at the thought of being asked to leave. She had messed up and she knew it. It was to be expected; she always did mess things up. It was as if she was programmed for self-destruction.
She remembered a Christmas from her childhood when she had been given a Furby toy. Presents were thin on the ground in their house and she had loved the furry creature that opened its eyes and mouth when it sang, loved it more than anything she had ever owned. She couldn’t believe that something that brilliant had been given to someone like her. She sang with it, stroked it, slept with it and held it close. Then, one night, her mum, in an even fouler mood than usual after a drunken spat with her latest bloke, had threatened to stamp on her Furby to ‘Shut it the fuck up!’ The thought of having to witness her beloved toy being destroyed was so unbearable that a little while after her mum’s rant, Tanya had taken her Furby out into the cold, damp night and stamped on him herself. With tears in her eyes, she threw his battered, broken body into the communal skip. It was far easier to cope with his loss than to live with the threat of his destruction hanging over her.
Tanya knew that life at Prospect House was as good as it got. There would never be a flat or a little job for someone like her; she would never go to Canada and never have a coffee machine like the one in the pub. But at least this way, she would never be separated from her baby, never know the pain of having to choose between her drug of choice and keeping her child, never wonder through heavy lids on a comedown who was feeding and bathing her little one, while she reached for the arms of the man that would feed her poison. The clifftop house was a wonderful sight. Her last vista could easily have been something quite different – a stained ceiling, the peeling wallpaper on a damp toilet wall or the slimy bricks of a deserted alleyway. This was better, much better. She liked the fact that she had decided. She was in control.
She placed her shrivelled, prune-like palm against the flat of her belly and rubbed in small circles. She was not alone; she would never be alone again, but would forever be at peace with her little secret safe and snug inside her.
‘You’ll never be afraid of the water.’
She spoke the words in her mind, to be heard by the small kernel of a human that had been conceived with love and was beginning inside her. The idea gave her a huge amount of comfort.
Her body had gone numb with extreme cold and her skin was peppered with a million goosebumps. Her fine hair floated like orange seaweed around her head. Still with her eyes on Prospect House, Tanya took two deliberate steps backwards. The soft sand beneath her feet gave way to nothing and she went down and down, under the sea, like the mermaid she had imagined so many times.
The cold water filtered into her airways, slowly at first, as her natural reaction was to close her mouth and hold her nose, but once she relaxed it gushed in, filling every space with thick salt water. When her brain registered that her gag reflex was futile, she was overcome with a beautiful calmness. A pinprick of light shone above her. She smiled. Then she slowly closed her eyes and embraced the peace and escape that lay ahead.
As Kate pulled into the driveway she was aware of Tom hovering by the back door. He was passing the checked dish cloth from hand to hand and was clearly agitated.
‘Oh great, what now? What drama awaits me – please not more drugs.’
She spoke to the mirror of her sun visor, hoping for a ‘run out of carrots’ catastrophe, but fearing something much worse. Maybe Janeece was right and she was getting old, possibly too old.
Kate scrambled down from the jeep with her shopping basket in one hand and the local paper in the other.
‘Everything all right, Tom?’
‘Everything’s just fine, Kate.’
Despite his answer, he continued to twist the cloth in his hand, indicating quite the opposite.
‘Oh good. No minor catastrophe awaiting my attention?’
‘No, nothing like that. It’s just that you’ve got a visitor.’
‘Oh, well, I’ll be right in.’
Judging from Tom’s twitchy stance, it could be an unexpected house