to come up with a plan.
It’s been a very stressful time. Victor is Phoebe’s half-brother.
I couldn’t bring myself to write Patrick’s son.
Phoebe and Victor don’t know yet, so please please don’t say anything to Georgia or anyone else until we’ve had a chance to tell them.
Just a few months ago, I would have trusted her with my life. Now it felt as though the power to wreck it lay in her hands. I swung between reassuring myself that we hadn’t actually fallen out, that she wouldn’t deliberately do something to hurt us all and fearing that it might already be too late. I stared at my phone, willing dots to appear, desperate for the beep of confirmation that my secret was safe with her. Nothing.
I thanked Victor for helping out, which he dismissed as though his part in finding Phoebe had been betrayal, not protection. I left him talking to Patrick. Then I knocked on Phoebe’s door.
‘What?’
I paused before I pushed the door open. I didn’t know what I’d do if she was sitting there with a bong or snorting something. As I’d just proved, any mothering skills I possessed had morphed from reliable old caterpillar to reckless butterfly. Miraculously though, she wasn’t doing drugs. She was lying on her bed, on her phone.
She jerked her head round with such ferocious anger. How? How did we even get here? What stopped us being the family that had a few spats over the length of school skirts or pick-up times from parties but still maintained enough common ground that we could watch a film together or talk banalities about our day in the time it took to shovel down a chicken stir-fry?
‘What do you want, cos I’m going to sleep?’
If my mere presence in her room engendered such hostility, I didn’t even dare to imagine what she’d be like steaming in from school next week, next month, demanding to know whether it was true, whether Victor was actually her brother. Before I could arrive at that cataclysmic event, I needed to understand whether it was just Georgia who’d taken drugs. I had no idea how long they took to work, whether there could be a delayed reaction. Phoebe hadn’t looked particularly stoned. But did that mean she hadn’t taken anything or that it wasn’t something that was easily detected? I’d tried to put the idea out of my head, but I had to know whether the night still held the possibility of a reaction to a dodgy tablet.
‘Phoebe. Can you tell me if you’ve taken drugs tonight? I’m not going to blow my stack, I just need to know in case you get ill.’
She looked as though she was waiting for the punchline, caught between raised eyebrows and a burst of laughter. Eventually she said in a voice that was weary, as though we’d been through this a million times. ‘Just go to bed, Mum.’
‘Can you answer my question please?’
She tilted her head on one side. ‘Why? Why should I tell you anything?’
Defeat dominated every one of my words. ‘Because I love you and I want to keep you safe.’
She rolled away from me, with an exaggerated yawn.
I walked out. Somewhere, long buried, was my little girl, but really, who knew where? Where was that girl who even three years ago would still come for a hug when skies were grey? How did it all slip by? How did I not recognise that last time she’d willingly folded herself into me, that smell of fusty corridors and school lunches on her hair? That in just a few short years I’d be hovering outside her door afraid she might be flailing about on a trip from some substance I wouldn’t recognise if it was sprinkled on my muesli.
I could hear Patrick speaking to Victor downstairs, but I didn’t have the energy to go and find out whether it was something I needed to be involved in. I bloody hoped he wasn’t doing the long-lost father schtick right now. Just thinking about that made my stomach churn.
I wondered whether it was too late to ring Faye. I sat on the edge of the bath in our en-suite, feeling as though I’d never know what the right thing to do was again.
I undressed and slid into bed. I lay there, listening to the hum of them talking below, that blokey baritone. I should tell Patrick that Faye knew the truth. There was still no reply from her. Maybe she’d gone straight to bed. Or