Читать книгу Abandoned: The true story of a little girl who didn’t belong - Anya Peters - Страница 12

Their fights were so loud it was inevitable that the neighbours would sometimes hear. Most people in the flats knew better than to interfere, but occasionally their fights were so bad that people would threaten to call social services and report us. A few times social services did come, but Mummy sent them packing, telling them they had no right to be knocking on her door telling her how to bring up her kids, that we were all well brought up and loved and to check that with the school. It would have been very clear to them that she was a good mother, and if he wasn’t there, easy to see how they would leave us alone.

One morning, though, Mummy told me a man was coming to talk to us, just me and her, and I got to come home early from school, before the others. I sat on the settee in my best summer dress and new white socks while he and Mummy talked. What they talked about was me, and I listened closely. He was a tall, thin man in a tight brown suit who must have been about the same age as my uncle at the time, in his mid-thirties. He appeared too tall to sit on our settee, perching awkwardly on the edge with his brown leather briefcase on his lap; his back shaped into a letter ‘C’ as he bent over it and his knees up almost to his chin. He said no to the tea and the eight custard creams Mummy had laid out on one of the blue plates for him, and turned down cigarettes too, dismissing them without looking up, with a wave of a long, hairy hand that was all loose-boned, like a skeleton’s.

He clicked the briefcase open and took out a large notebook and a blue folder of papers. I strained to see what was written on them, but Mummy caught my eye and shook her head. Mummy had told me he was going to be asking lots of questions and that if he asked if I liked my uncle to just say yes.

Every question seemed like a trap. He asked me what the names of all my brothers and sisters were, and which one was my favourite, and did I mind having a different surname to them, and did I like school and what was my favourite lesson? When he suddenly smiled and asked who I liked best, Mummy or Daddy, I said Mummy, and then quickly changed it to a shrug, worried that he might send me to Ireland to live with Kathy if I didn’t. I sat there nervously, wiping my hot hands on the cushions. But I felt special sitting there too, in my best clothes and in all the peace and quiet, without all my brothers and sisters talking over me.

Whenever he bent to write answers in his book, mine and Mummy’s eyes glanced at each other across the room swiftly, then away again, like birds flying to and fro across the sky. Mummy was small and pale and the only one in the family with dark hair like me, and I loved it when people said, ‘Don’t you look like your mum?’ or to Mummy, ‘Doesn’t she look like you?’ Sometimes Mummy ruffled my hair and smiled down at me saying nothing, but other times she said almost proudly, ‘She’s my sister’s little one.’

As I sat there, I thought of the way she sometimes said that, trying to shuffle it all straight in my head again, telling myself I didn’t care because Mummy was my real mum really. I looked over at her staring back at me. Her face looked sad and thin and her head was shaking in a way that frightened me. I felt my eyes well up with tears at all the trouble I was causing.

Next time he scribbled something, without moving her head Mummy curled her lip over her top teeth and did buckteeth, pointing at him, and I had to press my fingers over my mouth to stop myself from laughing. She shook her head and pulled a serious face to tell me not to, and I sat on my hands to stop myself from feeling anything at all, trying not to think of his buckteeth. I tried to do everything right and to sit still, and at the end I think we ‘passed’ because he shook Mummy’s hand when he left and patted me on the head.

After he’d gone Mummy looked tired and smoked a lot. I swivelled my eyes over to the biscuits still on the plate.

‘Looking down his nose at us,’ she sniffed. ‘At least I have the manners to accept a cup of tea and a biscuit when it’s offered to me.’

Mummy looked sad and I felt shivery, wondering if it was anything to do with me. In my head I saw the man’s buckteeth again and looked at the hard cream sandwiched between the biscuits. I thought of Mummy doing the buckteeth earlier to make me smile.

‘Maybe he only eats carrots,’ I said shyly.

I felt Mummy’s smile before I saw it, and looked up at her as it grew longer and longer, spreading across her face until she was laughing and tears were rolling down her cheeks. Suddenly she found the energy to get up, ruffling my hair as she passed into the kitchen, saying I was a great girl, and that nobody was taking me away from her, and I could have all the custard creams ‘quick, before the others come in’.

I bit into one, stuffing the rest into the front pockets of my dress, glad that nobody else was here, just me and Mummy and the whole place warm and quiet, all to ourselves, with the gas fire on and the clock ticking quietly up on the wall and everything put away, and the smell of polish everywhere. When I looked up at Mummy I could see that the tears had rinsed all the pain from her eyes, and when she smiled back at me, her blue eyes shining into mine, the smile spread all through me. Custard creams were the best taste in the world after that.