the cold began to seep through my skirt. As it hit the back of my thighs I shivered. Mum pulled her wax jacket close.
‘We went to visit her grave first thing and then your dad spent the rest of the morning in the garden.’ She pulled her jacket even closer and the fabric made a crumpling, cardboard sound. ‘You know he’s taken to finishing off the edges of the lawn with my nail scissors?’ She clicked her tongue and I tried not to flinch. ‘They’re so clogged with grass, I think I’m going to have to buy a new pair.’
When I’d first realised Lauren was missing, I’d run into the caravan’s small living room to raise the alarm with Mum and Dad. Clicking her tongue, Mum had dismissed my panic and instead had offered benign theories about where she might have gone. After asking neighbouring holidaymakers to help us search the park section by section, we’d walked around, calling Lauren’s name; Mum, all the while, was certain that she’d wandered off in search of one of the collie dogs that belonged to the family in the van next to ours.
I wrapped my arms around my chest and looked at the children’s play area, empty except for a gaggle of teenagers packed into a small, dark space underneath the slide. The dropping sun had spread a buttery glow over the swings, climbing frame and roundabout. The teenagers were smoking and talking in low, serious voices; the tips of their cigarettes pinpricking the gloam, orange against black.
‘I never noticed before. There aren’t many trees. Not like home. The orchards. Is that why you moved?’
‘Orchards? What have orchards got to do with anything?’
‘It is hard to imagine her in a place like this. Does that help?’
‘Mum, can we talk about why you’re here?’
‘Twelve years old today.’ She pulled a fingernail across the needlecord on her jacket collar. The ridged material vibrated dully. ‘You were awful at twelve. Answering back, kissing boys, shortening your skirts.’ She nodded at the teenagers under the slide. ‘Smoking out of your bedroom window.’
I did a double take. All these years and she’d not once let on she knew. When I was fourteen I’d gone through a phase of lighting up a sneaky fag every night before bed. I’d fancied myself as Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan and used to blow the smoke out the side of my mouth, taking care not to inhale too deeply as it made me feel sick. We’d lived in a modernist, seventies bungalow, the same bungalow occupied to this day by Mum and Dad, and my bedroom window, facing out onto the back garden, had been perfectly positioned, or so I’d thought, for acting out my Madonna fantasies.
‘Don’t be so naïve,’ said Mum, registering my surprise. ‘You used to reek of fags. Thank God you grew out of it. Disgusting habit.’
I smiled at the memory. I used to hide the butts in a pencil case, depositing them in the rubbish bin at the end of our street on my way to school. That street. That bungalow. I’d spent more time living there then I cared to admit.
I’d moved back in when I was six months pregnant. It had seemed to make sense. People ask about Lauren’s dad, but I only ever knew the bloke’s first name: Shaun. Lost to the blurry memories of stand-up sex in a nightclub toilet – unsurprisingly, I never saw or heard from him again. And so, my meagre salary barely able to support myself, let alone a child, I’d jumped at the chance when Mum and Dad had suggested the idea. Still, after nearly a decade of renting with friends, living back with my parents had taken some getting used to. Lauren had spent her first few months in the Moses basket in my room, below the same window I used to smoke out of. Then, when she was old enough, she’d moved into a cot in the bungalow’s third, smaller bedroom. Situated down the hall, it had once been earmarked by Mum and Dad for a sibling that never came. The day I claimed it for Lauren, Mum had been thrilled.
The last sliver of sun disappeared from sight. The park was cast into a thick, purply dusk. I looked at Mum. She was staring at the darkening sky, the nub of her chin tucked into the top of her polo neck.
‘I like your hair.’
She reached up and, misjudging her new length, found herself grabbing at her jacket