Читать книгу Lock Me In - Kate Simants - Страница 12

Mum’s outline was distorted through the bumpy glass as she bent to retrieve the dropped key. She cursed, but it was the weakness in her voice that made me certain that something was not good.

She came inside, her hair stuck across her face in muddy streaks as she unbuttoned her coat.

I took it from her and asked, ‘Did you find him?’

‘I’m sorry, baby,’ she said. ‘No luck.’

‘So where have you been?’

‘Just down to the boat, but he’s not there. I thought I’d get a run in on the way back.’ She started stripping off, moving quickly, her T-shirt slopping to the floor where she dropped it. Leggings going the same way; socks, the tube-bandage support she used on her dodgy knee. The bare wet flesh of her arms and torso was paling from the cold and stiffened with goosebumps, ropes of muscle tensing underneath as she moved.

She found a plastic bag and shoved the clothes inside. ‘Don’t look so worried, love. He’ll be … I don’t know. Out for a walk? Or out taking pictures?’

‘He’s supposed to be at work. They called, Mum. He’s not there.’

She was suddenly serious. ‘What did you tell them?’

I shrugged. ‘Nothing.’

‘You didn’t say …’ she started, her eyes drifting down the hall, to my bedroom door.

‘That I smashed my way out of my room in the middle of the night and I don’t remember it, and I’ve woken up covered in bruises? No. I kept that to myself.’

‘OK. Stupid question. I’m sorry.’

I followed her into her room. She unlocked the box beside her bed where she kept tools, matches, things she couldn’t leave lying around. She removed a pair of nail scissors and started cutting her nails down.

‘So where is he?’

She sighed. ‘I don’t know, Ellie.’ Finishing her own no-nonsense manicure, she gestured for my hand, which I gave her. ‘There’s nothing to say you had anything to do with it,’ she said, trimming the white from the tops of my nails.

I tried to pull away. ‘Mum, if you found something—’

‘I didn’t. It’s nothing.’

‘But it’s not, is it?’ I said, disentangling. ‘What if Siggy … what if it’s happened again?’

‘Don’t. Please. Just don’t think about it.’ Mum took a deep breath, held it, as if bracing for something. ‘And even if something has happened. We should definitely sit tight,’ she said at last.

I broke free, stood up, went into my room.

‘Where are you going?’ she called.

‘I’m calling the police.’

It took her about half a second to come after me. ‘No.’ She grabbed the phone out of my hand. ‘No. That’s not the right play. Not at all.’

I stared at her. ‘Play? He could be—’ I stopped myself from saying it.

‘But he’s not. OK? He’ll be fine. There could be any number of explanations. He might have just gone on a trip.’

I folded my arms. ‘Right. A trip.’

‘Maybe he wanted a break.’

It took me a moment to process that. ‘From me?’

She shrugged apologetically.

‘You’re saying this is just him breaking up with me?’

‘Men. They eat your pies and tell you lies,’ she offered. It was our joke, the phrase with which every conversation we’d ever had about my father would eventually end. But I wasn’t in the mood, and she saw it. ‘I’ve got to get to work, sweetheart.’

‘Me too. I’ve got a shift with the kids. What?’ I said, when she made a face.

‘Maybe best call in sick?’

‘What? Why?’

She spread her hands but didn’t answer my question. Didn’t need to. She didn’t want me to go because she wanted to keep me out of sight.

She thought I’d killed him.

Had I killed him?

After she left, I stood in the hall, taking in our dingy home. Nothing to mark it as ours. Our rent paid in cash – everything always paid in cash – so we could leave at a moment’s notice if anyone came knocking on the doors, asking questions about me, about Jodie. Mum used a different name, Christine Scott, wherever she could. She chose agency work over proper contracts because it meant wages in cash, and there were always agencies with a relaxed approach to background checks.

Our whole existence, Mum’s jobs, everything we did, was built around Siggy. Everything in her life was about me: boyfriends had been dismissed when they started to ask too many questions, jobs abandoned when demands were made that took her away from her duty to me. She’d given up everything just to cover my tracks and keep me happy, or at least keep me safe. Even before Jodie, we’d never put down roots, but since? I’d lost count of the number of times we’d moved. Always in a hurry when someone recognized her. It made her curse herself for ever having had success: if she’d never been on TV, it wouldn’t be half this hard.

I padded back to where the calendar hung on the wall: my shifts marked in pink highlighter.

It’s not like it’s actually a job.

I was coming up twenty years old. I was the same person I’d been at fourteen. Afraid of everyone and everything, locked into the bedroom in my mother’s flat every night for fear of what I might do if I was free. Whatever she said about my value in the world, I was jobless, dependent.

But I had Matt. Loving, understanding Matt. Patient. Blindly at risk.

I made a promise right there and then, that if Siggy had hurt him in any way, that I was ending it. I’d take her with me. I didn’t care.

Nobody wins, Siggy. Do you hear me? This ends here.

Siggy heard. Her black eyes flashed wide, but she shrank back, flattening into the shadows. Didn’t move, not a moment of a challenge. She’d been around me long enough to know when I meant what I said.