When the headmaster set eyes on Frances Delaney, sweeping the floor of the school corridor wearing nothing but a pair of trainer socks, he stood perfectly still and watched. He had never seen anything as strange and beautiful. His face was usually grey but not today. She had coloured him in. All around her, children were being children: wild, callous and despicable. They were like beetles, creeping bugs with hard shells. They said what they liked with vile spontaneity. Apart from little Miriam Delaney, of course. She was quiet, well behaved, positively ghostly. And with a mother like this, who could expect anything less?

He walked towards her, flicked the children away, took off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. She was warm, because her sweeping had been furious. When Frances cleaned, the bugs knew she was coming. Beside her feet the floor was shining.

“I think you should come with me,” the headmaster said, leading Frances along the corridors to his office. Her eyes were glazed, there were no words in her mouth. He pulled his National Trust blanket from the cupboard, blue and white and scratchy, smelling of tobacco. “Here,” he said, offering it to Frances. “We’ll find your clothes and then I’ll drive you home. Does that sound like a good plan, Mrs Delaney?” His palms were wet, his breathing was quick. “Were you actually wearing any clothes when you left the house?”

That afternoon, at the end of the school day, Miriam walked home by herself as usual. She worried about the safety of cats outside all day long, worried about what kind of concoction she would be given for tea, worried that other children would be meaner than ever and what that meanness might look like. Today had been the loudest day. No wonder you’re a fucking weirdo, Delaney. Your mother’s a nutter. Get your kit off, show us what you got, you both fucking nudists, is that what you are?

She opened the front door of 7 Beckford Gardens, walked along the hallway to the kitchen.

They were on the table.

On it.

Just like her boiled egg and soldiers this morning.

Just like her colouring books and felt-tip pens.

No amount of disinfectant would ever make this right.

She thought about that as she stood in the doorway.

Thought about cleaning products, wondered how many bottles there were in the world.

And eventually they stopped grunting.

He stumbled backwards and zipped up his trousers.

She was still wearing her trainer socks.

And her black bowler hat.

“Well hello, Miriam,” the headmaster said. “Did you have a good day at school?”

*

Miriam has vacuumed the front room and the hallway and it’s time for a celebratory cup of tea. She dashes past the glass panels in the kitchen door and catches sight of her own body. She pauses, her eyes widen. Is that me? A woman in knickers and novelty slippers, who has just sucked up dust using a hoover called Henry as though there is nothing in the world to be afraid of.

She remembers something Fenella once said: “The past is the past.” Stating the obvious makes Fenella happy. “It is what it is,” she often says.

Miriam tried stating the obvious for a while, to see if it improved her well-being, but it only made her feel crazier than usual:

“This is a packet of Weetabix.”

“The future is the future.”

“Death means never seeing someone again.”

“This is a pint of milk.”

“The present is the present.”

“I’ve never spoken in more than a whisper.”

“What I mean,” Fenella explained, “is no one can set foot in this house without your permission. Your mother’s gone. The past is the past. Catch my drift?”

None of those statements seemed connected, but Miriam caught her drift. It can take a long time to believe that something is over. That’s what Fenella had been trying to say. But it is. What’s done is done.

She sits at the kitchen table and sips her tea. For once, just for a few minutes, there is no history on her back. There is no history crawling over her skin and poking into her mouth. History will return as quickly as you can whisper Frances Delaney, but these small moments, these victories, have to be marked. They are the flags of progress. Signposts to normality.

The letterbox rattles.

Who gets post at eleven o’clock at night?

It’s another postcard, the sixth one Miriam has received over the past few weeks. On the front, a photograph of an old-fashioned bike, leaning against the wall of a French cafe. On the back, written in green ink:

YOU COULD SIT AND READ A BOOK IN A CAFE,
MIRIAM. YOU COULD CYCLE THROUGH THE
STREETS WITH THE WIND IN YOUR HAIR

Like the others, this postcard is anonymous. She sticks it on the noticeboard beside the rest and looks down at her slippers. These slippers are not sexy, she thinks. But have I ever been sexy? She flexes her toes, making the two West Highland terriers nod and say of course you have, Miriam, of course you have.

Sex. Now that should have appeared on the list of things she is afraid of. It’s not sex itself that’s the issue, it’s the fact that it has to involve another person. She told Fenella this last week.

“What on earth do you mean?” Fenella said.

“Well, it’s not the act of sex,” Miriam said, wishing she hadn’t phoned. Fenella had just got home from Zumba and was disarmingly energized.

“Right.”

“It’s having to be with someone.”

“So you’d be fine with a blow-up doll, is that what you’re saying?”

“That is certainly not what I’m saying.”

Fenella laughed. She opened a packet of Quavers and settled into an armchair.

“What’s that noise?”

“I’m eating crisps.”

“Doesn’t that defeat the object of Zumba?”

“How could it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Exactly. So back to sex. It’s never too late to get started,” Fenella said, but it was all right for her. She started when she was sixteen in a caravan in Newquay with a boy who liked to be called Lucy. It was the Price family’s summer holiday. Her parents were playing bingo in the town hall. Her brother was in the pub with a girl who liked to be called Pattie. It was raining, they were playing cards and Lucy (otherwise known as Martin Henley) said let’s do it and they did.

“Just like that?” Miriam said.

“Just like that,” Fenella said. “It was bloody awful but I felt fantastic afterwards.”

“You’re not exactly selling it.”

“I don’t need to sell it. It’s everywhere. It sells itself.”

“Why did he like to be called Lucy?”

“Why not?”

It was a good question. Fenella was full of those—questions that probed your assumptions and required no answers.

“At least I could do the pillow talk,” Miriam said, which made both of them quiet and sad.

“One day,” Fenella said.

“What if it never happens?”

“Whispering’s not a crime.”

So why does she feel like a criminal?

 

Miriam runs upstairs and puts on her pyjamas. That’s enough cleaning for one night—no need to overdo it. She sets a track playing on her CD player: ‘Wicked Game’ by Chris Isaak. It’s a song about the wickedness of love and a woman who has made someone think about her all the time. Miriam understands that kind of wicked—the taking over of mind and body—but she knows nothing about love. She has never experienced the kind of thing Chris Isaak is singing about, never fallen in love or had anyone fall in love with her. In fact, she is not even sure that she has met someone who is in love. Do they look different to other people? Are they easy to spot? Her mother always said that love was for people with dirty houses.

She looks in the mirror and knows what she is. She is buttoned-up. Buttons and buttons, moon-high. Imagine a night sky studded with buttons. Imagine Miriam’s buttoned-upness living in a jar—the jar would be full of navy-blue ink, the kind you might use to write a letter to your grandmother, a letter on Basildon Bond writing paper, watermarked blue, saying you were sorry, so sorry, for everything.

Dear Granny,

I am so sorry Mummy does not let me visit. She says you are too normal to be good for me. I have looked for normal in the dictionary at school and copied out what it means in case you cant remember.

conforming, usual, typical, expected, free from physical or mental disorders

I think normal is nice can we meet in secret to be normal soon? Please write back and tell me if you think this would be nice.

Lots of love,

Miss Miriam Delaney

Chris Isaak has a soul-stirring voice. Some people can do that—they can reach into your soul and stir things around. He is truly soulful. My voice is full of your soul—the parts I took when I stirred you around. His crooning makes Miriam wonder what it would be like to look at her bed and see someone lying under the duvet. Someone else. What a wicked song! It’s the soundtrack to a future that feels terrifying, exciting, possible, impossible. Her toes tingle inside her fluffy slippers.

Miriam sighs. She still misses her grandmother. The sight of those envelopes, her own name and address in that small, neat handwriting, made her feel like a real girl in a real house—a person of fixed abode, properly and officially there. But just as important was what happened in the act of writing. When Miriam composed her sentences, the voice inside her head sounded like any other girl. There was an unbroken stranger inside Miriam Delaney—the same age but louder, the same height but taller.

That stranger is now a woman and she is still buried deep. She is a doll inside a doll. Pull a string on the outer doll and nothing happens. Pull a string on the inner doll and she speaks. Trouble is, no one can hear the inner doll. No one knows she’s there.

How long is a piece of string?

People just string me along.

What’s done is not done.

She blinks her thoughts away, walks across her bedroom to the window. What’s happening out there in other people’s houses? She imagines a parallel world, another Miriam, then another. The multiplication of a person. All the possible versions of Miriam Delaney. Longer hair, short hair, dressed all in black, multicoloured, tomboy, girlish, a woman with a powerful voice, a leader, a follower, an artist, a midwife, a waitress, a driver, a baker, a scientist, a policewoman. No, not a policewoman—then she would have to arrest herself for the thing that happened. A woman with a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a son, a daughter, a cat, a dog. A woman who receives invitations and says yes please, thank you so much for inviting me. A woman who receives compliments and says thank you, how kind of you to say so, instead of blushing and squirming and hating the person for taking the mickey.

Which version would she be now if Frances Delaney had handed her to her father and walked away? A brand-new baby, a brand-new life. He lived in this house for almost a year after she was born, then he went into the garden and never came back. Ruptured brain aneurysm. He was hanging out the washing—Miriam’s Babygro. It was yellow, with a brown monkey on the front. It had to be washed again because it fell in the mud. So many details but none of them matter.

He was here and he was gone.

It was what it was.

It is what it is.

She closes her eyes, watches him smile as he jiggles her up and down, hears him sing a lullaby as he puts her to bed.

Made-up memories of a dad.

Stupid.