Blink(43)

Harriet listened, waiting until the noise of the stair lift had abated and her mother’s feet hobbled across the landing above her. The bedroom door opened and then closed.

Silence.

Then the slap of a wheelie bin lid in next door’s yard, a group of young female students striding by the window, laughing and bursting with a confidence Harriet had never managed to conjure within herself.

Sometimes, in her quieter moments, she wondered what the future would bring. When her mother was gone and she was still here, in this big, old, crumbling house, alone. What then?

She yearned for a new start, a family of her own. Specifically a child, to give the love and affection she’d never experienced herself but that she’d seen other people give their offspring.

It just didn’t seem fair that there were people out there who had everything but failed to value it. They fully deserved to have their precious things taken away, given to someone who would care and cherish them.

Someone like Harriet.





37





Three Years Earlier





Evie





Evie lay awake in her bed, staring up into the darkness. The new starry nightlight that Nanny had bought for her birthday was supposed to make night-time friendlier. At least that’s what it had said on the box. But it didn’t seem to be making any difference at all here.

Even though Mummy was an adult, she had gone to bed at the exact same time as Evie because she had said she was very, very tired. Evie had seen that her eyes were doing the staring thing again.

Mummy was already asleep. Evie could tell just by listening to her breathing, which she could clearly hear because both their bedroom doors had been left a bit open. Sometimes Mummy woke her up, shouting in the night, but when Evie went into her bedroom, she was still asleep. When Evie sat on the edge of the bed, she’d wake up and say, ‘Have you had a bad dream, poppet?’ and Evie would reply, ‘No, it was you,’ and Mummy would say, ‘Ahh, you’ve had a bad dream about Mummy?’

Evie just didn’t know exactly how to explain it and she always felt so dreadfully tired in the middle of the night, so mostly she just went back to her own bed.

Deep and slow breaths like now meant Mummy was properly sleeping.

She wouldn’t know if Evie slipped out of bed and tiptoed downstairs for a biscuit or another glass of juice like she sometimes did, even though she wasn’t allowed more than one drink before bed because Mummy said she’d be up weeing all night.

Now the darkness was thick and heavy, like when she covered her eyes up with her comfort blanket. There were no streetlights shining in from outside, like there had been in her old bedroom.

She tried to focus on the tiny nightlight stars scattered on her ceiling but they seemed dull here, not bright and glittering like they used to be in her old bedroom. Evie sometimes wondered if Daddy was looking down on her while she slept, amongst the real stars in the real night sky. Nanny said he definitely would be.

‘But how do you know?’ Evie had asked her more than once.

‘There is no doubt in my mind that your Daddy is always looking out for you, sweetheart, day and night,’ was all Nanny ever said.

Sometimes it worried Evie that Daddy might be watching her. Like when she’d stolen a biscuit before dinner or the time she gave Nanny’s cat, Igor, two treats instead of one, even though Nanny said it might give Igor the runs. The last thing Evie wanted to do was to let her Daddy down.

She didn’t like this stuffy new house, the way it was so silent at night, like everything in it was dead.

Their old house had creaky pipes and comforting traffic noises from the main road nearby. She had never felt alone there. Sometimes, when she was playing with her Lego, Evie used to imagine Daddy was still there behind her, sitting in his armchair and watching Sky Sports or reading his cycling magazine.

She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t.

Crying was for babies, that’s what the other children at school said all the time.

Evie had vague memories of Mummy and Daddy taking her to a pizza restaurant as a treat. Sometimes, Daddy used to take her swimming while Mummy had a bit of peace to read her book.

All that had stopped, of course, after the accident. And now Daddy wasn’t coming home ever again.

At first, Nanny had promised her that Daddy would get better in the Afghanistan hospital and would be ‘good as new’, but that hadn’t happened.

Then Nanny stopped saying it, and later . . . well, that’s when Mummy told her that Daddy had gone to be with the angels. It had all happened very fast.

Nanny and Mummy had always told her that she could go and talk again to the nice lady at the hospital about Daddy’s accident. If she wanted to, they said, Evie could talk to them about how she felt and about how everything had changed. But she didn’t want to.

Evie didn’t like talking to people about things that made her feel sad. She hadn’t made friends yet with anyone in class and she didn’t like Miss Watson questioning her about stuff in that horrid small group.

Miss Watson told Evie she wanted everyone to get to know her because she was new to the area. She also said Evie had to be a good girl at home for Mummy. But her questions made her feel all funny inside, like Evie’s nice round pink heart had been ironed flat. So it felt like a grey pancake hanging inside her chest.