In the narrow hallway outside her mum’s flat, Laura took a deep breath, counting to four, then holding for seven and exhaling for a count of eight. While she was practising this controlled breathing, she tried to clear her mind, but still her thoughts snagged on things around her – the mat outside her mum’s neighbour’s flat, with its cheery ‘Welcome’, belying the fact that, as far as Laura knew, Mrs Papadakis never had any visitors; the flickering strip lighting that bathed everything in a sickly yellow light; the fading notices in the locked glass case: ‘IN THE EVENT OF FIRE’, ‘COMMUNITY RULES’, ‘SITE MANAGER EMERGENCY DETAILS’. Nothing ever changed in this hallway. Not the blue vinyl floor tiles or the metal door numbers or the pervading smell of Cup-a-soup.
As soon as she let herself in through the door and heard the television blaring from the living room, Laura knew Katya was here. Sure enough, she found the young woman lying back in the leather easy chair, her feet in her bunny-ear slippers resting on the matching leather footstool in front of her. She was clutching a balled-up tissue to her face and her cheeks were tracked with tears.
‘Is Long Lost Family,’ Katya said, barely raising her eyes from the television. ‘Davina just find this lady’s mother. Thirty-five years searching. Is very sad.’
Laura glanced at the screen, where a heavy-set woman with dyed blonde hair and eyebrows halfway up her forehead like migrating birds was sobbing, as if in sympathy with Katya.
‘I’ll go and say hello,’ she said. Katya nodded without looking up.
Her mother’s room was directly across the hallway from the living room. Someone – Laura suspected it had been Femi – and once made a door plaque from a photograph of Laura’s mother as a young woman stuck on to pink card surrounded by flowers cut out of magazines. The card and the photograph had since faded, and some of the flowers had dropped off, revealing the yellowing Sellotape underneath.
Something heavy descended inside Laura. Still, she arranged her features into the semblance of a smile as she went in.
‘Only me! Just thought I’d pop in to see how you’re doing today, Mummy. You look pretty! Has Katya been doing your hair again?’
Laura’s mother was propped up in bed, wearing the orange pyjamas Laura had bought her to cheer her up. Her sparse brown hair had been pinned back with two pink plastic clips in the shape of bows. Her head lolled to one side and there was a thin string of drool coming out of the left corner of her mouth. Laura wiped it away with the cloth on the hospital tray over her mum’s bed.
‘That’s better, isn’t it?’
Laura perched on the bed and took her mum’s hand, which was as soft as cotton wool. It was impossible to believe there were bones in there. It felt like holding hands with one of those floury baps you find in old-fashioned bakeries.
‘So, you remember the client I told you about? Hannah? Well, I’m still concerned. You know I said two of the girls had killed themselves. How tragic it was? Remember I said that? Well, Hannah can’t accept it. Won’t accept it. Total denial. And that’s led to some worryingly obsessive behaviour.’
Her mother made a noise like a low moan and Laura leaned forward to dab at her mouth again with the cloth. Sitting back to survey the result, she sighed.
‘You’re right, Mummy. I have to step back and not get so involved. It’s not healthy. I must accept the things I cannot change. Annabel always says that. But these poor girls in the clinic. They are so terribly lost. They find the world so frightening. At least I have you. And you have me. We are so blessed.’