The Broken Ones (15 page)

I don’t know how long I slept, but it’s the darkest dark when I hurry out of the house. The security light must be as broken as the cameras. It’s in almost pitch black that I stumble down the pathway towards the road. Finally, as I make my way past the hedge by the pavement, I find myself illuminated by the puddle of light from the streetlight.

Intoxicated and groggy, I run clumsily into the road shouting Mum’s name. My hair is wild, spilling across my face. Strands fly across my eyes as they’re caught by the breeze. I slow down for a moment, trying to shake the hair from out of my gaze.

The air around me changes. At first it seems to be a change in atmosphere, as though the very atoms of the air have altered. Then, I notice the scent. Perfume. Peppery and sharp, but unmistakably perfume. I gasp. A body whispers against mine. Panicked, I spin towards the movement. I freeze when I see the dark figure dash past me. With my mouth agape, I stare after the figure, which melts into the darkness as though it had been conjured from my mind. The wind lifts my hair as I stand motionless in the middle of the road, searching for the mysterious figure.

“Mum!” I cry out.

The very marrow of my bones is ice. I shiver as I stare at the street; all I see is the long road from my dream, with the leaves that are turning golden and the smell of a strawberry lollipop. I’m a child again, a small, frightened child. I wanted Mum back then, but I was afraid to tell her what had happened.

That’s when it hits me. The dream isn’t a nightmare—it’s real. It’s a memory.

Back in London all those years ago, I ran down that street with the trees and the golden leaves and I was afraid someone was chasing me. I was also afraid of going home because I thought Mum would be angry with me. I was in pain, but I don’t think I was injured. I felt the pain deep down, like an ache in my stomach. The same kind of ache that I got when I lifted the jumper out of Mum’s blanket box. The same pain I wake up in every time I have that dream.

I wish I could remember why I was running down that street, and why I was in pain.

“Sophie?”

The voice pulls me back from my thoughts. I hurry across the road to number seventy-six on the street, owned by an elderly lady. She stands in front of the open door, letting the light from her house spill into the street.

“Sophie, she’s here. I was on my way to get you.”

I let out a deep breath and jog over to the door. “Oh, thank you. I’m so sorry. She must have found my keys and wandered off.” I rack my brain for her name. Agatha? No, Agnes.

“She’s in the kitchen drinking a glass of water. Come on in.”

Agnes has a tiny frame made even tinier by the oversized dressing gown drowning her body. Despite being in her eighties, she moves with ease as she directs me into her home.

“Maureen, your daughter is here.”

Mum sits at the kitchen table, ignoring Agnes’s Chihuahua yapping at her heels. She doesn’t seem to notice me as I step through the door.

Agnes turns to me. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

“I couldn’t. It’s late, and we’ve already woken you. I’m so sorry to have put you out like this.”

“Sophie, love, I’m eighty-two. I don’t sleep much these days, anyway. In fact, most nights I wake up and end up doing my ironing.” She chuckles. “Have you been okay recently? I don’t want to sound like one of those nosy neighbours, but you don’t seem yourself, and that little nurse hasn’t been round as much.”

“Thank you for asking.” I clear my throat, hoping that the wobble in my voice wasn’t noticeable. “We’re fine, really. Things have been difficult recently. Mum hasn’t been herself. I should get her home and to bed. Thanks again for everything you’ve done. Mum, come on. It’s time to go home.”

But Mum sucks through her teeth to make a
tsk
sound. “You were always the bad one, Becca. Why can’t you be more like Sophie?”

“I am Sophie, Mum.” I smile at Agnes to try to ease the tension. She glances away, trying to give us space, but before that I spot a glint of pity in her eyes.

“You’re not Sophie,” Mum says.

Reaching the end of my patience, I take hold of Mum’s arm, more roughly than I intended to, and pull her up from the chair. Without saying anything more, I lead my mother out of Agnes’s house and back to ours.

The door is still wide open, and the echo of the shadowy figure seems to fill the entire house. I bolt the door behind me. I think we both feel, in that silence, that the essence of the house has changed irrevocably. I know, deep down, that once I remember it all, we can never go back to how things were. We regard each other and the silent house. This is it.

This isn’t our garden. It’s colder here. The grass is soft and spongy under my shoes. I’m waiting for Mum to come back. She’s been in this strange house for a long time.

I’m glad my shadow decided to come along too. I like having the shadow around. It makes me feel better, and I don’t hurt as much as I used to. The only thing I don’t like about the shadow is that it never talks back. I want it to more than anything, but it won’t.

One, two, now you.

Silence.

Oh, well. I suppose I should do it myself.

“I dare you to hold a slug for two seconds. Okay, Sophie, here goes.” I lift the fat, slimy body and place it on my palm. “One, two, now you.” I pass the slug towards my shadow, but it doesn’t hold out its hand. “I’ll be brave for both of us, then. One, two. Now it’s four.” I throw the slug back onto the grass and shake my hand. “Yuk!”

There’s the sound of a door opening behind me.

“Mummy!” I call. “I’m playing dares with my shadow, like I used to with—”

“Stop that.” She strides over towards me in the way I don’t like. “There’s no shadow. Stop doing this.” Her face is red and angry when she leans over and presses it towards mine. I shrink away, wishing I was the slug right now. I want to cry, but I won’t. That only makes her shout more.

“I’ve sorted it,” she says. “We’re leaving.”

“Are we going home now? I’m cold. I like the slugs and my shadow, but I don’t like the cold here.”

“We’re leaving home as well. We’re going someplace new.” She takes hold of my arm and pulls me towards the gate.

“Will it be warmer there?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. You’ll have to wait and see.”

“Is Becca coming with us?”

Mum stops dead. Her face pales and her fingers tighten around my arms. “Becca is dead.”

I don’t like it when she says that. It makes me want to cry.

“Don’t ever talk about Becca again.” Her eyes are so hard that I’m more afraid of her than ever before.

I don’t want to stop talking about Becca. But maybe if I do, Mummy will like me again.

It’s the first time I’ve remembered anything from that far back in a long time. It popped into my mind as I was warming milk on the stove. I glance over at Mum sitting quietly at the table. She has her jigsaw puzzle in front of her again. I moved it from the sofa for her to work on with more space, but she hasn’t made much progress over the last few days. Her eyes are unfocussed as she holds a piece between her fingers.

She will always be the same mother I saw in my memory, at least to me. She will always evoke a certain amount of guilt and fear from me. I can never erase the screaming, the manipulation, and the psychological cruelty that I now recognise for what it is, but she is changing slowly into a child with her illness, and I don’t know which version of her is worse.

“Are you hungry?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer. I pour the milk into a mug and retrieve a pack of chocolate digestive biscuits from the cupboard. I take both to the table and sit down opposite her.

“Mum, I made you warm milk. Let it cool for a few minutes, okay?”

She nods, but I’m not convinced that she registered what I said.

I slam my hand down on the table. “Are you doing all this to drive me insane?” I blurt out. “Is it all you? Is this an act? Did you send that email to Erin? Did you cut up my clothes and drink the bleach on purpose?”

She stares at me again. Her eyes are slowly coming back into focus. Her expression changes from fear to confusion and then slight defiance. That’s when I know she’s coming back from the fogginess of her Alzheimer’s.

“Mum, who is Becca?” I ask.

“I don’t know.” She squares her jaw and folds her arms.

“You’ve called me Becca three or four times now. You can’t keep pretending that you don’t know who she is. She’s someone from your past, isn’t she?”

“Becca is dead.” She turns away, still with her arms folded across her chest.

“Okay, that’s progress. But why do you keep calling me Becca? You know my name. I’m your daughter. I’m Sophie.”

“Sophie is dead.”

I let out a groan in frustration. “No, I am not. I’m right here. I’m Sophie! Look at me, Mum. Tell me what you’re playing at. Is this all to punish me? Haven’t I lived up to whatever ridiculous standard you set for me? Did I frighten away your many boyfriends with my mere existence? Am I too ugly to be your daughter?”

“Stop it! Stop saying these things.”

“Then tell me who Becca is!”

For the first time in a very long time, Mum’s eyes fill with tears. I’ve seen her cry before, but it’s usually in the midst of a guilt trip, when she’s claiming that I want her dead, or I want to leave her. I’ve never seen her cry like this—quietly and reluctantly—as though she’s trying hard not to open a part of her she’s had locked up for years.

“I can’t tell you.”

She’s not going to tell me, at least not like this. I get up from the kitchen table, leaving her to the unfinished jigsaw, and make my way up to her room. Then I open the blanket box at the end of the bed and begin my search.

“What are you doing? That’s private. Those are my private things.”

Mum has followed me up to her room. When she sees that I’m searching through her things, she rushes to stop me. Her fingernails scratch against my arms as she tries to claw me away from the box. I push her aside and continue pulling letters, old documents and biscuit tins out of the box. I open the tins and throw the contents onto the carpet, spreading them out as Mum tries to snatch some of the papers away. She kneels on the floor opposite me, snarling and shouting. But I am a different woman now. I am a woman who needs answers, who is determined to understand what is happening to her—and what happened to her in the past. I will not be bullied. I will not be deterred. I am the immovable object that my mother has never encountered before in her life.

“What’s in this locked box?” I ask, holding it up.

This box provokes an even stronger reaction from her. She flies towards me. Batting away her hand, I throw the box onto the floor with as much force as I can. The flimsy old lock springs open, spilling photographs onto the carpet. Mum lets out a high-pitched noise from her throat and frantically searches through the contents. She snatches up as many of the pictures as she can, but it’s too late. I’ve seen them.

I’ve seen the two children that feature in every single one.

I lift a photo from the floor, and a wave of emotion passes over me. My throat closes with the unspoken scream clogged there.

Now I know.

Now I remember.

It’s not too far home. We can walk there in ten minutes. I’m sure of it. At least, I keep telling myself that.

Today, at school, Mrs. Ellis got us mixed up again. But that’s okay; everyone gets us mixed up. Sometimes I feel like
I
get mixed up, too. I get called Sophie
and
Becca all the time.

There’s only one person who never gets us mixed up. She always knows who I am. That’s Mum.

Mum forgot to pick us up from school today, but it’s okay. We can walk home.

We managed to sneak out before the teachers held us back. We don’t like waiting in the classroom with the teachers. We know that it gets Mummy in trouble. She’s probably still at work or with Simon, her new boyfriend, who she says is definitely not our new daddy. I keep asking when we’re going to get a proper new daddy, but she says that if we hadn’t driven the other one to his death, we wouldn’t need a new daddy. I suppose she’s right.

It’s colder today. I think Mum forgot to put our warm coats on this morning. She forgot to pack our Penguin biscuits, too. And my sandwich didn’t have butter on. I think Mum is still sad about Dad. She keeps forgetting lots of things. Sometimes she forgets to wake us up for school. Sometimes she forgets to pay the bills as well. There was a man who came to the house and took our television. Mum threw her slippers at him, but he still took the TV, and now we can’t watch
Coronation Street
.

Even though it’s a bit cold, it’s still quite sunny, and the leaves are going golden. I like it when they fall from the trees and you can throw them at people. My legs are tired, but we only have the park and then the street home.

“Does it look dark?” I whisper.

But she doesn’t hear. She’s leading me, like she always does. She says that I’m her shadow. That makes me feel good and bad. I like being close to her, but I don’t know if I always want to follow her. When we’re together, it feels like we’re one person.
SophieBeccaSophieBecca
. It’s good-bad. Maybe I need to be alone sometimes.

“Hey, cutie pies.”

She stops before I do. She turns around first. I would have kept walking, but she stops.

“Who are you?” she asks. She’s always the one who talks first. That’s one of the reasons why I get so confused when people mix us up. She’s always the one who talks first.

“I’m a friend of your mum’s. She said she was running late and I was to come pick you up. Look, I brought lollipops. They’re strawberry. Your favourite.”

The man is tall and wide and his eyes are like dirty pebbles. I’ve never seen him before, and I don’t believe he is Mum’s friend, but I can tell Becca wants the lollipop because she’s pulling me towards him…