Good Me Bad Me(42)

I contemplate backing out, burning it instead of showing it to her, but I’m not sure I could hold a flame to your face. The first time I flick the lighter, it blows out.

‘I didn’t see, do it again.’

The second time, it lights up your face, your mouth and your lips. You can’t see it in the photo, but there’s a freckle that sits to the right of your chin.

This time she sees who it is.

‘What the fuck! That’s that woman who’s been in the news, the one that killed the kids.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why are you showing her to me?’

The lighter goes out. Why am I? Push. Pull. The damaged things damaged people do. I was sure when I left the toilets at school that telling Morgan was an okay thing to do. That she’d feel differently about me, not like the girls in my year. I know what they’d say, how they’d feel. But they’re not my friends, she is, and I long to hear her say the words: you are nothing like your mother.

I ask her what she thinks about it, about you.

‘What do you mean, what’s to think? She’s a psycho, clearly. Why do you care?’

‘What if it was someone you knew?’

‘As if. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of shit goes on in the estate, but nothing like that.’

She promised she’d still be my friend, I can tell her.

‘What if it was someone I knew?’

‘Nice try, it’s October though, not April Fool’s.’

A greedy feeling of relief lapping at my heels, tempting me. Of being able to release some of the burden of you.

‘Watch,’ I tell her.

I hold the clipping next to my face and light the flame again.

‘Watch what?’

‘Just look at her face, then look at mine.’

She moves in for a closer look.

‘Shit,’ she replies. ‘You look really like her, eww.’

‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.’

‘What?’

‘I look like her because. Because.’

Please don’t leave when I tell you.

‘What? Because she’s your long-lost aunt or something?’

‘No, it’s not my aunt, it’s my mum.’

I let the flame go out, fold up the picture, put you back in my bag. I can feel Morgan staring at me, waiting for the punchline, but there isn’t one. She’s the first to speak.

‘Tell me you’re joking.’

She knows by my lack of reply, I’m not.

‘Holy fuck,’ she says.

I can’t help it, tears begin to brim in my eyes. She gets up, takes a step away from me.

‘Don’t go yet, please.’

‘I have to, my uncle will be mad.’

She’s lying, she’s leaving because she’s scared.

‘You said you’d still be my friend, you promised.’

‘It’s not like that, it’s just a lot to take in, you know.’

Yes, I do. It was a lot for me too.

‘Is that why you’re in a foster family?’

I nod.

‘Do they know about her?’

‘Mike and Saskia do, not Phoebe, and the headmistress at school, she knows.’

‘Nobody else?’

‘No.’

‘Not being funny, but why did you tell me?’

‘I’ve wanted to tell you for a while, it felt wrong keeping it secret from you.’

‘For real it’s your mum?’

‘Yes.’

‘Jesus, she needs to be put down, all those kids she took were about the same age as my little brother and sister.’

I nod again. What she says is true, you do need putting down, yet it hurts to think about it happening.

‘Tell me you weren’t living with her?’

‘I wasn’t, I lived with my dad until he died. I haven’t seen her for years.’

The lie slips out easily, and she doesn’t question it. If she reads that there was a child living at home with you I’ll tell her I don’t know who it was, that it must have been someone you’d taken in at some point.

‘Thank fuck you haven’t seen her for years. How did they catch her?’

‘Not sure, somebody at work I think.’

Not true. Somebody much closer to home. The biggest betrayal of all when blood hands in blood. Families are supposed to stick together, birds of a feather, but I want to fly in a different flock, to a different place.

‘She got what was coming, I guess.’

‘I guess so, yeah.’

‘I have to go,’ she says.

‘Okay.’

She walks towards the door, I call out to her.

‘Morgan.’

‘Yeah?’

She walks back over to me, I stand up and ask, ‘Has it made you feel differently about me?’

‘Not really, no. It’s not your fault, Mil. Nobody should blame you for what your mum did. Anyway, you’re nothing like her.’

‘Do you mean that?’

‘Yeah.’

Thank you.





19


Last week, sat in the alcove, Mike talking to June on the phone. Just before he hung up, he said, it’s the calm before the storm. I knew what he meant, he was right, the past week has been very calm. Outwardly. After the initial reporting of the trial date being moved, there hasn’t been much mention of you in the press. The journalists are resting, gearing up for the trial to begin, only ten days from now. You, also resting, saving your strength. You’ve only come to me twice. Both times you said nothing but laid your scaly body across my neck. I couldn’t breathe or move, the weight of concrete. The weight of our secrets.