“You can go,” I said.
“It’s Molly, isn’t it?” she said.
“Mum, Mum, Mum.”
“But that’s not my name,” I thought as I stood. I went down the hallway and into the lounge. Molly was sitting up straight on the couch, her fists balled against her eyes.
“It’s fine,” I said. “You’re fine.”
She gulped and choked. I knelt down next to her. I put one hand on her back. “It’s fine, Molly,” I said. “You just had a bad dream. You’re fine.”
“I—woke—up—and—you—weren’t—here—” she said. “I— thought—you—left—me—here—by—my—self—”
There was space on the seat where her head had been. I squeezed into it and pulled her onto my lap. I was surprised it felt so much like muscle memory; it wasn’t something my muscles had done enough to remember. Her arms went around my shoulders, and I was surprised again, surprised that our bodies fit together when they had barely had to fit together since she had been inside me. She pressed her face to my neck, making it slick with spit and snot. The wetness made me feel that we were two pools of seawater merging, edgeless and saline. Her tongue touched my skin when she panted. There was a tug at my scalp and I saw a chunk of my hair wrapped around her hand. Haverleigh came back to me in a wave so heavy I felt it as a blow to my gut.
When the keepers had stopped me stealing food to eat at night I had eaten more at meals. Three times a day, I ate until I was sick. They started putting my food on a plate before I came to the dining room, giving it to me at a desk in the corner while the other kids ate at the trestle table. At night I screamed even louder.
“What’s the matter, Chrissie?” asked my favorite keeper, coming into my room.
“I’m hungry,” I screamed.
“No, you’re not, lovey,” she said. “You had a good tea. You’re full up.”
“I am hungry. I am,” I screamed. She sat down on the floor beside my bed. Most keepers didn’t come that close to me, because I was so bad. I stopped screaming. I just whispered.
“I am hungry, I am hungry, I am.”
“You need to get to sleep,” she said. “Go on. Lie down.”
I put my head on the pillow. She was close enough that I could take a chunk of her hair and grip it in my fist.
“I am hungry, I am hungry, I am.” I whispered it until my eyes were heavy, and just before they closed I whispered, “Call me lovey again.”
“What, lovey?” she said. And then I was asleep, and when I woke in the morning she was gone. I still had a strand of yellow-brown hair tangled around my fingers, kinked and dead.
I pressed Molly’s body closer to mine. She whimpered, and I felt her fist open and close around folds of my jumper. She liked it here. She liked Linda. But she needed me.
“I didn’t leave you, lovey,” I said into her shoulder. “I didn’t leave you.”
Chrissie
After I got back from hospital I stayed away from the house as much as I could. I knew if I did anything to make Mam cross she could tell the police about Steven, or she could give me more tablet-Smarties, and I wasn’t in the mood for either of those things. Sometimes she was cross if I stayed away for too long, because she said it was like I didn’t love her. She was more usually cross if I was in the house, because when I was in the house I did annoying things like ask for food. I had decided she had probably given me the tablet-Smarties to try to turn me from a bad kid into a good one, and if she saw me she would realize I was still bad, and she might try something else to get me good. So it was safest to stay away.
“Your mammy will be wondering where you are, Chrissie,” Linda’s mammy always said when I was still at her house at teatime. She meant, “I am wondering why you are still here, Chrissie,” but I pretended not to know that.
“No she won’t,” I always said. “She never wonders where I am.” Linda’s mammy liking me because of being in hospital hadn’t lasted very long.
There were still policemen around the streets, and they still knocked on doors to talk to kids, and the mammies still twittered about it over their garden walls. Linda’s mammy didn’t do much twittering. She never really joined in with the other mammies. Probably because she was too old. You could get a heart attack from twittering when you were that old.
On Sunday I stayed after church to help Linda and her mammy put the knee cushions back on the pews, and Robert’s mammy helped too. She kept sighing and tutting and saying, “I don’t know, oh, I don’t know.” Linda’s mammy didn’t say anything, so Robert’s mammy sighed and tutted and said, “I don’t know, oh, I don’t know,” louder and louder until eventually she put her hands on her hips and said, “I shouldn’t tell you, really. I really shouldn’t.”
“No need to tell me anything,” said Linda’s mammy.
“I really shouldn’t say. Not with the kiddies around,” said Robert’s mammy.
“No. I’m sure you shouldn’t,” said Linda’s mammy, and went to the cupboard for the broom. Robert’s mammy went too.
“You’ve heard what they’re saying, haven’t you?” she said.
“Don’t expect I have,” said Linda’s mammy. She swept the aisle between the pews and Robert’s mammy waited for her to ask what it was that they had been saying. When she realized she wasn’t going to, she followed her again.
“About why they’ve been asking all these questions to the kids? You have heard, haven’t you?”
Linda’s mammy carried on sweeping. “It’ll just be gossip,” she said. “Not worth hearing.”
“They’re saying it must be a kid that did
