I’d considered getting a lock on my bedroom door but hadn’t got round to it. It had seemed excessive, and besides, I’d told myself, she’d grown out of it now. I lifted my jewellery box and tipped the contents over my bed, raking through them with my fingers. I checked the drawers and my handbag and even the pockets of my coat, getting more and more agitated. All the while Edie was in the bathroom. I’d heard the shower run briefly, and the rattle of the curtain rail. When she didn’t come out after half an hour I banged on the door with the flat of my hand.
‘Edie!’
‘In a minute!’
‘Not in a minute, now! What are you doing in there? Are you ill?’
‘I’m fine!’ The toilet flushed. ‘I just need a minute!’
‘You did this yesterday! Tied up the bathroom for nearly an hour! Other people live here too, you know!’
Silence. I paced outside the door, the small hallway closing in on me, twisting my anger tightly. Finally, the door opened a crack. Her face was pale-looking, with bright spots of colour high up on her cheeks. She’d pierced another hole in her ear, red and raw-looking, a scab of blood building up around the silver stud.
I held out my hand. ‘Where is it?’
‘What?’
‘You know what. My necklace. My favourite one, the one my mum left me.’
‘With the dragonfly on it?’ She shrugged. ‘I haven’t seen it.’
‘You’re lying.’
She rolled her eyes and tried to close the door on me. I pushed back and for a second there was a tense stand-off.
She relented with a sneer. ‘Ugh. I hate it when you’re like this.’
‘I left it in my jewellery box and now it’s not there.’
‘I said I haven’t seen it! I hate it, I wouldn’t wear it anyway!’
‘It’s not you wearing it I’m worried about, Edie, it’s you selling it.’
‘Oh, here we go—’
‘I want it put back where you found it by the time I leave the house.’
‘You need a hobby, Mum. You’ve started to imagine things.’
‘I said, put it back!’
‘I told you I don’t fucking have it!’
I reached out and grabbed her. My nails sank into her damp skin. I saw the wince of pain that pinched her face, quickly replaced by something harder and meaner.
‘Put it back or I’ll call the police.’
‘Do it. Go on! And I’ll show them the black eye you’ve given me!’
‘Wha—’
Edie lifted her hand and slapped at her own face. The air rang with the sound of it, sharp and brisk. I stared at her in horror as she did it again, her eyes watering. The right side of her face glowed brick-red.
‘Edie, stop – what are you doing?’
‘Let’s see how you like it in prison, huh? You know what they do to women in there who beat up their kids?’
This time she drove her head against the wall, staggering for a moment at the impact. I was filled with a cold horror as a trickle of blood seeped from one nostril and there was a strange, distant look in her eye. I forgot the necklace and grabbed her with panicky tightness, hard enough to leave red imprints on her skin, pulled her towards me, wrapping my arms around her as tightly as I could so her hands were pinned against her sides. Although she didn’t fight against me, she was filled with a stiffness, a rigidity that meant I had to lean her against me so that we didn’t both fall down. It was like clinging on to a plank of wood.
‘Don’t, Edie. Don’t,’ I said, again and again. She started laughing and her spittle flecked my cheeks, settled in my hair like snowflakes. Something shrivelled in me, a withered rosehip turning black.
That day I didn’t even see her leave, although the front door slammed so hard the house shook. I went to work and thought nothing, felt nothing. My ears seemed to ring all day with the shock of seeing her drive her head into the plaster. By the time I got home that evening it had started to rain. I can remember seeing her coat, the big winter one, still hanging on the hook, and I thought, She’ll be cold without that. I wasn’t surprised when she wasn’t home before me. She often went to friends’ houses after school, or down to the shops in town or the youth club. Later I would see my own words repeated over and over again in print: I wasn’t surprised when she didn’t come home. They had made me sound neglectful, careless. A half-mother.
I made pasta, had a glass of wine. I noticed I was checking my watch more frequently as it grew darker outside. Her dinner was cooling under a plate on the worktop. I felt the faintest stirrings of unease, like telepathy. Once the hands had crawled past nine o’clock I sat beside the phone. I went through my address book, old and falling apart on its binding. It was that tall boy I was thinking of, William, with his hard, shining eyes. I didn’t know his number; I didn’t even know where he lived. My heart quickened, just a little, as outside the darkness pressed against the windows. By half past I was speaking with a girl called Kate Robinson, who was in Edie’s class at school. They had known each other for years – the soft pencil with which I’d written her details into my address book had faded to a very pale grey. Kate came to the phone after her mother had got her out of bed. I could sense that talking to me made her nervous. If I’d had more presence of mind I would have questioned why. I remember Kate as a sweet girl, with a slight lisp, short and friendly in plum-coloured corduroy. She
