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For N.
whittled down to a single red tripwire.
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always hunted him down eventually. Not understanding why she hunted him down at all. Weeks of nothing; then the phone would ring one morning with a tip-off and she’d be thrown into action. Saying, Forget about school, I need you both today. Needed for what, exactly, neither of you could say—to hold on to a fistful of change for the parking meter, keeping watch for the inspector? She’d do her lipstick in the rearview mirror and fluff up her hair—Okay, girls, cross your fingers—before clipping up the stairs of a mean-looking building.
Watching your mother in those moments, with her clotted mascara and worn-down heels, it was impossible to imagine her ever being young, impossible to imagine swimming trophies and a modeling portfolio with Vivien’s. Most of the proof of that life was elsewhere—pawned or held ransom up north, which meant the house I grew up in, which meant grandparents. These people who were only feathery handwriting on birthday and Christmas cards, padded envelopes containing presents of glittery stationery and books you’d read years ago. The word Merewether crouched in the return address like a dangerous spider. That Merewether mansion, Dad called it—though it wasn’t, Mum insisted, really wasn’t a mansion—that’s where everything was.
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