The First Day of Spring

had chicken in a bird”—but our lives felt far apart. To me, sixteen was the fifth Haverleigh bedroom. I shared it with Nina, whose face was decorated with silver-pink knots of scar, because one of the other girls had thrown black-tea-with-three-sugars in her face the day she’d arrived. It was in the dining room, when the hot drinks had just been handed out. Nina crumpled out of her chair and writhed on the floor, clutching her cheeks, her skin bubbling and blistering like a vat of jam. Normal tea only burned for a bit, but sugar-tea stuck like glue. The scalding went on and on. Nina lived in the medical bay for a while after that, and when she came back she never stayed in our bedroom for long. Every couple of weeks she swallowed something that wasn’t for swallowing—bleach, batteries, letters from the Scrabble set—and the keepers had to take her to hospital. While Linda was setting up home and churning out kids, I was turning back the blankets on Nina’s empty bed, wondering if she would be back or if this time she had managed to swallow herself to death.

“Is Molly’s dad . . . ?” Linda said, reaching her hand up her back.

“No,” I said. “He’s not around.”

“Oh. Must be tough. I wouldn’t manage without Kit.”

“You’ve got about five hundred kids, though.”

We watched the five hundred and one kids charge around the garden. Molly was throwing a Frisbee with the oldest boy, and it clipped the toddler on the side of the head. He came into the house howling.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Molly. Come and say sorry.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” said Linda, pushing back her chair and gathering the toddler onto her lap. “Accident, accident.” She carried him to a cupboard, took a small biscuit from a jar, and slipped it into his fist. His crying stopped like a tap turned off. Outside it was nearly dark, and the kids had a glowing look as they ran around, as though their limbs were lit from inside. The toddler put his head on Linda’s shoulder. “I need to start getting them to bed,” she said.

“Yeah. Of course. Sorry. We’ll go,” I said.

“How long will it take you to get home?”

“Few hours. Four, maybe.”

“You can’t do that. You wouldn’t be home until midnight. Molly’s—what—five?”

“We can cope.”

“Why don’t you just stay here?”

“It’s fine. We’ll go.”

“But why don’t you stay?”

“We can’t. You’ve already given us loads.”

“Come on. I’ve just given you some tea. We haven’t even talked properly. I want you to stay. Please. Please, just let me be nice to you.”

I spent a lot of the next hour hanging in hallways, feeling spare. Linda was more than capable of executing the bath and bedtime ritual alone, even with an extra kid, even when that kid was Molly, who was drunk and overconfident on the departure from routine. Linda told her she didn’t have to have a bath if she didn’t want to take her clothes off in a strange house, but she was naked by the time she reached the top of the stairs, jumping into the tub next to the twins, suddenly oblivious to the hunk of plaster around her wrist. I helped her into the Spiderman pajamas Linda found at the bottom of her son’s drawer and squeezed toothpaste onto my finger to rub around her mouth. I was amazed that the process of bathing and changing and tooth brushing took the same amount of time for five kids as for one. When they were all clean and smelling of peppermint Linda gathered them onto her bed for a story, and I felt as though I was in a story, because I hadn’t known this kind of anarchic joy existed outside books. I sat with my back against the wardrobe and listened to her read—the way she pointed to the words and sounded out the letters. You would have believed it was for the kids if you hadn’t known her as an eight-year-old, hunched over her reading book in the classroom, pink grooves in her knuckles where they pressed against the desk. I thought of what I had said to Mam. If you want to, you figure it out. Most of the time it’s really hard and boring, but it’s not impossible. You just have to really want to do it.

When I settled Molly on the couch downstairs she tucked the blanket under her chin and sighed.

“I like it here,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“It’s fun.”

“Yeah.”

“I like that woman.”

“Mmm.”

I stood to leave, but she sat up. “Where are you going?” she asked.

“Just into the kitchen,” I said.

“Aren’t you going to stay?” she asked. It shouldn’t have surprised me. In her world, there was no alternative to my sitting by her bed until she went to sleep. I heard the front door open, Linda call, and a man answer. I sat back down.

“Yeah. Course,” I said.

She was asleep within minutes, and when I went into the kitchen Linda and the man were sitting at the table. I felt shy. He was wide-set and stubbly.

“This is Kit,” Linda said. “I’ve been telling him about how we used to be friends. At secondary school.”

“So nice to meet you,” he said. “I don’t know many of Linda’s friends.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Well. Thanks for having us. Thanks for letting us stay.”

“Don’t be silly,” he said. “You’re brave to accept. It’s a madhouse here. We never really know how many we’ve got for the night anyway.”

Linda fetched plates from the cupboard and served up more shepherd’s pie. She gave me some without checking I wanted to eat again. Kit drank a bottle of beer, and when the pie was finished we ate chocolate ice cream from bowls the kids had painted. At nine o’clock Kit stood up and stretched.

“Really sorry, but I’d better turn in. I’ve got to be on-site at six tomorrow,” he said.

I thought of Mam, sneaking out before the sun came up, head bowed, feet dragging. I pushed her away.

“So nice to meet you, Donna,”