I picked up a biscuit and thought about taking a bite. I can’t eat. I keep trying but everything tastes bad. I put it back on the plate. I didn’t know what to do and my throat felt as if it was going to cry. So I stood up without drinking any of my tea, and went round the table because all I wanted to do was give her a hug, I just wanted to touch her and get an echo of the way it used to be, years and years and years ago when I’d put her to bed and give her a cuddle. But she wasn’t having any of it.
‘No!’ she said. ‘Mum, you can’t just do that!’
‘OK,’ I said, ‘OK, but don’t worry. I’m going now. I’m OK. Don’t you worry,’ and I walked out.
Her voice followed me, angry and hard: ‘Don’t just walk off like that! That’s just typical!’
The back door was open. Through the sitting room door I saw Madeleine sitting by the ashy fireplace, turning the pages of a notebook. I’m notes. I’m words. On a page. My head’s light. I used to feel like that before I fainted. I fainted a lot when I was a child. That’s just another of the things written down. Quite a little story. That’s funny, I haven’t fainted for years, and it was once so common. Where did that go? All those funny head things. I’d say to someone, some friend at school, ‘Do you ever get that thing like when your head feels as if it’s…’ and then I’d try to explain the ineffable, and they’d say, ‘No. I’ve never had anything like that.’
Out the back door. Dan was standing smoking in the yard in the after-rain, two cats at his feet, looking up at him as if expecting something. No one followed me.
‘I’m going,’ I said.
He took the cigarette out of his mouth and nodded.
No one followed.
34
He thought they’d never leave. Sat there yakking away at his table for at least another hour and decided nothing.
‘Basically,’ said Madeleine in the end, ‘we can’t drag her kicking and screaming out of there as long as she doesn’t cause trouble. I’m inclined to just send a report to her last social worker or whoever, tell them where she is and leave them to it for now. We can keep in touch. Keep an eye on things. You’ll let us know, won’t you, Dan, if you notice anything…’
‘Sure.’ Oh great, he thought, dump it all back on me then. ‘So what about winter?’ he asked.
Madeleine looked at her watch as if that would tell her how long they had before it got really cold. ‘I think we have a little leeway,’ she said.
‘One thing I have to make clear.’ Harriet was up, buttoning her jacket over her large breasts and faffing about with her scarf. ‘She can’t come and live with me. It just isn’t viable. This is about the worst possible time for this—’
‘Fuck sake,’ he said, suddenly sick of it all, ‘I wish I’d never said anything at all. Just leave her there, for God’s sake. Tough old bat, just leave her.’
They both looked at him, surprised. He started picking up the half-empty mugs from the table and sticking them in the sink. Fuck off, his back said.
‘OK, so…’
Madeleine said they’d be in touch but it didn’t look like there was really very much they could do for the moment. ‘Let’s wait and see,’ she said. ‘She may move on, or go back. Anything could happen.’
So they mumbled themselves out of the back door and into their separate cars and thank God were gone.
*
It was late afternoon. He was hungry and the cupboard was bare. He went down to the pub and had a ham sandwich with crisps and a couple of pints, then went home and tried to feel normal again, but it was all just a mess in his head. He put on music in the kitchen, bang bang bang sadness and pining. Turned it off. TV. Whisky. Smoke. Light a fire, though it’s not really cold. Nice evening. Stood at the back door, the night bright with a moon coming up over the trees. The owls were beginning to call. One deep in the wood, one closer. Fuck it, he thought, leaving the back door open and heading off through the little side gate into the wood, the bottle swinging from his hand. He swigged from the neck as he walked. He’d forgotten the torch but it was light enough to see and he wasn’t thinking ahead.
She was in but she was packing up her things. The canvas was up, and the Tilley lamp hung from a branch just outside the doorway. She’d rolled up the old red and brown rug and was stuffing a scruffy old backpack with clothes.
‘What’ll you do?’ he asked, crouching awkwardly.
‘I don’t know. Pack up first. Set off.’ She looked at the bottle and laughed. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I got one too.’
He held his up, settling on the floor. ‘I’ve got more.’
‘I know what I’m not going to do,’ she said.
‘What’s that?’
‘I’m not going back to that place in Crawley.’ She laughed, and told him again all about that road and said, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to do that, to live with BetFred and squashed food and a triple-layered concrete car park where pale youths drove cars too fast round and round and round. And to find there, I don’t know, content or fulfilment or one of those things, and not always be wondering why the hell it all was, and realising nobody else felt like that.
‘Oh, everyone feels like that,’ he said knowledgeably.
‘I don’t think they do.’
‘Of course they do. That’s just what it’s like for everyone.’
She went on packing for a while and he grew stiff sitting on his
