S: Is there any chance that the reason Diane avoided visiting near the end was because she found it so difficult to watch your mother die?
H: Hmm. That’s not how it felt at the time.
S: Everyone deals with death differently, Hannah. Don’t take this the wrong way – I’m playing devil’s advocate – but is it possible that your view of the situation might be coloured by your subsequent falling-out with your sister?
H: I honestly don’t know. Maybe.
S: In terms of each of your relationships with your parents, do you think Diane remembers things the same way as you do? With pairs of siblings, it’s not uncommon for both to consider the other to be the parents’ favourite. I’m not saying this is true in your case, but some parents deliberately play their children off against one another.
H: Possibly, I guess. Like I said, she definitely thought of me being favoured when we were children. She often used to call me a goody two-shoes or a swat; she’d moan to Mum and Dad that they were tougher on her than me. Once we were adults, I’ve no idea what they told her out of my earshot, but I suppose they might have bugged her about following my example and settling down with a nice man. They certainly used to bother me about giving them another grandchild, although Mark and I had made it very clear this wasn’t on the cards.
S: Did that upset you?
H: What? That it wasn’t on the cards or that Mum and Dad nagged me about it?
S: This is your session, Hannah. You should focus on whatever you feel to be most relevant.
H: Um, I’m not sure. We’ve spoken before about me and Mark not having children, haven’t we? It wasn’t my initial preference, but I accepted it a long time ago. I chose my husband. I suppose it did grate a bit when Mum and Dad used to bring it up though, like rubbing salt into a wound.
S: Wound. That’s an interesting word choice. It suggests you hadn’t fully come to terms with your decision at that point.
H: Well, no. I can’t disagree with that. There were times when it was hard, especially after Mia was born; even when Diane was pregnant. It reminded me what could have been. What I was missing out on.
S: And now, having Mia back in your life as a teenager? Do you have those feelings again?
H: Um, it’s not quite the same as when she was little. Being around babies often seems to trigger something, I don’t know … biological? That broody feeling. Whatever, it’s different with a fourteen-year-old. When I’ve looked at my niece these last few days, I’ve often found myself feeling sad; regretting all those years of her life I’ve missed out on. It’s most of her childhood. That’s not something I’ll ever get back.
S: Does that make you angry at Diane for taking her away?
H: Definitely.
CHAPTER 6
Hannah read her sister’s text message for about the thirtieth time since receiving it yesterday lunchtime.
Please don’t call the police. There’s really no need. I’m fine. Just busy sorting things out. Taking longer than expected, but I’ll be in touch soon.
That was the sum total of Diane’s communication with her since leaving Mia in her care last Saturday morning. It was Thursday now; tomorrow it would be a week on from when the two of them had rolled back into her life, like a travelling circus taking over an empty field. And still Hannah had no idea when Diane would be coming back to get Mia.
Both she and Mark had tried phoning and texting her countless times since learning she hadn’t even been in touch with her daughter. But until this message had arrived, following hot on the heels of Hannah’s threat to call the police in an emotional voicemail plea, none of them had heard anything.
In fact, soon after the arrival of the text, Mia had burst out of her bedroom, announcing that she too had heard from her mother. But in her case it had been a short phone call.
‘Excellent,’ Hannah had replied, thinking it was about damn time. ‘What did she say?’
‘That she was sorry for not being in touch earlier. She’s been really busy, apparently. Oh, and for us not to worry.’
‘Did she mention anything about when she’ll be coming back?’
Mia’s face had fallen at this question, the rare glint of happiness fading from her eyes. ‘Um, only that she wasn’t sure yet when that would be. But it didn’t sound like it would take too long. Is that … okay?’
‘Of course,’ Hannah had replied. ‘You’re welcome here for as long as you need. You’re family, Mia, and family sticks together at times like this. Besides, we love having you staying with us.’
Hannah hadn’t mentioned the fact that, prior to Mia’s arrival, she and Mark had discussed the possibility of jetting away for a last-minute city break to somewhere like Madrid or Lisbon this weekend. Equally she hadn’t told her niece about the dinner reservation for two she’d had to cancel the other night in one of Manchester’s most exclusive new restaurants. Such things could always be rescheduled. And the last thing Hannah wanted was for Mia to feel like she was getting in the way.
Back in the present, sitting at her desk in the lounge, looking at her phone when she ought to have been writing, Hannah wondered whether to try calling Diane again now.
She and Mark had discussed this before he left for work and they’d agreed it was best to wait for a few more days. But every time she read that damn message over again or even thought about it, she felt herself itching to do something on the spot.
If only she knew what Diane was up to and why it was taking so long. But after not seeing her for more than a decade, Hannah didn’t have a clue. She knew next to nothing about her sister’s life nowadays and wasn’t comfortable asking Mia many questions, for fear of worrying her or making her feel awkward. The teenager had mentioned in passing that Diane now worked in some kind of recruitment role, but despite some gentle nudging, she hadn’t elaborated. Was this because she knew her mum wouldn’t want her aunt to know more?
Ever since her niece had come to stay, Hannah had wondered what kind of things Diane had said to her over the years about the sister with whom she’d fallen out. Had she bitched about her, slowly poisoning Mia’s mind, or had she avoided all mention of her? Hannah doubted she would have had anything nice to say – not after the awful way things had ended between them – which was why she still couldn’t get her head around her choosing this as the best place to leave her only child.
And what would happen once Diane did return? Would she whisk Mia away down south again, not to be seen for another decade, or would this be the start of a healing process? Hannah wasn’t even sure if she wanted that. She’d got used to things as they were now and she’d never been very good at dealing with change. If she did allow her sister back into her life, it could blow up in her face. Hannah couldn’t bear to have to go through all of that anguish again, which was why she’d returned to counselling on Monday to keep herself on an even keel.
Over the past week she’d given some thought to what kind of mess Diane had got herself into. The three most likely possibilities she’d come up with were: drugs/alcohol issues, a boyfriend turned nasty, and/or money problems. None of these theories were rooted in solid facts, though; they were pure speculation, based on what she knew about her sister before they fell out.
For instance, Diane used to like a drink and, unlike Hannah, had dabbled in recreational drugs when she was younger. She’d gone out with some dodgy blokes in her time, having always had a thing for bad boys. Plus she’d always been better at spending money than saving it.
‘Don’t you think she’d have asked us for help by now if the issue was financial?’ That had been Mark’s take on the money theory when they’d discussed it the other night, out of Mia’s earshot. He’d also pointed out: ‘Remember you thought she was going to ask for cash when she first turned up.’
‘Yes, but maybe she’s too proud to do that. I’d probably be the last person she’d want to come begging to, don’t you think?’
Mark had snorted at this. ‘Well, she pretty much did that when she asked
us to look after Mia for her, didn’t she?’
‘True. But I don’t think that’s quite the same as asking for money.’
Hannah hadn’t suggested any of these things directly to Mia – but she had tried a little fishing. For a start, she’d asked how things were with her mum generally, to which she’d got a very informative ‘fine’, accompanied by a shrug. She’d also queried whether Diane had a boyfriend, to which Mia had replied: ‘Not that I know of. She goes out on dates occasionally, but not recently. She’s always said she won’t bring a man home to meet me unless she’s really serious about him. I guess that means there’s not been anyone serious so far.’
That didn’t rule out a dodgy boyfriend, mind: the kind she wouldn’t ever want to meet her daughter. Perhaps that was why she’d hidden her away up north, to keep her out of his reach. Maybe he was a drug dealer who’d got her hooked on something nasty and, because she owed him so much money, had threatened to pimp Mia out to his sleazy, disgusting friends. They could have had a fight during which she’d killed him and now she was busy chopping up the body and disposing of the parts.
Hmm, Hannah thought, frowning at the black computer screen facing her. The machine was on, but it had gone into standby due to lack of use. Great. She was able to dream up all kinds of outlandish scenarios when it came to imagining what the hell her sister was up to, but could she get any work done on her actual book? Not so much.
‘Come on, Hannah,’ she told herself. ‘Stop procrastinating and get on with it.’
She activated the screen of her laptop and peered at the time: 8.41 a.m. Dammit. That meant she’d been sitting here for nearly an hour and hadn’t written a single word, despite that being the sole reason she’d plonked herself down at her desk so early.
First she’d wasted far too long browsing news websites to read that morning’s headlines. Then she’d opened her emails and seen a request for a meter reading from their electricity provider, which of course she’d had to do immediately rather than sometime later. And finally there had been all that time she’d spent wondering about bloody Diane.
Having done next to no writing since Mia’s arrival, Hannah had made a decision in bed late last night. She’d been kept awake by a combination of Mark’s on-off snoring and puffing noises as he breathed, together with her own restless brain. And as her mind wandered from one worry to another, she’d determined early morning was the best time of day for her to crack on with book two. So she’d planned on rising bang on 7 a.m. today, as soon as Mark had left for work, and getting a good shift in before her house guest even got up. However, the plan had gone awry from the off when, still tired from her lack of sleep, she hadn’t managed to drag herself out of bed until 7.30 a.m.
She’d fallen into the habit of waking Mia at around 10.30 a.m. and then making breakfast. It did seem a little lazy to Hannah that her niece needed to lie in for so long every day, but she’d decided to let it slide on the grounds that she was, after all, a teenager on holiday from school.
Anyway, at 8.45 a.m. Hannah finally wrote her first fresh sentence in nearly a week. Then she deleted it, stared at the screen for a while and rewrote it as it had been the first time. She sighed, dragged a hand through her uncombed hair, and typed some more.
She was finally starting to find something approaching her flow, around twenty-five minutes later, when she heard the sound of a door opening in the hall.
‘Morning,’ came Mia’s voice a second later.
Hannah twisted around in the desk chair and saw her niece standing in the open doorway of the lounge in her dressing gown, hair all over the place like she’d been backcombing it. ‘Oh, hello there,’ she said, doing her best to hide the frustration she felt at being interrupted. ‘You’re awake earlier than usual.’
Mia yawned. ‘I guess I am. What are you doing?’
‘Um, just catching up on some things,’ Hannah replied, a strange, self-conscious feeling washing over her. Fearful that Mia might walk over and start reading what she’d written, she fought off the urge to shut the laptop. But she needn’t have worried. The teenager merely nodded and announced she was going for a shower.
‘No problem,’ Hannah said. ‘I’ll make us some breakfast when you get out. Oh, and please remember to put the extractor fan on in the bathroom.’
‘Will do,’ Mia replied, although when Hannah walked past a few minutes later, she saw the switch for the fan was still off and, with a sigh, turned it on herself. The last thing Hannah wanted to be was a nag, but she knew from experience how long her niece’s showers tended to last – and all that steam needed somewhere to escape.
‘Um, you forgot to put the fan on again when you were in the shower,’ she said later over breakfast. ‘Please try to remember. Otherwise the bathroom will get mouldy.’
‘Did I?’ Mia replied. ‘I’m sure it was on.’
‘Well, it was, but that’s because I turned it on when I saw you hadn’t.’
‘Oh, okay.’
Hannah hesitated before adding: ‘And would you mind terribly not hanging your wet towel over the bedroom door? There’s plenty of room on the rail in the bathroom.’
‘Sure,’ Mia replied, like it was the first time her aunt had asked her this rather than the fourth or fifth.
Moving the conversation on to less awkward matters, Hannah asked how she was getting on with the book she was reading.
‘Oh, yeah. I finished it last night.’
‘Good ending?’
‘It was, actually, but now I feel a bit sad to have finished it,’ Mia replied, in between mouthfuls of toast, ‘especially as it was the last part of a trilogy.’
‘I know what you mean. I think it sometimes feels like losing a friend when you finish a good book. Have you got something to read next?’
Mia nodded and said she had some things on her Kindle. After a slight hesitation, she added that she’d noticed some interesting novels on the large bookshelf in the lounge. ‘Would it be okay if I, um—’
‘Of course,’ Hannah said, almost too enthusiastically. ‘Help yourself. Read anything you like.’
She had to stop herself from grinning at this point, enjoying having something to bond over with Mia. So far, despite the fact that Mark had been out at work a lot for the last few days, he seemed to be the one Mia preferred. She was usually more animated and engaged when he was around, spending less time cooped up in her bedroom than when it was just the two of them.
Hannah had been getting a bit paranoid about this, even though she told herself it was probably down to the novelty of having a man around – a potential father figure even – which had apparently never been the case at home.
She’d also considered the fact that perhaps she reminded Mia a bit too much of her own mother – and that was weird for her.
Since books seemed to be the thing they had most in common, Hannah was itching to ask which ones in particular Mia had her eye on. Maybe now was also the right time to mention her own soon-to-be-released novel: a subject that hadn’t arisen so far and which Mark was still under orders not to bring up without her approval.
But a voice in her head told her to stop. It warned her that now was a good time to sit back, play it cool, and let Mia continue to be chatty, rather than taking over the conversation with her own agenda. She’d read somewhere that teenagers were like cats; if you tried too hard with them, they wouldn’t warm to you. Whether that was true or not, she had no idea. But it felt like the best course of action here, so she went with it.
‘Is there anything you fancy doing today?’ Hannah asked instead.
So far that week they’d been out for several short trips around the city together, including visits to Manchester Art Gallery, the Museum of Science and Industry and the Whitworth. Mia hadn’t seemed to enjoy any of these places as much as Hannah, though. She’d walked around with her, smiling and nodding in the right places, but there hadn’t been any genuine spark of interest so far as Hannah could tell.
Apart from the Whitwo
rth, an art gallery where she sometimes went to think or write in its glass-walled café overlooking the park and all its squirrels, she hadn’t been to these attractions for ages. It was all too easy to forget about what was on your own doorstep.
Mind you, they were all the kinds of locations kids went on school trips, because they were educational. Mia was a teenager on holiday from school, so maybe they weren’t good choices in the first place.
But what else was Hannah supposed to do to entertain her niece? She could barely remember what kind of thing she was into at fourteen – and that was pretty much her only frame of reference.
Mia shuffled in her chair and cleared her throat before replying. ‘Um, I was wondering if it might be okay for me to go out for a bit by myself today.’ Her eyes darted all around the room, looking everywhere apart from at Hannah, while her fingers grasped at each other on the surface of the kitchen table.
‘Right,’ Hannah replied, trying to disguise her surprise. ‘I see. Is that, er, something you’re allowed to do at home in Bournemouth?’
‘Yes, definitely.’ Mia nodded, finally meeting her aunt’s gaze with an earnest look. ‘I go out by myself all the time. I walk twenty minutes to school and back every day during termtime.’
Hannah found herself in unchartered waters. Diane hadn’t given her any guidelines about this kind of thing, so she guessed it was up to her to decide. But what if something happened to Mia while she was out alone? She’d never forgive herself. It was all well and good Mia saying she was allowed to do this kind of thing at home. But teenagers couldn’t always be relied on to tell the truth, could they? And if she was anything like her mother … Diane had told fibs all the time when they were growing up. How often had Hannah had to cover for her less well-behaved sister?
And yet her niece was fourteen. She’d seen plenty of kids her age wandering around the city centre without adult supervision. Plus she was fast running out of ideas about how to keep her entertained; if Mia was able to do things by herself, Hannah would get more time to write.
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