I can smell smoke. At the living-room door I see Mum sitting on the wide brown rubber bands that stretch across Jackie’s chair. I feel like running to the lift to get as far away from her as I can. Instead I open the door and say, ‘What do you want?’ She looks different, thinner, like there’s not much of her left.
She smiles. ‘I missed you.’
‘I didn’t miss you,’ I want to say. ‘Choosing that bastard over me and then leaving me there for him to kill.’ But I don’t say it. Jackie looks at me and I look away.
‘I’m not coming back,’ is what I say.
‘I was so worried. I had this feeling, though, that you were okay.’ She looks at Jackie then back at me. ‘I know what he did to you.’
Why don’t you go and leave me alone?
‘I don’t care. I’m not going back.’
‘Okay. I’ve been to see Carmel and she’s got our old room ready.’
I don’t want to leave here.
‘So?’
‘So we’re not going back to Tommy Whites.’
Why don’t you ever ask me what I want?
This is it. There is no will you come back with me? There is no sorry. There are no decisions left to be made.
‘It’ll be just like last time when you told me a pack of lies then went back to him.’
‘It won’t, promise. I’ve told him it’s over.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I know you don’t.’ She starts crying, takes out her fags. ‘Your nan misses you. She wants to see you. I told her the police were out looking for you, so she didn’t worry herself sick.’
‘You didn’t get the police.’
‘No. I didn’t want the police involved. They would have contacted social services, had you taken away from me. Put into care. I couldn’t take that. I did everything I could think of to find you myself first.’
I see Nan at her kitchen window, watching for me to come across the road. Turning on the radio for the news and hearing somebody has been murdered and thinking it was me. I see myself saying: I am sorry. I never meant for you to worry. I am sorry for being so selfish and running away. Sorry that I never sent Bernie to let you know I was all right. I didn’t realize they could put me into care. I think about the care home where Lizzie said her mate got stabbed.
Jackie puts a saucer on the arm of Mum’s chair.
I start crying. It makes my nose run.
Jackie tries to give me a hug, but I wriggle away. I can’t look either of them in the eye.
‘I spoke to our Sylvia and she told me how upset your mum was and I told her you were with me. You’re a missing person, Robyn,’ Jackie says. ‘The police will arrest me if they find out you’re staying here. I’m so sorry, love.’ She talks like I’ve already left.
I didn’t want to leave Jimmy’s Café, didn’t want to leave Nan, didn’t want to leave my mum, don’t want to leave Jackie’s and I don’t want to leave St Josephine’s School. Lately that’s all I’ve been doing: learning how to leave, learning how to walk away when things don’t work any more. I think about Robert Naylor and how he learned how to leave that night when he disappeared, when he must have thought I would be better off without him.
I pack my stuff inside two carrier bags, leave the bits Jackie gave me behind in the airing cupboard. Back in the living room I turn to Mum. ‘If you take me back to Tommy Whites, I’ll knife that bastard. I mean it. Then I’ll run away again and you’ll never find me.’
Mum says nothing.
‘I know he’s not my dad. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Who told you?’
‘That doesn’t matter.’
‘I’ll make some tea.’ Jackie walks into the kitchen and closes the door.
‘I was going to tell you in a couple of years.’
‘Why didn’t you marry my real dad?’
‘I thought he didn’t want to marry me. He knew I was pregnant with you and he was in the army. I wrote to him, but he didn’t reply.’
‘Why?’
She shakes her head. ‘I don’t know. I suppose he got cold feet or something. He asked me to give him a year to think things over.’
‘But he came back before that?’
‘He came back when it was too late.’
‘Why didn’t you wait and talk to him before you got married?’
‘I would have been left on the shelf, Robyn. That’s what everyone expected when he never came back. Nobody wants somebody else’s cast-off with a kid on board as well. I saw an opportunity for us and I took it. Sometimes you have to take whatever you can get.’
‘But you must have liked him.’
‘I did. We had a laugh when we went out. I met him in a pub in town by Lime Street, the Legs of Man it was called. We met while he was on leave from the army. He had his own flat on County Road. We’d sit there some nights watching telly. He took me to the pictures, took me dancing. Your nan thought he was great. I thought he was great. It all happened so fast, the pregnancy and everything, and I think he panicked, said he needed some time to think. I don’t regret meeting him. When I had you they wanted to take you away somewhere, they said you’d be better off. I told them I was keeping you. I caused murder on that maternity ward, told the bastard nurse that tried to take you from me to fuck off. I don’t regret keeping you. I’ll never regret keeping you.’
‘Does Mrs Naylor know about me?’
She shakes her head. ‘I know Bob didn’t say a word. When I met him, he told me he had nothing to do with her. And I certainly didn’t tell her. She’s a nosy cow, though, so who knows?’ Mum squashes her fag into the saucer and stands up ready to go. What surprises me is how my mum put up with the way he treated her. I’m still stunned that she didn’t find a way to get away from him. When I ask her why she stayed, her answer sounds so simple. Mum said she had nowhere else to go. If she left and he found her she didn’t have a doubt in her mind that he’d kill her.
Jackie opens the front door wide. ‘You can come and visit me any time, Robyn. I’d like you to.’
I don’t answer. Mum takes one of my bags, presses the silver button and we wait for the lift. When it comes I turn around. Jackie smiles at me. I don’t smile back. On the way to the bus stop I walk close to the walls, away from Mum. I look up, see Jackie’s face at the window, her hand waving me goodbye. I stop. How could I ignore her? She knows stuff about me. She knows my favourite colour is sky blue and my favourite soap is Palmolive. She knows I like all the windows open, she knows who scares me most in the world. She was even going to take me to see her Dave. I drop my bag to the floor, lift both hands high and wave back.
I wake up in the hostel on Christmas Eve next to my mum. The room feels smaller than I remember. I get up and look out of the window. It’s foggy outside. I can hear the thud of footsteps above my head. Kids racing all around the place shouting, the heavy smell of bacon from the kitchen reminds me of Jimmy’s Café. Mum is still asleep.
Wearing the clothes she got me in Greaty Market I go back to the window. The fog is lifting. Lines and lines of tall trees behind a low wall. The branches are bare; without leaves to soften them they look dead to me.
Seeing these trees makes me think of the picture of the little boy, in Nan’s room, the boy who died wanting to be like everybody else. If I’d have stayed in Tommy Whites with Mum and Dad like kids are supposed to I would have died.
Downstairs I stand next to Carmel at the cooker. It feels warm against my belly. Carmel cracks an egg into the frying pan. She has a white shirt on and silver tinsel tied up in her hair. She looks like the Angel Gabriel. A few little kids I don’t know sit around the big table singing, ‘Jingle bells, batman smells, Robyn flew away.’ Carmel catches my eye and we both laugh. I pick up a fork and push holes into the pink sausages. Carmel says, ‘Can you cook?’
‘I can cook bacon, sausages, eggs and scouse.’
The doorbell rings.
‘Here you go,’ she says, handing me the spatula. ‘Knock yourself out.’
I stand over the pan, push the sausages about, flick them over onto the other side; a bit of fat spits out of the pan onto the top of my hand and I whisper shit ’n’ hell. Behind me the kids giggle.
When the kitchen door opens I can see her behind Carmel. Blue-eyed May, stick in her hand, legs half-past five on a clock. I drop everything, throw my arms around her, squeeze her a little bit too hard and she squeezes me back a little bit too hard. ‘Let me look at you, Robyn. Still as thin as a straw. I missed you.’ She traces her finger across my T-shirt and says, ‘Three Blind Mice.’ I am amazed. Nan laughs. ‘My new friend Eddie is teaching me. You can meet him if you promise not to disappear again.’