Seven Days(47)

She lifted them up and carried them to the corner. She took off the hinged lid from the toilet and emptied it into the bucket without the sand in it. The man would come and take it away later. Then poured bleach into the toilet bucket, making sure it covered the sides, and put the bottle on the floor. She opened the bottle of blue liquid and started to add it to the sand. It worked well; whatever the blue stuff was, it masked the smell of the shit and piss in there.

And, oddly enough, the smell always brought a smile to her face. It reminded her of a camping holiday in France when they had used a chemical toilet for two weeks. Although the blue liquid was pretty foul stuff it had a sweet, strangely alluring smell. It was like petrol: even though you knew it would be horrible to drink, it smelled irresistible.

She had asked her dad why horrible things could smell good, and he had laughed. Because we’re not always attracted to what’s good for us, he said. That’s one of the things you have to learn to recognize when you get older. Things that look good but aren’t.

How do you know them? she said.

He shrugged. Ask me. I’ll tell you. I’ll make sure you’re safe.

She’d believed him in the way that kids believed their dads, but he hadn’t, not in the end. She was sure that would be one of the things that tortured him most about her disappearance. As a parent she had learned that, although you wanted all kind of things for your children, what you wanted most of all was for them to be safe.

And when they weren’t you couldn’t forgive yourself.

She’d thought a lot about her parents recently. Were they still alive, even? She assumed they were, but she didn’t know. She didn’t know anything about anyone out there. They could be ill, dead, divorced. James could be a famous actor or footballer – well, maybe not, but something that made him happy. She liked to think – hope – that they were as happy as they could be, given what had happened.

And she liked to think she would see them again, sometime. She dreamed about it often, and, when she woke, she wished she could go back into her dream. The only thing that made her open her eyes were her sons. They were here and real and in this world, not her dream world.

She poured the blue liquid in and watched it seep into the sand. It vanished, leaving only a blue stain behind. When she had vanished, she hadn’t even left that. She had disappeared without a trace.

The way it pooled for a moment then seeped away into the sand was mesmeric. Max would be interested to see it. She turned to the mattress to beckon him over.

He wasn’t there.

‘Max?’ she said.

She heard a noise behind her, then his voice.

‘I’m here. Is this juice?’

He was sitting on the floor next to the bath, holding the bottle of bleach. He started to lift it to his lips and she realized two things.

She had left the lid off the bleach.

He was going to drink it.

A different memory came to her. When she was seven or eight she had climbed up on the washing machine, opened the cupboard above it and taken out a large white plastic bottle. It was fascinating; the cap turned and turned but didn’t open. It clicked, but it stayed on.

And then her mum had come in and gasped and snatched it from her.

What are you doing?

There was a tone in her voice that Maggie didn’t recognize, a mixture of anger and panic and fear that froze her.

Nothing.

That’s bleach, Maggie. You mustn’t play with it.

Why?

It can really hurt you. If you drink it – she shook her head – it could kill you.

Maggie remembered simultaneously wondering why they had something so dangerous in the house and understanding why it was so hard to take the cap off.

And now, just like she had, her own son was holding a bottle of bleach, except this time the cap was off.

‘Max!’ she shouted. ‘Put that down!’

He frowned at her. She never shouted at him, and she never told him he couldn’t have something. She wasn’t spoiling him; they had so little she was hardly going to deny him what was available.

This time she was. She lunged forward and grabbed the bottle from his hands. He frowned and reached for it, but she held it away. The cap was by the toilet. She screwed it on, then picked him up and hugged him. He was shaking, and he started to cry.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry for leaving that where you could get it. It’s Mummy’s fault. But everything’s OK. I promise.’

He settled a little, keeping his face buried against her chest.

‘Shh. It’s OK. It was an accident. No harm done.’

It had been close. The bottle had been inches from his lips when she grabbed it. She wondered what would have happened if he’d drunk the bleach? Vomiting, almost certainly. Fever? A prolonged sickness? Death?

Had she nearly killed him?

But he hadn’t drunk it. It was OK.

Sweat prickled on her back and arms. What if he had drunk it when she wasn’t looking? No – it would have tasted horrible and he would have been spluttering as he tried to spit it out. He wouldn’t have been trying to drink more.

She couldn’t be sure of that, though.

‘Max,’ she said. ‘Did you drink any of the stuff in the bottle?’

He didn’t answer. He turned away from her. It was the first time she had ever been mean to him.