The driver nodded, switched on his indicator and pulled out.
I leaned back against the seat and tried to catch my breath. I closed my eyes, but all I could see behind them was Jade, and she was crying.
42
Annie
And then one morning, it happened. The letter arrived from her mother. By this time, she’d stopped moping round the letterbox and resigned herself to the fact that her mother hated her, had disowned her, wanted nothing to do with her ever again, not even when she came out of prison.
It was Danny who brought it to her. ‘Letter for Miss Hope Lacey,’ he said, and dropped the pastel-pink envelope on the kitchen island in front of her.
She looked at me. ‘My mum,’ she said. ‘It’s from my mum.’ And her eyes shone and her fingers shook with the excitement of it.
I watched as she ripped the letter open and read it, quickly the first time, then again more slowly, and again.
When she’d finished, she passed it silently to me.
Holloway Prison.
July 2016
Hope,
Sorry I haven’t been in touch. There’s nothing much to talk about. Life in prison is terrible and all my letters get read before I send them, so prying eyes mean I can’t say any of the things I want to say to you, my girl.
They told me you’re in a home. Probably a good place for you. See no evil, hear no evil, do no evil and all that. I hope it works out there for you. Apparently, it’s a good chance for kids to turn their lives around. Good luck with that.
Got to go. Four years, eight months till I’m out of here. You’ll be nineteen by then. If I don’t hear from you, I promise I’ll find you, sweetheart.
Bex.
‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘Good that she’s been in touch at last.’
She shook her head. She’d waited months to hear from her mother, and now it was just this. Short, no love, no kisses, not even ‘Mum’, just ‘Bex’.
I watched her read it again and fold it away.
‘It’s a threat,’ she said. ‘The letter’s a threat. The guards read your stuff in prison, so she has to keep it subtle, but I know it’s there. I think she wants to kill me.’
That afternoon, she disappeared. I had no idea where she’d gone. For the first few hours, I just sat in her room and waited. She’ll be back, I told myself. She wouldn’t run away without me. She wouldn’t.
A couple of hours passed. I knocked on Lara’s bedroom door. There was no answer, so I let myself in. She was sitting at the window, staring out at the fells. The room stank of decay. It hit the back of my throat, and I choked on it.
‘Have you seen Hope?’ I asked.
She didn’t look at me, or do anything to register that she’d noticed my presence.
‘It stinks in here,’ I told her. She continued to do nothing.
‘I’ll be telling Helen you’ve got something disgusting in your room. What is it?’
Silence.
I left and went back to my own room.
At 6.00, Clare called us down for dinner. She set plates of lasagne in front of Lara and me, then looked round expectantly. ‘Where’s Hope?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. We were together at lunchtime, then I went to the loo and when I came back, she was gone.’
‘Annie! For goodness’ sake, why didn’t you say something?’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise. I thought she’d be back.’
I could hear the threat of tears in my voice, and so could Clare. She softened. ‘Alright, love,’ she said. ‘Let’s try not to panic. What time was it when you last saw her?’
‘About one.’
She nodded. ‘OK,’ she said, then turned her head and shouted, ‘Danny!’
He came in from the office. ‘What’s up?’
‘Hope’s gone,’ Clare told him.
He looked blank. ‘Gone?’
‘No one’s seen her since lunchtime.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
I thought, This is it. She’s done it. She’s leapt off a fell top and dashed her head against the rocks. I wanted to say to them, ‘She’s dead. She’s killed herself,’ but the words wouldn’t come and I wondered if this was how Lara felt all the time – so afraid that her throat was blocked.
Danny made a movement towards the door, ready to set off and look for her.
‘I’ll come,’ I said. ‘Let me come.’
‘No. You stay here. She’s more likely to show up here than I am to find her out there.’ I could tell he was trying to keep his voice light, but he was worried. He had no idea where to start. There were so many places she could be, so many places to lose herself and die in this landscape.
He headed out the front door. The sun was setting over the fells, leaking into the inky-blue sky, and I thought, She is dead.
I didn’t know what to do. I went to her room to see if she’d left a note. Under her pillow was a piece of paper with writing in a large, masculine scrawl:
See you on the 14th. A xxxxx
I checked my phone. Today was the fourteenth.
I stared again at the note in my hands.
A xxxxx
A xxxxx
A xxxxx
A xxxxx
A xxxxx
A xxxxx
A xxxxx
Ace Clarke. She’d gone off to meet him, after everything he’d done to her and everything we’d shared.
For the first time ever, I wanted my mother. No. Not my mother. A mother. Someone who would know what I should do, how I could make this alright. Someone who’d brought me up with the strength I needed to deal with this, instead of feeling that it was all too much and I needed it to go away.
That was the trouble with my past, I knew that. It wasn’t as bad as Hope’s, but it had left me weak and afraid, and all I could do to ease this pain now was eat. So that was what I did while I waited for her to come home, and it took me right back to that night with my mother.
The memory of it – the guilt and the shame – made me sick.
Significant Moments in My Life with My Mother
By Annie Cox
Part Three
My grandma told me I’d be able to leave when I was eighteen. ‘Grin and bear it, darling,’ she said. ‘Your mother’s a bully, we all know that. No one can stand up to her, but get your head down at school and work your way out. Make sure she always takes her meds, mind.’
‘Meds’ was short for medication. After that time at the hotel I’d told Grandma all about what had happened, and she’d marched Caitlin to the doctor’s and had her diagnosed as bipolar. Now, she took lithium to control it, but she was still a nightmare. You can leave when you’re eighteen. Eighteen. Further off than Australia.
I knew other mothers weren’t like this. I’d seen them in the school yard, carrying their children’s book bags and kissing them goodbye. Some of them even came into the classroom to help with reading. They smiled and talked. I couldn’t imagine crazy, angry scenes in their houses, where children were hit and kicked and yelled at, nearly all the time.
There was no way I could last till I was eighteen. For a long time, I thought about running away. I’d seen runaways on TV. I could go and find my father in London. He’d be happy to see me, and the two of us could live together in a house full of food. But I had no idea how to get there, or where to find him if I ever did get there. I was nine years old, with nowhere to go.
The only place I could think of was the community café. There were whole rooms there that looked unused to me, and I’d be able to live in one of them and eat as much as I wanted. All those fading donuts and Jammie Dodgers, and warm baked potatoes and soup. My mouth watered at the thought of it. And there’d be no one shouting at me from the moment I woke up in the mornings, no one telling me what a horrible girl I was all the time, and demanding that I love them.
It was the school holidays. Easter. My mother was working behind the counter in a chemist on the Oxford Road. She used to come home with make-up and para
cetamol tablets and gifts she said the boss had given her. She brought me a hot-water bottle once, held in a brightly striped knitted cover. I loved it. I carried it all around the house with me, enjoying its warmth through my clothes and the smell of wet rubber. I planned to take it with me when I left.
I knew I’d need to get to the community café in the morning because that was when the doors were open, but I also needed not to be seen. Valerie was only there on a Friday, so I decided to go on Wednesday and avoid her. Even then, I wore a hoodie with the hood up.
The community café was familiar to me now. Valerie turned a blind eye when I rocked up there with no coupon. She just let me eat. The day I ran away, I was lucky it was busy with clients and researchers, and managed to slip in unseen. There was a small room at the back, not much bigger than a cupboard, and I knew I could hide in there. There were shelves full of tinned fruit and condensed milk, and bags of rice and pasta, and strange grains I’d never seen before. ‘Couscous’, the packet said.
I made myself a hiding place out of boxes, which I arranged in the corner, then squeezed myself in behind them. If I curled up small, there was a chance no one would find me there. The light was on – a fluorescent strip light that went the length of the ceiling – and the switch was on the wall outside, so darkness would be no shield.
I sat there for ages among the boxes and tins of food. I didn’t know how long it was. Perhaps half an hour, perhaps four hours. Every time I heard footsteps or voices coming towards me, my heart would start pounding. I hadn’t really thought about the fact that this was trespass and I could be in real trouble if someone found me there, but I thought about it now. I also thought about what I was going to do if no one found me. Would I have to spend the rest of my life here, in this cupboard? It wasn’t really what I wanted, and now I was stuck here, afraid to be found and afraid not to be found. I’d been lured here by the thought of food; and in my head, Valerie had been here, looking after me like a mother. Except that wasn’t going to happen. If someone found me, I realised now after however long I was alone in the cupboard, they would probably be cross.
The thought brought tears to my eyes.
Then, suddenly, the light went off and the door was locked.
Hours and hours passed. Later, I found out the light had been turned off on Wednesday at 2.00 pm, when the volunteers all left. The darkness didn’t change at all. There were no windows here, so no gradual fading and re-emerging of light to let me know the day was ending or morning was coming. It was just dark.
After a while, my stomach started rumbling noisily, so I stood up and stepped over the boxes and fumbled on the shelves for something I could open. When I managed to grab hold of a can, I ran my fingers over the top in search of a ring pull. I found one eventually and pulled it back. I sniffed. Fruit and syrup. I pulled out the pieces of fruit and ate them one by one. Mandarin segments. My hands were wet and sticky with the juice. I wiped them on my clothes, then tipped my head back and drank the rest straight from the tin.
I did this several times over the next two days. All in all, I ate:
1 Two tins of rice pudding;
2 Four tins of baked beans;
3 One tin of something disgusting I’d never tried before but which turned out to be a tin of pilchards;
4 Three tins of various sorts of fruit;
5 Four tins of tomato soup;
6 Two tins of chicken soup;
7 Two tins of chicken curry;
8 One tin of potatoes;
The trouble then was, I needed the toilet.
For two days, I ate and slept and prayed that someone would find me. I cried now and then. The building was empty, I knew that. Silent, empty and creaky. It didn’t stop me from trying to get out. I banged on the door and called, ‘Help me,’ but no one came, and no one came.
I was filthy and the whole room smelled. I didn’t know what they’d do when they found me here.
Eventually, I heard footsteps outside the room, but by now I was afraid. I wanted to slip away without being seen, just the way I’d come in, but the door was locked. Was there any chance someone would unlock the door before they needed to come in, and I could make my escape without anyone ever knowing? Maybe. I clung to that hope.
It was futile. After a while, I heard the footsteps coming closer again, and this time, they didn’t walk past. They stopped outside the room, then the key turned in the lock and the light came on. I squinted in the new, harsh light and quickly arranged myself in a ball behind the boxes again, all the empty tins by my side.
The door opened. It was Valerie’s voice I heard. She made a noise of horror and disgust, followed by, ‘Oh, my God.’ It only took her a second to spot me, huddled behind the boxes, my head bent low with shame.
‘Annie?’ she asked, coming towards me.
I said nothing. I could feel my heart thumping loud and hard.
‘Annie?’ she said again, and pulled the boxes aside. ‘My God, Annie. What does this mean? What are you doing? The police are out looking for you.’
I began to cry.
‘Come on, love,’ she said, reaching for my hand. ‘Let’s get this sorted out. Let’s get you home.’
I didn’t want to go home, but I had no choice but to follow her.
43
Hope
She wasn’t crying when I got there. My mother and Ace stood together on the grassy area outside the flat, my view of them from the road half obscured by a hedge. Jade was lying back in my mother’s arms, her face tilted to the sky, her whole body limp.
I paid the cab driver and felt myself running in slow motion. ‘What’s happened?’ I said. I could see Jade’s eyes were open, but her pupils were like tiny pinpricks in her huge grey eyes, and the tips of her fingers were blue.
I could feel my heart, frozen and heavy in my chest, ready to deliver cold water to my veins. Ace took my arm and steered me to one side, while my mother jumped up and down on the spot, shaking Jade and shaking her again, as if she could somehow force the life back into her. ‘Come on, Jadey,’ she was saying. ‘Come on, my baby.’
Ace looked grave. I had never seen him so serious. He said, ‘We think she drank your mother’s methadone.’
I said, ‘Is the ambulance coming?’
Ace said, ‘We can’t call an ambulance.’
‘What the fuck do you mean? Call a fucking ambulance.’
‘Do you want Jade to be taken away, Hope? Do you want to see your mum in prison?’
I reached into my pocket for my mobile phone. Ace tried to swipe it from me, but missed. I hit 999.
‘Put the phone down, Hope.’
A female voice answered my call.
‘I need an ambulance.’
‘Put the phone down.’
‘My thirteen-month-old sister has taken methadone.’
They’d left it too late. The doctors said there was nothing they could do, and she died in the night. My mother broke down and sobbed. I let the shock numb me, although I knew straight away that this was going to be too great, too much for me ever to cope with. There was no way back from this, not for me.
The police arrested my mother and took her away, and I was sent to emergency foster care. I stayed there for three nights until they found me a new place. It was meant to be long term, but I hated it. It was simple enough to wreck a placement. You just had to go a bit mental – throw some stuff around, shout a lot, swear in front of the younger kids. Easy.
And so it began. A whole year of foster placements that never lasted longer than a month. My mother was banged up for manslaughter and never even sent me a note to say she was thinking of me, she was sorry, she wished it hadn’t turned out like this.
All I wanted was to go back to Ace’s, where I could be safe and looked after. I didn’t care about anything anymore. I could do the work if he told me I had to. I just needed to get by until I died. Because I was going to die, I knew that. The pain of losing Jade was too much. It would kill me before long.
S
o I ran away. And I stayed with Ace until they found me and sent me to more foster carers. Then I ran away again and in the end, they gave up trying to find someone to care for me and locked me up instead.
It was probably for the best, being locked up with a load of nutters. I wondered if it meant I was a nutter as well. I used to stand at the mirror above the sink in my bathroom and stare at myself. Did it show in my face? Were those the stark blue eyes of a madwoman? It was hard to tell. I didn’t look healthy, I knew that much. If anyone looked at me, would they be able to see that I’d been a fourteen-year-old sex worker with a sister who’d died at the hands of our drug-addicted mother? Or would it be the other way round? Would people find out about the things that had happened to me and then want to look at me, imprinting my face on their memories so they could say to themselves, ‘That’s what a child prostitute who lost her sister looks like?’ It often felt like that to me. It had felt like that in the courtroom, when I’d had to testify against my mother. No one could stop looking at me then. Except my mother. She hadn’t looked at me at all.
I was meant to be thinking of my future while I was there. They dangled it in front of me as a positive thing, something to be looked forward to, walked towards slowly, day by day, until eventually I’d arrive at it, glowing and happy and rich, the past behind me, locked safely away. I had to start now, they said.
But I couldn’t. I had no strength for anything anymore, and there was a dark mist in my mind that clouded everything. Nothing I could do would make anyone understand, so I started dressing in black then, to keep everyone away. It’s what they used to do in the olden days when someone died, to show people they were mourning and might act crazy sometimes. As far as I was concerned, the worst thing in the world had happened to me, and I wasn’t coming back. Not ever.
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