaned. ‘I’m OK, I’m just feeling a bit woozy …’ Her eyes rolled in her head, quite terrifyingly, Jess thought. She took Zoe’s arm and pushed her out into the hallway.
‘Zoe, has she taken anything?’
‘What? Like what? Only aspirins. She’s always taking aspirins. She says her head hurts.’
‘Has she eaten anything?’
‘No.’ Zoe’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I told you, she never eats. You were supposed to tell Angie.’
‘I know. I haven’t seen her since you mentioned it though.’
‘But you’ve had ALL DAY!’ Zoe wailed. ‘Angie was here this morning. You could have come over. You could have talked to her! All you think about is Natasha! Suppose Emily dies?’
Then it will be all your fault was the bit Zoe wasn’t saying. ‘She isn’t going to die, not today anyway,’ Jess told her. Matthew had hauled Emily up and sat her on one of Angie’s slinky kitchen chairs. He looked at Jess, indicating without Emily seeing that she weighed about as much as a kitten.
‘Come back with us,’ Jess told Emily. ‘We’re going to give you something to eat and drink, nothing big or heavy, just enough to keep you upright. And then when your mum gets back I think we all need to have a talk about what’s been going on, don’t you?’
Emily nodded miserably and gave Zoe a feeble smile. ‘Thanks a lot Zoe, now you’ve really landed me in it.’