by Clare Boyd
‘Have you told Harriet yet?’
‘No. I’m going to tell her tonight. I’m dreading it. I think I’m just going to say we’ve had a personal family crisis.’
‘Which is true.’
‘Yes,’ I laughed, ‘I suppose it is.’
Chapter Thirty-Nine
TOP SECRET
* * *
Dear Mummy,
* * *
ALERT! EVERYTHING IN INVISIBLE INK!
* * *
YOU ARE SO CRITICAL. I actually said sorry and you really actually just didn’t listen. You never listen to a word I say. You want to force me to tell you. I can’t say the words out loud to you about what I said to the police lady because it will sound so, so, so bad, and you will think I am such a horrible girl and you will think I am horrible and mean and you will tell your friends, like you always do, and my cheeks will burn off my head with embarrassment and you will get cross and say I am not your real mummy again and I will KILL MYSELF. YES, I WILL LITERALLY KILL MYSELF. Please don’t ever ask me to tell you about it. Please don’t, Mummy, I beg you.
* * *
Rosie
* * *
P.S. I have nothing else to say.
Chapter Forty
It was school pick-up time. Mira put on her jogging tracksuit. Before she left for the recreational ground, she popped a couple of chocolate biscuits into her pocket and wrote Gone to get milk! on a Post-it that she stuck onto the kettle for Barry. She removed the unopened carton of full fat from the fridge door and brought it with her.
Before she turned right into the main road, she ducked down and stuck the milk into the hedge on the corner of number seven.
On the recreational ground, her heart was going to burst in her chest. Whether it was the running or the anticipation of seeing Rosie again, she didn’t know.
The second lap up the pitch gave her a view of the wire back gate of New Hall Prep. She watched for signs of children. There were a few parents milling about chatting.
When the children started to pour out, Mira slowed down, almost jogging on the spot.
Just as she saw Rosie’s washed-out little face bound through the gates with her black mane of hair swinging, an older lady stepped towards her with her arms outstretched. Rosie flew into this woman’s arms. It was like a knife in Mira’s back. She felt winded, paralysed. Noah emerged and charged at this woman with similar gusto.
As this unit of three walked towards her in the dusky winter gloom, the woman bent a little to hear what Rosie was chatting about. Mira inspected her for family resemblance. She was not tall and broad like Rosie, she was slight, like Gemma, with shoulder-length crispy dark hair that stuck out from underneath an eccentric velvet hat. Her bone structure was pronounced, almost beautiful, but her eyes – a milky blue – sank a little too far into her small bird-like head, as though they were shrinking away from life, warily, frightened of what might jump out at her. Mira decided that a woman who was so frail and timid must have led a sheltered life. She didn’t like the look of her one bit. And when she saw her boney hand clasp Rosie’s, Mira felt a wildness come over her, and she winced, the wind sharp on her gums.
But she recognised a more powerful enemy when she saw one, and she retreated out of the grounds, her disappointment acute. While the police investigation was underway, Mira had been determined to be the back-up Rosie might need to see her through such uncertainty – and potentially Gemma’s volatility – but plainly someone else had stepped into the breach, possibly as part of the safeguarding plan DC Miles had mentioned to her on their follow-up visit.
Never one to mope, Mira set about thinking of other ways to get in touch with Rosie. By the time she had made it home, the plan was there, as easy as pie.
‘Hey love,’ Barry said, with his head in the fridge. ‘Cuppa?’
‘I could murder one.’
‘I thought you’d given up on that jogging business.’
Mira had forgotten about her tracksuit. ‘I just wanted to be comfy.’
‘Got the milk?’
‘What?’ she asked, remembering that the milk was in the hedge at the bottom of the close. In her agitated state earlier she had run past number seven, quite forgetting the ruse.
‘Didn’t you go out to get milk?’
‘Oh, I left it in the car.’
Before she had a chance to run out, Barry piped up. ‘Didn’t you walk?’
Mira wished he would just shut up. ‘I just left it there while I checked on the chickens.’
Her breathing was ragged when she returned, having run all the way there and back.
‘You took your time.’
Drops of tea on the floor marked Barry’s journey from the kettle to the bin. Two mugs sat steaming on the side, waiting for their blasted milk.
‘For Pete’s sake, Barry, sometimes I think you let the bags drip on purpose to annoy me,’ she puffed, pushing Barry’s legs away from the under-the-sink cupboard where the floor cloth lived.
‘By the looks of you, you need to get out jogging more often.’
She wiped the droplets away with more rigour than was necessary. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘The car’s only a few feet away from the front door and you’re huffing and puffing like you’ve run a marathon.’
‘I put the bins out,’ Mira lied, telling herself to remember to do it later when he was snoozing in front of the television. It was too dark now to see out, so he wouldn’t notice.
Barry handed her a cup of tea and his eyebrows raised up above his bottle-top glasses. ‘Everything okay, love?’
‘It feels like the Spanish bloody Inquisition round here,’ Mira huffed, grabbing the mug and leaving him standing in the kitchen. She called over her shoulder. ‘I’ve just got to write a thank you note to little Sam for making me that collage.’
‘Right you are. I’ll put the casserole in.’ He seemed placated.
The bureau drawer was a little stiff and the card with the robin on the front smelt musty. She worried that a girl like Rosie, with so many privileges, would laugh at the card. The other option was the embossed writing paper, but that seemed too formal. The robin card was more suitable for a ten-year-old.
She thought hard about what she was going to say before she put pen to paper.
Dear Rosie-Rabbit,
I hope you got back home safely the other night.
I’ll be in the shed potting my sweet peas tomorrow afternoon after school if you would like to squeeze through the hedge for a slice of Battenberg and a mug of hot chocolate.
Needless to say, it might be best to keep this note at school. We both know why!
Love from your friend,
Mrs E.
P.S. Use the blue bucket to reply! It’s on your side!
* * *
The next day, Mira left the house early to make a detour to the front gates of New Hall Preparatory. The wrought-iron gates and the long winding drive reminded Mira of Manderley in Rebecca.
The Edwardian building was an old manor house, but inside there was that familiar cabbage and smelly-feet tang in the air common to all schools, regardless of how elitist the institution strived to be. However, Mira had to admit that the potpourri and new blue carpets were certainly additions Woodlands could do with in their front hall.
‘Could you please pass this on to Rosie Bradley in Thistles, Year Five, if possible?’ Mira said, pushing the card through the hatch. ‘I’m her next-door neighbour and she dropped it on the drive. Thought it might be important.’
‘Of course, how kind, thank you. I’ll put it in her cubby hole,’ the receptionist said, taking the innocuous-looking little card from her.
‘Thanks ever so,’ Mira trilled as she left, trying to mimic the pretentious ways of her sister Deidre.
She drove back down the drive and out through the wrought-iron gates thinking that there weren’t any gates posh enough or high enough to hide Rosie away from her, however hard Gemma Bradley tried. At ten years old, Rosie had he
r own mind. At fifteen years old, Mira had not had her own mind. Mira’s mother’s smoke had blown into her quiet mind. The smoke was forever billowing from her mouth, filling the kitchen. Mira spluttered, coughing up the smoke, experiencing again the atmosphere of that kitchen. Willingly, this time, she strained to recall the details as a memory unfurled.
The radio had been turned off for once. There had been a sound of a car door slam. Her mother had jumped up. ‘Quickly, repeat your story one more time.’
Mira had replied dutifully, sulkily, ‘I did it with this boy at a party when I was drunk and then he left. He was at a different school and I don’t know who he is.’
Her mother’s intransigence had worn her down. The long, angry lectures. The stomping about. The irritable tone with the doctors. The tutting while on hold to Social Services. The kicking of the bin that stuck.
If Mira spoke up, she was shouted down. If she cried, she was blanked. It didn’t matter what she did or said, there was no getting through to her mother. If Mira kept this baby, she would be chucked out. Simple. Non-negotiable. Conversation over. Fuck you, you little whore.
‘Now the reasons you want to give it up.’
The silver bottle top was goopy. Mira smelt it. Her stomach heaved, but the milk was not sour.
‘I don’t want the baby. I can’t cope. I’ve stopped eating. I want to kill myself.’ Mira reeled off the reasons as she plonked herself at the kitchen table and poured milk into her mother’s mug of tea and some into her evening bowl of cereal.
The drill. Mira knew it well.
Mira pressed her fingers around the doorstep-cold milk bottle until they were numb at the tips. She imagined the numbness spreading malevolently through her whole body; the creep to non-existence.
Smoke clung to the social worker’s greasy parting of hair. The fumes of old cigarettes were fresh from her mouth with every question. The questions had been brief. The answers fell out of Mira’s despondent mouth. Her mother’s lumpy behind was wedged into the corner bend of the worktop as she let her daughter tell convenient lies.
Ten minutes was all it took. Adoption had been agreed. The social worker was about to leave.
‘Always my little ball of trouble, weren’t you love, right from word go,’ her mother had added, smug with the achievement of the afternoon, rolling her eyes at the social worker who was packing up her things.
Another cigarette was lit at her mother’s lips. The tip burning brightly into Mira’s eyes, the second-hand smoke inhaled, down, down, deep down into her womb where the baby’s tiny lungs were forming.
Mira’s hand was around the milk bottle, squeezing it, her eyes were on her mother’s cigarette, the bottle was levitating above the table, light in her hand, lighter and lighter as it floated above her head, and moved through the air towards her mother, who ducked, holding her hand to her face, the bottle smashing into her knees; soaking, stinking, sour shock.
Triumph and disbelief danced behind her mother’s hysteria. The social worker’s long, greasy day had come alive. The baby’s fate was sealed.
Chapter Forty-One
Rosie sloped down to breakfast, rubbing her eyes, coming in for a cuddle, just as she always had. I tried to act naturally while I bustled around – filling their water-bottles and wrapping their cucumber snacks in foil – while I formulated sentences in my head, working out the best way of telling them about the changes to their afternoon routine, the changes to their lives.
I lent my elbows into the breakfast bar opposite them.
‘Guess what, guys?’ I said, cheery and full of enthusiasm.
They both continued eating their cereal.
‘Daddy’s going to be taking you into school again today.’
They both grinned through mouthfuls.
‘And Grandma Helen’s picking you up.’
‘Again! But why can’t we go by ourselves like normal?’ Rosie cried.
‘What about Harriet?’ Noah asked, as if she might feel left out.
‘Grandma Helen doesn’t like Harriet, you know,’ Rosie interjected.
‘That’s not true. They’re just different,’ I said.
Noah piped up, through a mouthful, ‘It’s true, Mummy, she told me she thinks she is a huber-less.’
Trust Mum, I laughed to myself, to be competitive with Harriet by bad-mouthing her to the children.
‘Humourless, not a huber-less, you idiot,’ Rosie jeered.
‘Don’t be mean, Rosie,’ I snapped, before remembering our new circumstances. ‘We knew what he meant. And don’t worry, Harriet is going to take a little holiday for a few weeks and Grandma Helen is going to stay with us for a while.’
Rosie stopped shovelling cereal into her mouth for a split second and eyed me suspiciously. ‘Why?’ Rosie asked.
‘Does there need to be a reason?’
I was working on a ‘need-to-know’ basis. There was too much for them to take in for now.
‘Last days Harriet sent us a postcard when she went on holiday,’ Noah said.
‘Yes, last summer. But I’m not sure you’ll get a postcard this time, she might have a lot of college work to do.’
‘But we didn’t get to say goodbye!’ Rosie cried.
‘Don’t worry, she said she’d pop in this week to see you.’
‘And Grandma Helen is looking after us when you and daddy are at work?’
‘Yes, and to help me,’ I added, wondering if they would notice that my mother was to become my shadow, and Rosie’s covert protector for the other side.
‘That’s good,’ Rosie said, smiling and continuing to eat her breakfast.
‘And,’ I said, pausing, to keep their attention, ‘there’ll be another visitor this afternoon.’
Rosie scraped her bowl and the sound of silver spoon on porcelain screamed through the kitchen. ‘Who?’
‘Well, because of everything that’s happened,’ I began, glancing over at Rosie, ‘a lady is coming over to have a chat with us, just to make sure we’re all okay.’
‘What lady?’
‘She’s a social worker.’
Rosie’s spoon clattered into her bowl. ‘Like in Tracy Beaker?’
‘Not exactly like in Tracy Beaker,’ I said, thinking, yes, exactly like in Tracy Beaker.
‘What’s a social worker?’ Noah said.
‘They take children away from their mummies,’ Rosie said, pushing her chair back from the table, ready to bolt.
Noah’s eyes widened.
‘No, no, stop it Rosie, you’re scaring Noah, they don’t do that.’
‘Are you saying that Jacqueline Wilson is a liar?’
‘Tracy Beaker is fiction, darling, you know that,’ I said, evading the very good point she was making.
Rosie stood up.
‘Rosie, sit down. A social worker’s job,’ I said authoritatively, ‘is to make sure children are safe.’
‘But we are safe!’ Rosie cried.
‘Yes, but they don’t know that, so we have to tell them that you are.’
‘I’ll tell them I’m safe,’ Noah said proudly.
‘Yes, darling, of course.’
‘Me too,’ Rosie said, her bottom lip wobbling. ‘I really will this time.’
The ‘this time’ sent a shiver down my spine.
‘Of course you will,’ I said, hugging her, feeling a frisson of hope.
After they had left for school, I headed straight up to Rosie’s bedroom. Her diary was not in its usual place in the drawer of her desk by her bed. I looked under her duvet, in her sock and pants drawer, under things, on top of things, in the toy boxes, in the nooks of her cupboards, in rucksacks, behind her books, everywhere. It was nowhere. She had taken it to school. She didn’t trust me. She had been right not to.
* * *
Before Miranda Slater was due, Peter, my mother and I tried to continue a normal routine as much as possible, but as soon as the children were out of the room, we fell stony silent with nerves.
When the doorbell ra
ng, my mother said, ‘You know where to find me.’ And she moved regally up to the spare room, as though she was quite above such an insult of a Social Services visit.
While Peter waited in the kitchen, both Rosie and Noah hovered behind me as I opened the door. I could hardly breathe I was so worked up.
The children were exceptionally polite, shaking her hand, with brief, timid eye contact.
‘You two can go upstairs and play your games if you like, just while I talk to Mrs Slater.’
I was skittish and over keen to please and I barely made eye contact or registered any detail of her appearance or mannerisms in those first ten minutes, seeing only the generic features of an unfamiliar human being, for whom I had to project the image of our perfect family life. All of my concentration was taken up with this main objective.
When she had called me earlier in the day to warn us of her visit, she had been matter-of-fact in her tone. To her, her visit to our home was business as usual.
While I made a pot of tea, and fanned some digestives onto a plate, she had brought out her notebook and asked Peter and I some basic, seemingly innocuous questions – for example, whether Rosie dressed herself or whether she had any medical conditions – and then she explained the safeguarding agreement that they would draw up and sign. Once we agreed to this – although I was secretly hoping that it would be obsolete quite soon – she had suggested she talk to Rosie alone and ‘look around your home, if that’s all right by you.’
Downstairs, filled with apprehension, and clinging to the possibility that Rosie would confess, I had boiled the kettle to make another cup of tea for Miranda Slater, who liked two sugars.
Peter and I did not dare talk to each other. He pretended to read the newspaper while I cleaned the already clean kitchen. Both of us must have been thinking the same. What would Rosie say? Would she put me in the clear? Was this nightmare about to be over?
