Twenty-five years earlier
I can’t let this happen. Can’t let them go away together for a long weekend. Imagine what he could do to my mum in three whole days far from home.
He sprang the idea on her, just after I’d persuaded her to let Becca stay. For the past week, Becca and I have been pretending we’ve forgotten all about our suspicions. Becca’s been on her best behavior, trying not to upset Mum, but an atmosphere hums in the air. Mum is sometimes subdued; sometimes falsely, painfully cheery. Nick’s moods are up and down too. Some days he acts like our protector: He fixes things in the flat, deals with dodgy-looking people hanging round the tower block, insists Mum puts her feet up while he makes tea. Other days I’ll get home from school to find they’ve sent Becca out for chips, and Nick will be smoking on the balcony while Mum’s in her room or in the bath, door closed. And I’ll know they’ve been arguing.
And now this.
A surprise break, an early birthday present. As Mum sits at the kitchen table and tells me about it, she tries to seem excited but her eyes are empty.
Don’t go, I long to say. Please don’t go.
“The Cotswolds,” she says, smiling vaguely. “Lovely, hey?”
“I thought we might do something special for Becca’s last weekend,” I say.
“Well, you two can. You’ll have more fun without us.”
Doesn’t she remember the fun we all used to have together, before him? Creating our own cinema by turning off the living-room lights and heating up popcorn. Going to the library café for banana milkshakes when Mum and Auntie Rach had been paid.
“She said Auntie Rach might come up to fetch her,” I lie. “Don’t you want to be here when she comes?”
“I thought Becca was getting the train back.”
“Rach wants to see you.”
She fixes me with a searching look, then stares toward the window, two grooves etching the bridge of her nose.
Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go. You don’t want to, I can tell.
“Rach will just have to see me another time,” she says briskly. “Nick’s gone to a lot of trouble to arrange this.”
Becca and I try to hatch a plan. We consider involving Auntie Rach, maybe asking her to phone up and persuade Mum to stay at home, but Becca isn’t keen. She’s not getting on with her mum at the moment, she admits. They’re always butting heads these days, going through spells of arguing or not speaking (while Uncle Jack keeps well out of it), but I’m too stressed to ask her what it’s all about this time.
None of our plans seems fail-safe. Some are ridiculous. The one we keep coming back to is telling the police.
“All they’ll do is talk to your mum, though,” Becca says, in the worldly way that sometimes reassures me, sometimes drives me mad. “And if she won’t admit anything, there’s nothing more they can do.”
“They could arrest him!”
“It doesn’t work like that, Kay. And do you even know where the police station is?”
I stall. Of course not. I don’t know anything. I’m useless.
I stand up and look frantically around my room as if it might be hiding among my things. “We could phone 999?”
“That’s for emergencies.”
“This is an emergency! He could kill her!”
“Kate.” Becca leaps up and puts her arms around me, rocking and shushing, telling me it’ll be okay. I sob into her shoulder, wetting the thin fabric of her dress.
I barely sleep for the rest of the week. On Thursday Mum’s on an early shift, so she kisses me good-bye and goes off to work while I’m still in my pajamas and Becca’s still asleep. Nick left even earlier. The mornings feel lighter when he isn’t at the breakfast table. In the quiet that Mum leaves behind, I slip into her room.
It feels intimate—wrong—to be in her bedroom when she’s not home. The duvet is rucked up to expose the wrinkled corner of a sheet. The pretend-gold bracelet I bought her sits coiled at the back of her nightstand, no longer inseparable from her wrist. It looks cheap in this light, childish and flimsy, and my skin prickles with shame.
I turn on the spot, eyes roaming over photos and furniture that seem newly alien, knowing yet not knowing what I’m looking for. This room feels like a foreign country now. Out of bounds. I remember when there were no borders between her space and mine.
Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?
Guilt stirs as I slide open the bedside drawer to see a black hairbrush, a packet of aspirin, an out-of-date magazine. Turning to the wardrobe, I glide my fingers over the dresses and pretty skirts she never wears anymore. I nose the soft fabrics, her scent trapped in them, like a memory.
Just as I’m about to retreat, my gaze falls on something at the bottom of the wardrobe. A wad of light blue fabric scrunched into the shadows of the back corner. I reach down to pick it up, but as it unfurls, shock makes me fling it away. It hits the mirror and drops to the floor, and I see it again: a dark lake of red encrusted on the front of one of her T-shirts.
I stand dazed. Heart thumping, I spread out the top on the carpet and stare at the dried blood, trailing my fingertips across the stain. Vomit surges into my throat as my thoughts scatter, crazy and panicked. My mummy, my mummy, my mummy.
Now I know I have to act. I stuff the top into my schoolbag and charge out. I’d feel braver if Becca was with me but I can’t waste any time, don’t want my nerve to fail.
I ask four different strangers before I find someone who knows where the police station is. Reciting the directions over and over, I stumble through the streets until I reach the gray building with one-way windows. I hate going into any place I don’t know: I’m never sure how to introduce myself, what I’m meant to do. I remember my first day at secondary school, when I accidentally walked into the staffroom and a dozen teachers’ heads swiveled toward me.
Pushing through the front doors, I stand for a moment in the foyer. My vision is full of bright spirals and I’m burning hot from the rush to get here. To my left is a waiting area where two people sit in tired silence. One has a plaster cast on her wrist and the other is aggressively chewing—I can’t tell if it’s gum or the insides of his cheeks.
I shuffle up to the wide reception, which has clear glass panels right the way along, like in the post office where Mum works but higher and wider. The people behind are surprisingly far away, sitting at separate desks typing busily. I try waiting until someone notices me, then eventually tap on the window. A woman glances up and heaves herself out of her chair.
“Can I help?”
“I’m here to . . . I need to talk to a policeman . . . or woman.”
“You’re looking at one.” Her tone isn’t nasty, but I blush and my tongue knots.
“I just need to tell someone . . .” My hand flutters toward my bag, where Mum’s bloodied top is balled up beside my school things.
“Have you witnessed a crime?”
My hand shies away. “Not exactly.”
“Have you done something?” She cocks her head. “Is there something you want to admit to?”
“No, no!” I shake my head, choked by tears. “I don’t want to say it out here,” I whisper.
I’m not sure whether I imagine her cluck of impatience. She goes over to her desk and returns with a clipboard and a piece of paper.
“Why don’t you fill out this form?” She nods toward the chairs, and I recoil from the chewing man and the broken-armed woman.
Normally I’d jump at the chance to write things down. I’m much better with words on paper. But the boxes and the dotted lines look so confusing: How will I know I’m ticking the right things? Will it go on a permanent record?
“Can’t I talk to someone in private?” I ask.
The woman sighs. “Wait here. I’ll see if one of the interview rooms is free. Can’t promise anything, though. I keep telling them these facilities aren’t up to scratch, we need an extension . . .” She wanders away.
At first I breathe out with relief, but while she’s gone I mull over what she said. Interview room. I picture two police officers firing questions at me, leaning in close, doing good cop/bad cop. Rationally I know it won’t be like that, but sweat breaks out on my face.
I imagine them taking Mum’s top and sending it away for tests. She’ll know I’ve been in her room, rummaged through her things. They’ll send someone round and she’ll get upset and angry, and her refusal to admit what’s going on will make me look like a liar. Nick will see how easy it is to crush my attempts to help her. Confirmation, once and for all, that Mum won’t betray him.
A photocopier on the other side of the screen starts to snarl and beep. The man in the waiting area shouts, “How much fucking longer?” Suddenly the girl with the broken arm sits forward and pukes onto the floor, the smell instant and horrible.
This isn’t right. It no longer feels right.
Before the policewoman has even returned, I am gone.