by Carrie Elks
“You mean she’s dead?” Even though I’m expecting this, I’m still taken aback. It’s the thought of somebody larger than life just disappearing that gets to me. She seemed invincible. Every time life beat her down she managed to rise up better than ever, like a messed-up phoenix. “Are you sure?”
“She’s a-systolic.” He says it as if it should mean something, and it does. Memories from nine years ago assail me—another night, another death. “The paramedics declared her dead a few minutes ago.” He rubs my arm and it feels vaguely comforting.
“How... how did she…?” I break off. I can’t even say the word. If I say it, I’ll make it real.
How the hell is Allegra going to get over this?
“There are all the symptoms of a heroin overdose. We can’t confirm it until after the post-mortem, but there doesn’t appear to be any foul play.”
Heroin? What an awful way to die. Horror and disgust wash over me, tinged with an edge of anger. Even if Darren didn’t hurt her, and even if he wasn’t the one doing the injecting, he’s still the man responsible for her death.
Not that Daisy doesn’t bear blame, too. But with her body lying on the floor of a run-down tower-block flat, I can hardly bring myself to think it. They’re all victims here. Her daughter most of all.
“Darren Tebbit.” I say his name with a low voice. “Her boyfriend is called Darren Tebbit. He hangs around the rec dealing to kids in the afternoons. Feel free to chop his dick off.” I walk away, fury boiling in my veins because I have to go and break a little girl’s heart.
28
When I see Niall’s name flash across the screen of my phone, I have to bite my lips so I don’t cry. Three simple words turn me inside out.
How’s it going?
He’s asking about my dinner with Simon.
My reply is just as brief—brutal, even—but I don’t have the energy to sugar-coat things. Daisy’s dead.
Allegra stirs in my arms, murmuring unintelligible words before she drifts back into unconsciousness. Her head rests against my chest, all tear-stained and red. Even in her sleep she sobs—tiny gasps that come every three breaths—and I stroke her hair, hoping somehow she knows I am here.
We’re sitting on a beige faux-leather sofa in Dee’s tiny flat. It’s very clean and tidy in here. Even her cat seems well-trained and under control. When she gives me a mug of hot, sweet tea and strokes my forehead with her plump hand I try to reward her with a smile. It turns out twisted but she doesn’t seem to mind. She may be taciturn, but she’s a star. I don’t know what we’d have done without her.
My phone vibrates and I know it’s him. The thought somehow grounds me.
“Hi.” I speak softly down the mouthpiece, trying not to disturb Allegra.
Niall doesn’t seem to have received the memo, though. His voice is loud and thick with Irish. It makes me flinch. “What the hell happened? Are you okay, did you get hurt? Jesus, babe, I’m freaking out here.”
“Hush, Allegra’s asleep.” There’s some kind of irony going on here. I’m the calmer of the two of us. “Daisy overdosed and Allegra found her. She called me at the restaurant and I came right over. The police are here now and we’re waiting for social services.” I can tell him all this without getting emotional because they’re just facts. If he asks me how I am, I know I’ll end up wailing like a baby.
“Is Simon with you?”
“No. I told him to go home. There’s nothing he can do here and he looked really uncomfortable.” I don’t tell him that Simon looked like an old man, shaking softly as he stared at the poverty surrounding him. He was shocked, that much I could tell. As if he couldn’t believe a world like this could exist in the centre of London.
“Are you still at the Whitegate Estate?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “I’m on my way.”
“It’s okay. You don’t need to come over. We’re just waiting for the social worker to arrive.” I don’t tell him there’s no way I’m letting them absorb Allegra back into the system. I’ll fight them tooth and nail if I have to.
“I didn’t ask for your permission. I’ll see you in half an hour.” He sounds pissed off but it warms me inside. I like that edge to him; the protective side that doesn’t take no for an answer. It’s the reason he waited for hours in the rain while I sat in a police station. He wants to take care of me. I can live with that.
As long as he lets me take care of him, too. Equals in everything.
Allegra and I are still sitting in the same position when Niall arrives about thirty minutes later. Dee has turned on the TV and some inane late-night detective show is flickering across the screen. Allegra is still out for the count, her dark hair tangled across her face. If it wasn’t for the fact there’s a whole phalanx of police outside, I’d steal her away before the social worker gets here. I want to tuck her up in bed and hold her until morning.
I hear his voice before I see him. It’s distinctive—deep and slightly gravelled, his accent adding a cadence you don’t find in a native Londoner. Having him close feels as if somebody has placed a warm blanket across my shoulders. He’s there, standing in the doorway, his hair messy and wet as if he’s just stepped out of the shower.
“How is she?” When he comes closer I can smell the clean scent of his soap and the soft fragrance of his shampoo. He reaches out to stroke Allegra’s matted hair, his expression full of compassion. “Poor kid.”
“She’s been out for a while. It all got too much. The shock, her mum...”
He sits down beside us, lifting her legs onto his lap. The gesture makes me want to cry. Instead I look at him and he stares right back and it feels as if he can see right inside my soul.
“I want to take the two of you home and board up the door. Not let anybody inside.” When he strokes my cheek I have to close my eyes for fear I’m going to lose it.
“I think we might like that. At least for a while.”
He reaches out to squeeze my hand, and a single tear escapes from the corner of my eye, trailing down my cheek. I wipe it away almost angrily. I want to be strong. For Allegra. For me. But Niall’s having none of it.
“It’s okay.” He brushes my cheek. “You can cry, she won’t notice. Even if she wakes it doesn’t matter. You should cry, it’s worth crying about.”
The need to sob thickens my voice. “If I start I don’t think I can stop.” I can’t be the one to break down. When Digby died I barely surfaced for months. This time, though, Allegra needs me. Desperately. There’s no way I can wallow in useless self-pity.
“You know, my ma has all these stupid sayings and I can’t even come up with one right now. But I do know that crying isn’t weak. There’s a strength in showing your emotions. In taking control and letting them out. So don’t hold back on my account.”
My bottom lip starts to tremble. I try to still it with my teeth, but all that does is make my eyes water harder. I go to wipe them with my hand, but he holds on, not letting me pull away. When the tears start to fall he shuffles closer. Allegra’s prone body lies across us both, and he curls his arm around me. My head rests on his shoulder, and he strokes my hair when I start to sob. I cry for Daisy, for the futile pain of her death. I cry for Allegra, Niall holding me until I’m all out of tears.
Even then my shoulders shake with dry sobs.
* * *
We’re still huddled together when the duty social worker arrives. I don’t recognise this one, and from her relative youth and maximum unease I get the sense she’s newly qualified. In this case it’s a bad thing, because she’s trying to stick too tightly to the rules.
“I need to take her to the group home and we can assess the case in the morning,” she says when I ask if I can take Allegra home with me. “I can’t allow you to bring her to an unknown house. It’s against our guidelines.”
“Would you say the same if Beth was her aunt?” Niall asks. “This kid has just seen her mother die in front of her eyes and you want to take her away from the one person she knows? What
kind of fucked-up guidelines are these anyway?” He can be scary when he’s angry. The social worker cowers away. I reach out to calm him.
“I’m CRB checked and known to social services. I’m even known to the staff at the home. Can’t you let me take her home for one night?”
She shakes her head and I hear Niall mutter, “Fucking jobsworth.” In another minute I think he might actually explode. I’m so much calmer than him, icy even, because I’m absolutely certain I’m not going to let them separate Allegra from me. Even if I have to handcuff the two of us together, the only person she’s going to be waking up to is me.
“I’ll go with her to the home.” I don’t pose it as a question. “If it will help you sleep tonight I’ll stay there and in the morning we can talk custody. But I’m not leaving her tonight.”
The social worker flails a little, but then nods her head, relieved not to have to fight anymore. Niall bristles next to me, staring at her with a sullen expression. I want to stay here, in our little bubble of three because no matter how tortured and painful Allegra’s sleep is, it’s nothing compared to the pain she’ll face when she wakes up.
When she remembers her mum is dead.
In the end we get to the group home just after three in the morning. The night worker shuffles to the front door, opening it to reveal her Winnie the Pooh onesie tight against her body. Yawning, she shows us to an empty room. Niall walks in behind us, carrying Allegra in his arms, a tender expression on his face. He lays her down on the made-up single bed and pulls me into an embrace.
“Call me in the morning, okay? Let me know how she’s doing.” On the way over here we made hushed plans in the back seat, and agreed that I’d take the lead. Trying to present ourselves as some kind of viable couple when we’ve only just reconnected would be crazy.
Not to mention the fact I’m still married.
“I will.” My voice wobbles. No matter how determined I am, the future seems daunting. He cups my face with warm hands. I’m barely breathing when he brushes his lips against mine. I cling to the back of his shirt for a moment too long because I’m so scared this may be the last time we are together.
“If you need me I’ll be here. Remember that.” Another peck and he pulls away.
When he walks out of the door, the only thing stopping me from running after him is Allegra. Her tiny body is curled up on the bed, her One Direction t-shirt twisted around her waist. She sleeps fitfully, her body occasionally shuddering at some invisible monster haunting her dreams. I walk over to the ramshackle armchair in the corner of the room and pull it toward her bed as if I’m visiting her in hospital. Though it’s late at night there’s no possibility of me falling asleep. There’s so much to think about.
This morning I was a woman on the way to divorce, trying to juggle a burgeoning relationship with a desperately fading one. Living in a single bedroom in an insalubrious part of town. But now... now everything changes. It’s as if the world is twisting on its axis, shifting to the left until all I can do is cling on with weak fingernails, my legs flailing behind me as I try to find a footing.
As for Niall, I don’t even know where he fits in to all this. It was complicated enough as it was, with our shared history and our rocky start. That’s nothing compared to this new addition. I don’t even know how he feels about kids, let alone whether he would want to be involved in Allegra’s life. It’s not the sort of conversation I considered having with him in between kisses and dry humps.
As Alex would say, “Shit’s just got serious.”
There’s another problem, though. Even if I could work out how Niall and Allegra fit into my life, there’s the small matter of somewhere to live. There’s no way I’ll ever be allowed custody if I’m living in a shared house. I don’t even have a bedroom to put her in. On my limited wage I can hardly afford to live in a bedsit, let alone a two-bedroom flat.
Which brings me to Simon. I know he’s the obvious solution here. He’s offered to buy me a flat and I’ve turned him down. I don’t want his money, I want to be able to move on without it, but that doesn’t help with the current housing situation.
I rub my face with the heels of my hands, as if the answers to all my problems are in there somewhere. I press them against my eyes so hard I can see tiny stars swirling in the darkness, but no miraculous solution appears.
Daylight sneaks through the curtains like a naughty child, stealing its way across the pale green carpet until sunlight washes across Allegra’s face. Her mouth twitches and she moans a little, rolling over to escape the brightness. Her body has reacted a moment too late, because the morning has chased away the comfort of sleep, leaving her blinking and confused as she slowly sits up. She frowns when she sees me sitting next to her.
Her lip wobbles and her breathing turns ragged as realisation dawns. Memories return like a cruel dagger, and if I live to be a hundred I never want to see such pain in her face again. It hits me in the chest, hard enough for me to gasp, and as soon as she starts to cry, I feel my own tears well up.
“My mum...”
I shake my head. “I’m so sorry.” When I reach out for her she snatches her arm away, hands tightening into fists. She looks angry, as if I’m the one responsible.
“No! She isn’t dead. She’s just poorly, like last time. She told me you’d take me away from her. She said I should stay away from you.”
I can’t lie, the rejection hurts. It’s natural, though, and I can’t blame her. Instead I let my hand rest on the side of the bed, ready for her if she needs it.
“She didn’t make it,” I whisper. My voice sounds hoarse with emotion. “They tried to save her, they really did, but it was too late. She’d already gone.”
Allegra opens her mouth as if she’s going to talk but no words come out. Then I realise she isn’t speaking at all. She’s silently screaming. It’s all I can do not to join in. I ache to hold her, to comfort her, but I can’t, not until she’s ready, and it’s killing me to wait. She starts to rock back and forth, wrapping her arms around her waist, her breathing still stilted and harsh.
And still I wait, because that’s the only thing I can do.
It takes five minutes for her to calm down enough to speak, though it feels so much longer. She turns to me with wide eyes and asks, “Where will I go?”
How terrible not to know where you belong. I understand that feeling all too well. I tried to escape it by getting married, but even then it haunted me.
“You can come with me, if you’ll have me. It might take a few days, and you’ll have to stay here and be very brave, but I promise you I’ll sort things out as quickly as I can.
She inches a little closer to me. Her movement’s barely perceptible but it’s there.
“I have to find us somewhere to live, and I need to talk with your social worker about some grown-up stuff.” I lean closer, hoping she can feel how serious I am. “But I’m going to sort things out as fast as I can, because I want you with me.”
Her bottom lip trembles. “But Mum said I shouldn’t talk to you.”
Oh God, how to discuss this without shadowing her memory of Daisy? “I think... I think she’d want you to be with me. I know she was angry with me, but we would have made up. Like when you have a spat with your friends. Eventually you get over it, right?”
Allegra nods slowly.
“Well it was a bit like that. We argued about something stupid, but I still loved her. And you. We just had a difference of opinion.”
“What did you argue about?” Her voice is quiet, almost contemplative.
“About Darren.” I try to keep it as basic as possible. “I don’t like him very much but I upset your mum when I told her.”
She’s silent. I watch as she picks at the bobbles in her blanket, pulling off fibres and letting them fall gently onto the sheet. When she looks up at me, there’s something resembling understanding in her eyes.
“I don’t like him very much either.” She whispers it, as if he’s close enough to hear.
There’s so much to deal with, not only her mum’s death, but the way Darren treated her. It’s going to take more than a few weeks to mend her broken heart.
29
When Niall arrives later that afternoon I all but throw myself into his arms. Unlike me, he’s showered and dressed and is wearing a button-down shirt and navy trousers. He’s kind enough to ignore my dishevelled state. He holds me tightly, kissing my face with soft lips. I sort of melt into him, trying to absorb him by osmosis. I want his strength, his determination. In return I give him my paralysing fear.
“They won’t let me take her.” Three hours of meetings and about a hundred forms later, they told me it could take weeks for any application to go through. “Until I have a stable home they’re keeping her here.”
He tilts his head. Though his expression is sympathetic it isn’t shocked. I guess I got my hopes up and thought being on the inside would help me. All it did was land me with a hot cup of disappointment.
“We should get a lawyer,” he says. My eyebrows rise up when I hear him say “we”. “Do you know any good ones?”
For the first time in days I feel the urge to laugh, because I know a whole bloody chamber full of them, not that it’s any good to me now. “Apart from Simon?”
Niall stares at me for a minute. His next sentence is completely unexpected. “You should call him.”
One minute he’s kissing me, the next he’s telling me to call my husband. I don’t know what to make of it.
“Really?”
“What? You think I’m gonna get all macho and ban you from seeing him?” His lips twitch as if he’s trying to suppress a laugh. “That’s not me, you know that.”
Running his fingers through my ratty hair, he smooths it away from my face. I can’t stop staring at him. Does he know how right he makes me feel? Like I’m not that ditzy girl who broke down for years after Digby’s death. He looks at me as if I’m strong. Capable of anything.