The safe house

‘Do you want an apple?’

‘No.’

‘I want to go home,’ Kirsty said, and she began to cry, really cry, with big tears running over her red cheeks.

I picked her up and carried her through to the living room. Finn wasn’t there, thank Christ. Holding Kirsty in my left arm, I pulled a box of toys from behind the sofa and shouted to Linda to bring Elsie down, by force if necessary. There were dolls without clothes, clothes without dolls.

‘Would you like to dress the dollies, Kirsty?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said Kirsty.

An equally cross Elsie was dragged into the room.

‘Elsie, wouldn’t you like to help Kirsty dress the dollies?’

‘No.’

The phone rang out in the hall.

‘Answer that, Linda. You love the dollies, don’t you, Elsie? Why don’t you show them to Kirsty?’

‘Don’t want to.’

‘You’re supposed to be fucking friends.’

Both of them were crying when Linda came back into the room.

‘It’s a Thelma for you,’ she said.

‘Christ, tell her to… no, I’d better take it in my office. Don’t let anybody leave this room.’

Thelma was ringing to find out how it was going, and I described the situation as quickly as I could. Even so, it was more than twenty minutes before I could get off the line and I left my office expecting screams and blood on the walls and legal action from Kirsty’s mother and the intervention of Essex social services and an inquiry culminating in my being struck off. Instead, the first sound I heard was miniature tinkling laughter. Linda must be a miracle worker, I thought to myself, but as I turned the corner I saw Linda standing in the hall by the partially open door.

‘What…?’ I began, but she held a finger to her lips and gestured me forwards with a smile.

I tiptoed towards her and stared through the crack. There was a thin scream of delight which crumbled into gurgling laughter.

‘Where’d it go?’

‘I don’t know.’

Whose voice was that? It couldn’t be.

‘You do, you do,’ two little voices were insisting.

‘But I think it might be in Kirsty’s ear. Shall we look? Yes, there it is.’

There were more tiny shrieks.

‘Do it again, Fing. Do it again.’

Elsie and Kirsty were kneeling on the carpet. Very slowly, I peered round the edge of the door. Finn was sitting in front of them holding a little yellow ball from the play-box between the thumb and index finger of her left hand.

‘I don’t think I can,’ she said and rubbed her hands together, transferring the ball from her left to her right hand. ‘But maybe we can try.’ She held her left hand forward. ‘Can you blow?’

Elsie and Kirsty blew with furrowed brows and round cheeks.

‘And say the magic word.’

‘Abracadabra.’

Finn opened her left fist. The ball was gone, of course. It was a terrible magic trick, but both little girls gasped in amazement and shrieked and laughed. None of them saw us, and I stepped back into the hall.

‘Let’s not get in the way,’ I whispered, and we tiptoed away.

‘I’m amazed,’ said Kirsty’s mother, as she stood in the doorway waiting to leave two hours later. ‘I’ve never seen Kirsty like this in anybody else’s house.’

‘Oh, well,’ I said modestly, ‘we tried to make her feel at home.’

‘I don’t know how you did it,’ said Kirsty’s mother. ‘Come on, Kirsty. Goodbye, Elsie, would you like to come and play with Kirsty some time at our house?’

‘I don’t want to go,’ said Kirsty, tears in her eyes once more. ‘I want to stay with Fing.’

‘Who’s Fing?’ asked Kirsty’s mother. ‘Is that you?’

‘No,’ I admitted. ‘She’s – Fiona’s – someone who’s staying with me.’

‘I don’t want to go,’ shrieked Kirsty.

Kirsty’s mother picked her up and carried her out. I shut the door behind her. The screams receded into the night. There was the slam of a car door and they ceased. I knelt and held Elsie close.

‘Did you like that?’ I asked softly in her ear.

She nodded. She had a glow about her.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Run upstairs and take your clothes off. I’ll come up in a minute and put you in the bath.’

‘Can Fing come? Can she read me a story?’

‘We’ll see. Now go on.’

I watched the back of her strong little body making its way up the stairs. I turned and walked back into the sitting room. The television was on. Finn was sitting watching. I sat next to her, and she showed no sign of having noticed me. I looked at the screen and tried to work out what the programme was. Suddenly I felt her hand on mine. I turned and she was looking at me.

‘I’ve been a drag,’ she said.

‘That’s all right,’ I said.

‘Elsie gave me a present.’

I couldn’t help laughing.

‘And what might that be?’

‘Look,’ Finn said and held her fist out. She slowly unfolded the fingers and there, neatly perched on her palm, was one of Danny’s paper birds.

That night I rang Danny. I rang at ten, at eleven, then at twelve, when he answered in a thick voice, as if I’d woken him.

‘I’ve missed you,’ I said.

He grunted.

‘I’ve been thinking about you all the time,’ I continued. ‘And you were right. I’m sorry.’

‘Ah, Sammy, I’ve been missing you too,’ he said. ‘Can’t seem to get you out of my head.’

‘When will you come?’

‘I’m rebuilding a kitchen for a couple who seem to think that sleep’s a luxury and weekends don’t exist. Give me a week.’

‘Can I bear to wait for a week?’ I asked.

‘But then we need to talk, Sam.’

‘I know.’

‘I love you, you difficult woman.’

I didn’t reply, and he said sombrely, ‘Is it such a hard word for you to say?’

Eleven

We stood side by side in front of the long mirror in my bedroom, looking like two witches in a coven. I had dressed in a black knee-length skirt, black coarse-silk shirt and black waistcoat, and then, taken aback by how