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by Penny Parkes

  ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions,’ Anna bit back, ‘and I can personally attest that not everyone is cut out to be a foster parent.’

  She swallowed hard, Henry’s conviction about ‘making it work’ ringing loud in her ears, almost drowning out that long-held belief. A growing part of her willing to take a chance, play the odds, and dismiss any lingering doubts. Willing and ready, in fact, to offer Callie the springboard into adult life she needed. Longing, actually, to take that leap together.

  If only the girl would answer her bloody phone.

  Anna navigated her way around another ridiculous roundabout, counting down the exits until they were heading into the heart of St Pauls. The rows of shuttered shops and tatty terraces hadn’t really changed from the memories of her youth. There was still the vague sense of disquiet, clusters of youths hanging around, bored, looking for something to fill their day. No sign of the promised gentrification that had spread throughout the other wards of Bristol.

  Anna shivered, despite the cloying heat in the Mini.

  ‘Well, isn’t it fun taking a trip down memory lane?’ She waved a hand to the left at a nondescript government building, the signage faded and defaced. ‘Signing-on money here, and then – oh so conveniently – bookies and pub here.’ She indicated and turned right, the satnav squawking in protest. ‘Arguments and brutal rows two hours later – here.’ She stopped the car in the middle of a narrow street, the tiny houses butted together to almost block out the light. ‘Home sweet home.’

  ‘Drive on and return to your route as soon as it is safe to do so,’ intoned the satnav with no idea of its uncanny insight.

  Anna shook her head. ‘I thought everything would feel smaller, somehow. Or different. It’s kind of sad that nothing has changed.’ She put the car into gear, on familiar ground now, weaving her way through identical streets until she reached a strip of office buildings. Tired but clean.

  ‘You have reached your destination,’ said the satnav.

  ‘Deep,’ said Kate with an encouraging smile.

  Chapter 52

  Chipping Norton, 2019

  Barely half an hour later the letters sat on Kate’s lap in a faded blue box file, and it took all of Anna’s concentration to keep her eyes on the road. There had been no grand reveal, no momentous ceremony to mark the occasion. Just a photocopy of her passport, her driving licence and a signed chit to acknowledge receipt.

  And now, merely inches away, a ticking time bomb.

  ‘Look, why don’t you pull over somewhere and just read them? Or read one?’ Kate said, watching her closely, making no secret of her concern both for their safety and for Anna’s mental health.

  Anna shook her head. ‘Nope. I’m just going to read them all in one sitting once we’re home. By myself. Try and process whatever she’s chosen to share and then get on with my life.’

  ‘Well it’s a plan,’ Kate said tentatively. ‘And for what it’s worth, I heartily approve of diving in. Drives me mad in movies and books when they tease it out for weeks, months, years even. I mean, who even does that?’

  Anna shook her head. ‘Weird people, Kate. Weird people with self-control.’

  ‘Another Hobnob?’ Kate said, plucking one from the nearly empty packet and passing it across.

  ‘Don’t mind if I do.’ Anna smiled, comforted by their easy familiarity. As though she could just relax and be herself, warts and weaknesses and all. She paused in her chomping, crumbs tumbling down, wondering if that was how other people felt when they went home for the weekend. Was that the pull, more than roasties and hugs? Was it the opportunity to drop the exhausting façade that modern life seemed to demand, even if just for a few hours?

  ‘I’d be lost without you,’ she said, eyes on the road. ‘Whatever those letters say, Kate, you’ve been more like family to me than she could ever be.’

  ‘You can have both, you know. You never ever have to choose. I’m not going anywhere.’ Kate gave her shoulder a squeeze.

  ‘And I’ll get used to sharing you with Duncan. I will. I just, well, I hope he knows how bloody lucky he is.’

  ‘He does. And it’s kind of handy that he loves you too, you know. He’s always so proud of everything you do, like you’re his sister and Max is just an embarrassing cousin he got lumbered with.’ She laughed, drumming her fingers nervously on the box file. ‘Have you thought about what you’re going to do if she wants to meet up?’

  Anna shook her head. ‘Nope. I can’t even – no. I’m just going to read them. With an open mind if I can.’

  Her phone trilled on the hands-free cradle and Emily’s picture filled the screen. They were overdue a conversation, but Anna had simply no headspace to spare to talk about house-sitting and feisty felines in need of her attention. She pressed decline and stared straight ahead, incredibly aware of Kate’s appraising look from the seat beside her.

  ‘I’m beginning to think that I should meet this Emily of yours,’ Kate said.

  Anna shook her head. ‘I’m not sure that hearing your opinions in stereo is helpful for any of us.’

  Kate laughed. ‘Ooh, now I am intrigued. Don’t tell me that lovely Emily and I agree that your random house-hopping is waay past eccentric and bordering on bonkers?’

  ‘It’s her business,’ Anna reminded her.

  ‘But you didn’t say no.’ Kate nodded with a smug smile. ‘Tellingly.’

  There was a pause – not so much a comfortable silence as Kate realigning her advance.

  ‘Did I mention, by the way, that Duncan and I converted the third bedroom into a study? The one in the attic with those little dormer windows?’

  ‘Subtle,’ Anna replied with a smile.

  ‘One room for you, another for your writing and then a lovely spare… For guests, or friends.’

  Anna simply shook her head. ‘You’ll get so much money renting that out on the open market. It’ll be snapped up in a heartbeat.’

  ‘And what if money isn’t my only motivation? Hmm? Had you even considered that?’ Kate said crossly. ‘You of all people can identify with how little a full bank account means if you’re still not fulfilled or happy.’

  Anna frowned. ‘You didn’t tell me you were unhappy.’

  ‘I miss my best friend,’ Anna replied simply. ‘I know she misses our life in Oxford. And I’m the kind of spoiled brat whose parents helped them get a foot on the property ladder. You, Anna Wilson, are the salve to my middle-class conscience. Please help me—’ She couldn’t keep an entirely straight face.

  Anna shook her head, smiling. She slowed as they drove into the web of narrow lanes leading into Chipping Norton. ‘You know I’d do anything for you, you daft muppet. But this – it still feels too much like charity.’ She held up one hand to ward off Kate’s interruption. ‘As though you’ve given up on me making my own way in life and you’re staging an intervention.’

  ‘Well that’s just stupid. A little bit true, but still stupid,’ Kate huffed. ‘But it’s mainly for my benefit though. Look, don’t make a big thing with Duncan, will you? But I had a lot of time to think on that island and there were very few changes I wanted to make in my life but one of them was undeniable. I am deeply in love with my husband but I love you, Pod. I’m my best self with you – and when we talk things through it puts everything into perspective. So yes – I got married – but that doesn’t stop you being the love of my life.’ She managed a teary, twisted smile.

  Anna allowed the car to glide to a halt at the entrance to the cul-de-sac, twisting in her seat. ‘And you know I feel the same way about you, right? Our friendship is the most meaningful relationship I’ve ever had. The only relationship that’s ever lasted. Or made me feel safe. You are my rock.’

  There was so much more she could have said, but emotion never sat comfortably out in the open. Safety and stability were huge in Anna’s world – ironic really for someone who made a conscious choice to continually seek out the unknown.

  Kate sniffed, a little hiccup of
acknowledgement making her smile. ‘Bloody hormones,’ she said.

  Anna leaned over and pulled her into a hug. ‘Should we have stopped and bought chocolate?’ she offered, Kate’s emotional rollercoaster of PMT almost legendary on occasion.

  ‘Always. But in this case…’ Kate sat back in her seat, hands resting squarely on the box file. She hesitated. ‘Actually, one thing at a time. Let’s get you inside to read these letters while I cook up a feast.’ Her stomach growled in appreciation of the suggestion and she shrugged. ‘I’m starving. And then we’ll play Big Picture.’ She bent down and tugged her handbag from the footwell, reaching inside and pulling out a notebook identical to the one she had given Anna all those years ago. The depository of the infamous List. ‘Time to start a new plan, I think, Pod, don’t you?’

  Anna simply nodded. Her best friend, a box of the past and a blank page. All they needed now was a bowl of risotto.

  * * *

  Anna pulled into the driveway of the Loseleys’ house and immediately slammed on the brakes. ‘Jesus!’ Kate said, grabbing for the dashboard. ‘What the—?’

  Anna stared at the porch and blinked for a moment, as though to confirm that her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her. ‘Callie,’ she said simply, before pushing open the door and running across the lawn, leaving Kate strapped in, weighed down by the box of letters and none the wiser.

  It was as though their conversation earlier that day had summoned her physical presence and Anna struggled to compute what she was seeing. Snuggled against the front door was Callie, fast asleep and tousled, one of her eyes blackened and swollen, a coat clearly pulled on in haste over what looked like her pyjamas and without even a bag at her feet.

  She crouched down. ‘Callie? It’s me – Anna. Callie, love, wake up.’ She gently shook her shoulder and felt winded by the lost expression on her face, as Callie drowsily gathered her bearings.

  ‘Hi,’ she said simply, falling into Anna’s arms for a hug. Never the most touchy-feely of people, Anna surprised herself by drawing the girl in close and whispering reassuring nonsense into her hair.

  ‘Please don’t be cross, but I didn’t know where else to go,’ Callie said quietly, her voice plaintive and dejected. Nothing like the confident, outspoken young woman that Anna had left behind in Bath.

  ‘I’m not cross, I’m worried,’ Anna said. ‘And that eye looks really painful.’

  ‘You should see the other guy,’ Callie joked, tears welling up. ‘Seriously. I might be in really big trouble.’

  ‘How big?’ Anna said, her mind running on and evaluating all kinds of scenarios. The only solicitor she knew was the flakey one back in St Pauls and that thought alone didn’t exactly fill her with confidence.

  ‘He hit me, so I hit him back. Hard,’ Callie said, a shadow of her previous grit in her voice. ‘And then I left.’

  ‘And your mum?’ Anna asked, ever hopeful.

  ‘Stood and watched the whole thing,’ Callie said, choking up again. ‘Then screamed at me when I stood up for myself.’ She paused. ‘Although to be fair, I didn’t expect him to just go down like a tree trunk.’ She looked seriously worried. ‘I just hit him back, Anna. It was a decent punch but I didn’t mean anything.’ She bit her lip and her whole face seemed to flinch with the movement, the bruises across her cheekbone and around her eye already darkening to deep Professor Plum purple. ‘It was just one good punch.’

  ‘With a year’s worth of pain and frustration built in,’ Anna said, her empathy for this girl almost suffocating. ‘And nobody would judge you for that. It’s called self-defence for a reason. And it’s okay.’

  There really were worse ways of being an absent parent than being physically absent, Anna decided, biting down on the impulse to pick up the phone to Callie’s mother and let rip.

  Callie pulled the coat more tightly around her, shivering despite the heat of the afternoon. The laughing shouts of children playing in their gardens utterly incongruous to the very real drama playing out on this doorstep. ‘You said I could call if I needed you, so I pinched Mum’s emergency cash and got in a taxi. I mean, this counts as an emergency, yes?’ she managed, and then the tears began, the shuddering, wrenching sobs of a girl at the end of her tether. Afraid and alone. The concept of picking up the phone before it came to this obviously beyond her.

  And Anna, knowing all too well how those feelings pulled your very soul apart, sat down on the doorstep beside her, tucked her body in close and began to re-evaluate everything she thought she knew, her priorities realigning in an instant.

  Chapter 53

  St Pauls, Bristol, 1995

  Anna flinched as her father swung around in the doorway, his tattered holdall like a heavy pendulum. A brutal version of the swingball game she so adored.

  She looked to her mother, frozen in fury in the kitchen, bleeding hand wrapped in a tea-towel, broken crockery scattered across the linoleum floor. Her precious Peter Rabbit mug lay amongst the broken shards and seeing his little blue coat in pieces brought a wave of fury that Anna could barely contain.

  Why weren’t they listening to her? Or to each other?

  This argument they had went round and round in circles, but never truly went away.

  She didn’t understand all of it, but even she could recognise that her father’s furious accusations were some kind of madness.

  Although that didn’t make her mother’s immediate leap to anger any more helpful.

  ‘Well – you got what you wanted, Jenny,’ he said, his eyes black with fury, focused so intently on his wife that it was as though Anna, caught in the middle, simply didn’t exist. ‘Try life as a single parent for a bit if you think you’re so bloody capable.’

  ‘How will I notice the difference – you do fuck all around here,’ her mother said tightly. ‘Maybe we’ll even have a bit of money left over each month without you pissing it away down the bookies. Or on another one of your idiotic get-rich-quick schemes. Does it not occur to you that even a small wage is better than an empty promise? Why does it always have to be all or nothing, with you? Be a father for once, why don’t you?’

  Anna wiped her clammy hands down her dungarees, her head swivelling back and forth as they argued. But nothing was ever resolved.

  Two ears and one mouth – that’s what Mrs Joseph said at school. God’s way of making sure you knew your priorities. Her mum and dad didn’t seem to know that.

  ‘Please!’ she shouted in the end, her hands clamped over her ears. ‘Just stop!’

  And to their credit, silence fell for a moment, and Anna felt her lungs fully inflate for the first time since her dad had walked through the door that evening, jittery and looking for an argument, his pupils large and his words all fat in his mouth.

  ‘Look what you’re doing to her—’ Her mum was the first to pick up the baton. ‘Look! How you’re upsetting your daughter.’

  And then they were off again, blaming, accusing and picking holes in each other, as though Anna were too young or too stupid to understand what was happening here.

  Because there had always been rows, for as long as she could remember.

  Thursdays were always the worst.

  Thursday was when her dad went to sign on and yet still came home with empty pockets.

  Or when one of his ‘plans’ went wrong. And they were worse off than they’d been before. Empty promises were his currency of choice – that’s what she’d heard her mother say, but Anna had no idea what that meant. She just knew that life with Graham Wilson was either feast or famine. And that he would ‘rather die’ than have a steady job like her mother’s.

  But today’s fight felt worse. Much, much worse. Because of the holdall swinging over her dad’s shoulder and because her mum stood still in the kitchen, watching him gather his things without taking a single step to stop him.

  She blinked for a moment, another silence taking her by surprise, even more so when her dad crouched down in front of her. ‘Listen, kid.’ His aftershave was woody and s
picy and oh-so-familiar and Anna couldn’t help but throw herself into his arms, almost knocking him off his feet.

  ‘Don’t go,’ she said, her face buried into his shoulder, the soft, worn fabric of his T-shirt against her cheek.

  ‘Kiddo, your mum’s had her say. She doesn’t want me here right now. But you’ll be okay.’

  ‘But why? Why can’t you stay?’

  Her dad looked up and across at his wife, his mouth twisting as he spoke. ‘Ah well, your mum’s full of big ideas with her new job, isn’t she? Your old man’s not good enough for her anymore.’

  ‘Big ideas?’ Her mum’s voice was cold, sharp and pointy. ‘Big ideas like paying the rent on time and dodging the bailiffs? Go to hell, Graham.’ And she turned her back.

  It was like when the sun went behind a cloud, and the whole room felt colder for a moment. Darker without her mum’s protection. ‘Mummy? Mummy? Say something. Stop him,’ Anna shrieked, panicking now as her dad strode towards the front door.

  ‘Daddy? Stop. Please.’ Anna looked back and forth and ran after him, hanging on his arm even as he strode away down the pavement, stubbing her bare toes on empty cans and filthy, sodden food wrappers.

  He stopped for a moment, looking almost embarrassed to have a small, snot-bubbling child clinging to him. ‘Anna. Enough. Go home to your mum. You’ll be fine and you don’t need to worry about me. I’ve got a plan.’

  ‘But – I can’t,’ Anna managed. ‘I don’t understand.’ How could she say that it wasn’t him she was worried about? Was it selfish that her only thoughts right now were for herself?

  ‘Look, Anna, she doesn’t want me here,’ he said coldly.

  ‘Then stay for me?’ Anna begged, her eyes sticky and her breath coming in short, stabbing gasps as she fought against the tears overwhelming her.

  He paused for a second, as though to consider her request, her heart leaping in her chest at the possibility he might, just for once, have truly heard her.

  ‘It’s not enough,’ he said, shaking his head, as he untangled his arm and walked away, leaving Anna on the pavement, shivering in disbelief.