Copyright

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk

This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2018

Copyright © Rachel Edwards 2018

Cover design by Heike Schüssler

Cover image © Arcangel Images/Margie Hurwich

Rachel Edwards asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008281151

Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008281137

Version: 2019-01-25

Dedication

To Peter

and

Patricia, darling Mum

Epigraph

‘If you prick us, do we not bleed?’

William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

What’s Done is Done

PART I

Darling

Lola

Darling

Lola

Darling

Lola

PART II

Darling

Dark

Lola

Darling

Lola

Darling

A Thing or Two

Lola

Darling

Lola

PART III

Darling

Red Flowers

Lola

Darling

Lola

Darling

Lola

Darling

What’s Done is Done

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

What’s Done is Done

It took less than six months for everything to fall apart. Six months of fighting, competing, whispering, each of us trying to be better, to love him better.

I knew she was trouble from the moment I saw her. I felt it as she stood in our doorway that day: disaster. Not just because she was so different – that skin and that hair, as opposite to me as it’s possible to be. More than the way she always looked through me, right past me, straight at him. There was something wrong about her. Wrong for us. We would never fit. It was never going to work.

I did try. I tried more than anyone will ever know, in my own way. I tried to welcome her. Tried to meet her halfway, like he said. Didn’t get stressy when he locked himself away with her for hours on end, even though I needed him too. Even when I started to get suspicious, when her lies built up around her, I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. But before the Christmas storms – over the top, like the crappy clichéd ones they teach you about at school – before the rain and the branches and the roof could fall on the four of us, she was dead.

She is dead.

Now only I am left to love him and it’s all my fault.

PART I

Darling

FRIDAY, 24 JUNE 2016

I ran. Ribcage, feet and thoughts pounding, I ran and ran and kept on running.

What had we done? Why had we?

Blue, blue, blue, blue, yellow, yellow, a whole buggeration of blue: on and on the results had flashed up, all the live-long night, and now we were out.

Fuck it. Brexit.

Now I needed a fag, I needed my dead mum and I needed a new passport, in that order. The latter two were out of the question, so I had bolted to the supermarket for cigarettes.

When I reached the doors, I eyed myself in the glass. My lips were mud red. I was puffy, my eyes salt-stained and dry; worst of all I was panting in public. Over-exercised, out-voted, thwarted and screwed, but alive and still here, wherever here was now.

On the bright side, nothing made you appreciate a fag like a good sprint.

Two people had arrived before me. There was an old lady wrapped in thick, well-cut mustard – years of knowing that summer mornings could be chilly in this corner of the European Union – tying up her spicy little terrier. And him.

The woman blanked our smiles but he and I met each other’s eye. I was ready:

‘Not long now …’

He was too:

‘Here’s hoping …’ His first words.

A pause; we were taking our time. I could see up close those cuffs that commanded a second look, the sun-starved wrists, the moon rising from each cuticle. The hair, organised, showed more salt than pepper in that still-shocked light. But these were unimportant details. All I could feel was the pressure, building in the nothing between us. With pressure like that you just knew that the universe, or the Almighty, or whatever the hell, was getting ready to give one mother of a push.

6.58 a.m. Friday 24 June 2016.

‘I’m here for my daughter,’ he began at last. ‘She’s turning sixteen and wants me to get “a tonne of good stuff”, whatever that might mean …’

‘It’s her party?’

‘Only the sleepover tonight, the main party next week, but I have no—’

‘Oi-oi!’

Just as he was about to tell me what he did not have, we heard it: the unmistakable cadence of trouble. A heap of a man was arriving, belly first; lumping his way down from the high street, prickled scalp tilted high. From where we stood you could see he was a meeting of both triumph and disaster.

‘Out! Out!’

The red face, the glittering glare: joy gone bad. He was coming closer.

‘Enger-lurrnd!’ he sang, as three more prickleheads straggled around the corner behind him. ‘En! Ga! Lund!’

More fat than muscle but still, he was big.

Then he was nearly upon me, blue marble eyes swivelling, ready to bash at this other thing, this other thing, this dark blot on his brand-new swept street, his clean sheet. A black woman wearing rushed make-up and a look of contempt for his playground punch-up politics.

He spoke:

‘We voted Leave, love. Outcha go!’

I gaped, eye-level with the chest of this sweaty fiasco. Tattoos all over his thick neck.

‘I don’t think there’s any call for that.’

A voice as dark as my skin, it flowed with a current to it. It was him. This man beside me, feet fight-distance apart but fists at his sides, a heat in that count-to-ten stare.

All I could think of was the blood spurting on to that pretty suit.

Then the big man inflated his cheeks and chest, became whale-big. Big of body was a thing for him, you could bet on it, but he liked his ideas small and hard.

‘Wotchoo, er fackin’ ’usband?’

‘Yes,’ said the suited man, moving closer to my side.

The eyes swivelled wilder, the disgust too great. A torrent of blood was surely coming – and then the stragglers caught up.

‘Trev!’ They swept him along, shambled away, a colourous bobbling of orange and dark red-pink T-shirts. As they rumbled on, with the man-mound clasped in their loving headlock, one mate rubbed his knuckles into the headstubble, and the smallest man pressed a lager can up to Trev’s lips. The meaty fist punched out, now into only air, into no one.

‘Whoa,’ I said.

‘Indeed,’ he said. The laughter lines, the rivulets of skin that danced at each idea that rose behind the eyes, eyes that shone. Yes, he was appalled to the core and embarrassed, but above all relieved he was not them. To make sure I knew it, he offered his smile; one warm poultice for our wound.

‘That was scary.’ I stopped short of patting my chest. ‘I have never, ever had that said to me. I was born here—’

‘Idiot,’ he said.

‘Big mad angry violent idiot.’

‘So dumb.’

‘As in “referendumb”.’

‘Ha, precisely. Don’t worry, though. He’s just one nutter.’

‘But he’s clearly swallowed at least two others.’

He laughed, shook his head. ‘They feel emboldened, they were always going to. It’ll pass.’

‘Or get worse.’

‘It’ll be fine. We’re all better than that.’

‘Well … Thank you.’

‘Pleasure.’

‘No, seriously.’ It had to be now. ‘How can I ever thank you?’

‘Actually …’ he said.

‘I always buy them and she pretends not to mind, but she does. I’d be so grateful—’

‘I’m not actually going to bake you one, you know!’

We walked on through the aisles and, laughing, stopped.

‘Here we are,’ I said. ‘Look.’

‘Great.’ He reached for the nearest factory sponge.

‘No, listen.’ I surprised myself with that flirty-bossy tone, me trying to take over his senses so soon. Look … listen … ‘You don’t want a big-brand one with loads of E numbers. Think cricket wife. Wonky, homemade.’

‘Oh, but I—’

‘Hang on.’ There I went again. ‘This one, with apricot jam. Ah, organic. Perfect.’

‘Hold your horses,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit … you know.’

‘What?’ I scanned it for flaws.

‘A bit …’ He smiled. ‘Naked.’

‘Forward,’ I said, walking on.

We put the nuddy-cake in his trolley and continued, weighing each step.

‘Look,’ I said, a few steps later. ‘Icing sugar. You—’

‘I ice it myself, slap “Happy Birthday” on it.’

‘You catch on quick.’

‘Insanely good teacher.’

‘Damn right,’ I said.

‘Best home-made money can buy.’

‘Our secret.’

‘Our naked secret.’ He shook his hair out of place. ‘Sorry, way too forward, crass of me …’

‘No problem.’ Then, new in this territory, in this changed world, I dared:

‘We’re married, remember?’

His eyes sparked, looked away:

‘Whatever happened to our honeymoon?’

Cloud to ground flashes, electric potential under the strip lighting. An atmosphere. After such a bad night I must have looked jaundiced, a proper fright, but his eyes were saying no such thing. I lowered my gaze, too.

‘You don’t even know my name.’

‘Care to rectify that?’

‘Darling.’

Delight, disbelief, then that dink of dropping copper. Every time.

‘You’re called Darling?’

Genuine pleasure, as if I’d chosen my ostrich feather of a name just to tickle him under the chin.

‘That’s me.’

‘I’m Thomas,’ he said and I knew, before he had even unlocked his phone, that my digits would soon be safe inside, if …

I ran the test.

‘Go ahead, you can laugh, my Stevie’s friends find my name hilarious too. He’s five; my little terror.’

‘Bet he is,’ he looked down for a moment. Two.

I counted in my head. Six, and then he said:

‘We could meet up sometime. Do you know Andante? The café on Stewart Street?’

I did. ‘I’ll find it.’

‘Could I take your number please, Darling?’

We met at Andante on the Tuesday; a safe get-together over coffee. We knocked around a little conversation like beginners playing pool. I did not smoke. Small sips, no clattering spoons. Then, someone else’s boldness breaking through: honeyed nibbles, unasked-for struffoli doughnuts which the owner brought to our table, flushed and apologising for the interruption, telling us that they meant all our Christmases had come that very morning. It was impossible not to give sweeter, more rounded smiles after that. Fortified, we ventured opening gambits, a brisk mapping out of our positions. I told him I was a trained nurse, and lived alone with Stevie; he was an architect, father to sixteen-year-old Lola and the widower of one Tess. The next time, Friday cinema, brought kisses that were warm if prosaic. I believe we wondered if it could be enough. Did we still carry the seeds for so much possibility? We were hardly teens, after all.

We went back to Andante twice the next week. He dropped in on the way back from the office; the first time I left Stevie with Ange, and then the next time with Demarcus, his father. Thomas revealed that this café had become his preferred thinking space in recent years, somewhere to be when Lola was out and he did not want to sit at home alone. In the battered leather and wood landscape we pitched our hopes on common ground. We drip-dropped our thoughts, tongue-felt the body of the house blend. Short, untroubled dates, tuned and timed so I could leave with a little regret, not too much, go home to breathe in secret smoke and marvel.

The second evening at Andante, a confession:

‘I never loved my wife enough.’

After that, a kiss that mattered. A little too much. Slow and familiar, rude and strong, not so dull as to be perfect; a real headfuck of a sensation, a first. It lifted us. We opened ourselves up to the times that might come after that moment; to possibility.

We stayed up.

Later, in the smallest hours, I dropped the DMD bomb.

‘Stevie has this … He’s been diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy.’

‘God, what?’

Guilt. Always that pressed-down guilt at tagging the disease on to my son’s little life like some fucked-up medical degree: Stevie White, DMD. But that’s just how it was: one day you were considering the diagnosis and – pow! – your Wonderboy’s future was punched into the ether.

‘Yes. Sorry, this is hard.’

‘Take your time.’

I hesitated. I would indeed take time to explain everything to Thomas: DMD takes time.

‘DMD is a muscle-wasting disorder, a serious one, that mostly affects boys. It’s progressive. The weakness in the thighs starts at around age five. It makes walking more difficult and climbing the stairs, balancing … and obviously running …’

‘Poor kid.’

‘His callipers, or KAFOs – knee-ankle-foot orthoses – make life easier, although Stevie has better balance than most. Terrible rhythm though …’

(Badaboom! Nerve-soothing black joke for new boo.) I raised my sights, determined not to falter before I had picked off the devastating facts.

‘It is not curable—’

‘Really? God, but—’

‘No. It takes and takes until you have to think about things like sitting, ventilation, fractures and swallowing.’

‘No.’

‘It is rare. Affects 1 in 3,500 males and … the average life expectancy of DMD boys is twenty-seven years.’

‘Shit.’

Yes, Duchenne takes time; all of it, in the end. But that was why Stevie would hear over and over that he was my boy, my lovely little one. As long as he stayed my baby, he would be safe.

‘So you see, Thomas,’ I said. ‘Every moment counts.’

‘I do see. Oh. Darling.’

And just like that, I was not alone.

Entangling my limbs with his, I brightened the tone:

‘It’s fine. Stevie and I talk about it, you know? We even laugh, get silly about it. He doesn’t need to know it all. I tell him, “I will look after you always, sweetness. No need to worry, ever.”’

‘That’s good. And his splints, his callipers, does he have to …’

‘His “superlegs”, you mean? Yes, he wears his KAFOS all day long to help him, but none of that is a problem, I take care of it all.’

‘You’re a great mum.’

‘We’ve had some fantastic support, too. These girls, they call themselves Stevie’s Wonders and they’re a miracle, really. About eight months ago, I told this new nurse, Paula, about Stevie’s diagnosis and next thing all her young student mates started fundraising for him. They’ve raised over £12,000 so far. Amazing, isn’t it?’

I went on to tell him how my son had tried a ‘Wonderburger’ at the launch barbecue – cheese and double bacon! – how I had a framed photo of him with smears of it all over his smiley chin. How the girls had got serious about that smiley chin and next thing done a sponsored bike ride; how boyfriends had joined in with some extreme ironing stunt up a big hill; how a newsletter had emerged. Soon to come was a marathon walk, maybe something in the High Desford Gazette. It was without a doubt the most wonderful miracle.

‘They sound ace,’ said Thomas.

‘Yes, they are, totally. But’ – I eased up on an elbow – ‘I have never wanted Stevie’s needs to be anyone else’s problem. Do you get me? He’s my responsibility.’

Thomas raised himself up to meet my eye. ‘I get you. But help – support – is always better. Right?’

I kissed him in place of a reply. Stevie had always been my responsibility. I was still the one who needed to make everything all right for him. Our generous, warm, bacon-fat days together were destined to be short. Moreover, Duchenne’s was carried in a female carrier but overwhelmingly it affected the male offspring. Passed on, from the mother to the son. I was responsible, in the eyes of those who judged such things. All my fault. I was his cherisher, I had to be, whatever might happen, whatever had happened.

‘He’s a good boy, my baby. You’ll like him.’

‘Of course,’ said Thomas. ‘He does sound wonderful. You’re … Come here.’

After that night, I slapped on nicotine patches and chewed punitive mints after meals. By our third Friday we were doing dinner at the proper-bonkers Lunar (my next test for him: they name tapas-sized Portuguese dishes after dwarf planets and the décor is holiday-misadventures-on-acid, but the guy can cook). He saw past all the crazy-name petiscos, straight to me. And me? I could barely see past the mental fug of non-smoking and the heat-haze from Pluto’s pataniscas de bacalhau, or think past our awed mouths, or get past this interior tightening, this fresh hot-blooded ache …

My phone rang during pudding.

I saw the caller’s name. It took everything not to turn it off altogether – my fingers strained but I simply passed the water jug. Had to let it ring: Stevie was with Ange and my mobile was our mum-hotline. The ringing stopped.

‘What’s wrong?’ Thomas reached for my restless hand.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Thought stupid PPI was dead already.’

I turned the ringtone down as low as it would go and raised a pastel de nata to his lips.

On our next date, I would take care of dinner.

The first time you cook for a man is important. It doesn’t just tell him about your tastes, it tells him what you think his tastes are. I had weighed and measured Thomas, more than he would ever know. And so I would cook for him, but not nursery food, no shepherd’s pie cuisine; I was nobody’s bloody nanny. It was summer, but I would not do him the usual platter of cracked shell and bivalve and sea juice. Despite the ordered hair, any fool could see that he was a man who might be persuaded to crunch, suck and snap a bone, when no one else was looking. Meat then, the best, rare sirloin. A bastardised tagliata. A well-hung porterhouse – charred, smeared in garlic, olive oil, lemon and Parmesan, on a bed of rosemary and rocket. Europe slain, seared and bloody on its greenery, there all for him on a plate.

‘I’m going to cook you something,’ I said. ‘Something simple, but a bit different.’

‘Oh good! I’ve always wanted to try real home-cooked Caribbean food.’

‘But, actually I—’

‘I mean, I’ve had a bit of jerk chicken once or twice at a barbecue, but that was just … they were from Devon.’

‘Uh-huh,’ I said.

Mean. It would have been mean, self-defeating and, as the kids had it, ‘awkward’, to say anything more than:

‘Uh-huh, I’m going to cook you up a real Jamaican treat.’

‘Great. What, might I ask?’

So, of course, I had to say:

‘Well, wait and see. But it will be wonky and homemade. It may be naked. Or saucy.’

My mother had fed us well; we ate it all up, with thankful mouths and hands ready to do the dishes. She had grown up in the hills near Negril, where food had winked and dangled from every last tree and nigh on every day had ended in satiety, but for us she worked hard at all those meals that aspired to Englishness, the cabbage-and-potato dinners you could make from ingredients bought from up the road, boiled hard. Just like her cousin, Ionie, who had come over a few years before; just like any other 1970s housewife round their way. One generation on, I stirred up flavours from our blended world in a reduced-to-clear cast aluminium pot from a department store off the M40; a Dutchie by any other name.

She had never sat me down and told me a recipe from back Home – I doubted she even thought of such recipes as formalised processes, never mind written-down documents – and I am sure I never asked. Although a certain amount of osmosis had let the right knowledge flow from her generation to my own, I did not wear the wisdoms of ‘our’ food around me in the way she did, easy as a shawl on a cool Home Counties evening.

And so, two nights before I first cooked for Thomas, I ordered a small cookbook, Jamaican Home Cooking Secrets, for next-day delivery. When the driver, a young West African guy, rocked up with my parcel, my eyes dropped to his trainers, though he had no obvious ability to see my shame through cardboard. I don’t know why I felt so bad; I was born in Basingstoke.

I read, and chilled. Nothing tricky or unfamiliar here; not a single ‘Secret’ worth the name. Just enough prompts to turn the pages of memory: my mother’s island childhood at the kitchen ‘fire’, written down and bound. A right result.

The simplicity itself made me a touch cocky. For my dearest English Thomas, I might start slow: Brown Stew Chicken. I would perform the optional washing of the supermarket chicken with lime even though there was no need: no germs, no heat, and competent fridges. But some traditions existed for good reason; the lime also sharpened the dish. Still, only two-thirds of the Scotch bonnet, without seeds, for my man. The stew would get hotter each time until he became accustomed to ‘our’ levels. I was sure he would like all the teasing, the special treatment.

I tasted the stew.

As sauce hit tongue my mind was shaken by something more surprising than savoury, a memory so strong that it might have come from behind me, or just beyond the door.

I lifted the spoon and turned it in my hand, a dripping totem.

Wah yuh ah duh? Mo salt, yuh si mi?

I turned to face the empty kitchen, then back to my chopping board. I choked on a laugh, silent but fierce, almost a shudder. The black tear fell into the stew.

Dat better, gyal.

The chilli caught the back of my throat.

‘OK,’ I coughed. ‘I hear you.’

A quarter-pinch of allspice and the flavours dropped, settled. This was the right stuff for Thomas. This food sang of bright afternoons to be devoured before they darkened, of passion plated high, of a belief that hungers had to be sated. These dishes stirred you right back.

Not enough though, yet.

I had never once bought callaloo; spinach or kale were more readily available in High Desford. However, I had tracked down a supplier in Brockton – forty-minute drive, plus a full five minutes of speed bumps, mind you – where I bought an astonished boxful of the leafy veg, common to even the most spit-poor yards in Jamaica. Including the petrol, it cost more than Stevie’s shoes. But that green haul of social climbers deserved a Thomas to appreciate them. At the same time, I did wonder whether preparing this authentic Jamaican meal for him was in itself inauthentic, from a woman mostly reared on plain grey mince and plastic butterscotch desserts, just like him. Still, I knew it was a dinner that told more truth about me than lies. Each mouthful would seduce. A sweet smack of plantain and it was done: our hot lovers’ spread.

Thomas, as it happened, would never forget it. Nor would I.

Halfway through, the door went bamm-bam-bam. I knew it was Demarcus, still too much man for doorbells. Thomas shot up, rice falling to the table from his brandished fork.

I opened the door to Demmie, coiled tight as ever and dressed sharp, holding my sleeping son.

‘Y’alright?’ he nodded darkly at Thomas, who sank back down and started piling up my killer crisp-soft plantain on to his plate. ‘Got to go, Darling. I’m going out.’

I kissed Stevie, took him. ‘Where though?’

‘Just out, innit, change of plan. One-off, promise.’

‘Is it a woman?’ I did not smile but I felt no anger either. The spices and simmering had soothed me, and I had missed my baby.

‘What women? Don’t know no women.’

I smiled then, an easy reflex; this was our usual banter, our stock exchange. We were cool with each other, Demarcus and I. He was always a good dad, at least for a dad who couldn’t keep it anything like in his pants. His pants flew off weekly and landed in a different time zone without ever fulfilling their cotton destiny of keeping anything in them. However, when I got pregnant he stuck around, unlike some – unlike many – and we had talked about a flat-pack future, living together, even a wedding at the town hall where his brother could DJ, crack out the old-school ragga. I had been serious and so had he; we were not tripping off down any bumpy babyfather route, I did not want some cartoon of a bruvva cliché. I wanted a real husband, to be a father and son and mum, an all-together family like the one I grew up in.

Our truest story, to be fair: he was no stereotype spat out by potty-mouthed politicians – those whom Mum had christened battymouts – and nor was I. We were just not ready for each other. He liked having a boy but did not rate the stink of nappies. He had liked my milk-heavy breasts but had not wanted to miss Amsterdam to watch me push our son out of that same swollen body. He liked to stroke his son’s cheek goodnight but never woke for him. Or he would already be out. Then my Stevie was diagnosed and Dem, still my anti-husband, would stay out longer, later and longer, until I noticed that I had not seen him for three days and he hadn’t left his best jeans for me to wash and soon he wasn’t even calling me any more to tell me, ‘Don’t know no women.’

Game over, then. But only because I had been ready anyway.

So that night Dem stood there breathing in the peppery tang of another man’s dinner for two and I closed him out with a calm click, and brought Stevie in to meet my new friend, Thomas, and my boy was too drowsy to ask questions, and Thomas was fantastically uncool and kind – with a proper sleep-tight voice, that very first night – and it was enough.

Dem deh two gwan be like bench an’ batty.

As I turned to take Stevie to his bed, my phone went. I stooped to answer it, arms full of son.

‘Oh, I really can’t be arsed to—’

‘Easy, turn it off,’ said Thomas, rising to make us coffee.

I turned it off.

My man, his back to me, waved a silver pouch high. He had sought out some Jamaica Blue Mountain to make for us in my home, perhaps his way of telling me something about how he got me even though he didn’t know me.

Later, in that same kitchen, I was taken aback by just how much he knew me. We went together. He got me.

Stevie was pulling at my hand so hard I nearly sloshed coffee on to the floor.

‘Don’t go out, Mum.’

‘I won’t, poppet, not until much later.’

‘Cuddles!’

‘I’ve told you, darling.’ I bent to hug him. ‘The big lorry was far away, not here.’

He had been clingy ever since that morning, when a new terrorist atrocity had driven a hole through his innocence. He had sensed my alarm at the rolling news. Unable to find the controls I had stared too long, wearing the fear for both of us. My Stevie knew, despite my efforts, and now he did not want me to go out tonight.

‘Are you crying, Mummy?’

‘No, sweetness.’

‘I can stay here, with you. I won’t go to Ange.’

I could not stay. We had awoken to brutality, and to more wrong to come, to every shade of evil directed to extremes. And to change.

But you had to run. Run towards what they hoped you would hate.

‘Ange would miss you too much, my precious. You need to go see her. First though, cornflakes.’

We left the TV off all day and before I could think twice, I was there.

Littleton Lodge, in High Desford Old Town. From my house, it was across the main park and along a bit, on the corner of a lane so green it felt like the gateway to another country. I had walked past it often, this house: set right back, three storeys high and wide, really bloody wide, and white, with wisteria swagged across it. A great fat wodge of Tinkerbell’s wedding cake, it even had the nerve to stand at the end of a muesli-crunch driveway.

Walking up to the house I had noticed a scuff on my black court shoes – bloody gravel – but the door opened before I knocked and – blouse an skirts! Mi neva si huh dere – there she stood, the happy fairy or nymph or sprite, shifting her weight from foot to foot in a pink playsuit. The girl, his girl, with her father coming close up behind her. As I neared them I could see they shared the same welcoming gaze but hers shone from grey, almost metallic eyes, eyes that you knew would not look away first. Her face was warm cream, her shoulders bare, no wings. Lola.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ we said.

I stepped in, Thomas stepped back, there was a hefty ker-chunk of the door and before I had stepped off the doormat Lola had moved forward to wrap me in a surprise: a free and fluid hug. Then she stepped back and smiled up at her father. The dance of greeting, done.

Father and daughter were both barefoot. Burnished floorboards stretched back into hard acres behind them.

The air was so harmonious I was afraid to disturb it:

‘Should I take my shoes off?’

Thomas parted his lips.

‘If you don’t mind, thanks,’ said Lola.

I felt their eyes on me and my marked heels. I should have worn tights: my surprised toenails were unpolished. My toes were silly, stubby and two were considering corns; I had always hated my feet. I was wondering how to work gravel damage and hours spent standing on wards into the conversation as she took my hand and said:

‘Come, I’ll show you around.’

Another easy glance; and yet such ripening wisdom in those silver disc eyes. I put down my handbag. I was dazzled. Truly, I could not take her in.

‘Good girl.’ Thomas was nervous too. ‘I’ll potter off and get on with our dinner. You’re in for a treat! We’re having my special pasta sauce. A real family fave, is it not, Lollapalooza?’

Lola took me from room to room, looking back at me now and then with a certain intensity as if to check that I was missing nothing, noticing it all. How could I not? This was Thomas himself in brick: a home that challenged you not to find it charming and well appointed. It was the generous but cosy, life’s-goshdarn-rosy nest of an architect who had been born with that true American optimism in his blood and still felt he was coming into his greatest powers. As I walked his hallways I believed in him more than ever. Later on he might provoke, or dissemble, or build sustainable grass-roofed mansions, or fool around with the conventions of loft apartment chic, or offer answers to clients’ most difficult prayers in cathedrals of black brick and zinc cladding; later, there was time. For now he lived somewhere that suited him. Clever, with a heart. I was inside what he called his ‘three-dimensional canvas’, in which walls would have been moved, spaces taken up and down and outwards. Lola was formal and proud, but I understood that. I followed her and paused to admire, followed and paused as she padded with unsettling poise – ballet? – around her home. I shuffled through the full tour on my ugly bare feet. We stood caught in our unblinking double glare, the light sting of her scrutinising my back as I wheeled, toes resting to hide for a moment in the pile of a rug, in slow humiliation through the study and the snug, through the whole of her too-lovely world.

Lola beckoned me to the next stop on the tour with a steel-tipped wave. (Her nails and toes were both painted, a shade lighter than her stare.) She was set on showing me all five bedrooms. These would not have been tidied, armfuls stuffed into cupboards, for my eyes only. It was a well-ordered house, grown-up and yet designed to fulfil the grandest hide-and-seek fantasies. By the time we went from her room to the attic (up the secondary doll’s house stairs behind a Narnia door, I kid you not), which they had thought about converting – not her dad, they – I almost wanted to say, ‘OK, I get it and yes, I’m impressed not accustomed, and yes, I’m just the guest …’

But then I thought sixteen and bit my tongue – actually gave myself a salty little nip – and I beamed and nodded, every inch the spellbound stranger, when she asked:

‘So, Darling, would you like to see Dad’s favourite place?’

We traipsed back down the main attic stairs along the landing, and carried on down to the hallway without speaking. A shout from the kitchen over the effortful jazz:

‘All OK, girls?’

‘Fine, Dad!’

Lola and I kept going, to the right, to the left, to the side, through a door hewn out of the fucking Faraway Tree and into the dust of a red-brick landing. Another smaller door. I hesitated:

‘Basement?’

‘Cellar.’

She flicked on a sickly light and I squinted, unsure. Before I could think of three good reasons why not, we were going down. I descended into the B-movie, my mind’s camera shaking, her he’s-behind-you blonde hair swishing in too much shadow to be funny. But something about her steady pace told me she was not acting. Lola led me down into the dark must.

‘Watch these steps,’ she said.

‘Will do, thanks.’

I tried not to mind her. Of course she was showing off the house as if it were double-glazed with diamonds. Anyone would be proud with a dad like Thomas Waite.

At the bottom, another switch; more powerful illumination. Racks stood in rows, housing aristocratic boozers asleep under thin blankets of dust. The stone-carved ceiling curved in places and the ends from wine boxes tiled the walls.

‘Ta-da!’

I nodded and smiled, as required.

‘Go ahead and take a look, it goes right back.’

I had never been a huge wine drinker – a vodka, gin or rum girl, me – and could not spot a good year, coo with urbane delight. However, even I could work out, without looking too hard at the labels, that if wine had been left alone for a few decades you had to be confident that some poor grape-trampling sod would have made it worth the wait.

‘Yes, Dad? Coming!’ A yelled reply to a call I could not hear. ‘Back in a sec.’

She skipped upstairs and left me gazing, with the same eyes I had turned on the ‘original’ fireplaces and the ‘spacious’ study, at a bottle of 2012 Côtes du Roussillon Villages Le Clos des Fées. Ah, fée: French for fairy.

Thud-click.

‘Lola?’

Nothing. Nothing except a muffle-thump of bass, some new and energetic tempo. Was that Queen?

‘Lola?’

I moved, with laboured nonchalance, to the foot of the stairs. Slow, slow, feet chilling on dank stone. I stared up: please, not this. Where the oblong of daylight had shown there was now only black.

‘Lola!’

Nothing but the dun-dun-dun high above, through dense, deaf floors – ‘Under Pressure’? Within seconds the room was pressing against my skin. I sank into a crouch. Walls locking down on me, dead air growing sweet in my nostrils, a sharp whiff of red flowers; the lights dimmed and in my ears dun-dun-dun a drum beating, a dangerous vibration, my lungs tight and full because I must have stopped breathing and then I was pounding upwards, upstairs dun-dun-dun-dun pounding hard into hard blackness:

‘Lola!’

I hit at the door dun-dun-dun. Not goddamn ‘I Want to Break Free’, no way. She couldn’t have.

‘Lola! Lola, let me out. Get me out now!’

Too loud, too far. My mobile; it was still in my handbag by the front door, next to my shamed shoes.

‘Lola! Lola!’

I could feel tears bleeding into the sweat at my temples.

Then a blinding of light and air and noise rushed in and she was there, a bending shadow. Oxygen, music washed me down (my hysterical ears now heard ‘Killer Queen’) and Lola swept me up.

‘Oh, you poor thing, I’m so sorry!’

‘I thought—’

‘This stupid beeping door. God, Darling, so sorry. It must have locked behind me, it’s been sticking lately.’

She took my hand and led me through the first door back to safety. Thomas danced out, a seafood cocktail in each hand. Seeing me he stopped dead:

‘What’s wrong, what—?’

‘The cellar door, Dad. Knew it would do that sooner or later.’

‘I’m fine.’ The veil of sweat said more, the tacky film noir on my face. I dropped her hand.

We ate. The prawns were perky, the pasta porky; paccheri topped with a fat chop, rubbed with salt and fresh oregano, in a more than passable passata. But I was done in. I laughed too loud, complimented everything Thomas had created: the dinner, all things Lola. I tried, but the pulsing music was all dun-dun-dun and I could not follow the chatter, my flesh had been rubbed with salt sweat and fear, and my wine tasted sharp, all wrong. We ate on as my toes curled up on themselves, defeated. My smiles lied broad and long, as did the yawns at around 9.30 p.m. Enough. Our night had been left behind, locked in the cellar, and I pleaded an early start with Stevie: physio. I would gather up my boy, he could sleep in my bed after all.

I pecked Thomas and hugged Lola, realising as I backed away that I knew little more about her than when she had first landed those eyes on me. As the door closed, those eyes put me in mind of magnesium, with the potential to flare bright. Or perhaps the casings of incendiary devices, of dormant bombs. Yes, that was it. In a certain light, Lola looked like she could go off at any moment.

Lola

DONE LIST 1

So, getting right down to it – we good girls always do our homework.

If you are my future child, going through all my old crap as I dribble Happy Oats down my knitted front in a nursing home you can’t afford, please ignore anything that you read here – I already have.

Introduction

Welcome, Ms Waite, to the inside of your brain!

This pointless but scenic ride through your psyche is your buy-one-get-one-free, no refunds, pain-in-the-ass complimentary gift, for which you are eligible thanks to the £110 per hour (I googled her) your dad has spent on ‘talking therapies’ every fortnight since you hit puberty and cried all night because you wanted to try on your mum’s bra (totally logical, how the fuck else would I know how it worked?).

So, no one even thought to get me as much as a training bra before thirteen (if I get saggy tits I will sue EVERYONE) but hey, two thumbs up for Alison Thoroughgood!

BTW innocent dinky future kids: that’s true, but it’s not actually a reason anyone ever got a shrink, not any girl anyway, let alone a fine specimen such as your drooling mother, but I really can’t be arsed to go into it all right now. Also, I’d just be happy with a bit more tittage generally – there’s always lifting tape for when you hit thirty.

Never mind that though, it’s basically:

£110 x 26 fortnights x 5 years since my nipples first weirdly popped out (still joking) = £14,300 minus holidays. About £14k spent paying someone he hardly knows (we love our letters after names, Dad and I) to get into my head. No wonder AT wants me to deliver some serious goods, aka ‘exploratory homework’ #cantbearsedwithfuckedupgirls #fundingmytibetanyogaretreat.

Still, £14,000 says something. It tells me two major things about Dad.

First thing: he has a lot more money than you might think to look at his car. Even I, who deleted all his lame old-guys-in-flying-jackets-speeding shows, know a Volvo’s too safe a choice. Alfa, Dad? Audi? Merc?

Second thing: he is an optimist.

He wants to cure you. Aka me. But none of us – especially not Alison Thoroughgood BSc, PG Dip whatever – is sure of What Underlies The Problem. All my mouthing off may be suppressed sadness, ask AT. So what’s my issue? My Dead Mum blues, no doubt. My stinking attitude. That ‘horrible’ obsession with hotness (is this really a fault? If you have to live your shitty life, you might as well look good). Bra fetish?

I probably am crazy, but point me to a teenage girl who isn’t. ‘Talking therapies?’ Chemo = therapy. Talking = fuck off, I’m watching YouTube, right? Just saying.

Make yourself comfortable, Lola, and I hope you have plenty of biros.

This is a piss-poor introduction to my head, but then who likes saying what they’re supposed to say? It’s tragic. Long story short: I will make the Notes every week or day or month or whatever and make my long list of five Achievements, as instructed, because as I have mentioned, I am a good girl. Not four Achievements (four’s for losers), not six (arsewipe show-offs) but five, as in ‘high five, AT, woop-woop!’ But basically these will be no more than DONE LISTS. I told her straight ‘No thanks, I’m more of a Nike kind of girl: just do it’ but that Alison, she needs to see where I’ve been – she’s always looking backwards. Isn’t that a bit lazy, or nostalgic, or even romantic for a therapist? Obviously I don’t think AT is actually in love with me though, thank Christ. Scary old geezerbird when I first met her. Now I think she’s more straight and tough than butch. Whatever. She won’t be reading any of these lists either, she just wants me to keep telling her whatever the hell I want in our sessions – an important part of the process she says – but at least she will get me to spend my whole time looking backwards too #timewasters101. I think the idea is that I am to feel I have got somewhere, DONE something just by making it to the end of the week without pausing to blow my brains out. Or something. Still, better than the sad-sack page-a-day diary with spaces to note your mood and that weird teddy on the front she tried to shove on to me a couple of months back. I didn’t mind giving her what she wanted to hear for a while: ‘Dear diary, I’m so fat and why can’t I get anyone to screw me blahblahblah … Mood: So Very Sad …’ I aimed for devastatingly sincere with a tiny hint of piss-taking, but I guess she didn’t buy it which is why we’re now doing this. ‘I won’t read these lists, Lola. You decide how much and when, Lola,’ in her ever-hopeful voice. Touching. I suppose I do owe her a brief go at this thing, although the diary fail was definitely not my fault – don’t give me some fat teddy holding carnations and expect me to spill my guts like you’re doing me a huge favour.

Notes

First off, I don’t get it. I just don’t. So three even four times I offered to give him Viv Halston-Jones’s mobile. Pretty, freshly divorced, perfect. Lizzie HJ’s a laugh too so if the parents hooked up it would be exactly like some cheesy old sitcom, brilliant. Him – ‘I’ll think about it.’ That usually means ‘yes’. Next thing, he comes back with her?

I don’t fucking think so.

I strongly suspect I have failed all my GCSEs. Why not? Screw A*s – nothing you really expect to happen happens. Things you don’t want: boom. Who needs it?

OK, massive dilemma – how best to slut-shame Caro Francis?

1 FB? Might actually be that much of a loser, but everyone would think I was joking. Who takes those posts seriously any more?

2 SnapChat? Yaas! Snap of me with my tongue poking way into my cheek, nice. Will try not to send it to Eli C instead of Ellie this time. #bloodydisaster

3 Old school … Yes! Scream with laughter around the Dovington boys then shout to Anna about what is so piss-yourself funny. Bingo. (Hey, Dad, you were right! Sometimes life is better without a digital trail.)

Seriously – who the hell gives someone a blow job in a hot tub? At a party? When it’s Will Benton? Caro Francis is rancid. Caro bloody Francid. She must secretly have been a total ho this whole time when we thought she was just a bit of a dick whose mum massively over-Bodens. It was probably because everyone reckoned they had holed themselves up in the parents’ en suite doing all that blow first. Anna was too drunk to freak. Lucky her mum was on another cruise with Tobias (the dilf to end all dilfs) and not just out. Someone’s hot tub – since when is that OK? Other people went in there afterwards as well. Ewwww (add ws. Ad infinitum. Rocking that Latin revision a little too late, Lola Waite). No wonder Anna was so pissed off in the morning that she cried, what a way to start the summer. I think she is planning to drain it just in case (sperm swims, right, but does it float? Maybe the filter got it all. Caro certainly did lol). How does that even work: why didn’t she drown?

I want to know all of these things, now. Sooner.

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

He saw her again. Until after 1.30 a.m. last night, ‘dinner round hers’, and apparently she’s ‘quite a bit more than just a date’. I mean … what?

For a start, let’s get the obvious thing out of the way. Since when was he into black women? I mean, Mum was it for him – the bomb – natural blonde, like me; she was your genuine Alpha², your total headfuck dreamgirl. I’ve got the photos to prove it. Dad’s always said: they simply went together. Tall, slim; him dark, her fair. All that genetic pay dirt I would get on my knees and thank God for every day if I believed in all that crap. Then Mum dead, nothing and no one for years, a few pointless dates, and now Darling. Is she his change that is as good as a rest? I doubt it. She must have been some kind of sexual accident. But then AT always says there are no such things as accidents. This does not make any sense.

Listen up, Roxie McFoxy. Stop torturing us with yet another tragic end-of-year routine … Rrrrring! The Eighties called, they want their Electric Slide back (told you – YouTube never lies). And why is Jane Forte in the front row? Her arse alone will eclipse us all.

Darling. She’s kidding, right? She tried, I’ll give her that. Obviously right out of her depth, nice enough, just wrong. Wrong for us, anyway. Nothing intelligent over dinner – except how lovely the pasta was, how lovely the daughter was, and had she mentioned she loved the pasta? Just rolled her eyes at Dad and laughed the whole bloody time. Some sucking up to The Lovely Daughter (that’s me, kids), all a bit obvious. Pretty sure Dad was finding her painful too because he wasn’t bothered when she sloped off early. That’s old people for you: need to get their rest.

Did she really think I’d find her lovely, what with her rolling her eyes and dragging her minging feet all over our poor house (hello, tights? Pedi?). Plus, she kept sniffing and coughing all over the wine, all like ‘Why do you people drink this dusty old crap?’ It’s true, they don’t like wine. Ellie went to Antigua and all her parents could drink was rum and beer, so her mum spent ten days with a massive air-conditioned migraine. True story.

Darling White is rude and I was angry. So – a little chill-out time for her in our cellar. Only for a few seconds and I was right there outside the door the whole time, but she screamed the goddamn place down. Lola! Lola! You’d have thought she was being murdered.

Now or never: a big shout-out for Caro Francis tomorrow, outside Maccy Ds, ably assisted by Anna #slutshaming101. The boys should be needing a Quarter Cheese, a fag and yet another pathetically unsubtle stare at our tits by about 5 p.m. No Will, I hope, or it’s obviously a non-starter.

Now she’s even getting into my head, into my warm-down space. This is literally the only time my head ever clears into whiteness and silence. That’s why I do it, the dancing – it all ends in the white and silence in my head. Now Darling White’s stolen even that.

I did mess with her head, though. Thinking about it, she nice-freaked all over me at dinner the other night, after the cellar thing. Trying way too hard. I watched her: super-nervy. She cut the pasta using her knife for a few bites, then remembered and picked up the spoon. I pretended not to see, but Dad saw and he saw me not noticing and told me later that I have great manners. I really do.

If she turns up again she’ll get 100 per cent The Lovely Daughter and fuck-all of me.

I can’t wait. I literally can’t wait for things to get back to how they should be again.

Dad reckons I’m impatient, but in some great way. I know the truth: it’s not that I’m actually patient, I’m not, I’m impatient, but it isn’t all so uncomplicated and great, it’s more of a juicy flaw, a fat complicated spot that I enjoy squeezing. As soon as I see a dress online I want it not only delivered now, I want to be wearing it while I look for the next one I want. I actually do! I might eat a GoGo bar all nice and slow when my friends are around, but on my own it’s all over before the wrapper’s hit the bin. What? Just the way it is. If by any miracle I ace my GCSEs then I want the results today, I can’t wait weeks, I’ve earned now. Tiring, but I’ve come to appreciate it – patience is the most over-rated virtue, as Mum used to say, apparently. That must be why Dad likes me not having it.

It’s like with Will. Why should I wait for him to come to his senses and realise that his decision to let Caro Francis anywhere near him was just horrible? I mean, she’s all lumpy hips and boobage and no brains and she doesn’t even get his jokes so it’s not as if they can have a proper laugh together. And why would he be interested in someone who – let’s face it – he’s much better looking than? Like putting a 10 with a 5 ½ (the half is because boys seem to like obese chests, the five is basically for showing up and breathing); it won’t work. Seriously, she’s got these weird eyes, all puffy and glassy, clueless. Dead walrus eyes, I swear. He must have been so wasted. I’ll be doing him a massive favour by exposing their whole stupid human hubbly bubbly scenario. How tacky? He’ll thank me one day. Even if he won’t, I don’t think I can stop myself.

No, I don’t like waiting, not for anything. But I have waited for Will Benton for over nine months.

And for the record, I’ve always thought my own impatience started out as a rebellion against my stupid surname (any thoughts, AT?). Whenever someone says my name in full, I just think ‘Why the fuck should I?’

Mission accomplished! I yelled to Anna about the whole ridiculous hot-tub thing, she shrieked back and there you go – if Will goes near that sket again he will be torn to pieces by all his piss-taking mates (btw I’d never heard of a ‘nob-gobbler’ until Martin Howe shouted it mega-loud, then the staff asked us to please move away from all the Happy Meal eaters). Now I feel calm again. So that’s where the hell my white and silence went after the Year 11 (Group A) Modern Dance Prizegiving rehearsals yesterday – all sucked up by Caro Francis, never mind that bloody Darling.

When I’m furious in the morning and sunny at night, Dad tries to hug me into submission and says I’m a funny old mix, and don’t I just know it?

Sure do, Pops, sure do.

Can’t sleep again.

Was going to bin this crappy book as I can’t, to be honest, be arsed with yet more writing after weeks – literally gazillions of seconds I will never get back – spent in exam hell #smothermenow. But making this sad sacrifice to the great god AT is better than trying to lie still until I have another one of those dreams where I run and run and get nowhere. Maybe it is good to keep track of what I’ve done. Especially during the summer – I need structure, apparently. AT might say that’s linked to my impatience issues but I can’t hang around to find out (ha!). Gotta get the DONEs done.

So. End of term tomorrow. End of Harbrooke House too, forever – one final dull-as-fuck Prizegiving but Dad’s not bringing her, so that’s good. Time for the mums to get all teared up again (not mine, lol) and the dads to snort a term’s fees’ worth of champagne and canapés. Our parent-pleasing (rated U, no twerking) dance, then a trillion+ hours of the annual Year 13 tears and snot festival, bring wellies – ohlikemyGodIcantbelieveIllneverseeyouagaaain. Then I’ll dance my lil white mighty-fine booty off! Sorry, must stop doing that. I’m really not a racist.

All this to come, tomorrow. Will might even get dragged along to the evening – Georgie Benton wins everything in her year, always. That would keep me awake at least. After that it will finally be the start of my actual, proper life. No more Harbrooke House, no more rules to do my head in, just a crazy-long summer, then college and my time at last. End of.

Achievements

1 Started a FB group (no Caro Francis) for everyone going to the Mungojaxx festival which is actually going to be on Josh’s cousin’s farm, some fields near Henley. Have kept the Caro/Will cumfest offline for now (the screaming plan worked big time).

2 Added ten extra squats and twists to my morning workout. Roxie will cream her pants when she sees my insane leaps tomorrow. Get the fuck into the back row, Jane Forte!

3 Bought my first ever packet of Golden Kings using my fake ID. Sweated it, but Delhi Deli don’t give a toss. They’re not even a proper deli (no salami, no pastrami, no scotch eggs #grossguiltypleasure). No meat at all, people, bad for you or religiously impure or whatever … but go ahead, smoke yourself silly! (Don’t do it, kids, ever.)

4 Lost Thursday’s lunch. Mistake.

5 Practised in my head being nice to Dad’s date. Did not tell her she was totally not his type. Did tell him, of course. Did not ask her, ‘And who in Mcfuck’s name is even called “Darling”?’

Darling

SATURDAY, 23 JULY

It was time. My baby had been brought along to meet everybody, but he decided to show the world his tonsils at high volume when I tried to get him out of the car.

‘Come on, Stevie, sweetheart, they want to see you!’

‘No, Mum!’

‘Please, baby, come on, I’ll help you. My little Wonderboy …’

Just like that: the cheekster smile. My son took an inordinate, lips-pulled-wide pride in his name, especially when we played ‘Fingertips’, turned right up. He would not have to sing or perform, ever. But from the moment my future mathematician or philosopher or astronaut had first been flopped on to my chest, I knew he was Stevie (never Steven) Marcus White. My little star, my baby emperor.

‘Please, my love, for Mummy.’

In the distance a train shrieked its passage through the town into the fast-rolling fields.

‘Choo-choo!’ said Stevie.

‘Yes, sweetness, that’s right,’ I said. ‘Now … please?’

With a damp frown up at the strangers, Stevie swung his legs sideways, exactly the way I had shown him, and eased on to my arm, on to his sticks and out of the car.

Once again the door was already open, but this time Thomas stood on the doorstep, a controlled explosion of blonde hair behind his shoulder. She’d washed it and let it dry curly and natural, and I knew there was a reason for that but could not think what it might be. Was she unwinding follicle by follicle or simply trying to make us feel more at home? Both?

‘Hello, Darling! And here’s super-Stevie …’ said Thomas.

This for his daughter’s benefit. Stevie the Wonderboy, I wanted to correct him but I didn’t. Let them get to know him in their own time.

Then I saw her face.

Her father’s shoulder and shadow could not hide her. There it was, the spark of disgust, swiftly snuffed out, when she looked down at my boy. This is why I needed to protect him, right there, in that look.

‘Stevie, Thomas, remember? And this is Lola.’

When I turned the spotlight on her she sprang into action:

‘Ah, OK, would … you … like … to …’

I had to jump in: ‘It’s fine, it’s only in his body. He’s a smart boy, aren’t you, Stevie?’

A squirming, wide-eyed nod.

‘That’s good,’ said Lola, looking at her feet.

Young. She would learn.

Morning unfolded into afternoon with an unhurried Saturday vibe; we were all to hang out together and enjoy the blueberry bran muffins that Lola, Thomas swore, had insisted on baking all by herself in Stevie’s honour.

Stevie winced at the murky sponge and the berries that bit back, but I caught his eye in time; good boy. Lola sat with him for over an hour after lunch and left Thomas and me to chat, mostly about surviving the summer and binning off the school run.

Lola had finished now, but Stevie had another week to go until he got his end-of-year medal. I was so proud of him. Once, home-schooling had appeared to be the only way, but he had been a true lion as ever:

‘I want to play with my friends, Mummy!’

I could not hold him back, I would never do that. So off he went to High Desford’s best primary, no trouble at all. Lola had gone to that nicety-nice girls’ place up the road, of course. Lovely blue uniforms, but – la! – they all wore them so short. My mum would have slapped me upside my head if I’d tried that on.

From the kitchen we could hear them discussing favourite cartoons. That was kind of her, helpful; good to see.

Meanwhile, I twitched. I had vowed not to smoke, in honour of us all. I would end those dashes into the en suite to brush my teeth before kisses, before talking, before breathing; the dashes out of the door to top up on nicotine; the miserable yellow-toothed excuses to the one person who wanted to see me happy. Straight-up cold turkey quitting. No fags, no patches, no nicotine chewing gum, no sugar-free mint chewing gum, nothing but the taste of Thomas. Who needed cigarettes when we had us? Lips were for lovers; from now on I would practise full oral fidelity.

More than the urge to smoke, the blueberry muffins had set off in me a strange urge to bake. It was Stevie’s birthday in a few weeks and I figured I could whip up a dozen or so soppy little chocolate frosted cupcakes with those silver balls.

I am not a natural baker. I like preparing things with skin and bone, skimming fat and salting sauces. But this afternoon something made me want to try. Maybe it was a faint hope that Lola might sniff out a mother figure. We needed a crumb of that sticky stuff. She was embarrassed: we both knew, from as soon as the actual dust settled, that we both knew she had locked me in the cellar. But I was an adult; I had moved on. Just a little kick-out at the nasty ole lady who was kissing her daddy, all pretty textbook. More than that I was a nurse: caring was my life and so was understanding. I got it. And I never planned to try to be ‘Mum’; that would have been wrong, insensitive, futile, crazy. I would simply, as people liked to say, be there for her.

It took me a moment to realise that Stevie had walked in, holding something.

‘Put that down, Stevie! That’s not yours …’

I could not hide the panic in my voice. Dark red-pink and orange in his hands: he had walked in holding a Bright New Britain flyer, snatched up from the hallway. What words – incomprehensible to us both – might he try to read?

‘Come and see our garden, Stevie,’ said Lola, taking the leaflet from him and placing it on the side. ‘Can he …?’

‘He’ll be fine, he can get around with his sticks, just watch him a little.’

‘OK.’

Thomas pulled me to him as we watched them disappear up the garden.

‘We can go and see the pond!’ The small voice drifting over the lavender.

‘Sure,’ said Lola.

The girl didn’t go outside much. A gorgeous garden, but she preferred Facetiming her friends all day. So many friends too; Ellie seemed to be the closest at that time, but it changed from week to week. Girls were strange, these days; I had either had someone for good, or not at all.

I lifted the leaflet from the work surface:

BRITAIN FOR THE BRITISH

We are taking back:

Our borders

Our jobs

Our NHS

Our streets and our kid’s futures … today!

‘What the hell is this?’

‘We never used to get them but they come every few days now. They must be targeting the area …’

‘Oh God, we—’

‘No, sorry, ignore me. We get all sorts of crap through, every day.’

‘And what about my kid’s future? Are we no longer British?’

‘Just ignore it, Darling, please.’

‘I was British, apparently, when I was cleaning up their wasted kids’ fluids and saving their bleeding lives in A&E. Or when I spoon-fed their grandmas. Or when I—’

He pulled me into a hug, into that compelling, hard-won privacy that only parents could know. ‘Time is short,’ he said. ‘Too short,’ I said. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘Me you,’ I said. The urgency of our kisses became uncomfortable.

Hands on cheeks, hands on shoulders, at my waist, his hands …

‘Dad!’

Lola running up, nearly at the door, no Stevie. No Stevie. Blood? A forever loss, a fall, a drowning – I sprinted, seeing it all already. My boy. I raced past the flowerbeds and bench and vegetable garden, far to the back, by the chestnut tree where the pond hid, dank and gorge deep, skulking away from our eyes. So wide and deep: with those things strapped around his legs he would sink to the bottom. Stevie was nowhere, no Stevie.

‘Darling! What’s wrong?’

A bewildered bass; Thomas running behind me.

‘Stevie,’ my voice snagged. ‘Where’s Stevie?’

Thomas held up his arms, shrugging his whole body. I wanted to punch him in the chest.

‘Stevie! Where?’

‘He’s—’

‘Dad!’

We both spun. Lola was ambling up towards us. I could have flown at her, tugged answers out of that tousled hair. She could see it.

‘He’s fine, Darling, he’s just on the swing.’

‘What?’

‘Look.’

She ran-skipped back up the garden and parted branchlets of willow tree. There was Stevie, sitting immobile on a wooden swing, no longer hidden by the weeping canopy. I ran to him.

‘Push me, Mum!’

It was then that I realised my feet were cold, dirty and bare once again.

‘I was only calling for Dad,’ said Lola, ‘to ask if he would be allowed to swing—’

There, that. Was that triumph in her voice?

‘Of course he can’t fuh—’ I said; Thomas was walking closer. ‘He can’t go on swings, Lola, sorry.’

‘Push me!’

‘No, Stevie!’ The look I gave her was as direct as I could make it. ‘If he breaks a leg he’ll be … it could set him right back. Permanently.’

Thomas took in a rapid breath. Lola lowered her chin.

‘Yes, of course. Sorry. It’s OK, you meant well, Lollapalooza,’ her father said.

‘Of course you did,’ I agreed. ‘No harm done.’

I never wanted him to feel he had to defend her from me. We both knew how well she had meant.

We binned the leaflet and tied up the swing.

Later, Lola disappeared off with a group of friends to something that gloried in the name of ‘Mungojaxx’, a ‘festival for faux-boho future bankers’, as Thomas described it, which drew a tight snort from me. The girl seemed keyed up as she walked out of the door and as she went a certain tension in the breeze whistled right out with her.

The next time we came over, I arrived with two small overnight bags.

Lola had let us in; Thomas hurried into the kitchen ten minutes later, fresh from work.

‘We were just saying yesterday,’ said Thomas, ‘it’ll be lovely to have him stay over. Weren’t we, Lollapalooza?’

‘Were we?’ she asked.

My back to them both, I pressed down on banana flesh with my masher.

‘Come on, Lo …’ he said.

‘What?’ She walked out of the kitchen.

‘Lola!’

‘It’s fine,’ I said, breaking eggs into a bowl. ‘It’s all still so new to her. Go get changed, relax, I’ll bring you something.’

That won his smile back. We were still so new to ourselves that every hackneyed and cosy gesture felt daring, sexy; mixing him a drink in his own home, baking in his Aga. I was now spending so much time at Littleton Lodge that we had decided: time for our first sleepover with Stevie.

‘OK. I’ll just go see to Lola first.’

I nodded and started whupping the eggs, quite hard. After he left I googled on my phone. As I had thought:

Lollapalooza

/ˌlɒləpəˈluːzə/

Noun, North American, informal – A person or object that is more than usually impressive or attractive.

I had heard the word out of that soft mouth a few too many times already. Time after time. I found it irritating, but I needed to stay calm. To relax. Vodka. I would make vodka tonics to ease us into our weekend. First, I scrolled down:

Lollapalooza; also, a gambling term for a made-up hand of cards.

In other words, tricky. I never claimed to be an intellectual, far from it, but I did indeed read into things. Meaning lurked everywhere, even though we could only look back or around us, never see what was to come.

And what was to come?

It had been over a month since the referendum. A lucky seven days since I had last smoked. Things in this country – as with things in my lungs – might have been calming down, or they might not. For a few days after the referendum I had raged. Raged. Then, Thomas had called and I had started to hope we would all just get on with it; rise in the heat, as we always had done. We got on with it. High Desford – not famous, not distinguished, beautiful to few – excelled in that it had become a truly blended town. White English people, Sikhs, Poles, Hindus, Afro-Caribbeans, Chinese, other Europeans and yes, Muslims; genders and sexualities every colour of that proud rainbow; all generations, everyone; even one local character who liked to drape a Partick Thistle scarf across his chilled wares in the market square. Surely, unless you mixed it all up, gave it some heat and bit in brave and hard, you never could know. And maybe a Swedish-born oven, raised in Shropshire, was always destined to bake some bloody lovely Jamaican banana bread.

As it rose in the oven, I went to the drinks fridge. But the bottle of vodka had gone, and the tonic too. I did not stress: that sunshine aroma was already billowing out from the cast-iron conundrum, filling such cracks in our day. Wine would do.

‘Mum?’ Stevie wandered into view. ‘The cartoon finished.’

‘OK, sweetie, I’m coming through.’

‘Can I have some ’nana cake, please?’

‘Not right now, after supper.’

No, the youth was not in charge, today; the grown-ups had already plotted. As our reward, the evening had passed off quietly – Stevie, having seen the size of his new room, lit up the longer silences – and everyone had gone to bed early and eager. None more so than Thomas and I.

Lights left on, always. Our pampered mouths – brushed clear of crumbs and newly minted – were now more than stunned by their discoveries, they were over-sexed and delighted for it. Our bodies were ahead of even our lips. Thomas had seized a no-messing handful of right thigh. With my toes pointing past his shoulder, he eased my thigh higher as we sat, naked, facing each other on the bed; higher he stretched me, back and higher …

‘Mum!’

‘Oh God!’ A hamstring twanged, good as snapped. ‘Stevie darling, hi—’

Thomas had already yanked up the duvet.

‘What are you doing, Mum?’

‘Exercises, poppet. Physio.’ I gave Thomas my first cross look. ‘Door?’

‘It was locked, I swear!’

‘What did you want, baby? You can’t sleep?’

‘I dreamed of Lolly and she came.’

‘What?’ we said.

‘Lolly was here, she told me you wanted me.’

Neither of us spoke for a moment. Then:

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘We always want you, my lovely one.’

Stevie, free of his callipers but broken by bad dreams, clambered on to the bed so he could throw his insubstantial arms around me. I sat back on my haunches, the right one aching like hell, and I pressed my lips to his crown. He wormed into the bed, nestled down under the duvet.

Behind me, a swallowed sigh.

In the morning, Thomas was all smiles and ‘more coffee?’. As the first sure-bring-Stevie sleepover it had not been an unqualified success. Not knowing which child to blame, we yawned, gulped the breakfast blend faster than normal, and blamed neither. But I knew.

I watched as Lola, triumphant, made a show of cutting soldiers for Stevie’s dippy egg.

‘… and this is the soldier that guards the queen!’

She caught my eye; we smiled. Yet my faking lips fell when she said:

‘Next time, Stevie, you’ll have to top-to-toe with me!’

Thomas laughed, grateful. I said:

‘His legs, though, you see …’ and the laughter died.

Maybe I was being too harsh on her, on all of us. Thomas doted on Lola, and Lola might have been coming to dote on Stevie.

I never meant to panic, to make a big deal, to give the impression that he was totally helpless. But that was what thinking about Duchenne muscular dystrophy did to a mum. Thomas understood that; I ought never to forget that he was the man who got me. Thomas understood the sadness in my smiles when Lola petted and teased my boy. I always watched over him, it was my job, my joy. And Thomas understood, deep down, how glad I had to be that his girl wanted to reach out to my baby, even for a moment.

A few days later, we endured a lockjaw-inducing dinner. A meal sucked up through clenched teeth.

Lola needled and carped at everything I said. As I offered her potatoes:

‘You know I’m off carbs, right?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Well, I am.’ A look. ‘I don’t want to get fat.’

And, as a nineties dance tune played on the radio:

‘Tune!’ I cried. ‘I used to love this.’

‘God, it’s really annoying.’

And, as I confirmed to Thomas that I was indeed wearing a new top:

‘Wow, you love shopping, don’t you?’

‘No more than most, I imagine,’ I said.

‘How do you afford it?’ A beat. ‘That top … yes, I think Lizzie HJ’s mum has the same one. You’ve met her, haven’t you, Dad? God, she’s so pretty it’s sickening.’

And, as Thomas reached out to touch my hand:

‘Don’t look, Stevie, old people alert!’

And, as Stevie pulled back one arm and pointed with the other, his favourite Lightning Bolt pose – aimed straight at my loving chest – I said:

‘The Olympics should be pretty incredible. And the Paralympics.’

‘Yeah, but they’re spending all that money on it and clearing out the favelas.’

‘I know, you’re right but—’

‘The games are just so the better countries can show off to—’

Thomas smiled. ‘It’s OK, Lolapoo, relax.’

If she were mine I would have made sure she did more than relax. So much sharpness, such spite; you could catch a nerve on it, trip up and gash your good intentions. Why did he not notice?

Later that night, I was no longer in a receptive mood. I wanted to get the hell away. I wanted a cigarette. But Thomas was ready to share his stories. He wanted to tell me more about what mattered to him. So: Dad George dead, Boise, Idaho, America. George could drink a bottle of vodka for breakfast and defend a rape case before lunchtime. (I popped a mint in, started listening.) This combination of talents gave Thomas the cold sweats to this day. He had died over thirty years before and Thomas still felt weird; cheated that it was a car accident that got him – he had been in a taxi – rather than the burst liver for which his Tommy had spent his whole childhood preparing. His mum, Sal, a Brit, was not much inclined to live in the land of pumpkin pie and prairies. She fled sniffily to England, only to return, in crumpled Chanel, to Idaho, because that was where George was buried. The pull of that car-crash love, beyond pride and maternity and oceans, was such a shock to that practical woman that she never recovered. Thomas still retained some pride in this familiar yet foreign half of him; the US was the sassy, stacked superpower the whole world secretly fancied so he flashed his generous half-Yank teeth as he said:

‘Imagine. Us in Boise, Idaho.’

‘Can’t.’

‘Big fishing country. The Rockies, Pioneer villages … fuck-all, really.’

‘Thomas! I do believe that’s the second time I’ve heard you cuss.’

‘Is that right? Ah, that’s not me, that’s American Thomas. Tom … Wassernacker. He swears like all—’

‘Oh, shut the fuck up and come here …’

‘Darling! I do believe—’

‘Hush now.’

There were bright stabs of joy, daily, despite the teenage parrying. Thomas seemed to be taking to Stevie faster than I had hoped. Going over and above; under and around too, drafting new ways for us all to be. It was a Wednesday evening, and I was to idle in the bath while he took the kids to the summer drive-in, showing Grease. As it happened, the hospital called first, needing me to cover, but his thoughtfulness was no less magnificent.

As Thomas started up the engine, with Lola and my son in his car, my mind buzzed. I wanted Stevie to love culture, even if it started out with some shiny, big-quiffed, ‘Summer Lovin’’; that night he would at least learn something about the beauty of transformation. I read books and watched plays, which some people found surprising, but that in itself surprised me. High Desford was not a complete cultural desert – not compared to Elm Forest, the small, scruffy nearby town where I had spent my early years.

Even if it was semi-arid, I had studied and sought out thoughts, dowsed for words and meaning, drunk it all in ever since we had moved here. If I had not been made a nurse by vocation and were I not Stevie’s destined mother, I would have written. All the blinking time. I certainly read. Some of the first lines I ever committed to memory, apart from Neneh Cherry’s ‘Buffalo Stance’, were from Ophelia’s loco chatting which we had to recite once at school:

‘Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.’

So good. A bit too much sense for real madness, but that seemed to be the point. (We thesps of Class 4C probably did not greatly enhance the meaning with our am-dram gurning and tied-lunatic lurches.)

Thomas and the kids left for the movie before my shift. However, St Foillan’s then called again to explain that they did not need the cover after all, and that the first call had been due to an administrative error, so I opted to hang around alone at Littleton Lodge.

I waited for them, wondering: what must it be to live in a home such as this, with a creator of homes such as this? It would be more than ordinary dreams could offer to see love in every lintel, every stairwell, every last nail. I leaned against the wall of his study; the petrol blue paint still smelled of the cost and challenged the eye in just the right way. He was clever. But more than that he knew how to plan for the way lives would be lived within his spaces, how to build, yes, love into an angle, to create unity and harmony, or division with a layout – a true domestic God. What power! I imagined myself as part of the house itself, a quiet corner or window. I moved upstairs, smoothing the balcony with my hand. I did not know what had been done or how, but interventions had been made in the original building so that the below flowed into the above without a stutter. I pretended to myself that I was doing my old pausing-to-admire schtick, but I knew I was in fact going straight to where I had to be: Lola’s bedroom.

I went in, looking over the made bed, the chair with her stack of ironed clothes that got done by the lady up the road twice a week, the wardrobe and the desk. Tess watched my every move from her frame, the sun lighting up her milk-and-honey mouldings, frozen. I opened the wardrobe door. All the wispy skirts and half-cocked dresses, just smart enough to pour scorn on the mottle-thighed proles, plus a trifle or two of vintage, to my narrowed eyes the whole predictable cache of competitive irony – Behold my sweet regurgitated rara! My jaunty 10p fedora! I, so young and so untender … and so tediously well-off! All of it in colours tied to studied trends, the shapes following sanctioned fashions. Uncharitable, perhaps, but clothes that focused so much on the now and the then did little to move me. Whatever the year, my dress had always had something loud to say about sunshine and breasts and hip-to-waist ratios, even at a younger age, even in the coldest weather; moreover, I had never been so slight. Girl should eat more. I leant into the back of the wardrobe, groped and looked down – nothing but oak and dark space. I withdrew, closed the door and moved to her window, to its unobstructed view over the garden. The best view in the house, really. She was loved. Did she know it?

Finally, I did what I had come to do. I opened her bedside table and sifted. What was inside? Pens, coins, a phone charger, a plastic-sheathed tampon, a couple of hairbands, a notepad, five or six GoGo chocolate bar wrappers, an empty purse maybe. Girl’s mess that did not invite.

Next drawer down: hairdryer, brush, dental floss, that sort of thing. Diet pills (ah!) half empty, more tampons, B vitamins, a few unused soaps, hair oil, foot cream. More debris denoting female effort.

I straightened, looked at the dressing table. Not sure why it caught my eye; perhaps it was the only exposed hint of disorder in that cleaner-controlled room. Peeking out from the third drawer down was the corner of a patterned headscarf. I reached for it, pulled the drawer out. The headscarf billowed up into a silken cloud of ironic paisley. There was a small block of something underneath it. I dug my fingers under, pulled and … yes, Golden Kings cigarettes. We smoked the same brand. If Thomas had the first idea … I planned to have a word, put her straight. A drawer of secrets, then. More scarves – none I could imagine her wearing – and when I pushed through to the bottom, a blue book; an A4 exercise book with a dolphin postcard taped to the cover. The dolphin in its sea was a similar blue-grey so that it seemed as if the creature were swimming out at you from the depths of an ocean which was balanced upon the word HAWAII. Also on the book’s cover, in large neat underlined capitals:

DONE LISTS

There was one entry – DONE LIST 1 – several pages long.

I read it; of course I read it. And then I smiled, dropped my head.

Just a child, I reasoned. A girl alone with her pen and her angry, angry words. I got it, we all needed an outlet. Angry child, angry words. Love would win.

Everything was wrapped, wedged and replaced. Five minutes later the three of them were pulling into the drive. I had texted Thomas about the cancelled shift; Stevie almost skipped to me in his KAFOs.

‘Stevie, careful.’

Lola did not look at me. She would not meet my eye and when I examined Thomas he also seemed to be holding tense words an inch behind the jawline. Our backs to the kids, my expression asked him the question; he responded with the slightest shake of the head.

We readied ourselves for bed. I listened to one message – it was always the same one – then I deleted the seven missed calls, put my phone on vibrate as usual. Enough already.

‘So now, what was that earlier?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The atmosphere.’

‘Nothing.’

‘Really? But—’

‘The kids had bickered a bit, that’s all. Nothing big, everyone’s just tired.’

It did not take a mother to know that his sixteen-year-old girl and my five-year-old boy would get nowhere near arguing, but I said nothing more.

Soon we were locking limbs around each other, never that tired, not then. But even as we stroked our bodies brighter and pushed on through to that grasping, eyes-shut, giving, gasping place where no child could ever find us, I wondered. Lola had changed.

It was as if she could read, in my eyes, what I had read in her room. But of course she could not and, in the end, I did not let it keep me from tumbling into the grave-deep sleep of the satisfied woman.

When I woke, I felt the childish urge to skip the whole breakfast routine and slip us out of the door. But Lola was the teen, and moody by definition. I was not. I swung out of bed, leaving Thomas to snore, went downstairs to my bag to get my phone and – before I had tripped the wire that triggered the brain-alarm ‘Stop, in the name of your flaws’ – I was reaching for the pack of cigarettes, giving it a hopeful shake. I had been almost certain it was empty, but in fact it contained one final stick of tobacco. I ran the cigarette along my upper lip as I breathed it in. I weighed it in my pinch. I rolled it between thumb and finger. I held it between my lips, closed my eyes and waited for the dirty billow of longing to overwhelm me. It did not come. Moved by this lack of feeling – triumphant even – I dropped the packet into the dustbin.

Over breakfast, silence was broken only by exasperation. A wall-faced Lola, with ‘Screw You, Darling’ graffitied all over her. Stevie upturning his bowl in a rage because his KAFO had got wedged between the chair and table:

‘They so annoy me, Mummy!’

Thomas soothed us all but my embarrassment soared as the milk dripped to the floor and then, after a quick wipe around, I gathered my son so we could totter – clack-clack – out of their smart door and drive home.

‘No, she totally hates me, I’m serious. Huh-ates me!’

That weekend I pretended not to listen through the old serving hatch as Lola complained into her mobile for long minutes, muffled by a cushion; you could make out the tear stains on the silk. I sprinkled radishes through the all-Littleton Lodge salad. The lettuce, cukes and curlicues of pea shoots made a fine bed in their bowl. I’d left Thomas and Stevie in the garden, devouring the pièces de resistance: cherry tomatoes plucked straight from the vine.

‘I know, how could she say that to Jess and not have told me?’

I figured she had to be talking to Ellie. I tore up a few more butterhead leaves, picked five minutes before from the Waite patch. Lola went on:

‘Ellie Motte-Ryder is a complete and utter bitch.’

I rummaged for a jug, found one so well designed that it almost annoyed. I glugged some olive oil into vinegar, added mustard, seasoned and whisked. She had not seen me, could not hear me, did not know I was there.

‘I can’t believe she said that!’

It still needed parsley. I slipped out of the back door to the herb garden, snapped a stem or two and crept back in.

‘No … Oh my God, did she? Well just kill me now.’

The herbs in a colander, I turned on the tap, only for the water to explode in a great gush.

‘Hello?’ she called.

‘Only me,’ I said.

‘Got to go,’ she told her phone.

No time to waste. I walked into the sitting room where she was curled up under a throw, limbs unstirred as if under a layer of custard, no matter that the windows were open and it was 78 degrees outside.

‘Can I get you anything, Lola?’

‘No thanks.’

‘Nothing at all?’

Darling White is rude. She’ll get fuck-all of me.

Lola did not speak, stared straight ahead.

‘Nothing?’ I repeated.

‘Perhaps a new life?’ She would not be seen to cry, refused, but her voice caught, a downward glance.

‘Ah, now …’ I moved closer, ready to sit. ‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’

She raised a hand before her face, hiding her eyes, blocking me out.

‘Actually, just a hankie would—’

‘Sure, let me get you one.’

I hurried back to the kitchen; I had to keep trying. I loved to care. Nursing was love – that simple and that complicated – love, time-stamped and dished out to strangers. Caring for your sick child could be similar but it did not vary with precisely the same frictions and erosions and unwanted quickenings and surprise softenings, with the rough incidents that abraded you when tending the wounds of the unknown many. Your love for your child was relentless, and joyous, and painful. But all of it – nursing, caring, loving – there was nothing better, nothing else I ought to be doing with my life.

Grabbing my handbag, I pulled hard at a corner of cotton and there, once again, was a packet of cigarettes that I did not remember buying, was sure I had not bought. The box was light. I shook it, flipped it open and there, once a-bloody-gain, lay a lonely smoke.

Ah, got it now, Lola. Her Golden Kings, all of them, were for me.

I snatched up the hankie, pinched the cigarette between my fingers, held it high and walked back into the sitting room.

‘Why are you giving me these when I’m trying to give up?’

She said nothing.

‘Why, Lola?’

She shifted so that her feet tucked further up under the creamy blanket and lowered her gaze to the floor.

‘You seemed really stressy without them. Just trying to help.’

‘That’s the only reason?’

She looked me in the eye. Looked away.

‘OK … Well, thanks for the support, or whatever, but I need to kick these things. I will quit, too. Here.’ I passed her the hankie.

‘Thanks.’

‘And don’t you even think of trying it.’

‘No way,’ she advert-flicked her hair to one side, patted an eye. ‘That’s never going to happen. I’m not stupid.’

‘Well, that’s fine but—’

Clack-clack. Stevie was coming in, with Thomas close behind.

‘Mummy, we’ve got tomatoes for the salad, look!’

‘Thanks, sweetness.’ I got up, trying to give Lola an ‘our secret’ look. She was staring at her nails.

‘Let me show you, Mummy. Let me show you the plants, let me—’

‘OK, OK,’ I said, with a sunny nod at Thomas. ‘Someone’s had a lot of fun! I’m coming.’

I turned back to Lola once more, but with a wave of her wrist she had already commanded the TV to amuse her. We three walked up the garden. Quite some garden too; long and wide beyond anything I had ever imagined when I had first walked down this street. A lavender farewell by the kitchen door, alongside pots of herbs: rosemary, purple-afroed chives, thyme, mint, a stately bay tree. We walked on, passing the shed, through lawns fringed with a whole production of blooms, past the willow tree and onwards until there, before we reached that murderous pond, we breathed in the must of tomato plants.

Stevie tugged me closer to what was left of them. ‘Here, Mummy.’

‘They’re beautiful, aren’t they?’

‘I wish we could live here so I can eat them every day.’

I said, ‘I’ll buy you some nice tomatoes, sweetie.’

‘But I want these!’

Thomas was saying nothing. My eyes must have spoken despite me, and the look he gave answered at perfect pitch, did not shout, did not whisper.

‘Can I dig a muddy pool?’

Thomas laughed. ‘Sure, why not? I’ll get a trowel.’

I chose that moment to leave them in the sunlight, Stevie sitting straight-legged on the grass in his dew-smeared KAFOs, with Thomas making a whole mudpit of mess in the place where his good things grew, and all for my boy.

Unwatched, I wandered back towards the house with sassy step, arms swinging free, pausing only to lean into the boundary shrubs and pick a trumpet of buddleia. Black and a flash of crimson fluttering out: a Red Admiral weaving up into the sky, first I’d seen for years.

I moved through the French windows into the cool of the kitchen. Lola’s phone drawl drifted to me, a sharp note in the August air:

‘Yeah, she’s still around. And her son … I know … Yeah, she’s basically a pretty big slut.’

My foot paused mid-step. I was rinsed down by disgust and anger, all washed over by something icier: cold shame. Shame that I had even tried with her, shame that I had failed. I turned and grabbed my handbag from the counter, slipped into the dining room, ducked sideways through the conservatory, out of the side gate. I had to have it.

I ran, a mad tiptoed sprint, halfway up the road. Just a couple more final puffs.

Her conjuror’s trick cigarette glowed as I lit it. Lola knew, she had always known. The fags weren’t some anarchic take on Girl Guide charity. She was a Millennial, she had been told her whole life that the nasty things were multi-talented killers. I inhaled deep.

First the cellar, then this. She clearly wished me a slow death.

Almost impressive. Not too shabby; no sugar-candy Mandy, this one. But dislike could do more damage than tooth-rot. No matter, la! I would sure as hell win her over.

One, one coco full basket.

She would change. We would be just fine in the end, Lola and I. Because that was how it was going to be. Love wins.

On the Monday evening, I engineered an excuse to stay over at Littleton Lodge when Stevie was with Demarcus and Thomas was dining with clients. I needed time alone with Lola. I would cook for us.

Food, though, was turning from my gift into our battleground. Most days Stevie ate anything, but Lola? She was a tricky one. That night I offered her spaghetti, with either bolognese or a tuna and tomato sauce, but she ‘wasn’t feeling’ pasta, so I offered grilled chicken and potatoes, but she wasn’t feeling chicken, or potatoes, so I offered a sea bass fillet, not feeling it, sausages, nah, sirloin steak, nah – she wasn’t feeling any meat at all. By this time I was feeling the need for air, so – back in a minute! – I left her in front of the TV and grabbed my bag, which now held a fresh pack of cigarettes, put there by me alone.

I smoked. Then, with my deliberate failure already stale in my mouth, I hit upon a meat-free inspiration: everyone loved my Caribbean vegetable curry. I aimed for Pattie’s West Indian Food Store a few streets away, bought what was needed and wandered back.

There was no sign of Lola downstairs.

I snatched up a knife and cut out the scowling. There would be no asking, nor pleading; no telling, no pandering now, just dinner on a plate. I needed to calm my blood and get this sauce to bubble; it would taste almost as good from Thomas’s overpriced pot. I diced the onion fast – chuk-chuk-chuk – grated the ginger, then fried them together nice and slow. I whistled as I chunked up the vegetables, inhaled a savoury puff which seared my skin as I poured liquid over. A breather.

I padded to the back door. Time for the flavours to mix themselves up, for it all to meld together and break down a touch. I considered another cigarette but remembered Lola’s gift of suffering and pushed the urge aside, for now. I went back to the hob, added coconut milk, stirred and covered.

Soon come.

After at least twenty minutes, I decided to seek her out upstairs.

Lola was in her room. She was sitting up on the bed, Facetiming some friend, and when she looked up I saw it: that naked, honest hatred that she had not been quick enough to hide. So then, Lola.

I stood, rock steady, in her bedroom doorway until she killed the call.

‘I’m making a Caribbean vegetable curry for you …’

‘I’m not really feeling—’

‘What aren’t you feeling now Lola?’ I said. ‘Curry? Vegetables? Or simply the Caribbean?’

A twitch at her mouth. ‘Well. No. I was just going to say I wasn’t feeling that well.’

‘Oh,’ I said. I waited for the sympathy to come, but it did not.

Two seconds passed. Three.

Then from cool flat nothing the magnesium sparked and flared, and Lola reheated a smile:

‘Hey, want to see my new skirt? Try it on if you like!’

It was a black and turquoise patterned mini, and it was pov-chic and it was witty-tacky and it was small as hell; it would never have fitted over my rounded old black backside, even at her age. She threw it down on to the bed, a polyester gauntlet.

I did not rise, I did not move; I paused, made admiring noises.

‘So yeah,’ she said. ‘Not bad for High Desford.’

‘It’s lovely, Lola,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I’d better check on dinner.’

‘I told you.’ That hot metal stare. ‘I’m not that hungry.’

I met her long gaze, eye for eye. A flexing of time, and of wills.

‘OK then.’

I walked out of the room. Lola got up and followed. I stopped by the stairs; she stopped.

‘What?’ I said.

She moved closer.

A loud purr, gravel. A car. Lola edged me forward along the landing, seeming to hear something that made her cry out:

‘Why? Why do you need to be like that?’

‘Like what?’ I said, literally on the back foot.

‘You act like you hate me the whole time!’

She was shouting now, a full-throated yell.

‘What? You can’t be—’

‘It’s true! No. You talk like you like me, but—’

‘Lola!’

‘You—’

‘Lola—’

‘Hi, Darling!’ called Thomas.

And, poor silly girl, in that one weird second she heard not Darling, but darling, and she rushed to the top of the stairs.

‘Hello?’ called Thomas.

But I was still moving forward and she pushed, pushed at me, then more shouting, screaming, a heart-jerking lurch – she was screaming? – and then my arm flew out somehow, anyhow, but she flailed, flew backwards.

Down she fell, a tripping, twisting, puppet’s dancefall right down to the bottom of the stairs.

I looked at Lola lying there, one arm up in a question mark above her small fair head, one arm down, legs bent. A beautiful catastrophe: her broken swastika of a body.

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