The Things You Didn't See(60)

She looks affronted. ‘As I told Mr Salmon when we spoke last week, we’re happy to make concessions for our alumni. We can give you leeway on both girls’ outstanding fees for this term.’

‘Both girls? What are you talking about?’

Mrs H flushes pink, recovers. ‘I’m sorry, I must be getting muddled with another family. But please, don’t remove Victoria from the school without due consideration. Why not take her home for one night and reconsider?’

‘There’s nothing to reconsider, I want her home.’ My voice sounds small.

Her face pinches thin. ‘Victoria is very happy here – she’s quite inseparable from Dawn. Have you actually talked this through with your daughter? As you know, teenagers get very attached to friends and those girls are more like sisters.’

I’m sick of hearing about people being like family when they aren’t. As if family were a sign of closeness, given the secrets and lies that have been kept from me. ‘But they aren’t sisters, and Victoria should be with her family. I’m taking her home today.’

She stares at me in the same way she did when I’d failed to hand in my homework. Pushing away her cup and saucer, she sighs. ‘I’m afraid that you can’t simply remove Victoria from the school. You aren’t the guardian named on her records: your mother is. She would have to be informed.’

Rage fills me. I can feel it running in my blood, rising to my face. I want to slap her smug expression.

‘I’m taking Victoria home, she’s my daughter and you can’t stop me. Or are you going to say you need my mother’s permission? Which would be rather difficult, given that she’s dead.’

Mrs H’s hand hovers up to her chest. ‘Oh my,’ she says.

‘She was shot last Friday and died yesterday. That’s why I need to take Victoria home, to attend her funeral. Any problem with that?’

I know I’m being cruel, that none of this is her fault, but I’m glad to see her face mottle.

She picks up the phone to speak to her secretary. ‘Lucy, could you fetch Victoria Salmon, please? Straight away.’

The phone is replaced with both hands and we wait. After a few minutes of awkward silence, she begins to flick through the papers on her desk and I sit on my shaking hands, for fear they will betray me.

‘Mum!’

And there she is, the light of my heart: Victoria. My little girl looks all grown up, in skinny jeans and a cold-shoulder jumper that bags around her wrists. Her maple-coloured hair, so very much like yours, has grown long. In the seven weeks since the summer holidays, she’s changed from pretty to beautiful. It pains me that I haven’t seen this transition.

‘What are you doing here?’ Her face is full of emotion and glowing with health, her cheeks are pink and her eyes have that lively lustre. She’s never looked more like her grandmother than at this moment, as if the genes skipped a generation and here you are, as a fourteen-year-old.

‘Where’s Dad?’

Maybe it’s the way her eyes narrow as she waits for my answer, or maybe that slick of red gloss on her lips, but she’s no longer a child.

‘Dad’s busy, love.’

She frowns. ‘Then why are you here?’

Mrs Hollingsworth watches with interest, but her lips remain sealed. Now is not the time to tell Victoria about your death. I decide to play it safe with my answer, though I hope to never see this place again.

‘I’ve come to take you home, love. Because I missed seeing you at half-term.’

‘But lessons start on Monday. Am I allowed?’

‘Of course.’ I open my arms to Victoria, holding my daughter in a grip that feels unnatural and forced despite my love, my fierce love, for this teenager who’s as tall as me now. She kisses my cheek and I’m grateful for the stickiness of her lip balm.

‘Can Dawn come?’

‘No, she has to attend her classes, I can’t remove her from school.’

Her look of disappointment stabs my heart.

Victoria and Dawn’s room is small but full of light, two beds on opposite walls with identical desks, tossed Hollister hoodies and teddy bears, a life-size poster of Ed Sheeran, his freckled face covered in lipstick kisses the girls have added, and lots of photos – two years’ worth of selfies: the girls in various places and poses. I’m not just taking Victoria home, I’m removing her from one too.

‘If I can miss classes, why can’t Dawn?’ She’s still sulking about this, still trying to push me into giving in. ‘I bet Dad wouldn’t mind.’

‘Well, I would. There’s something I need to talk to you about, something’s happened.’

She pulls a sports bag from under her bead and begins to pack. ‘Are you and Dad splitting up?’

I feel like I’ve been slapped, and I wonder if she’s intuited something that I’ve missed. ‘Of course we’re not! Why would you say something like that?’

She pushes a few more items into the bag. ‘It was what I thought of when my half-term trip home got cancelled. And now you’re here, taking me out of school – you never collect me.’

I busy myself with trying to help, folding up some pyjamas bottoms from her bed. ‘They’re Dawn’s,’ she says, snatching them from me just as the door flies open and Dawn comes rushing in, dark hair springing from her head and her eyes already moist with tears.