Tom sat on the bed, feeling nostalgic for the old house, the old routines and the smaller spaces that used to exist between himself and his children.
Cassie’s tablet was on the floor beside the bed, charging. Tom picked it up, intending nothing more than to look at the cover, a vermilion-and-black spider’s web design, which on closer inspection revealed itself to be a dreamcatcher. It must be new. Her last one had had cartoon rabbits on it. He had bought it for her, thinking she’d appreciate the cheesy humour. She’d obviously grown tired of it. He opened the cover, intending nothing more than to see whether her tablet was fully charged – wasting electricity, a teenage-girl Olympic event. It was. He lightly touched the screen, intending to glance at Cassie’s choice of apps. The screen immediately asked him for her pass code. Without thought, he tapped in 1 – 2 – 0 – 4, her birthday, and was surprised when the screen opened; some things in her life hadn’t changed. He briefly scanned her pages, hunting for clues to this new, emerging incarnation of his daughter, but the apps told him little, other than that she was as mired in the same social-media web as every other teenager, which – curiously – reassured him.
He shifted his position on the bed and barely touched the Internet icon, intending simply to check that Cassie hadn’t been spending all her allowance on make-up. She hadn’t, though there were plenty of searches for exorbitantly expensive eyebrow pencils. She’d also googled a shop that repaired hair-straighteners and, reassuringly, found at least a little bit of time to do some homework, if the search on American Civil Rights was anything to go by. But there was one other search that definitely wasn’t 1960s US politics-related – family-planning clinics in their local area.
Tom closed the cover and dumped the tablet back on the floor, scalded by the insight into his daughter’s life that he’d had no intention of discovering.
Erin woke, having not thought she’d been asleep, to the absolute certainty that there was someone in the house.
She lay still, her heart thudding, neither flight nor fight winning. Had she locked the back door behind her when she came in? She couldn’t remember. Had some lad in a hoodie with a habit slipped through the side gate into the garden, peered through the windows and seen enough to make it worth his while? There was definitely someone upstairs. She could hear them moving around in her parents’ bedroom, searching for valuables, not caring how much noise they made, thinking the house was empty. Erin didn’t move, too frightened that they would hear her. The ‘awkward’ second drawer in her parents’ chest of drawers squeaked as it was yanked open.
Then her dad swore, softly.
It wasn’t a drug-dependent burglar about to attack her and leave her sprawled in a pool of blood, like a character in a TV drama. It was her dad. Of course it was. Erin unclenched and waited for her heart rate to steady. She was an idiot. She lay with her face stuck to her book, the horrid gluey taste of adrenaline coating her tongue, feeling stupid. Her dad came out onto the landing and she waited for him to barge in and make one of his chronically unfunny jokes, but instead of coming into her room, he went upstairs. She heard his footsteps cross the floor overhead, then silence. And then more silence.
Erin unpeeled her face from her book, pushed herself upright and listened to her dad, doing absolutely nothing, in her sister’s bedroom.
*
An hour later, Tom dished up dinner. They ate in the kitchen. Erin did her best to keep her father occupied with anecdotes about the new maths teacher with the personal hygiene problem. After they’d eaten – a huge bowlful of spag bol, with lots of cheese on top – and cleared up the kitchen, she made an effort and followed her dad into the lounge. He didn’t seem to want to be on his own. The only ‘compromise TV’ they could find was a natural history programme, but after five minutes of watching thousands of tiny, newly hatched turtles playing ‘chicken’ – and losing – across a six-lane highway in Hawaii, Erin couldn’t stand it any more. She excused herself and went back upstairs to have another go at her art homework. The minute she left the room she heard her dad switch over to the History Channel for some sepia Second World War footage of mass death and destruction. That was bound to cheer him up.
Her homework was a reinterpretation of Munch’s The Scream and it wasn’t going very well. The background colours were warring with the figure in the foreground and the perspective was off. Erin felt that with every mark she made, she was making it worse. As she worked, the picture grew darker and muddier, but she persevered, hoping that if she just kept going, somehow it would come together. She struggled on without interruption for over an hour, with the exception of a couple of texts from her mum, who was going through a chronic phase of emoji overuse. There was nothing from Cassie; there rarely was these days. And, thankfully, there were no more excursions upstairs by her dad.
Cassie got back later than normal. Erin had already been lying sleepless in her bed for nearly an hour by the time she heard her sister try and sneak into the house unnoticed. She failed. The lock was on a spring mechanism and, as always, it made a loud rattling noise as the door shut. Simultaneously, the sound of the TV cut out. Erin lay in the dark and waited. She heard footsteps. Cassie made it across the hall, but not up the stairs.
‘You said you’d be back by quarter past ten.’ Tom’s voice, full of suppressed irritation, was very clear. Erin waited for her sister’s response.
‘It was busy.’ Cassie’s voice was equally clear. But it wasn’t the words themselves that were the problem, it was the tone.
‘Cassie, you have to stick to what we agreed.’
Erin pushed herself up in bed and listened.
‘It’s only half an hour, what’s the problem?’ Cassie’s casual, but deliberate defiance echoed around the hallway.
‘It’s closer to an hour; it’s gone eleven p.m. Anyway, it’s not the time that’s the problem – it’s doing what you said you’d do. Or at least texting, if you’re going to be late.’
‘Oh God, Dad. Can’t you give it a rest!’ Cassie’s footsteps made it onto the stairs.
Tom’s voice went up a notch. ‘Cassie! Please don’t walk away from me when I’m talking to you.’
‘I’m tired. I’m going to bed,’ she replied. No hint of apology or compromise.
Tom’s next question was the one guaranteed to light the blue touchpaper. ‘Were you with Ryan?’
There was a long, long pause.
Cassie’s response, when it finally came, was loud, firm and final. ‘No.’
Erin heard her come up the last few stairs, cross the landing, go into the bathroom and close the door. The minutes ticked by. The loo flushed, the tap ran, she came back out. The landing light clicked off, plunging the house into darkness. Cassie thudded up the stairs to her den and shut herself in.
Conversation over.
Erin sat hunched up in bed, breath held, still waiting for her dad’s response.
But there was nothing – just the unmistakeable and unnerving sensation of him standing, silently, at the foot of the stairs in the dark.
Chapter 3
CASSIE NEARLY backed out of it. She put it off for more than a week, picked the Tuesday to definitely go, then conveniently couldn’t, because ‘something important’ cropped up. The Thursday was a bust as well, but on the following Monday she caught the bus into town after college, on her own, with every intention of going through with it.
The place was nothing special. It was a modern, two-storey building that could have been an office, but for the sign outside offering podiatry – whatever the hell that was – a dental clinic, a baby clinic and Cassie’s destination, the sexual-health and family-planning clinic. Even from way across the other side of the road, the sign made Cassie flush and feel hot. She watched people coming and going for at least ten minutes before screwing up enough courage to cross over and hurry through the automatic doors. Even then she could have backed out of it – was actively considering it – but the woman at the reception desk chose that precise moment to look up, sm
ile and say, really loudly, ‘Can I help you, love?’ It was purely Cassie’s inability to come up with a deflecting response that saw her being directed up to the first-floor waiting room, the one on the left, not the one on the right, unless she wanted her corns seeing to. Even then, Cassie could have not sat down and not waited for her turn. But she did.
The whole exercise had become a sort of test, a self-imposed challenge. It wasn’t about Ryan, not really. It was about her growing up, making her own decisions. She hadn’t told him what she was doing. He would have got the wrong idea; well, not wrong exactly, but he would have got excited, very excited, and the invisible red lines that she’d so carefully drawn around her body would have been wiped out in an instant. Cassie wasn’t sure she was ready for that, not yet. She liked the tension at the edge of what he wanted and what she would allow. She liked that the power was in her hands. But she also knew she was going to relinquish it, eventually, probably sooner rather than later, and when she did so, she wanted to be prepared.
Her parents should be proud of her for being so responsible, but she seriously doubted they would be.
‘Cassie Haines?’ a voice bellowed. Cassie leapt up and dropped her bag. She felt like a complete chump as she gathered up her stuff and followed the woman through into the consulting room. The website had promised that all the doctors at the clinic were female, but for a minute Cassie could have sworn that the person sitting at the desk was a man. Cropped hair, a big jaw, no make-up, bad jeans and a bland shirt. A bloke. Cassie stopped, two steps into the room.
‘Come in. Please.’ The Amazon indicated an empty chair.
Cassie sat down, clutching her bag to her chest.
‘Now, how can we help you today?’ On closer inspection, it was a woman – just. The he/she doctor waited patiently while Cassie stutteringly explained what she wanted. The following ten minutes were awkward. She stared at a point beyond the doctor’s left ear as she answered the questions about her intentions and her decisions. They seemed very keen to establish that Cassie knew the meaning of consent. She reassured them, more than once, that she did. The doctor was actually quite good. She was straightforward, helpful, un-judgy. She nodded, a lot, as if agreeing that Cassie was making a wise and sensible decision. Before too long they were onto which were the best methods of contraception to avoid pregnancy and which were better for protection against STDs. ‘You need to keep yourself healthy as well prevent conception,’ she advised. As the doctor talked, Cassie felt the screwed-up sensation in her gut ease.
Then a form was produced. The doctor clicked her pen. ‘I just need to ask a few last few questions about your medical history, specifically on your mother’s side. It helps us decide which device might be best suited to you. There can be a familial link to certain risk factors with some of the methods.’ The pen was poised ready to fill in the box. ‘Is there any history of breast cancer in your family?’
Cassie answered, ‘No’, but as the doctor started to write down her answer she realised she couldn’t say that. ‘Sorry,’ she blurted out, feeling stupid and unsettled, ‘I don’t know.’
The doctor scored through her original answer and scribbled DN on the form and continued. ‘Any history of strokes/ embolisms? That’s blood clots?’ she clarified.
Again Cassie had to answer, ‘I don’t know.’ Her voice grew fainter.
‘Obesity or diabetes?’ Another box to be ticked.
‘I don’t know.’ Her response was barely audible.
The doctor, sensing her discomfort, seemed reluctant to ask the next question. ‘And the last one: any mental-health issues that you are aware of – depression, schizophrenia, paranoia? Don’t worry if you don’t know; many of our patients haven’t a clue about their family’s medical history.’
Cassie didn’t answer.
Mercifully, the doctor stopped probing. ‘Well, like I said, it’s not too much of a problem, but I’m afraid we’re obliged to ask. I think we have enough to be getting on with. It might be good, however, if you could speak to a family member before your next appointment; your mum perhaps – if you feel you can – so that we can have a full record.’ She straightened the papers on her desk and seemed all set to proceed, but Cassie couldn’t cope with any more.
She stood up. She wanted out, and fast.
‘Cassie? Are you all right?’ the doctor asked.
She wasn’t, but she couldn’t tell them why. The concern on the doctor’s face only made it worse. Cassie panicked. ‘I’m sorry, I think I need to think about it some more, before I decide what to do. I’ll come back another day, maybe.’ And without waiting for a response, she walked out of the room.
Head down, cheeks burning, she hurried across the waiting room, down the stairs and out of the building. In her rush to get away from the clinic, she ran across the road without looking. She was rewarded by the blast of a horn, and a very unfriendly gesture from a white-van man, who shouted some obscenity at her through his open window. The shock tipped Cassie further into confusion. She suddenly hated Ryan for landing her in this position, in an area of the city she didn’t know, on her own, being asked questions she couldn’t possibly answer.
The sight of her bus approaching at least gave her a focus. She ran to the stop, got there just in time, paid and headed up to the top deck. Distance, that’s what she needed; distance and some space to breathe and compose herself. Unfortunately, the bus was busy. Cassie swayed to the back, targeting the only double seat that was still free. The bus pulled away as she claimed it. Within seconds the clinic had disappeared from view, but the shame lingered, slick and oily on her skin.
Cassie watched the streets and shops grind by, waiting for the embarrassment to fade; which it did, slowly, only to be replaced by something worse. She felt as if someone had grabbed hold of her and shaken her. She clung onto the handrail, desperate for the juddering sensation to settle. Until she’d stepped into that bloody clinic, her adoption had been an interesting but inert fact in her biography. She had been adopted as a toddler, so what? It was an irrelevance. An acknowledged part of her history, but something with no bearing on her everyday life. She rarely thought about it. Now she couldn’t stop. The doctor had woken up the reality of her adoption and sent it crashing around her brain, knocking over the familiar furniture of her life. She willed it to stop, but it wouldn’t. The truth was that she knew nothing about her medical history, because she knew virtually nothing about her life before her parents. She’d accepted their potted version of her past as if it didn’t really relate to her. What was wrong with her? Shouldn’t she have wanted to know more about her biological mother? It should have mattered. She should have mattered.
Cassie twisted and turned in her seat, struggling with the sudden awareness of her own ignorance. Only one thing was certain: her adoption now had the shadow of her actual, birth mother attached to it.
Chapter 4
GRACE WAS worried that Cassie had been abnormally quiet for the past week. Her usual flow of opinions and self-assertion had dried up. She ate with them, when she didn’t have a shift at the hotel, did what they asked – which was a relief – and appeared to be doing some work for college, but she seemed absent, distracted. After every meal she either retreated straight upstairs to her own room or to Erin’s, closing doors behind her. It left a void. In the evenings it was almost as if they didn’t have children. Tom was relaxed about it, privately enjoying this quieter, less combative version of his daughter. He was pleased that Cassie was home more. Secretly he was hoping that she’d ditched, or been ditched by, Ryan. There had been no sign or mention of him of late. If it was a break-up – fingers crossed – and she was a little down, she’d survive. Ryan had looked eminently replaceable, to Tom. But Grace was concerned.
So when Cassie was running late for work on the Saturday morning, Grace went up to her room, knocked and tentatively offered her a lift. Grace hoped that the time in the car might give them a chance to talk. For a second she thought Cassie was going to turn her down
, but then she shrugged and said, ‘Okay, yes please.’
Grace crossed the room and sat on the bed as Cassie rushed around, shoving things into her bag. When she’d got her stuff together, she flumped down on the floor in front of her mirror and started dragging a comb impatiently through her hair. Grace winced as she watched. The rasp of the comb announced the damage that Cassie was doing. Grace risked taking another small step – by offering to help. Again Cassie surprised her by agreeing. Grace took up her position behind her daughter on the floor, picked up the comb and began working it through Cassie’s hair, a section at time, carefully, lovingly. Patience paid dividends with hair like theirs. Beneath her hands she could feel energy crackling through her daughter, the thrum of a thousand unspoken emotions, but Grace told herself to ignore the clamour. She concentrated on the task at hand and on the curve of Cassie’s skull beneath her fingers, working efficiently and gently.
Her touch seemed to have the desired effect, or perhaps it was the familiar smell of the oil and the comfort of old routines. Whatever it was, the vibe in the room softened and Cassie submitted willingly to her mother’s attention – just as she had fourteen years ago, when Cassie was Cassidie, and Grace was yet to become a mother.
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