The Stepmother(90)

‘I hitched.’

 

I make her toast and Marmite and save my lecture about the dangers of hitching for another time. I sit down opposite her at the table. I am oddly pleased to see her now my heart has stopped hammering – but I am worried too.

 

‘Why have you come, lovey?’

 

She shrugs, eating her toast and avoiding my gaze. But I look at her again and I say, ‘Frankie’s not here you know.’

 

‘I know.’ She scowls, that familiar little expression. ‘He’s in France. It’s not him I came to see.’

 

‘Oh I see.’ I feel strangely touched. ‘You came to see me then?’

 

She nods.

 

‘Well I’m honoured. But you do know your mother will be going mad. You will have to go back.’

 

‘I don’t care.’ She flings down her final crust. ‘I don’t care if she’s going mad. She doesn’t care about me.’

 

‘Oh, Scarlett, I’m sure that’s not true – really.’

 

‘Are you?’ Her look is full of challenge – and then she yawns widely. Little girl that she is, she looks exhausted.

 

The little cuckoo clock Jon had left above the door strikes the hour.

 

‘Let’s go to bed, love, and we can talk in the morning. Have you let your mum know where you are?’

 

‘Yes.’

 

But I don’t believe her, so I text Kaye myself.

 

Scarlett just arrived at mine; she’s fine. Will put her on the train to London in the am.

 

 

 

 

 

I owe her nothing, but it’s one mother to another.

 

Before I go to bed, I stick my head round Scarlett’s door. She is reading a battered old paperback. Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, I think.

 

‘Can I ask you one thing that’s been bothering me?’

 

‘Okay,’ she says, laying her book down.

 

‘It’s just…’ I go into the room properly and lean on the bedpost. ‘Well. You know you said you had a nanny?’

 

‘Daisy?’ She stares at me, fingers clutching the duvet. ‘Er – yeah – so?’

 

‘What exactly happened to her?’

 

Her eyes are really wide as she hesitates. ‘She – she kind of got – in an accident…’

 

‘What kind of accident?’

 

‘I’m not meant to talk about it.’ She scowls like the old Scarlett.

 

‘Why?’

 

‘It’s – it was like a legal thing, they said.’

 

‘Who said?’

 

‘Dad and Kipper.’

 

Kipper? I finally click: the overweight policeman who liked guns.

 

‘She got sort of – run over, but she was leaving anyway, I think. I can’t remember,’ Scarlett prevaricates.

 

‘Run over?’ I am horrified. ‘Was she – killed?’

 

‘Oh no.’ Scarlett is more airy now. ‘Not killed, no. Just broke her leg. And her back, I think.’

 

‘Oh my God!’ I gape at her. ‘That’s terrible.’

 

‘Well…’ Scarlett yawns again. ‘Yeah, it was. But at least she wasn’t paralysed. They thought she would be at first.’

 

 

 

 

 

Sixty

 

 

 

 

 

Jeanie

 

 

 

 

 

13 June 2015

 

 

 

 

 

I am up first, around six, unable to get back to sleep.

 

I keep thinking about the girl who was so badly hurt, this nanny, and why that had been hidden from me.

 

I make coffee and set the table for breakfast, and then I sit in the window and think about what to do.

 

I haven’t reached any proper conclusions when Scarlett staggers downstairs in her oversized T-shirt, looking exactly like the child she is.

 

‘You’re up early,’ I say, surprised. I pour her orange juice and make her sit. ‘Are you all right?’

 

‘Don’t send me back, Jeanie.’ She slumps at the table, and I push the cornflakes towards her.

 

‘Eat up. And why not?’

 

‘I don’t want to go back. Let me stay here.’

 

‘I don’t think your mum and dad will like that much, love.’