by Amanda James
Another Mother
Amanda James
Copyright © 2018 Amanda James
The right of Amanda James to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2018 by Bloodhound Books
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
www.bloodhoundbooks.com
For my husband and wonderful family who have helped me through a dark few months. Thanks to you, there is light at the end of the tunnel and it's getting brighter every day.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Epilogue
A Note from Bloodhound Books:
Coming Soon
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Lying on her side in the road, Hannah looks at a sandal a few feet away. It’s similar to hers, but she can’t see it clearly because her left eye keeps rolling inwards. No, the sandal isn’t hers, there’s a spatter of red on the heel.
Something feels very wrong inside her head, and her right eye watches a pool of dark liquid spread out from underneath her across the tarmac. There is a taste of metal in her throat. Hannah thinks she hears a scream and a babble of voices. A woman’s face comes close to her own. Her mouth moves, but Hannah can’t make out what she is saying. It is as if they are separated by thick glass. The woman smiles, though tears run down her cheeks. Does she know her?
Hannah watches images flick in quick succession across the woman’s face.
The road … traffic racing along as if each vehicle is afraid of coming last … it’s raining … Hannah needs to cross … a tissue on foggy spectacles … waiting … linking arms with someone … laughing?
Green
Amber
RED
A gap between cars … preparing to cross … a sharp elbow … sandal strap snapping … panic … running…
A man’s voice comes as if from a long way off. ‘Don’t move her. You could do more damage!’
‘Damage? Is someone hurt?’ Hannah thinks she says these words but can’t be sure as her lips are numb. She looks at the woman again; tears still wet her cheeks, but there is a dark hole growing at one side of her face. It looks like a full moon aligning with the sun.
A searing pain explodes behind Hannah’s eyes and she wants to scream, but her mouth is full of vomit and her limbs thrash themselves against the surface of the road.
In the dark, she prays the pain will stop, and seconds later it does. She hears a man’s voice loud in her ears counting up to five, over and over, and in perfect time with the counting, she feels a rhythmic thump against her ribs.
At last, the man’s voice is fading, and she is thankful. The darkness is a circle and a bright pinprick of white light expands from its centre, until it is all that she can see.
1
My fingers tremble as I hold them poised above the keyboard on my work desk, so I tuck them under my armpits. I look at the computer screen and then switched my gaze to the rain on the window, focus my mind, fight to keep a hold on the present, but the past fights harder. Memories stored deep, perhaps almost forgotten, like daffodil or crocus bulbs can often emerge from the thickest frost. I tell myself that thirty will be knocking at my door in a few months and school is a long time gone. I close my eyes but it’s no use. A wrecking ball of nineteen-year-old images smash into my consciousness …
SMACK!
Automatically my shoulders jerk up round my ears, but lower again as I realise someone has popped bubblegum behind me. Synthetic strawberry sweetens the air. Perhaps a bit of gum has landed on my new school cardigan. My hand travels up my sleeve but stops when laughter trickles through the group of children blocking my way. Their ringleader, Megan, steps forward.
I notice a loose thread on my sock. Yes, I remember snagging it on the rabbit hutch before school this morning. I close my eyes and conjure an image of Boris, wiggling his nose and twitching his ears.
I swallow.
I wish I was home with him now.
I open my eyes, but don’t look up, just dig the toe of my shoe into the tarmac on the playground. The baking sun has softened the surface, and from the little hole I make, sticky black molasses releases the acrid smell of bitumen.
Perhaps if I keep looking at the thread on my sock and picture Boris in my mind, they’ll all get bored and that bitch Megan will leave me alone, but my heart’s racing, sweat beads my top lip, and a tide of anxiety sweeps Boris away.
A phone ringing somewhere in the office brings me back to the present. I open my eyes, take a moment to calm my breathing. Of all the unwelcome memories trapped within the folds of the past, this one escapes most frequently and is the most vivid. Though it is a grim day outside, I can feel the sun’s heat on my skin, the bitter taste of humiliation; the feeling of helplessness and self-loathing in my eleven-year-old heart.
Occasionally there would be a trigger, but not today. Today I’d been sitting at the keyboard, fingers flying, constructing an invoice for Clear View Glass & Co. Just another day, another typical task, but then my hands started to shake, and I’d stared through the window at the rain and thump: there I was back in the playground.
The rain gathers strength, lashing the pane as slate-grey clouds crowd in, weighting the day, anchoring my thoughts to the past. Just another day, but perhaps that is the problem. Everything since my school days is different, yet nothing has really changed. I can tell the rest of the memory is there just waiting, but I’ll be damned if I’ll give in this time.
I rest my fingers on the keys but can’t resume typing, just look at the deluge outside and wonder what the hell I’m doing with my life. A rasp of stubble against dry fingers accompanies a deep sigh close to my ear. My gaze leaves the clouds and telescopes back into the office. I don’t need the reflection on the window to tell me that the boss, Kevin Morley, stands inches away from my right shoulder.
‘Lu, did you hear me?’
‘I heard you sigh,’ I answer, but keep ‘and your infuriating habit of stroking your chin every waking moment’ in my head.
‘That’s because you took no notice when I spoke to you. Away with the fairies this afternoon, eh?’ Kevin draws his fingers over his chin again and I wish I could block my ears.
‘
Just looking at the rain, the clouds, you know?’
Kevin makes a noise in his throat that sounds as if he is trying to laugh but his vocal cords are too serious to permit it. ‘Well, some of us have work, no time for cloud gazing. I asked you if you’d ring Mrs Percy about rearranging her patio door fitting.’ He jabs a finger at a telephone number on the pad in front of me. ‘Sarah double-booked her yesterday. I swear that girl has a brain the size of a peanut.’
‘It would fit with the wages you pay us then, wouldn’t it?’
Kevin’s jaw drops. His fingers hover above his stubble but don’t make contact; his lips part but apparently have trouble forming words, so his tongue just clicks the roof of his mouth instead. If he is surprised at my comment, then I’m stunned. I had wanted to give him smart answers many times before but had never dared. Only five years older, he talks to me as if I am an infant.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Kevin manages to wrestle his expression from startled into neutral, though I assume that his one raised eyebrow is supposed to intimidate me.
I clear my throat and consider the choices. Do I continue to speak my mind, or pull my horns in and, snail-like, retreat into my shell? Megan had forced retreat. Even aged eleven she had been far more intimidating than Kevin. Since that day I had been a snail. In fact, long before that day.
Never being what my mother called ‘much of a mixer,’ I’d always gone off on my own, or with Boris, preferring to read in the shade of the cedar tree during the summer holidays, rather than having a laugh with friends … not that I had many. I became a dab hand at pulling my horns in and never saying boo to a goose. That phrase always struck me as odd. Just why on earth would a person want to—
‘Hey! What’s the matter with you today? I asked you a question and I’m still waiting for an answer,’ Kevin says.
I watch him add another raised eyebrow and folded arms to his repertoire and note that he’s echoed almost exactly what Megan had said on that long-ago day.
‘I think you heard me, Kevin.’ My words taste sweet on my tongue. Without realising it, I have opted to keep my horns out.
‘I did hear you, Lucy, but I am perplexed as to how you think you can talk to me in that rude and offhand manner!’
‘It’s Lucinda. And perplexed? What a very old-fashioned word. I do like it though, don’t you?’
‘What? I really cannot believe—’ he begins, but the door opens and Sandra, his PA, comes into the room.
‘Sorry, there’s a problem. An irate customers on the phone.’
Kevin clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth again and frowns down at me. ‘This isn’t finished,’ he says, and taps his knuckles on my desk. ‘Not by a long chalk.’ He rasps his stubble and leaves.
The time flies for the next hour. I don’t look at the weather, nor allow my thoughts to wander. I don’t want to think of the consequences of my unprecedented behaviour – and consequences there will surely be. Kevin Morley would never let me off the hook. He’s cut from the same cloth as Megan, though her cloth was hessian to his silk. Her cloth still had the pins in it and was trimmed with barbed wire. Once her cloth was drawn over the skin, it wounded – left scars.
Just before four thirty, Kevin strides from his office, his serious eyes on mine. From the pegs along the door he selects a raincoat, snaps out the creases and drapes it over his arm with a flourish. I hide a smile. He looks ridiculous, though I presume he imagines himself to be terrifying – a matador entering the ring.
‘I have to sort out an urgent matter so will be leaving early,’ he says to the space just above my head. His voice comes from deep in his throat and his mouth is pursed so tight I wondered how he gets the words out. Eyes that normally hold little interest or expression sweep mine with clear contempt. ‘We will discuss your disrespectful attitude in the morning. And let me be quite clear’—he nods three times and cracks his knuckles— ‘you had better be damned well sorry, madam.’
The door closes behind him and I think about the next morning and if I am sorry or not. It will probably still be raining, and I’ll be sitting behind the desk typing. I’d look up at the rain and the grey clouds would merge into one colossal mass and be sucked down to street level. They would muscle in, press against the window of the office and I would feel the air leave my lungs, and I’d struggle to remember who I was inside my oxygen-starved brain. But then it wouldn’t matter who I was because my life was empty, and I’d see nothing in my future but rain, keyboards, egotistical raspy-faced bosses and memories of the past.
At the end of the day I stand, walk to the window, take a few deep breaths and look out at the shoppers on the high street avoiding puddles. I suddenly realise I’d not avoided puddles today. Today I had drawn something up from deep in my belly, something that resembled pride, guts and fight. Something that I didn’t know was in me. So, no, I’m not sorry.
I press a few keys and the computer shuts down. My reflection frowns at me from the blank screen, the memory of that day in the playground crawls at the edges of my mind and Kevin crawls there too, rasping and sneering. Before I can change my mind, I start up the computer again and compose a letter of resignation.
A police car is parked near my house. I look across at Mrs Heggarty’s, she’s forever complaining about the kids who lived on the estate. Dad says that she must have the local police station’s number on speed dial.
I open the door, put my coat on the banister and try to calm my voice enough to be able to shout my normal greeting – difficult when my heart is beating so fast. I tell myself that Mum and Dad’s reaction to me chucking the job won’t be as bad as I imagine. Dad might even say I’d done the right thing. He’s always the softer of the two.
‘Hello, it’s me!’ I say and walk into an empty kitchen. Odd. Mum would normally be making dinner by now.
‘In here, Lu.’ The voice from the living room is Dad’s but there is something not right. It sounds broken.
Dad matches his voice. He sits in his chair by the window, eyes staring from a slack white face. Opposite, on the sofa, two police officers nurse their caps. The female officer stands. ‘Lucinda, please take a seat.’
I look into her sympathetic eyes and feel the room shift. I don’t want to sit. ‘What’s happened?’ I say, leaning my weight against Mum’s chair.
‘Please sit down, Lucinda.’
‘No. Just tell me what you’re doing here.’
The officer takes a deep breath. ‘I’m afraid to tell you that your mum died in a road accident this afternoon.’
I sit down.
2
It’s ironic that it’s sunny today. We have had rain, fog, and even sleet over the last week or so; why on the day of Mum’s funeral is the sky a fairy-tale blue, why are the birds singing, and why is the world carrying on as if nothing has happened? My world is different from everyone else’s. My world is small, dark and cold. There is no sun. Perhaps there will never be sun again.
I lean my head against the cool glass of my bedroom window and watch the funeral cars pull up outside the house. Dad, freshly shaved, scrubbed clean of despair and awkward in his new suit, goes down the path to talk to the funeral director. The fact that he’s walking and talking, functioning like a real person twists my heart because I know it’s all an act. Dad has been on autopilot for days, mostly allowing his brother Graham and sister-in-law Christine to organise everything, and wading through the dizzying mountain of bureaucracy surrounding a person’s death. Our neighbour Adelaide pitched in too. I have been worse than useless. Last night Dad stood in front of me just staring. His red-rimmed eyes and milk-white skin under a greying beard told me the extent of his pain, but his words pretended otherwise.
‘Tomorrow we have to be brave for your mum, love. We have to be strong and get through the day. I’ll be here for you, don’t worry.’ Then his face had crumbled, and he’d turned away, walked out into the garden.
The reflection in my cheval mirror shows me a tall, pale woman in a red dress. The woman
has very dark circles under her eyes, the colour of slate, and her black hair is scraped back into a ponytail. This can’t be me, can it? My eyes used to be green, my skin peaches and cream. I remind myself that this was before my world became dark and cold. Before Mum stepped off the pavement, ran across the road … and into the path of a car.
‘Lu … time to go, love.’ Dad’s soft voice from my doorway blocks the too-graphic images of what my mind imagines it must have been like for Mum that day.
I turn and look at him, well, past him really, because the pain in his eyes opens wounds that I’m trying desperately to keep closed. ‘I’m ready,’ I say, and follow him downstairs. I’m not, of course. If it were left to me I’d stay at home. Mum’s gone. What’s the point of gathering at a church to sing, pray and then watch them put her body in the ground? Aunty Christine said that funerals are for those who are left behind. If that’s the case, then I want to be left behind here at home. Dad needs me, though, even if he says it’s the other way around.
Everyone in the church is crying except me. I’m pretending that I’m somebody else, somewhere else. That’s working by and large, but then I catch sight of Dad’s shaking shoulders and I have to refocus. There’s no shame in crying, is there? Though every time I feel like I’m about to, nothing happens. The last thing I want is to screw my face up and then no tears appear. People will think I’m nuts. I sigh and look round. The church is full of our friends and neighbours and even some people I don’t know. Must be Mum’s friends from work, I guess.