partying, anaesthetising herself with alcohol and drugs until she couldn’t smell the chlorine any more, couldn’t hear the lap of the water, couldn’t remember the events of the day before, or the night before. She’d changed her name when she left, managed to stay hidden until, shaking and twitching, desperation had forced her to use her debit card. She’d woken at the squat to find her mother looming over her. ‘Don’t be angry, darling.’ She’d smiled her brittle sweet smile as Laura had shuffled away from her, screamed at her to get out of her head. ‘I’m just here to help,’ she’d said, gathering her up and taking her home. She’d turned up several times since, oozing sympathy as Laura’s life had fallen apart, taking her back to the place where her nightmares had started. If the memories haunted her, her mother haunted her more. She would never let go of her. Laura thought she would probably follow her to the grave.
She wouldn’t let her. She would have her life back, if only she could find the courage to confront her, tell her she didn’t believe that she had been sleepwalking on the darkest night of her life; that when she’d woken, she’d experienced the kind of hangover she’d later come to recognise as drug-induced. Her mother claimed she was trying to protect her. She wasn’t. She was protecting herself. Her lifestyle. That was all Sherry had ever held dear.
‘I do wonder why you didn’t think about going to university, Laura,’ she went on now. ‘You were always so good at English. It seems such a terrible waste.’
Because I wanted to teach, but I might have found it a bit of a challenge when I was struggling to speak, you insensitive cow. Fuming inside, Laura braced herself to walk back into the bedroom, then stopped, and baulked, as she realised Sherry was poking around in her wardrobe. ‘M-M-Mu …’ she started, and then paused and forced the word out. ‘Mum! What are you doing?’
Her back towards her, her mother didn’t answer for a second. Then, ‘Why have you kept this?’ she asked, her face drained of all colour as she turned around.
Laura’s stomach tightened, her gaze going from her mother’s shocked expression to the photograph she held in her hand, one of the few precious photographs she had, which she’d printed and also scaled down for her locket. She found the physical photo of him brought him closer somehow.
Stand up to her. Her heart boomed. There was no reason she shouldn’t have a photograph. He’d gone, leaving nothing but the memory of him, but he’d existed. Existed still. Laura could see him in the eyes of the children who miraculously came into her life; she could hear his melodic laugh when they laughed. Destroying photographs of him couldn’t eradicate him. ‘There’s no harm in keeping it,’ she said, notching her chin up, trying to look braver than she felt.
Sherry’s mouth dropped open, and then her expression darkened. ‘You know how painful the memories are for me,’ she hissed, her voice hoarse with disbelief. ‘How hard I’ve worked to protect you. Burying my own grief in the process.’ She slapped the flat of her hand against her chest, as if she were capable of feeling.
Laura felt anger well up like corrosive acid inside her. ‘Are you sure it’s me you’ve been protecting?’ she asked, finally finding the courage to challenge her. She had nothing to back up her challenge with, nothing but fleeting images that floated tauntingly away before she could catch them. She’d heard him sobbing. She had. In her dreams and her waking nightmares, she still heard him sobbing. Sometimes, as she walked the fine line between sleep and wakefulness, she heard him calling plaintively, ‘Mummy, Mummy!’ – a tiny child alone and frightened in the night.
Her mother and Grant had been arguing. About her. It came to her with blinding clarity. She’d heard them. High-pitched screaming, a male voice growling, glass breaking, doors slamming, the patio doors. He had been crying! It hadn’t been the imaginings of her bloody subconscious.
‘Do you want to rake this all up again?’ Her mother snatched her back to the present. ‘Have people digging into your past?’
Your past. Laura’s blood pumped.
‘Reporters raking it all over, pointing fingers at his grieving family? Asking you questions you’ll stutter and stumble over answering?’
Fear pierced Laura’s heart like an icicle. Knowing she would be incapable of making the word ‘no’ spill from her mouth, she shook her