I try to put my arms round her, but there’s nowhere I can touch that doesn’t hurt. A perfect tear rolls down her swollen cheek.
‘Sorry, pet,’ she whispers. ‘I’m sorry.’
Then her eyes flicker shut and she turns her head away.
‘Let her sleep,’ WPC Barrie says. ‘It’s the best thing. Everything will look brighter in the morning.’
But it is the morning, four in the morning. The nurse finishes checking Mum’s dressings, fiddles with the drip and switches off the light.
WPC Barrie shepherds me out into the hushed ward corridor. We walk noiselessly past the nurses’ station, past the open doors to dimly lit rooms. We push through the heavy, swishing double doors and into the brightly lit foyer.
‘What kind of an accident was it?’ I ask WPC Barrie. ‘Were they in the van? Was it a crash?’
Sitting on the sofa by the lift is a plump social worker called Lou. She cradles Misti in her lap, a tiny fair-haired refugee child wrapped in a tartan blanket. Lou smiles and nods as we approach.
She’s our social worker now.
We never had one before.
‘What happened?’ I ask WPC Barrie again. ‘Is Max OK? Is he hurt?’
She turns to look at me.
‘Max Kelly isn’t hurt, no,’ she tells me gently. ‘He’s safe and well, locked in a police cell, down at the station. He’s the person who did this to your mum, Indigo. It wasn’t an accident. It was assault. If your mum will only press charges, he’ll go to prison for it too.’
‘Oh,’ I say.
Misti sucks her fluffy rabbit and sleeps. Lou looks at me with sad, sympathetic eyes. WPC Barrie shrugs her shoulders, puts a hand on my sleeve.
I take a deep breath in.
Max.
What more is there to say?
I wake late, sandwiched between crisp pastel sheets in a room with mauve walls, purple carpet. The sun creeps through a gap in the pink ballerina curtains.
There’s a soft knock at the door.
‘Mmmm?’
The door opens and Misti crashes in, washed and brushed and dressed in a ruffled frock I’ve never seen before. She jumps on to the bed and hugs me.
‘Inky! Come on, Inky…’
‘No need to ask if you’re awake now!’
A grey-haired woman, about Gran’s age, stands in the doorway, smiling.
‘I’ve run you a bath, love, and Lou’s over at the flat getting you some clean clothes. We’ll get you both fed and then Lou will get you to your Gran, and maybe back down to the hospital…’
I can remember the hospital, the policewoman, Lou. I remember Mum. I remember a taxi ride with Lou, then a nice, grey-haired lady in her dressing gown, fussing and smiling and tucking Misti up in a cot with high sides and clean, pastel blankets.
‘Um… Auntie Kay?’ I offer.
‘That’s right, love,’ she beams. ‘Now come on through and have that bath. I’ve put in plenty of bubbles.’
She’s kind and friendly and thoughtful and sweet, but she’s not my auntie. She’s nothing to do with me. She’s an emergency foster carer, somebody paid to take care of two lost, scared, filthy kids in the middle of the night.
First I have a social worker, now I have an emergency foster mum. And my own mum is lying in a hospital bed, with broken bones and blue-black bruises and a drip feeding liquid into her veins because the man who said he loved us beat her up.
She didn’t fall. She didn’t slip. She wasn’t clumsy, and it wasn’t an accident.
It was Max.
I always knew it, really. I just couldn’t admit it, not even to myself.
I sit in the bath and splash bubbles about, listlessly. I slide under the water and wet my hair. I massage in shampoo that smells of oranges, then slip under the water again to rinse it off. I let my face sink down beneath the water, holding my breath, wondering what would happen if I never came up again.
Then I come up.
By the time I go downstairs, wrapped in a big towelling bathrobe, Lou is here with a bag of clothes from the flat. I get dressed, pick at some toast. Lou says we have an Emergency Case Meeting in town.
Auntie Kay tells us we’re big, brave girls and ruffles our hair like she’ll miss us. Lou says we won’t be coming back to this neat little house with the ballerina bedroom and the bathroom that smells of steam and oranges and bubble bath. Gran is coming.
All I have to do is hang on till then.
So I keep it together all through the taxi ride, right through the walk across the quiet courtyard to the Social Services offices that are meant to be closed on Sundays. They’re open, because of us. We’re an emergency case. Our feet sink into soft carpet as we move along the corridor, Misti trailing her pink rabbit by its lone surviving ear.
Lou takes us to a sofa-stuffed waiting room, and there’s a scrum and a racket and people are hugging me tight, stroking my hair, telling me to keep my chin up.
Jane is here, with Bob, her husband, and Ian from upstairs, and Mrs Green, and, amazingly, Miss McDougall from school in her best tweed suit and flouncy blouse. Everyone is talking at once. Jane says she’s sorry she wasn’t in last night; they went out for a meal after their shopping trip, had too much to drink and forgot to check the answerphone till morning.
‘It’s all my fault,’ she says, her face pale and trembly.
‘No,’ I tell her. ‘It’s Max’s.’
It doesn’t matter that Ian drove down south to see his parents, that Mrs Green never answers the door after seven o’clock, that Miss McDougall thought it best not to ask too much about what was happening at home.
None of it matters, not now.
It’s still Max’s fault.
Lou ushers us through the waiting room and into an office, and then I don’t have to hold it together any longer, because Gran is there. She folds us up in her arms, Misti and me both, and I’m crying now, letting out all the hurt and fear.
We sit on soft, plush chairs and answer questions while a man in a suit scribbles things down in a folder. Who is Max? Why was he out with Mum last night? Why were we home alone, in the dark and the cold?
Then Gran is signing papers and saying we’ll be staying with her in Wales, me and Misti and Mum too. We’ll have to stick around at the flat for a few days, till she’s out of hospital and well enough to travel, but then we’re out of here.
Lou shakes me by the hand and we’re back to the waiting room and the people who care, want to help to make it better.
The adults scribble addresses, exchange scraps of paper.
‘How he could do such a thing…’
‘… no better than an animal…’
‘If only I’d known those two girls were all alone…’
Then it’s over, and we’re away, safe at last in Gran’s battered blue Volkswagen Beetle.
Gran leans back in the driver’s seat and lets out a long, shuddery sigh. She pulls out the letter I wrote weeks back, unfolding the paper, looking at the untidy scrawl of words.
‘Indie, I’m so sorry,’ she says. ‘The police gave me this letter earlier, and when I read it… Why didn’t you post it, Indie, love?’
I shrug. ‘Couldn’t find a stamp.’
Gran puts a hand over her eyes. I notice suddenly that her hand is old, wrinkly, the veins sticking up like blue string.
‘I had no idea,’ she says. ‘I worried when Anna didn’t call, when she didn’t return my calls, but Max kept telling me things were fine. Your mum is very independent, Indie, I know that. She can go for ages without getting in touch. Now I know why…’
Her pale-blue eyes blur with tears. ‘I’m sorry you’ve had to cope alone. You’re not alone now, pet. Not ever again, I promise.’
We hug. I rest my face against Gran’s soft, papery cheek. At last, Misti gets bored and starts fiddling with the steering wheel. She honks the horn loudly, and we fall apart, grinning, grabbing seat belts.
Gran finds the key, turns it.
We’re off.
We stay for five days in the damp basement flat, waiting till Mum is discharged from hospital. We visit every day. Her room fills up with flowers – posh roses and lilies from Jane, white lilac from Miss McDougall, peonies and irises and frothy snow-in-summer from Mrs Green, from the flower beds at number 33, the beds Mum weeded and dug and tidied.
Ian Turner doesn’t send flowers – he thinks it was the bunch of flowers he gave Mum that made Max so mad in the first place. Mum’s sure now that she caught a glimpse of Max in the supermarket, that he followed us home and waited till he saw Ian leave.
Did he ever want to win Mum back, talk her round, make things right? Did he want us to be a family again? Mum thinks he did. But when she told him that she wasn’t coming back, not ever, he got angry again. They argued in the restaurant, then later in the van. Max wouldn’t take Mum home, wouldn’t stop and let her out. She waited till he slowed for a traffic light, then jumped out of the van and tried to run. She slipped in her cute blue kitten heels and Max caught her, lashed out, lost it.
A passing car saw them and the driver called the police and ambulance on his mobile. When they got there, Mum says, Max was sitting at the side of the road, head in his hands. He didn’t struggle as the police led him away.
‘He didn’t mean it,’ I hear her tell Gran. ‘He really didn’t.’
Gran shakes her head. ‘You have to press charges, Anna. You have to make him pay.’
Mum closes her eyes to end the conversation.
‘What has he done to you, Anna Collins?’ Gran asks, stroking the blonde curls that fall across Mum’s bruised, swollen face. ‘What has he done?’
I don’t think she’s talking about the broken bones.
When we’re not at the hospital, we pack up the flat at 33 Hartington Drive. Gran says we won’t be staying there a moment longer than we have to, and no wonder we’re all so thin and pale. Mrs Green says we can store the boxes and furniture in her spare room for as long as we like, even though we’re not coming back. Gran has been to the Housing Association and put our names down on a list for flats, and we get lots of points for being a single-parent family, temporarily homeless, and in crisis.
Gran says she’s sure we’ll have a flat by September.
‘I’ll miss you,’ Mrs Green says.
‘I’ll miss you,’ I say. I give her a big box of Thorntons dark-chocolate mints that Gran helped me buy, and I promise to visit once the summer is over and we’re settled into our new flat.
Then, when Mum comes out of hospital, we drive down to Wales. We’re going to spend the summer, not just a week like we usually do, but the whole long summer. And when the summer is over, Gran says Mum will be all better, and our flat will have come through – dry, clean, close to the schools.
‘No mould, no damp,’ she says.
‘No bluebird bedroom, no Mrs Green,’ I echo.
But it’ll be better, all the same.
And now I’m in the middle of nowhere, the most beautiful bit of nowhere ever, Gran’s cottage, just outside a tiny, pretty, Pembrokeshire village. Misti and I eat home-baked bread, warm from the Aga. We pick peas from the garden and eat them raw, popping the pods. We pick wild raspberries from the hedges, and eat them with thick, yellow cream and sprinkles of brown sugar.
We go to the village shop for butter and chocolate and comics. We feed Gran’s tabby cat, Bronwen, and lie on the grass in the long back garden, shaded by towering foxgloves and wigwams of sweet peas.
In July, I get a parcel from Miss McDougall.
There are photos from the play, Aisha with her dark hair pushed up into a big, tweedy cap, raggedy clothes, singing her heart out. Jo as a flower seller, pretty in pink satin. Shane as Dodger, cheeky in a big top hat and tailcoat, blowing a kiss at the camera. There’s a video too, a bit shaky and blurred in places, but I get to watch my friends sing and act and I manage to be glad for them, almost.
When I watch Aisha sing Oliver’s sad solo, I can’t help thinking it could have been me, wondering if I’d have had the guts to stand there in front of all those people. Aisha’s brilliant, and the roar of applause when she stops singing is the closest to jealousy I get.
At the end of the tape, there’s Mr Lennon giving a speech, thanking Miss McDougall, the parent helpers, the actors. ‘And as for our star,’ he says, ‘all I can say is, take her home, Mrs Patel, and for goodness sake, feed her!’ Everyone in the audience laughs and cheers.
The play was a sell-out, both nights, Miss McDougall says. They’re all sorry I couldn’t be there.
Me too.
A week later, Aisha writes, four pages of pale-blue notepaper crammed with news and questions and stuff about school. She says they miss me, that it isn’t the same without me, that Shane sends his love.
Jo misses you too, though she never says anything, Aisha says. But Jo seems like history. She used to be my friend – once.
Aisha sits in a desk on her own now, like before. She’s waiting for me.
See you in September, Aisha writes. At Kellway Comp!
I write to Aisha and I write to thank Miss McDougall for the video. I send Mrs Green a postcard of the beach near Tenby, Jane a postcard of a sheep with mad, curly horns, and a cartoon postcard of a fire-breathing Welsh dragon to Ian.
In August, Mum gets the train home to stay with Jane for a few days. She’s got an interview with the Housing Association about a flat, just off Calder’s Lane. She signs the lease, goes along to see the supermarket people to ask whether they’ll have her back in September, puts Misti’s name down for a day nursery nearby. She rings and tells Gran the best news of all, that Max has put his house up for sale and done a flit. He’s gone, this time for good.
When Mum comes back, we do holiday stuff. We go sailing, climb a real live mountain, take picnics down to the coast and eat ice lollies and paddle in the sea.
The summer slips by, and slowly the nightmare fades.
I’m up at seven, showered in record time. After a lifetime of navy pleated skirts and blue polo tops, I reach for a little grey skirt and a white top, an outsize black blazer with red braid trim. I brush my hair into high bunches, then pull it into little twists with the ends sticking out all jaggedy. I resist the temptation to chew at my fingernails. They’re short and neat and painted ‘Palest Peach’ (in case the teachers are going to be strict about that kind of thing).
I have a new pencil case, new felts, new ruler, pencils and pens. I have a new school bag, a big black backpack that fastens with a wide, diagonal strap across my body. I look in the full-length mirror in the pine wardrobe door. It could be worse. I feel grown-up and five years old, both at the same time.
Mum’s in the pine kitchen-diner, dishing up muesli and chopped strawberries. Misti balances on the edge of a chair, still pink and pyjamaed, stealing the ripest ones.
I splash on cold milk and eat a few spoonfuls, anxiously.
‘You look great,’ Mum says. ‘So grown-up.’
And I feel it, even though I know we’ll be the littlest kids at school now, lost, out of our depth, squeaky clean, marked out by our shiny new shoes and freshly ironed uniforms.
I wonder if I’ll miss Calder’s Lane Primary with its rumbling radiators and corridors that smell of disinfectant and boiled cabbage. Can you get nostalgic for school stew, bumped knees dabbed with witch hazel, spelling tests and chalk dust? You can. I can.
I wonder who’ll be sitting in my old desk this morning, under Miss McDougall’s eagle eye.
She wasn’t so bad, in the end. For a teacher.
The doorbell rings. It’s a bright, loud burst of sound, a million miles from the long, reedy peal at 33 Hartington Drive.
‘That’ll be Aisha,’ I say. ‘She said she’d call over. I’ll be off now, then.’
‘OK. Bye, love,’ Mum says, hugging me. ‘Good luck.’
‘Good luck, Inky,’ Misti says, hugging my legs.
I open the door, and Aisha’s grin lights up the little lobby. I spoke to her last night on the phone,
but this is the first time we’ve got to see each other. We only made it back from Wales yesterday afternoon.
‘Missed you,’ Aisha says.
‘Missed you,’ I echo shyly.
‘Hello, Aisha,’ Mum calls. ‘Take care, girls. Be good!’
‘We will!’ Aisha laughs, and she hooks her arm through mine and walks me away. The door clicks shut behind me and we clatter down the steps.
‘Scared?’ Aisha asks.
‘Nah,’ I bluster. ‘Course not.’
We walk in silence, then turn to each other, pulling terrified faces.
‘OK, I’m scared,’ I laugh. ‘Petrified.’
‘Me too,’ Aisha admits. ‘You look great, though. All sort of rosy-cheeked and healthy. D’you think you’ll miss Wales?’
I will, I know. I’ll miss Gran, and the cottage, and the warm bread and the home-made jam. I’ll miss the way it felt safe and steady and picture-book perfect, and how all of us, Mum, me and Misti, learned to relax, let go and breathe again.
‘A bit,’ I say cautiously. ‘But it’s good to be back. The flat’s amazing.’
We’re in a Housing Association flat, and though we’ve only just moved in for real, and it’s still all boxes and bin bags and clutter, it’s heaven after Hartington Drive. It’s smaller, but it’s also clean, dry, warm and modern. The doors and cupboards and built-in wardrobes are honey-coloured pine. The floors are carpeted, wall-to-wall, with soft green carpet. The windows are double-glazed and there’s central heating, and we’ve got a phone and a shower and a small, second-hand TV. Mum’s saving up for a video player too. She reckons we’ll have it by Christmas. She starts back at the supermarket next week, and Misti’s starting Nursery. We won’t have to scrimp and save any more.
‘I think your flat’s kind of like ours,’ Aisha is saying. ‘We’re only round the corner, and they’re both Housing Association, aren’t they? I mean, it won’t be as cool and arty as the basement flat… remember the flowers and the bluebirds your mum painted all around the wall in the bedroom?’
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