‘Leave it,’ her mother hissed. ‘I’ll go. You’ll probably leave them open and I’ll be raped and you murdered and they’ll leave with all the money.’
Rachel wanted to scream, ‘WHAT MONEY?’ but said nothing as Mother weaved towards the door leading to the stairs down to the shop.
‘I can go, Mother,’ said Rachel, watching the way her mother swerved in her satin-like nightgown.
‘You can’t do anything, you stupid child, so stop pretending. I think something happened to you as a baby. God knows what. Perhaps they dropped you when you were born,’ Mother said as she opened the door and started down the stairs.
Rachel wondered if they had dropped her, as she wasn’t good at so many things, but surely her mother would remember if she had been dropped since she was the one who gave birth to her.
She could hear Mother muttering on the stairs, and Rachel stood still, unsure what to do. Should she just go to bed and avoid her mother or should she wait and receive more abuse when Mother came back?
Then the sound of thumping was heard and a scream came from the stairs and more terrible sounds like a bag of flour had been thrown. Rachel rushed out and saw Mother lying at the bottom of them in an awkward position that made her body look inhuman.
‘Mother!’ She ran downstairs.
There was a cut on her head and blood was gushing out and one of her legs was at a peculiar angle.
She moaned and Rachel ran to the phone in the shop. She called triple nine and gave the ambulance service the address. Rachel sat on the bottom step and looked at her mother. She knew she should do something to make her comfortable but her leg was almost twisted behind her back and there was blood everywhere on the floor surrounding her head.
Rachel started to rock as she sat on the stairs. It was comforting but Mother often told her when she did, it proved she was the village idiot like everyone said she was.
She wondered what Clara would do in this moment. One thing was for sure, she would know what to do. Rachel carefully stepped over her mother and, pulling the number from the cash register where she had hidden it under the tray, she dialled and waited.
Clara answered almost immediately. ‘Hello? Clara speaking.’
‘Clara? It’s Rachel Brown, from the bakery. I hope I didn’t wake you.’
‘Oh hey there, how nice that you rang. No, it’s only nine-thirty. How are you?’
Rachel paused. ‘I’m okay but Mother fell and I’m waiting for an ambulance. I was wondering what you would do in this situation.’
‘God, is she bleeding?’
‘Yes, from her head. There’s quite a lot of blood.’
Even to Rachel, her voice sounded very calm, almost uncaring, but that couldn’t be right – she was supposed to care about this moment. Perhaps she was in shock, like they said in the books she read.
Clara was speaking. ‘I’ll be there in a moment.’ And then there was silence on the end of the line.
Rachel put the phone down and looked at Mother. She was pale, she looked almost blue and there was a large pool of blood spilling out onto the lino floor.
She knew she should do something, but she wasn’t entirely sure what. More than that, she didn’t know if she wanted to do anything for her mother ever again. For a brief moment, she wondered if her dad had pushed her down the stairs so she could be friends with Clara, just as she had asked.
9
Clara – aged 10
Clara had a ritual she would run through before her dad came home from work.
If she washed her face and hands and brushed her hair, then he would come home on time.
If she did all her homework, he wouldn’t be drunk.
If she cleaned her bedroom and tidied up the papers from the kitchen table before Mum came home from work, then he wouldn’t be mean to Mum at dinner.
And if she did her reading without missing a word, then Mum and Dad would sit and watch television and she would go to sleep with the sounds of Strictly Come Dancing instead of yelling and the thump of Mum hitting the wall.
Checking the time, she worked out how long she had before Mum came home from the grocery store where she worked. Sometimes she brought home sausages from the delicatessen that hadn’t sold, and she would fry them up with eggs and beans and toast and HP sauce and Dad would tell jokes that made Clara and Mum cry with laughter.
Other times, when Mum brought the smoked cod home, and there was a letter from the bank on the table, then Dad would just make them cry.
Clara couldn’t remember a time when her mum and dad didn’t fight. Sometimes she wanted to run into Mum and tell her to not argue with him, that she would never win. Why did Clara know this but her mum didn’t understand?
She would worry about it in school and if she had a test the day after a big row she would barely pass. Other days, when Dad told jokes and told her she was his clever Clara, she would score a ten out of ten.
It was so confusing.
Especially in the mornings when she woke up and Mum would be making Dad eggs on toast and coffee, and they would act like nothing had happened, as if Mum didn’t have a black eye or a split lip.
Sometimes she wondered if it was a dream or if she was imagining what had happened the night before. But the hole in wall was evidence it wasn’t a dream and the broken cups in the rubbish were as real as the mouth ulcer that Clara kept putting her tongue into when she was nervous, which seemed to be a lot more lately.
So, Clara created a new ritual. At night, in her bed she would lie in
