But to my amazement, Roy is standing behind the counter, not looking a day older than he did fifteen years ago, as though he was dragged into the word as a fully formed fifty-year-old and has stoically refused to age a day since.
‘Nasty business back there.’ I start at the voice from one of the four shiny silver seats behind me. Turning, I see a woman so grey she almost melts completely into the trendy Farrow and Ball wall. Her hair, face and clothes appear to be completely devoid of colour. I attempt a smile to cover my surprise.
‘Could have been a lot worse,’ Dan says in his best jovial voice before I can reply. He gives my hand a quick squeeze. I wonder if he can feel that I am still shaking slightly. ‘No more than a grazed knee, as it turned out. And a dent in my bonnet.’
‘Yes, that was some emergency stop you did there, son,’ Roy pipes up. His voice has a kindness that I don’t remember ever hearing as a young girl. Then again, I don’t exactly remember an abundance of kindness from anyone round here, except Pammy and her family. ‘Could have been a much nastier crash.’
‘All’s well that ends well,’ I mutter, trying to put an end to the conversation. The grey woman, however, ignores the hint.
‘That Harper girl was lucky it was you. Plenty round here that wouldn’t have been quite as quick to react. But then,’ and there is a steely glint in her eyes as she continues, ‘you hardly expect to see a girl that age push another young ’un into the road, do you?’
Dan gives me a sideways look and I know he is silently pleading with me not to be drawn in. Don’t bite, Immy. Not your circus . . .
‘She didn’t push her.’ I hear my husband’s small exhale of breath. He knew I wouldn’t be able to resist. ‘We saw it, didn’t we, Dan?’
Dan nods. ‘Yeah, she didn’t push her.’
‘Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong.’ The woman gives a sly smile. ‘That girl, she doesn’t have to touch you to get the job done. I was sitting right here. And I saw what she did.’
My brows furrow. ‘I don’t understand. Are you saying she pushed her without touching her? That’s crazy.’ I look back at Roy, expecting him to laugh or roll his eyes at the old woman, maybe twirl a finger around his temple to show that she’s batshit. Instead, he stands frozen, avoiding my eye and flipping a fish over and over on the hotplate. I speak directly to him so that there is no way he can ignore me. ‘Who is that girl? Ellie, is that her name? Who is she?’
‘That’s Ellie Atkinson.’ The woman gives a chuckle. ‘She’s a foster child.’
‘Oh, and I suppose that makes her—’ I stop short as I feel Dan give a sharp tug on my arm. The door clangs open, and in the doorway stand Ellie and the woman I now know must be her foster mother. The teenage girl who came to her defence in the street trails in behind them.
The old woman breaks the silence with a chuckle, and Dan clears his throat.
‘Two mini fish and a large chips, please,’ he says to Roy, who nods as though the last few minutes haven’t taken place.
‘Five minutes for the fish,’ he mutters, and we take a seat on the opposite side of the shop, as far away as we can get from the creepy old lady. Ellie’s foster mother orders their food, then walks over to us.
‘I just wanted to say thank you for standing up to that awful woman.’ She looks weary, defeated almost. Her mousy brown hair is scraped back into a messy ponytail, tufts of it sticking out at odd angles from her head, as though she is the one who was nearly hit by our car. ‘And obviously for not hitting her daughter,’ she adds as an afterthought.
‘Don’t worry about it.’ I smile with what I hope is caring sympathy rather than demented lunacy. Do they know what people are saying about Ellie? That girl, she doesn’t have to touch you to get the job done. ‘I hope you’re okay?’
I direct my question at Ellie, who is standing with her head bowed, her eyes fixed on the floor. She doesn’t move. Her foster sister gives her a nudge, and when she still doesn’t move, the older girl mutters, ‘She’s fine, thank you.’
Dan snorts and I shoot him a glare. The grey woman in the corner shuffles out of her seat, watching us all the while.
‘Mrs Evans.’ Ellie looks up, addressing the woman’s retreating back in a low, clear voice. The first time I have heard her speak, and it doesn’t sound natural.
The woman hesitates, almost as though she doesn’t want to look at the young girl. Eventually she turns, faces her head-on. ‘Yes?’
‘You really shouldn’t tell lies. In the olden days, they would have cut your tongue out.’
6
They walk down the street, a distance of only a few feet between them, but it may as well be miles. She glances up at the woman’s hand, just dangling by her side, and longs to reach up and slip her own hand inside it. Just to see what it feels like. She’s seen plenty of other children doing it, holding hands with their mums as though it is the most natural thing in the world to reach out and connect with the person they love. And Imogen does love her mother, even if her mother can’t bring herself to love Imogen back.
Mother – she hates Mummy; makes you sound like a whiny little baby – looks down, and it’s like she knows exactly what Imogen is thinking, because she snatches her hand away and shoves it deep into her coat pocket. And just like that, her chance is gone.
‘Get a move on,’ snaps Carla Tandy, turning her head away from her only child. ‘We don’t have all day.’
7
Imogen
I stand looking up at the house I grew up in, and in one moment it’s like the last twenty years of my life have melted away as though they never existed at all. Welsh stone surrounds the heavy wooden door; ivy snakes its way around it like an alien trying to possess a host. The sound of this very door slamming behind a fifteen-year-old me is still like a whip cracking, a gunshot that echoes in my ears, so much so that the slamming of the car boot sends a shock through me, making me jump with fright. Dan is at my side in seconds. He probably thinks I’m still upset about what happened in the town, and I am: the thought of that woman screaming at poor Ellie, the frozen look on the girl’s face as though she had no idea what had just happened. But that isn’t what has me unable to reach out and slide the key into the front door of a house I left behind in my teens.
‘Take your time,’ he murmurs. ‘I know this must be hard for you.’
He’s obviously picked up more than I give him credit for. I’ve never given my husband enough credit.
‘I’m fine.’ I shake my head to dislodge the memories. ‘Come on, let’s go in.’
We finally manage to get the stiff front door open and practically fall through it with the effort. I prepare myself for the onslaught of memories to hit me like a freight train, but the hallway is so different from the one I remember that for a second I wonder if we’ve come to the wrong place. Nana Tandy’s musty-smelling red and gold swirl carpet has been ripped up and replaced by polished wooden floors, a beige and navy striped carpet runner leads up the stairs, and the walls are a fresh light yellow instead of the grubby taupe they once were. It feels like a new house masquerading as the one I remember so well from the outside. But no, it may have had a facelift, but the bones of this house are still the same. The new paint hasn’t managed to hide the small cracks of subsidence I once ran my fingers up and down, sitting on the stairs waiting for my mother to come home. Sometimes I would sit there waiting so long that the cracks became shadows, threatening to yank me in. Sometimes I wanted them to.
‘This is nice,’ Dan remarks as he hauls both of our bags over the threshold. ‘I thought you said it was a bit of a dump?’
‘She must have decorated,’ I reply. She being my mother. I’m both relieved that it looks nothing like I remember and irritated that she spent the effort making herself a decent home only after I’d walked away. All those years we lived with peeling paint and flourishes of black mould as she wandered around the house like some kind of ghost, pretending she couldn’t see how our house and our lives were decaying.
‘Well that saves us a job.’ He grins and goes to push open the door to the living room. This is moving too fast for me. I don’t want to look like a totally irrational female, but I’d hoped I could take things a bit slower. Maybe if I’d confided even the smallest part of my past life here to him, my reticence would be more understandable. As it is, I’m reduced to pretending to inspect the large pile of post that carpets the wooden flooring in order to postpone leaving the comfort of the hallway. Looks like bills, bills and more bills. Mum left enough to cover her funeral costs, a funeral I organised but never attended. I feel a pang of something that might be shame at my final fuck-you to the woman who never cared about me enough to ask me to stay.
‘There’s something here addressed to us,’ I mutter, but Dan has already gone right through the front room into the kitchen. I can hear him opening and banging shut cupboards, occasionally saying things like ‘What’s that supposed to do?’ Considering he’s barely been in a kitchen for the past five years, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s discovered the oven.
The envelope addressed to us is bright pink, making solicitors or HMRC unlikely. I tear open the flap and a smile crosses my face when I see who it’s from.
Hey, city slickers. I’ve left you a care package in the back garden under the coal shelter (that’s the black thing made of tin, in case you’ve been in the big smoke long enough to forget). Come see me as soon as you can. Bring wine. Hope this isn’t weird for you.
Pam xx
‘That’s nice of her.’ Dan reappears at my shoulder. ‘Shame she didn’t have keys to let herself in and do some cleaning. The place has at least an inch of dust.’
‘Give you something to do while you wait for your muse to catch us up.’ I smile, kissing the tip of his nose. ‘Do you mind if I take a look around on my own? It’s a bit overwhelming, being back here with Mum gone.’
‘Of course.’ Dan nods outside. ‘I’ll get the rest of the bits from the car.’
I spend the next hour wandering around the distant memory that is my family home. So many things have changed, yet just as I think this isn’t going to be so difficult after all, I find the clock from the living-room mantelpiece, now sitting on a wooden shelf, a hidden relic waiting to thrust me back in time. My throat constricts when I see it, remembering the hours spent staring at this clock waiting for my mother’s return with equal parts trepidation and excitement. Wondering if today will be the day she strikes up a conversation, or brings us a chippy tea; knowing that it won’t be.
I pick up the clock and turn it over in my hands. A lifetime of sorrow has been reflected in that face. Its hands are frozen in time, and the bizarre notion that it stopped working at the exact moment my mother died strikes me. Don’t be ridiculous, I tell myself, but I can’t shake the idea that it knew its job was done; there was no longer any need to count the hours until my mother’s return. She was never coming back.
I put it down and blink a few times to stall the tears that threaten to overcome me. Crying never solved a single thing, Imogen. One of the only pieces of advice she ever gave me. And she was even wrong about that. On the day I left, I waited until I was safely inside the squalid student digs I’d managed to get ridiculously cheaply before breaking into ugly, noisy sobs until my lungs almost burst. When I woke the next morning, my eyes swollen and puffy and my head feeling like I’d downed a quart of vodka, I felt surprisingly cleansed. And I promised myself not to shed another tear over a woman who had never once, in fifteen years, told me she loved me.
8
The sunlight has drained away and the garden has been painted a gloomy palette of lilac and grey, yet still the sky refuses to give in to the darkness. Sarah has been sitting with her legs folded up on the garden chair scrolling through Facebook on her phone for so long that she has barely noticed the shadows folding in around her, the warmth of the day ebbing away to be replaced by the chill of twilight, until a gentle breeze ripples across her bare arms, making her look up and blink in surprise.
‘Bloody hell,’ she mutters. ‘What time is it?’ She glances back at her phone. Ten past six. The girls and Billy should be coming in for something to eat by now. She’s surprised they haven’t already started on at her – kids are perpetually hungry, she has come to learn. Well, except Ellie, of course, but Ellie is the exception in most cases.
Speaking of the children, where are they? They were messing around in the ramshackle playhouse at the end of the garden what, half an hour, forty minutes ago? Couldn’t be much more than that, although she’s spent far too long arguing with Mark’s cousin Tina over an article she shared on her wall that said women over forty were selfish to have babies. She must have known that Sarah would see it, but she still acted all ‘soz hun didn’t know ud b upset xx’ when Sarah told her how insulting it was. Silly cow knew exactly what she was doing. Anyway, even if Sarah couldn’t see the kids, she could hear them. Only now the garden is in silence.
‘Mary? Billy? Ellie?’
Nothing. Sarah sticks her head around the side of the playhouse just in case, but the kids are nowhere. She shouts into the house and is met with resounding silence. Where are they?
Trying not to panic, she quick-walks back into the garden, her eyes scanning furiously. It’s only small: a tree, the playhouse against the fence, and beyond that a small patch of disused waste ground . . .
The waste ground. Why didn’t she think to check there first? The kids are always sneaking through the gap in the fence, although usually she can hear them ploughing through the undergrowth, laughing and shouting. Today the air is still and silent.
‘Mary?’ Sarah calls as she approaches the broken panels. ‘Billy? Ellie?’
It’s a squeeze, but Sarah isn’t a large woman and she manages to push herself through, her T-shirt snagging on the rough splinters and her hair catching in the branches of the unruly hedge that lines the fence.
The waste ground is a small patch of uncleared land that joins Sarah and Mark’s property to two others surrounding it. It is a mass of untamed scrub and nettles; no one is really sure who it belongs to – if anyone – so it has remained orphaned and untended for as long as the Jeffersons have lived in Acacia Avenue. To them it’s an eyesore; to the kids it’s an adventure paradise.
She sees them instantly, the three of them kneeling in a triangle in the only clear patch the waste ground offers. All three have their eyes squeezed shut, and Mary and Billy are swaying slightly backwards and forwards. Ellie sits statue-still, only her lips moving furiously as she mutters a low incantation.
Sarah feels the hairs on the back of her neck stand as a shiver takes hold of her. She has found the children, they look unharmed – so why are goose bumps rising on the skin of her arms?
‘Kids?’ She moves closer. It’s impossible for them not to hear her, and yet none of them so much as stirs at her voice. She pushes through the thorns and branches and walks out into the clearing to stand beside Ellie.
‘Kids!’ she practically shouts, and reaches out a hand to grasp at Ellie’s shoulder. Before she makes contact, Ellie’s lips stop moving and all three pairs of eyes snap open at once. Later on, Sarah will find herself telling Mark it was as though they had been released from a spell.
‘Mum,’ Mary says, her eyes widening. ‘What’s going on? What are you doing out here?’
‘I was shouting from the garden. No one answered. What are you doing? What the hell is going on?’
‘Just playing, Mrs Jefferson.’ Ellie looks up at her, her dark eyes fixing on Sarah’s face. She is the only one of the three who doesn’t look confused and disorientated. Billy’s eyes are darting between Ellie and the waste ground itself, as if trying to decide how on earth he has ended up there.
‘Billy?’
‘Just playing, Mrs Jefferson.’
‘Then why did none of you hear me shout? I was standing right there.’
Ellie’s eyes don’t move from Sarah’s. She looks far from guilty; her jaw is set in defiance.
Ellie and Billy get to their feet and follow Mary out of the clearing, squeezing through the gap in the fence with much greater ease than Sarah herself did.
It isn’t until they are back in the house and Sarah is alone in the bathroom that she lets out the terrified sob she has been holding in.
9
Imogen
I stare into the fire, watching the flames grow and die down, crackling and spitting. I smile up at Dan as he hands me a mug of hot chocolate piled high with whipped cream. ‘Thanks.’
‘Thank God for Pammy and her care package,’ Dan remarks. We found my old best friend’s box in the back garden and I was amused to see wine, Hobnobs, prawn crackers, hot chocolate and whipped cream alongside a bag of logs, a bundle of sticks with a note attached announcing them as ‘kindling’, and a pack of firelighters.
‘Anyone would thing we were suburban idiots,’ Dan joked, but I could tell he was secretly pleased that the hard work had been done for him. I’m looking forward to tomorrow, when I’m going to show him the log shed where the axe is kept.
Earlier, I moved through the house like a woman without sight, touching the walls, the furniture, trying to bring any kind of feelings to the surface that I could muster. But so much has changed – I have changed. I no longer feel like the lonely, miserable girl who sat in my bedroom on my heels praying to a God I didn’t believe in that a mother I barely knew would open the door and fold me into her arms. Opening the door to my mother’s room, where we would be spending the night, was the strangest thing of all. I was never allowed in there as a child, although that didn’t always stop me, and I had only the vaguest memory of what it looked like. As I crossed the threshold, I got a chill imagining how furious my mother would be if she caught me in there. Don’t be ridiculous, Imogen. You’re not a child any more. Still, I didn’t linger. I haven’t yet been able to bring myself to open the door to my old bedroom.
The Foster Child Page 3
