One sharp, hard bang.
Forehead to glass.
The pain vented the pressure.
That had been the beginning.
Of course the social worker’s intention had been to get information from her, not give it to her. But once the interfering bastard had called, it was out of his hands and into hers, for a change. Social media had provided the rest. The hotel had come courtesy of Cassidie’s waiter friend Freddie; Cassidie’s college Leah had identified from the badge on her prissy blazer on a Facebook photo; the date of the Open Day had been plastered all over the college website.
It was all useful information – from which Leah was slowly but surely creating a picture of the new world that Cassidie now inhabited. There were still a lot of gaps, but she had hopes that today’s visit would provide a few more of the missing pieces.
In contrast to Cassie’s low-rent waitressing job and grubbing around on the back seat of cars, the evidence from the college pointed to a world of tree-lined streets and double-parked 4x4s. She should have known that Cassidie was only slumming it at the hotel. This was her real existence: a polite, middle-class universe where seventeen-year-olds were treated like little kids, ferried around by their ‘mummies’ and kept in school. Where they were protected and pampered and provided with the latest phones and bags and shoes – and anything else they asked for. A world of the ‘haves’ and ‘want mores’.
The bitter little creature that had being growing inside Leah ever since she’d spoken to the social worker stretched and pushed its sharp fingers up between her ribs. She sat on the bench and studied the scene in front of her, silently feeding the creature titbits of information that fuelled rather than sated its growing hunger.
‘Cass, wait! Can I get that book off you?’
Leah hadn’t realised the buildings behind her were part of the college as well. She dipped her head.
‘Yeah, sure.’ Cassidie’s voice was close. The accent born of a different upbringing. Leah didn’t turn round. There was a pause – the book exchange? – then footsteps. Cassidie passed along the path in front of the bench, within touching distance.
Leah kept her eyes down, letting her hair fall down to mask her face. She glimpsed black skinny jeans and good trainers. Then Cassidie was past. Leah raised her head and watched her cross the square and head towards the college entrance. Just another student. But not. The hair was the clincher. The halo. It was definitely Cassidie.
Leah waited for her to be swallowed up by the building, where she couldn’t follow, but Cassidie didn’t head inside. She veered to the left and went to sit on the low wall that ran in a curve around the front of the college. Cassidie was facing Leah, looking straight at her, looking straight through her.
The observer and the observed.
A fourteen-year gap separated them. It felt like a hundred. Enough time to blank it all out, but never forget. Plenty of time to imagine, but to never know. And yet there she was, thirty feet away, flesh and blood. Real. Reachable. Not that Leah had any intention of reaching out to her. None whatsoever. This was a reconnaissance exercise, not a reunion. That would come later, when she’d made up her mind about what she was going to do and, more importantly, how she was going do it.
For five, maybe ten minutes Leah watched Cassidie as she messed with her hair and rooted around in her bag. She watched Cassidie check her phone repeatedly, and say ‘Hi’ to a couple of lads, and not once during that time did Cassidie seem to register her presence. She was invisible. Irrelevant. For now.
A group of Cassidie’s friends finally emerged from the main building and they set off together, walking away from college, laughing and chatting.
Leah waited a few seconds, then got to her feet.
Then she followed Cassidie – at a ‘safe’ distance – all the way home.
Chapter 18
LEAH WASN’T surprised by how nice Cassidie’s house was – how big, how pretty, how much space and greenery and light there was. It exactly suited this reborn, alien creature who used to be Cassidie.
She was beautiful.
Her house was beautiful
Her life was probably fucking beautiful.
It all added up.
Cassidie let herself in and banged the front door shut. Cassidie on the inside, Leah on the outside. Leah counted the blips of the alarm. You never knew what might be useful.
Then nothing. No signs of activity at all. The house stared back at her blankly, challenging her to state her business or piss off out of there. She had no excuse, after all, for hanging around the leafy suburbs. It looked suspicious – like she was up to no good. But hang around she did, hidden in the passageway between the two massive houses that faced Cassidie’s lovely detached home. It helped that it was so quiet. Apart from the distant sound of someone cutting a hedge, it was like a ghost town. There was nothing to see, no one else around, but that was good. It meant there was less chance of her being spotted and questioned. When her phone suddenly beeped, it sounded way too loud. She read Naz’s message, but didn’t respond. She switched it to silent after that, just to be on the safe side.
Leah leant back against the wall. She was prepared to wait for as long as it took. In her notes they always described her as impulsive, impatient, someone who was easily distracted, who gave up easily – but they were wrong. She’d just never had anything to concentrate on or care about before. Now she had. She shifted her position, scratched at the scars on her left hand and carried on watching.
And her patience eventually paid off, with the arrival back home of not one parent, but two.
‘The mother’ got back first.
A five-second glimpse was all Leah got, but it was enough. The shocking black skin against the smudged colours of the garden. The strong profile. The pronounced lift of her chin. The stature. The presence. The long, striding walk. It was less an image than a deep, indelible impression of grace and confidence. She was obviously a total bitch. The physical reality of ‘the mother’ brought up bile. It filled Leah’s mouth with sourness.
Ten minutes later ‘the father’ arrived.
She watched his car turn into the driveway and park. Him she saw more of. He got out, stretched his back and turned away from the house towards the road for second or two. It was as if he was preening, just for her. He was one of those trendy business types in a smart suit with a stupid, splashy tie. His hair was too long for his age, touching his collar – an attempt to hang on to his youth, which failed. She guessed he was in his forties; dark-framed specs, a fucking man-bag to complete the image. He was obviously a total wanker.
The ‘parents’ and their ‘daughter’ – all home safe and sound together. Such a happy family.
The creature in Leah’s gut shifted. She slumped back against the wall, feeling tired out. Stick or twist. Something deep inside her told her to stick it out. The evening wasn’t anywhere near over yet.
So much for her having no stamina.
The council of peace took place in the lounge. Grace gathered them together as soon as Tom got in from work. He didn’t even have time to change out of his suit, though he eased off his shoes and pulled off his tie in a bid to feel more comfortable and look more dad-like. He chose the big chair in the corner and sat, wrapping and unwrapping his tie round his hand like a silk knuckle-duster, a repetitive, nervous gesture. Erin offered to step out again, but Grace shook her head. ‘No, darling, this affects you as well – we want you to stay. As long as that’s okay with your sister.’ Cassie nodded.
Tom stilled his hands and cleared his throat. ‘Your mum and I have been talking about the questions you have about your adoption. We know how much it’s been on your mind recently.’ He took a breath. ‘What we told you was the truth, as far as we know it. We’re sorry; we should’ve shared more of it with you – with both of you – before now. I suppose we didn’t because we wanted to protect you. And, in all honesty, we didn’t realise you really wanted to know the details.’
Cassie shifted in
her seat, as if she was about to say something, so Tom picked up the pace.
‘But now, obviously, you do. And that’s completely understandable. So we were wondering if it would help if we told you more about Jane, your foster mum, and about what happened in those early few weeks when we first met you. Mum says you’ve been having dreams about her?’
Cassie made a noise, which Tom took as assent. Erin wasn’t so sure.
‘She was a very experienced foster carer. She looked after a lot of kids, over a lot of years. She was a motherly sort of person. Well suited to her job. She really helped us get to know you at the start, kind of introduced us to you. Made it all less stressful, for everyone. They lived over in Stockport. She, her husband and their daughter. She must have packed it in by now, given her age, but if you think it would help, we could try to contact her. We don’t have her an up-to-date phone number or address for her any more, but we could try getting back in touch with Social Services and see if they can arrange something. They might be able to track her down. Do you think you might want that?’ Tom seemed to lose momentum as he spoke. ‘You know…to have the chance to talk to someone else about your adoption? And about what you were like, before we came on the scene?’
Grace and Tom looked expectantly at Cassie. She nodded. ‘Yeah, I suppose that might be useful.’ There was a beat. ‘And while you’re talking to them about Jane you can ask them about my biological mother.’
Tom blinked and looked at Grace. ‘Is that what you really want?’
‘Yes.’ Cassie sat up straighter on the sofa, to underline her seriousness. ‘It isn’t anything to do with not feeling part of this family.’ At this, she glanced at Erin. ‘I do. I love you all. You know that. But I want to know more about her. Can you understand that?’ She did want them to understand. She really wasn’t doing this to hurt them.
Tom pulled the tie free from his fist, then started slowly rewinding it around his knuckles again. Erin focused on the way the pattern changed as he worried away at it. ‘But, Cassie, what are you hoping to discover?’
Cassie was already leaning forward, ready to argue her point. ‘I just want to know what happened to her.’
‘And if she’s still around, what then?’ Grace asked. ‘Would you want to contact her, write to her? Meet her?’ The dark red flush on her neck belied the calm tone of her voice.
‘Maybe? I don’t know.’ The thought of it made Cassie feel vaguely sick.
‘That’s what’s worrying us,’ Tom said. Cassie arched even further forward, but he held up his hand. ‘Cassie, listen for a minute. We’re not saying “No”, we’re saying let’s take this a step at a time. It’s not sensible to start on something like this, not knowing what you want out of it and where it might end.’
Grace joined in. ‘And there will be processes that need to be followed. A closed adoption is an absolute thing – legally binding. I honestly don’t know what the situation is, in terms of contact. It’s such a long time since we’ve had any dealings with the Adoption Service. Why not let me speak to them, explain the situation? They’ll know, from experience, what to do and what the outcomes are likely to be. Isn’t that sensible? To tread carefully, at least to start with?’
They all looked at Cassie. At last she muttered, ‘All right.’
Tom leant over and patted her hand. ‘Good girl.’ He was too busy meeting Grace’s eye to spot that he’d tipped the scales too far.
‘I’m not six!’ Cassie growled.
Tom began back-pedalling, but it was too late. ‘No one said—’
‘You can’t fob me off with a trip to see some old lady who looked after me for a few months when I was tiny. I want to find my mum. It can’t be that difficult to understand.’ They really didn’t get it. It was all just words to put her off.
‘Cass!’ Tom met her aggression with a hint of his own. He tossed the tie aside in frustration.
Cassie burned brighter. ‘No. You don’t get to decide this for me. I do.’ She stood up and looked down at all three of them. ‘It’s my life. I’ve a right to find out about it.’ She didn’t wait for Grace to reach out to comfort her, or for Tom to argue with her; she simply turned and stalked out of the room. Followed, a few seconds later, by Erin.
Cassie’s bedroom door was shut, so Erin had to knock.
‘Leave me alone!’ Cassie shouted.
‘It’s me,’ Erin answered.
There was a long pause. ‘All right. You can come in.’
Erin pushed opened the door. Cassie was rifling through her clothes drawers, bad-temperedly trying on tops. ‘Going out?’ Erin asked. Ryan! Erin hated Cassie having a boyfriend who took up so much of her time and her attention in general, but what she hated even more was that when the going got tough, she turned to him.
‘There’s no point staying here, is there?’ She yanked off a shirt, without undoing the buttons, and threw it on top of the growing pile on her chair. She pulled a T-shirt over her bra, glanced at the fit, approved of what she saw and flumped down onto the floor, in front of the big mirror that was propped against the wall. She started ‘putting on her face’.
Erin stood by the door, uncertain. She desperately wanted to prove to Cassie that she was the only one who understood, the only one who truly cared what she was going through – certainly more than Ryan – but it was hard to break through to her sister when she was in one of her fierce moods, so Erin stayed on the threshold. In the mirror she watched her sister transforming herself from someone familiar into someone barely recognisable; someone harder, more polished and more alien.
‘What?’ Cassie paused, pencil in hand, one eye heavily rimmed with kohl, the other smaller and naked-looking. Erin was struck by the image and wished for a split second that she had her phone with her, to take a picture. ‘Erin! What do you want?’ Cassie looked back at her own reflection and continued to submerge herself beneath a palette of well-applied cosmetics.
‘I want to help.’
‘I don’t need your help.’
Erin shrank back from her fierceness, and Cassie noticed. Her hand dropped into her lap. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t take it out on you, but they drive me insane.’
‘They did say they’d contact Social Services.’
‘Yeah, but they don’t really want to. You heard them.’ Erin made a non-committal noise and Cassie went back to making up her face. ‘They want to control everything. Just like always.’ She paused and reviewed her handiwork: two slashes of lip-tint and she was done. Then she said something that sent a shiver through Erin. ‘Anyway, it might not be up to them.’ Cassie picked up her phone, scrolled through it, then held it out to Erin.
Erin came into the room and took it from her sister. She looked at the screen and found herself staring at an old photo. It took her a second to realise what she was seeing. It was an appeal for information about Cassie’s birth mum. ‘But what are the chances…’
‘Well, crap, obviously,’ Cassie said dismissively. ‘I’ve had nothing back yet – well, nothing useful – but you never know.’
Erin passed the phone back. The thought of the appeal pinging around cyberspace freaked her out. It seemed such a risky thing to do, so revealing and vulnerable. There was no telling who might reply to it. She was shocked that Cassie had taken things into her own hands so directly, but on reflection, she wasn’t really surprised. It was classic Cassie, jumping in, feet first.
Cassie slung on a jacket and grabbed her bag. ‘Don’t look so worried, Sis. It’s a long shot, but she must be out there, somewhere.’
Chapter 19
LEAH WAS tired and needed to piss, but she stuck at her post. It was tedious, but also curiously compulsive to stand in the shadows, watching someone else’s life. It was if she was absorbing information through her skin, committing tiny details to memory. The layout of the house and the gardens, the path at the side that perhaps led to a back door, the absence of a dog, the big windows in the roof that must look straight up to the sky: that might be Cassidie’s room. An
d from her vantage point she could just about make out who was who, through the big lounge window. They seemed to be sitting there – doing nothing.
Six days ago she’d known nothing about Cassidie’s new life, or at least nothing useful. Now she knew where her college was, what her friends looked like; she had her home address, knew who her parents were, which cars they drove; she knew where Cassidie worked – even who she was screwing, and where.
But it still wasn’t enough.
It would never be enough.
There was still a huge gap: the years and years of denied access and ignorance. The thought of it was messing with her head, stirring up emotions that she thought had died long ago, due to wilful neglect. Thinking again, feeling again, reflecting on the past – it was bad. It never led anywhere good. And yet ever since that first phone call, she’d been unable to stop thinking – and feeling – and hurting. She put her hand to her forehead and pressed.
The door slamming brought her back to the matter in hand.
Cassidie burst out of the house and strode away, her bag bouncing against her hip. Leah could tell by her pace and the set of her shoulders that she was pissed off. For a second she was tempted to let her go, let it all go, leave the past alone, but the creature inside was demanding more, so she pushed herself off from the wall and set off in pursuit.
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