The woman opposite him made sympathetic noises and handed him more tissues. Valerie stood up and said, ‘Here, come with me, Annie.’
I followed her to a side room, full of plastic trays loaded with sliced white loaves and packets of donuts.
‘Now,’ she said. ‘Tell me about your mother.’
‘That’s it,’ I told her. ‘She hasn’t been out of bed for ages and there’s no money. There’s nothing left to pay the rent and the landlord keeps coming round.’
‘Is there any food in the house?’
‘Only tea bags. We always have tea bags. She buys big sacks of them whenever her benefit’s paid.’
Valerie thought for a moment. ‘You know I’m not meant to give you anything from here unless you’ve got a referral from the food bank, but we’ve had some good donations recently. I’ll sort you out with a bag of stuff. Do you want a baked potato? I can bring you a baked potato from the kitchen. And here,’ she turned round and took a four-pack of donuts from the tray behind her, ‘take these. Don’t eat them all at once, mind. You’ll be sick as a dog.’
I took them gratefully. I couldn’t help it. While Valerie was gone to fetch me a baked potato, I ripped open the packet and crammed as much of one donut into my mouth as I could. I chewed rapidly and swallowed too soon. It hurt. I took another bite, then another. Jewels of sugar coated my lips and the donut was gone. I’d have reached for another one if Valerie hadn’t come back in then.
‘Here we are, love,’ she said, and put the potato down in front of me. ‘You tuck in.’
I tucked in. Then, without warning, I started to cry.
Valerie kneeled down on the floor beside me and put her arm around my shoulders. No one except my grandma had ever done that before. ‘There, there,’ she said. ‘There, there. It’ll be alright, lovie. It’ll be alright. You have a good feed and you’ll feel better.’
But I wasn’t crying because I was hungry. I was crying because Valerie could never be my mother.
I was eight when I wrote my first letter to my father. In my head, he was a bit like God – distant, invisible, but loving – and for this reason, I thought the fact that I had no idea where he lived wouldn’t be a problem. Like God, he would simply sense my letter, as if it were a prayer, which in all the ways that mattered, it was.
I had an idea that my father would make my mother well if he came back. I knew his name was Ross and that he’d gone off to London to become someone important shortly after my mother fell pregnant. ‘He should’ve stuck around and been a father. That’s what’s important,’ my mother said, but my grandma said I mustn’t be too hard on him. He was only a boy, after all. I couldn’t tell whether ‘only a boy’ meant nothing much could be expected of him because he was a child or because he was male. Either way, my grandma led me to believe it wasn’t all Ross’s fault, and by then I was beginning to suspect that the prospect of a life-time with my mother really might be something to flee from.
At that time, paper was thin on the ground in our house, so I took some from the tray in my classroom and brought it home with me. I knew my mother would be at work in the chip shop till late, so I wrote on the sofa, leaning on my reading book. There was something blissful about the freedom of being alone in the house with nothing to do but write to my father, knowing Caitlin couldn’t interrupt or tell me off. I knew, of course, that she’d be unhappy about it.
13 Mason Road
Reading
14th June, 2010
Dear Ross,
My name is Annie Cox and I am eight years old. I live in Reading with my mother, whose name is Caitlin Cox. You used to know her.
You’ve never met me, but I am your daughter. There’s only me and my mum in our house. I haven’t got any brothers or sisters. Other things you might like to know about me are:
1 I can play the recorder.
2 My favourite TV programme is Pointless.
3 I am good at maths.
4 I like going to school more than being at home (this makes me quite unusual).
5 I am a brilliant speller.
6 Caitlin works at the chip shop. She brings home the leftover chips.
7 I am hoping that one day I might get to meet you. Please write back.
Love,
Annie Cox
I folded the letter in half and kept it under my pillow, expectantly, like a tooth.
It took two weeks, but my mother found it. I was downstairs at the time, watching Saturday morning TV, when I heard her shout, in that unmistakable way of hers, ‘Annie! Come here, please!’
I went to my room. My mother was standing in the middle of the floor, my letter to my father in her hand, and a scornful look on her face. ‘What’s this, then?’
I said nothing.
She read it out, line by line, in a voice that mocked. When she finished, she looked hard at me and said, ‘So, Little Miss Brilliant Speller, what is this?’
I said, ‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know? Well, I know, Annie. I know. I’ll tell you exactly what it is. It’s a load of bloody shit. Do you think this man still thinks about you? Do you? Let me tell you, Annie, he thinks nothing about you. Nothing! “Please write back.” What a joke. How dare you be thinking about him, writing to him, when I’m the one who has given up everything – everything – for you? I could have walked out, gone to university like him, had a good life, but I ended up with you instead, and this – this – is how you repay me.’
She held the letter out in front of her and tore it to shreds. There was real violence in that ripping sound.
I watched silently as my mother threw the torn pieces of paper into the air and let them fall. Then quickly, fiercely, she turned and slapped me across the face. It was so hard and so sudden that I fell backwards on to the floor.
‘How dare you? How dare you? You have broken my heart, Annie. Broken it! Do you see? Do you see what you’re doing to me?’
I couldn’t get up. I felt my mother’s feet in my stomach, kicking and kicking until I thought I might be sick.
My mother was sobbing. ‘Look,’ she cried. ‘Look what you’ve done to me. Look how you’ve hurt me.’ And then she lay down on my bed and howled.
After a while, I stood up again. I moved silently around the room, picking up the pieces of paper and putting them in my pockets.
My mother was always like this, and I had no idea how to get away.
41
Hope
I liked living at the flat. I’d thought Ace would try to get me to work again, but he kept his word and didn’t. He hardly came near me. I lived up there by myself with Jade, far away from the business below. Now and then, an envelope with fifty quid in it would be pushed under the door, and I knew it was from Ace. It helped. I used it to buy our food and pay the bus fares to the Sure Start Centre.
But then one evening, Ace came up to visit. He brought a bottle of wine with him and a miniature of whisky, and we sat together in the front room and talked and laughed the way we used to, and later, just before he left, he sat back in his chair, swallowed the last of his whisky and said, casually, ‘If we ever end up in court, Hope, you know I’ll always win. You consented to all of it.’
I stared at the floor in silence. He came over, kneeled down in front of me and tilted my face upwards again, then kissed me lingeringly on the lips. ‘Goodnight, my darling,’ he said, and left.
My mother didn’t come over until we’d been there three weeks. I wasn’t sure if she’d deliberately left it so Jade and I would be settled before having to tackle a visit from her, or if she just couldn’t be bothered. It would, I realised, involve an unexpected change in character for my mother to give any thought to what might be best for me in these circumstances, rather than just doing whatever the hell she felt like. When she arrived, though, it appeared she really had changed. Or at least, that she wanted to convince me she had. Or that she was trying to.
‘Baby,’ she said, the moment I opened the door, and then she flung her
arms around me and sobbed for a while.
I stiffly endured her emotional affection. God, it was all so demanding, this love of my mother’s, all so draining. I used to long for one of those mothers whose love was nurturing and caring, instead of so bloody dramatic and needy. But it was too late now. I was never going to have that. All I could do was look after myself and Jade.
My mother let go of me. I stood aside to let her into the flat. She looked tired and thin, and worn in the face.
‘I’m off the drugs, baby,’ she said earnestly. ‘I’m off them.’
I nodded. I would have liked to build up slowly to this conversation – made a cup of tea first, sat down, talked about the weather or how Jade was doing. But that wasn’t my mother’s way. If she had something to say, she didn’t hang around waiting for the right moment. She just blurted it out, spilled the entire contents of her head all over the room, then grew angry when people didn’t know what to do with it.
I said, ‘I’ll go and get Jade.’
Jade had been having her afternoon sleep in the cot Ace bought when we first moved in. When I went into the bedroom, she was sitting up, rubbing her eyes. She saw me and held out her arms, and I lifted her over the bars. She leaned her head sleepily on my shoulder. The desire to hold on to her, to strap her to my body and keep her there forever, was overwhelming.
I carried her out to the front room.
My mother looked at Jade and started sobbing again. ‘Jadey,’ she said. ‘My little baby.’
I snapped. ‘Mum, stop being so fucking weird. You’ll scare her.’
My mother wiped her eyes. ‘Sorry, love. I’m just…’ She wrung her hands together in her lap. ‘I want you two home. I love you, baby.’
‘This is temporary, Mum. As soon as I can, I’ll be getting out of here for good.’
‘I feel like you hate me.’
‘Don’t start.’
‘What can I do, baby? What can I do to make it up to you? I’m off the drugs. I promise you. I’m doing really well. I want you back. I want you both back.’
I said, ‘You’re not having her. You can’t look after her. I’ll go to social services if you try and get her back. I’ll tell them everything.’
‘I know I’m not a good-enough mother,’ she said. ‘I know that.’ She started crying again. ‘But one day…’
‘It shouldn’t bloody be like this, Mum. It should never have been like this.’
‘Let me have her now and then. It’ll give you a break. Let me have her on Sundays. Just for the morning. A few hours. That’s all.’
I nodded. ‘Alright,’ I said, and wished I hadn’t.
All night on Saturday, I slept badly. I kept waking with visions of my mother unleashing her vicious temper on Jade, and Jade bewildered, wondering why she was there, and where I was. I knew all too well what it meant to be at the receiving end of our mother’s fury – like being tossed into dark waters, flailing in every advancing wave, with no idea when it would stop, or if the light would come.
I didn’t want Jade exposed to it. My mother had promised nothing bad would happen, that she was in control of her anger now, but I wasn’t so sure. Rage was a part of her. It was the fuel that kept her going.
She’d been over every day since her first visit. She stayed for an hour each time, sitting with Jade on the floor, playing with her, talking to her, making her laugh – trying to prove to everyone that she was well, she could do this, that we’d be able to trust her to have us back before long. I was having none of it.
‘Try and be less frosty to her, Hope,’ Ace said. ‘She’s doing her best.’
He always said that, as if the fact that she was doing her best should be enough. It wasn’t enough. She’d always done her best and her best had always been feeble.
I got up at 6.30 on Sunday morning, while Jade was still asleep. I was going to work this afternoon, after my mother had been to pick Jade up. This wasn’t the way I wanted to be living, but I needed to build up savings, and sometimes you just had to say fuck the method and take the money. But you needed a tough heart for this work. That, at least, was something my mother had given me.
I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. I was fourteen years old, and had a heart mostly of rock. If it wasn’t for Jade, it would scarcely beat at all.
My mother came over after lunch. She was looking better than I’d seen her look for months. Her cheeks were less sunken, the rings round her eyes less dark, her smile less strained. Jade went with her willingly, without crying. Alone in the flat for the first time, I sat on the sofa in the front room and allowed myself to feel for a minute that life might be improving. Slowly, that was the key, I realised now. I’d been too impatient before, thought that running away would solve everything, but now I realised I needed to do it in stages: save enough money by working for Ace so that eventually I’d be able to do something that didn’t pay as well but which I could be proud of. I thought I might like to open a shop one day, selling children’s things – one of those posh shops, like a wonderland where everything was crazily expensive. I’d be good at that.
But for now, I was a sex worker, and there was money I had to earn.
When I came back into the flat, I checked the time on my phone. 16:26. When Jade was here I would often wish her away – not for long, just a couple of hours so I could watch TV for a while, or sleep, or eat a sandwich without her wanting to share it. But now there was just a sense that Jade was missing and ought to be here.
I wondered sometimes what I’d ever done before Jade, or what life would be like if she’d never come along. I wasn’t sure how people got through the days with only themselves to care about. Without Jade, I knew, I’d be a mess: drinking probably, smoking, staying out late with stupid men. I saw other girls doing it all the time, telling themselves this was what they were meant to be doing, what being young was all about. Freedom, madness, fun. I watched them from behind the window of my own life and thought, No. All everyone really needed was a reason to stop doing this.
Jade was my reason. I wanted her to be my mother’s reason, too. My mother said she was, but I knew by now that words meant nothing. Action was what mattered.
‘She’s doing well, Hope,’ Ace said. ‘She’s got methadone. She’s off the heroin. You can’t expect too much, too soon. Give her six months.’
But it wasn’t as wholesome and reliable as Ace made out. She wasn’t on any kind of proper rehab programme. Ace had just managed to get the methadone from some contact of his. His whole mission in life was to keep his women, his work and my mother’s drug habit off the radar of the authorities, and that involved never going to the doctor. The methadone Ace had found could be anything.
16:42. She was bringing Jade back at 5.00. I didn’t mind letting her look after her for a few hours, but it was important that for now her evening routine stayed the same, and that meant coming home so I could give Jade her tea and a bath. Never before had I had the guts to stand up for anything the way I stood up for what she knew was right for my sister. I’d fight anyone for her, even just for her right to have a bath in her own home.
16:46. My mother wasn’t yet late, but I felt oddly, unexpectedly anxious. Where was she? Since I’d finished work, I’d been picturing Jade in my mind: playing with building blocks, stirring cake mixture, guzzling milk before her nap. Now, I couldn’t picture her at all. She ought to be bundled into her coat and shoes, ready to come home, but I had a sense, an ache as certain as knowledge, that this wasn’t happening, that something in Jade’s day was going wrong.
I picked up my phone from the sofa and texted my mother: Everything OK? Are you on your way?
Nothing.
I dialled the number instead. My mother’s phone rang and rang.
It’s OK, I told myself.
16:50. Ten minutes. I’d give it till they were meant to be here, then I’d get on the bus and go round. No, I wouldn’t. I’d done four hours’ work today and had £400 in my purse. I’d ring for a cab.
&nb
sp; I tried Ace’s phone. No answer. I sent him a text: Can you call me?
Nothing.
The silence was unbearable.
I tried to shake off the anxiety, which was slowly rising to panic. There was no reason to be feeling like this, no reason at all. It was insane, to get an idea in your head and let yourself go mad like this. Absolutely insane.
Except…
I grabbed my denim jacket from where I’d slung it over a chair and shrugged it on as I ran down the stairs to the front door. There was a taxi rank just around the corner. It would be quicker than phoning, or at least, it felt better to be moving instead of standing still, waiting, waiting.
Nothing has happened, I told myself. Nothing is wrong except something you’ve dreamed up from your own mad head.
I looked at my phone again. The screen was blank except for the time, displayed in large white numerals: 17.00. Jade should be home now.
What would I say, if my mother called to tell me they were at the flat and I wasn’t there?
I’d have to lie. I’d have to make something up about going to the shop to buy Jade’s tea. I couldn’t say I’d decided at half past four that something had happened to my sister and the thought of it had driven me mad until I could stay at home no longer, but had to go out and find her. Everyone would think I was mental.
A taxi was at the rank, waiting, when I arrived. ‘Douglas Estate, please,’ I said as I climbed in. ‘The block of flats by the hairdresser’s.
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