Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers

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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Copyright © Camilla Way 2016

Cover design by Heike Schüssler © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Cover photographs © Nilufer Barin / Trevillion Images (woman); © shutterstock.com (door)

Camilla Way asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This is entirely a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organisations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008159047

Ebook Edition © JULY 2016 ISBN: 9780008159030

Version: 2019-04-03

Dedication

For Alex

Epigraph

‘It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.’

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Part One

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Part Two

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Part Three

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before

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Part Four

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

After

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by Camilla Way

About the Publisher

PART ONE

After

Outside my kitchen window the long afternoon empties of light. I look at London stretched out far below, my dripping hands held poised above the sink. The doorbell rings, one long high peal; the broken intercom vibrates. The view from up here, it’s incredible, like you’re flying. Deptford and Greenwich, New Cross and Erith, then the river, and beyond that there’s the Gherkin, over there’s the Shard. From my top-floor flat here on Telegraph Hill you can see forever and as usual it calms me, soothes me: how big it is, how small I am, how far from where I used to be.

The doorbell rings more urgently – whoever it is putting their finger on the buzzer and holding it there. The night hovers.

At first I used to see Heather everywhere. Connor too, of course. From the corner of my eye I’d catch a glimpse of one or the other of them, and there’d be that sharp, cold lurch that would leave me sick and shaken long after I’d realized that it had been an illusion; just a stranger with similar hair or the same way of walking. Whenever it happened I’d go somewhere busy and lose myself amongst the crowds, roaming the south-east London streets until I’d reassured myself that all that was very far away and long ago. A small West Midlands town a million miles from here. And the doorbell rings and rings as I’d always known it would one day.

I live on the top floor of a large, ugly Victorian building, and there are lots of us squashed in here side by side, in our small, draughty little flats. Housing Association, most of us. And when I wedge my door open with a shoe and go down to answer the bell, past four floors of white doors marked with brass letters, the early evening sounds seep from beneath each one: a baby crying, a telly’s laughter, a couple arguing; the lives of strangers.

I’m entirely unprepared for what’s waiting for me beyond the heavy wide front door and when I open it the world seems to tilt and I have to grip the door frame to stop myself from falling. Because there she is, standing on my doorstep staring back at me. There, after all this time, is Heather.

And I have imagined this, dreamed of this, dreaded this, so many hundreds of times for so many years that the reality is both entirely surreal and anticlimactic. I see and hear life continuing on this ordinary London street on this ordinary afternoon – cars and people passing, children playing down the street, a dog barking – as if from far away, and as I stare into her face the sour taste of fear creeps around the back of my tongue. I open my mouth but no words come and we stand in silence for a while, two thirty-three-year-old versions of the girls we’d once been.

It’s she who speaks first. ‘Hello, Edie,’ she says.

And then she does the unthinkable. She steps across the threshold (my heart jumping as she looms so close), wraps me in her arms and hugs me. I stand there rigid, enclosed, as memories slam into me: the wiry feel of her hair as it brushes against my cheek, that weird fried onions smell her clothes always had, her tall, heavy presence. My mind is empty, I am only my heart knocking in my throat and now she’s following me into the hallway no no no this is just one of your dreams and up the stairs, past all the other doors with their brass letters and their chipped paint and we’re at the top and I’m watching my hand as it pushes open my door and we’re here inside my kitchen no no no no no, and we’re sitting down at my table, and I’m staring into the face I’d once hoped never to see again for the rest of my life.

Neither of us speak at first and I’m filled with longing for my quiet, solitary life within these three cramped rooms of moments before. The tap drips, the seconds pass, the browning tendrils of my spider plant shiver on the windowsill. I get up so I don’t have to look at her, and I turn away and grip the work surface. With my back to her like this, I manage to speak. ‘How’d you find me then?’ I ask and when she doesn’t answer I turn and see that she’s gazing around the room, peering across the hallway to the narrow lounge with its fold-down bed.

‘Hmm?’ she says vaguely. ‘Oh.’ She looks at me. ‘Your mum. Still lives in your old place, doesn’t she.’

And I nod, although I hadn’t known, because Mum and I haven’t spoken in years and in that instant I’m back there, in the old Fremton house. We’re in the kitchen, the strip light flickering, the blackness outside making mirrors of the windows. I’m crying and telling Mum everything, every single thing about what happened that night, as if telling her might stop the screaming in my head, clear the pictures from my mind. I tell her about Heather and Connor and what they did but it’s like I’m telling her about some horror film or a nightmare I’ve had. I listen to myself say the words and I can’t believe that what I’m saying is true. I don’t stop talking until I’ve told her every last detail, and when I’ve finished, I reach for her, but Mum’s body is rigid and her face grey with shock. She backs away from me, and never, never again in my life do I want someone to look at me the way she does then.

When she speaks she spits out her words like stones. ‘Go to bed, Edith,’ she says. ‘And don’t ever talk to me about this again. Do you hear me? I never want to hear about this again.’ She turns her back then, staring at the window and I see her pinched, awful face reflected in the glass. The next morning I get up before dawn, take some money from her purse and catch the train to my Uncle Geoff’s in Erith, and I never go back there again.

I’m stunned by what Heather has told me: that my mother had my address to give her amazes me. My uncle never knew what caused the rift between us and always hoped that we would one day reconcile, so the fact he passed it on to her is no surprise. But that Mum had actually written it down and kept it safe somewhere is a revelation.

I suddenly feel exhaustion roll over me in waves, but I force myself to ask, ‘What do you want, Heather? Why have you come here now?’ Because I always knew, really, that this moment would come. Hadn’t I dreamt about it night after night, woken in the small hours sick with the fear of it, looked over my shoulder certain it was approaching, out there somewhere, getting steadily closer?

She doesn’t answer at first. On the table in front of her she’s put her bag: a black woollen knitted thing with a chipped plastic button. Clinging to the wool are bits of fluff, crumbs, and lots of little ginger hairs – cat hairs, maybe. Her small hazel eyes peer at me beneath sparse pale lashes; she wears no make-up except for an incongruous smear of bright-pink lipstick that looks like it should be on someone else’s face. In the silence a woman’s voice drifts up to us from the street, Terry … Terry … Terrrrrrr-eeeeeee … and we listen to it dwindle and die, and at that moment the darkness over London pounces, that sad, final instant where daylight vanishes, the electric lights of the city suddenly strong, and I hear a faint tremor of hurt and reproach in Heather’s voice as she says, ‘Nothing. I don’t want anything. I just wanted to see you.’

I try to make sense of this, my mind confusedly grasping at various possible explanations, but then she starts to speak again, and she says – with loneliness like an open wound, so raw and familiar that I have to turn my eyes from it – ‘You were my best friend.’

‘Yes,’ I whisper. And because I have no idea what else to do I get up and put the kettle on and I make some tea while Heather talks, for all the world as though this is an ordinary visit – two old friends catching up: how she lives in Birmingham now (‘We moved not long after you left’), the newsagent’s where she works part-time.

As she talks I take in little glances. Such an ordinary-looking woman. A bit on the large side, her chubby hands folded in front of her on the table, her soft Welsh accent, her shoulder-length hair, her eager smile. ‘Do you still live with your mum and dad?’ I ask, for something to say, falling in with the game she’s playing, if that’s what this is. And she nods. Yes, I think – it would be hard, even now, to imagine her coping without them. She was never stupid, Heather, not backwards or anything like that – in fact she’d always done well at school. But despite her cleverness there’d always been an inexplicable something missing somehow, an innocence that made her vulnerable, too easily led astray. I sit down in the chair next to her. ‘Heather,’ I say quickly, before I lose my nerve, ‘Heather, what do you want?’

Instead of answering, she reaches over and, taking me by surprise, gently pulls a strand of my hair between her fingers. ‘Still so pretty, Edie,’ she says, dreamily. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’ And I can’t help it: I flinch so obviously that I have to get to my feet, clattering the tea things together in the sink, her eyes boring into my back.

‘Can I see your flat?’ she asks, and when I nod she goes and stands at the door to my tiny living room. I follow her, and together we look in at the cramped, dusty mess, the fold-down bed, the rail of clothes, the crappy, second-hand telly. ‘It’s lovely,’ she says in a hushed voice, ‘you’re so lucky,’ and I have to stifle a sudden desire to laugh. If you had asked me at sixteen what sort of person I would become, what sort of life my future self might lead, I would never have pictured this.

It occurs to me that she must have found her way to London by herself, before making her way through the city to get here, and I’m both impressed and horrified by this. The thought hits me that she might expect to stay the night, and the idea is so awful that I blurt, ‘Heather, I’m sorry but I have to go out, I have to go out soon and it’s been so nice to see you again but I really do have to—’

Her face falls. ‘Oh.’ She looks around the room wistfully, disappointment etched into her face. ‘Maybe I could stay here until you get back.’

She eyes my sofa hopefully and I try very hard to keep the panic from my voice as I lie, ‘I’m going away for a few days actually, with friends,’ and I begin to steer her back towards the kitchen. ‘I’m sorry.’ Reluctantly she nods and follows me to where she’s left her coat and bag. I watch her, my heart sinking, knowing I should relent. She’s only been here fifteen minutes after all. But I stand there as she puts her coat on, and I say nothing.

‘Can I have your number?’ she asks. ‘I could phone you and then next time we could spend the day or even the weekend together.’ There’s such longing in her eyes that I feel myself nodding hopelessly, and she rummages eagerly in her bag. I watch her, my arms folded tightly, as she slowly punches my name into her mobile.

She looks up expectantly, but my posture or the angle in which I’m standing reveals something to her and as realization dawns, her mouth gapes. ‘You’re pregnant!’ she says.

For the briefest moment I see something in her eyes that makes me shudder, though I don’t know why – just for a second something else peeps out at me from behind her hazel stare. My hands fly defensively to my belly and an image, gone almost before it’s there, of Heri’s face flickers across my mind. I don’t reply.

‘Well,’ she says after a silence, ‘congratulations. How lovely.’ As she continues to gaze at me her pupils twitch intently, and sensing that she’s about to ask more questions, I rattle off my number and watch as she punches it in, agonizingly slowly, until finally I open the door, say goodbye as warmly as I know how, and at last she turns to leave. But before she does she stops and pauses and says very softly, ‘Do you remember the quarry, Edie? How we used to go up there together, all of us?’

I feel momentarily light-headed, a wave of nausea washes over me, and when I speak my voice is barely a whisper. ‘Yes.’

She nods. ‘Me too. I think about it all the time.’ And then she leaves, her sensible lace-ups clattering upon the staircase as she retreats lower and lower. I lean against the wall, weak with relief, until from far below I hear the front door’s heavy slam as she closes it behind her, like a jailor.

Before

Year 11 leavers’ day, and everywhere you look girls are writing on each other’s shirts in felt-tip pen, drinking from Coke cans I think they’ve filled with something else, throwing flour bombs out of top-floor windows. I sit on the bench below the library window and watch. They’re all going up to the rec later to get drunk – I’d heard them talking about it in the loos. They hadn’t asked me, but I don’t really mind because Mum always worries if I’m back late. I see Nicola Gates over by the water fountain, but she turns away when I wave.

And that’s when I first see Edie. Walking across the forecourt in the direction of the main doors. As I watch, her face appearing then disappearing behind others in the crowd, she stops, her eyes squinting up at the building before darting around herself again and then finally landing upon me. I hold my breath. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so pretty before, not in real life.

Then there she is, standing right in front of me, and at first I’m too distracted by all the different parts of her to take in what she’s saying: the smell of the leather jacket she’s carrying over her arm, mixed with something else, something soft and appley, her eyes, big and golden brown with lots of black eyeliner, pale mauve varnish on her nails. In the hollow of her clavicle is a little gold locket with a tiny green stone in the middle. If you were to put your finger beneath it you’d feel the jump jump jump of her pulse.

‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘What?’

She smiles. ‘The office. Where is it?’ Her voice is clear and sure with a northern accent – Manchester maybe.

Of all the people she could have stopped to ask, she’d picked me. I get to my feet. ‘I’m going that way myself,’ I tell her, though I wasn’t. ‘I’ll walk with you if you like.’

She nods, shrugs. ‘Yeah, OK. Ta.’

As we walk, I see Sheridan Alsop and Amy Carter standing by the water fountain. They stop talking and watch us as we pass. I have a mad impulse to link my arm through hers, this stranger who walks beside me, and I imagine us strolling along like that, arm in arm like best friends. How amazed Amy and Sheridan would be to see that! I don’t though, of course. People don’t like it when you do that sort of thing, I’ve realized.

‘My name’s Heather,’ I tell her instead.

‘I’m Edie. Well, Edith really. But how lame’s that?’ She looks around herself then shakes her head, ‘Bloody hell, this place.’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I know! Totally lame, isn’t it? Are you going to come to school here then?’

She nods. ‘Starting my A-levels in September.’

‘I’m doing my A-levels here too! What’re you studying? I’m taking Biology and Maths and Chemistry. I was going to do a language as well but Mum and Dad said it was pointless because it’s not what I need to read Medicine at uni. Best to concentrate on just the three. What with all my volunteering work and everything too. I’m going to be a doctor one day and—’ I stop myself, my mouth snapping shut. I always talk too much, Mum says. I bite my lip, waiting for Edie to look at me the way the other girls do.

But she doesn’t, she only smiles again. Her long brown hair swings in front of her face and she pushes it away, tucking it behind her ear. ‘I’m doing Art,’ she tells me. ‘And photography. I’m going to go to art college in London. Saint Martins probably,’ she adds with breezy certainty. And she explains that she’s recently moved down here to Fremton from Manchester with her mum. She has this way of talking, like she’s a bit bored by everything, looking around herself like she finds it all a bit of a joke, but all the while glancing back at me, including me as if I’m in on the joke too. It’s nice. I could stare at her for hours.

We’ve already reached the office, even though I’d taken her the long way round. ‘It’s in here,’ I say, and I’m about to tell her that I’ll wait for her, that I’ll show her around after if she wants, but she’s already moving away. ‘OK. Thanks, yeah?’ she says. ‘See you later.’

The door swings shut behind her. Edie. Eedee. I turn the word over and over in my mind on the walk home, trying it out for size, tucking it away for safekeeping like it’s a precious locket on a fine gold chain.

‘Heather … Heather … HEATHER!’ My head snaps upwards and I look around my bedroom in a daze. How long had it been this time? ‘Heather!’ My mother’s voice, its note of irritation rising as she calls me from the kitchen, propels me to my feet. I look around myself for clues. I’m dressed in my school uniform, my bag of books by my desk. It’s light outside, but definitely an evening sort of light, I think. Slowly it comes back to me. It had been the last day of term before exams started. I had returned home from school and come up here to begin my revision and then … it must have just happened, the way it sometimes does, and I never know why. Almost as though I fall asleep while I’m wide awake. It usually happens when I’m upset or angry, like the time with Daniel Jones, the boy who’d bullied me all through primary. I hadn’t even known I’d hit him till I saw the blood. A jumble of my classmates’ voices, past and present, crowds in on me, mingling to make one long mocking hiss. What’s wrong with you? Why do you stare like that? Weirdo. Fucking freak. I shake my head to clear it.

My dad collects clocks and there are hundreds of them in our house all ticking at once, like the air is shivering, chattering its teeth. I listen, and sure enough after a few moments, there it is: the clanging jangle of dings and dongs as they all strike the hour at once. I count to seven. Teatime, then. My mother’s never late. The thought of her downstairs sat at the kitchen table waiting to begin grace jolts me into action. ‘Coming!’ I shout. ‘I’m coming!’

Downstairs, Dad sits at the kitchen table reading aloud from a newspaper article about geological engineering. Mum moves around the kitchen not listening to him, transferring plates of food from the worktop to the table in front of us. I watch her, trying to gauge her mood, but she puts the last plate down and without looking at me, sits and begins to pray.

Sometimes Mum reminds me of the lake where we used to go camping back home in Wales. I’d wade through its water on hot summer days, occasionally chancing upon inexplicable pockets of ice-cold, before blundering further into a shallower, warmer patch. I’d stay there for as long as possible, wallowing in the sunny warmth until the touch of slimy seaweed or the thought of eels or dead fish slipping past my ankles would make me panic and press on. Being with Mum is like that sometimes: you never know where the cold pockets are, or what’s there waiting for you in the warmer spells.

‘Heather!’ My mother stops mid-prayer and I realize too late that I’d been absent-mindedly picking at the tomato salad.

‘Sorry,’ I say, and feel myself redden.

Sometimes I do this thing to help me sleep: pretend that everything’s as it was before, that I am six again and Lydia three, and we’re all still OK. I imagine Lydia’s hand in mine as we run together in the garden of our old house and hear her laughter as I fall asleep.

As if to rescue me from my thoughts the face of the girl I’d met that afternoon pops into my head, and I feel a sort of light, lifting in my heart. Edie.

Fremton’s a horrible town. I shouldn’t say that, but it’s true. We moved here from Wales when I was ten – a fresh start, Mum said. After what happened, people in our village who I’d known all my life suddenly looked differently at me when I passed them in the street, or else swooped down on my parents like big black greedy crows, cawing sympathy, pecking for answers.

Eventually Mum and Dad stopped doing the things they used to do. Slowly, bit by bit, Mum pulled out of choir practice, her book group, organizing school fetes. Except for church on Sundays, she barely left the house at all. Dad carried on teaching at the boys’ school across the valley but at home he found refuge in his study, mending his clocks and reading his books. I guess from the outside it might have looked like we were shutting out the world to find comfort in each other, but it wasn’t like that at all. My mum and dad cleaved like a stricken tree, me like a lost squirrel hopping between the two halves. Dad had never looked at me in the same way after it happened and Mum didn’t either, but it was different with her. With Mum I knew in my heart that she wished it was Lydia who had come home safe and sound that day, not me.

So when they told me one evening after supper that Dad had been offered a new job in an English town 160 miles away, that it meant a promotion and a bigger house, I knew the real reason for the move: we would be going somewhere nobody knew about us, about what had happened, and what it meant. And a month later here we were. But nothing changed, not really. My mum found a new church to go to, but apart from that she still hardly ever leaves the house. These days her focus is on me. My schoolwork, my weight, my piano practice, my future. She’s trying to make me better, I think.

Now that the exams are over I have seven empty weeks to fill, so when I’m not helping Mum around the house or doing my volunteering work there’s nothing much else to do but walk. Fremton’s right next to the motorway, so wherever you are you can hear it, the never-ending rush of traffic on its way to somewhere else. The whole town feels like it’s been forgotten somehow, like everyone upped sticks and left years ago. There’s a canal that runs through the middle but no one goes down there very much and the shops in the square are mostly empty since the superstore opened on the Wrexham road. There’s a big statue of a miner in the centre of the square, carrying a sack of coals on his back, but someone’s spray-painted a big orange willy on his head. Then there’s just streets and streets of council houses till you get to the Pembroke Estate, three high towers pushed right up against the motorway, like they’re standing guard, warning outsiders away.

Wherever I go I look out for Edie, my eyes scanning the faces I pass, hoping that one day one of them will be hers. I think about her smile and her brown eyes and how nice she’d been to me and I wonder what she’s doing and where she lives, whether she’s bored or by herself like me. Then, out of the blue, I see her again. I’m walking home through the square when I spy her sitting on a bench by the statue, smoking a cigarette. I stop in a shop doorway to watch her. She’s wearing a short denim skirt and her legs are long and tanned, stretched out in front of her, a silver chain around one ankle. Her hair hangs loose around her shoulders and she smokes her cigarette like she’s deep in thought. She looks beautiful. It’s as if she shines against the greyness of this town, I think, like she’s full of light. I hesitate before half raising my hand to wave and I’m about to call her name when someone cuts across in front of me and reaches her first. My hand falls to my side, her name catching in my throat.

I can’t see him properly, whoever he is, this person who’s come between the two of us. I only know that his effect on her is instant, her face and neck flushing pink, her eyes wide and bright. She listens to what he says, laughs and glances away, but only for a second, as though her eyes can’t quite help being drawn back to him. And then he sits down next to her, so close that their arms touch. He says something and she shakes her head, a smile hovering upon her lips, and I don’t know what it is, this strange heat that’s there in the crackling, held-breath space between them, I only know that it has no place for me.

As quickly as it began, it’s over. He leans in close and murmurs one last thing in her ear that makes two red spots appear high on her cheeks before he gets up and walks away. I get a clearer look at him now. He’s dressed in tracksuit bottoms, a zipped-up jacket with a hood. He’s about twenty or so and very handsome, I suppose, though I don’t like his face at all, its roughness and its smile that shows he knows she’s watching him still. I wait for a few moments more, in the shadow of the shop’s doorway, before I take a breath and go to her.

When I’m there, standing in front of her, saying her name, she looks at me so strangely, as though she hardly knows where she is, tearing her eyes from his retreating back and blinking up at me. ‘Edie?’ I say again, and the moment lengthens until, at last, her expression clears and she smiles and says, ‘Oh, hiya! Heather, right?’ and my heart somersaults with relief.

After

A new family’s moving into one of the ground-floor flats today. I stand by the window and watch them; a couple of teenage lads lugging furniture from a van, while a small, ginger, tattooed woman shouts directions from the kerb. As I watch, she raises her arm to point at something and her top rides up to reveal a long, red scar running the entire width of her back and I find myself wondering how she got it, what could possibly have happened to leave such an awful wound behind. Best part of an hour it takes them, the two, grim-faced boys towering over their mother as they traipse back and forth beneath boxes, a sofa, a fridge, watched all the while from the van’s front seat by a shining black lump of muscle and teeth that barks and barks and barks.

My hands fall to the warm curve of my belly. The decision to keep it, the baby, was never consciously made, I just never went through with getting rid of it. I got as far as making the appointment, booking myself in at a clinic, but when the time came for me to put on my coat and take myself to the bus stop, I simply didn’t. My coat stayed where it was, I stayed where I was, and the seconds and minutes ticked by until the time had passed, my appointment had been and gone, and the phone with which I could call and reschedule remained untouched. I had never actively wanted a child – motherhood was something that happened to other women, not to me – yet some stubborn, unexamined part of me clung to the life growing in my belly, and it clung stubbornly to me.

The boys carry the last of the boxes from the van and are followed into the building by the woman and the dog. Within minutes I hear the sound of banging coming from the ground floor, the repeated thwack of a hammer echoing up the stairwell, and I stay where I am for a while longer, staring out at the street, watching the afternoon traffic pass until the hammering stops and the sound of a drill takes its place.

Heri, my baby’s father, was a chef at the restaurant where I waitress. Like me he worked more and longer shifts than everyone else and we were often left to lock up together, sometimes sharing a beer after a long night. He would tell me about his home in Tunisia, about lagoons and deserts and the sirocco winds. I liked him; I liked that he didn’t push his nose into my life, never asked questions I didn’t want to answer, liked that he was always somehow self-contained and by himself, like me.

The night we spent together was not unexpected, but never repeated. An attraction that had always been there flickering into life one evening and, for no particular reason, acted upon. From the window of his bedsit you could see the floodlit grounds of Charlton Athletic Football Club. ‘You see!’ he said proudly as we stood looking out. ‘The very best seats for free!’ He’d shaken his head sadly as he added, ‘You English really can’t play football.’ We drank beer and talked about our corner of south-east London. The only possessions he seemed to own were lined up on the windowsill: a book, a metal tin, some writing paper and pens, a photograph of a woman with a small boy. His clothes were folded neatly on a chair, his bed a single mattress pushed up against the wall.

‘You are a strange one,’ he said, turning to me, his large, almost black eyes watching me in the half-light. ‘So beautiful, work so hard, so quiet.’

I continued to stare out at the illuminated pitch.

‘You never talk about yourself,’ he went on. ‘Why are you not married, not …’ He shrugged, and when still I didn’t reply, he reached over and brushed a strand of hair from my face.

We undressed in the yellow glow of the floodlights, his skin dark and warm against my paleness; a night’s comfort. And afterwards our friendship had continued exactly as it had before. When the day came for his wife and little boy to join him over here, I was happy for him and wished him well. He left the restaurant soon after for an office-cleaning job the three could do together and even after I learnt I was pregnant the thought of contacting him never occurred to me.

And the child inside me grows. I don’t think about what will happen after it’s born; a strange calmness possesses me: what will be will be.

In the weeks following Heather’s visit she phones me repeatedly, sometimes several times a day. I never answer. Instead I watch as my mobile vibrates and buzzes, the unfamiliar number flashing on the screen, my stomach twisting queasily. Sometimes she leaves a message, but I delete them all unlistened to. It’s six weeks before the calls stop abruptly one day. Life begins to return to normal, the water closing over the disturbance that she’d made, my pregnancy taking over my thoughts once more, leaving no room for anything else, not even her.

But out of the blue like a carefully aimed dart, she pierces my life again. A few days after the woman and her two lads move in downstairs, I spot the postman approaching from my window and go down to collect my mail, expecting an appointment letter from the hospital. As I pass the new tenants’ ground-floor flat I hear the sound of bolts being drawn and keys turning in their locks before the door opens a crack, stopped by a heavy thick chain. Someone peers out at me through the slim black gap as I pass. For a few seconds I feel myself being watched until finally the door closes again. I hear the locks turn and the bolts shoot home once more.

Amongst the scattered envelopes lies one that’s pink and square. I don’t remember ever seeing Heather’s handwriting before, but I know instinctively that it’s from her. The physical presence of it makes my scalp crawl but I return with it upstairs, carrying it like some dead and rotten thing between my fingertips. There on my kitchen table it sits. I leave it unopened, curling up in a ball on my sofa, my legs tucked beneath me, my arms tight around my bump. The minutes tick by until with quick decisiveness I run into the kitchen, snatch up the envelope and tear it open. Along with a piece of pink notepaper a photograph falls out, landing face down on the floor.

My hands trembling, I pick up the letter and quickly scan the words. Dear Edie, it says.

I’ve tried to phone you loads but I think I’ve got the wrong number. Can I come back and see you? Here’s my number at the top. Please phone me.

Lots of love from Heather Wilcox. XOXO

PS. I found this photo of us! LOL! You can keep it if you want!! X

Eventually, reluctantly, I pick up the picture and look at it. It’s of Heather and me. I’m sitting just in front of her by the quarry and I’m smiling up at the camera, holding my hand out as if to defend myself from its lens, my fingers a big pink blur in the foreground. Heather is looking away, staring off down the hill. I’m shocked at how childish we look, our faces plump and stupid with youth. But the picture’s not of us, not really. Even though he’s the one taking the picture, it’s of Connor. He is in the expression in my eyes and in the shadow that streaks across the grass between Heather and me. Connor. In my flat the walls feel a little closer, the air a little harder to breathe. A wave of nausea hits me and I have to run to the sink to vomit up the bile that floods my mouth.

Opening the kitchen window I crawl out on to the flat roof of the neighbour’s bedsit below, gulping at the fresh air until the sickness begins to pass. Usually I love to sit out here, high above the city spread out before me in all its noisy, dirty glory, comforted by its vastness and indifference. It’s not true what they say about London, that it looks down on the rest of the country – in fact London’s barely aware of the England that lies beyond its borders. In its self-absorbed bubble, towns like Fremton and all they represent barely figure, and that has always suited me just fine.

But now, even as the sickness recedes, I see only Connor’s face, the moment he’d first approached me in the square, and I feel a reflexive cold punch to my guts. I remember how the sight of him had made the rest of the world vanish, how immediate and physical it had all been. I had never seen anyone so beautiful. He’d asked me for a light, in that quiet voice of his that was like cigarettes, like syrup. Then he’d sat down next to me as if he didn’t doubt for a second I’d want him to. I think he asked me what my name was, where I was from. It didn’t matter: all I knew was that I’d never ever seen eyes like his before; never in my life had I seen such beautiful green eyes.

I shudder. Far below me is the building’s communal garden, full of abandoned furniture and bags of rubbish. As I watch, one of the new lads from the ground-floor flat appears with his dog and it squats down next to a fridge freezer while he waits. The boy, about seventeen or so, tall and well built, smokes a cigarette and fiddles idly with his mobile, oblivious to me up here looking down at him. I will be due at the restaurant soon and I need to catch the bus to another seven-hour shift, earning all the money I can before the baby comes. I make myself get up and, resolving to throw the letter and photo in the bin, crawl back through my kitchen window. But at the sight of them lying there on my table I freeze then barely notice as I sink into a chair.

Beyond my window the light begins to change as the afternoon wears on, an ice-cream van’s chimes jangle in the warm, close air, the school-run traffic picks up, slowly, rain begins to fall. But I’m only dimly aware of these things. Despite my best intentions I am entirely back there at the Wrexham quarry, the night before I left for good, memories slamming into me one after another: the confusion and panic, the awful, terrifying screams as everything spiralled out of control. Here in my flat the last seventeen years vanish, meaningless and unreal compared to the tangible, unforgettable horror of that night.

What does Heather want from me now? What could she possibly want from me now?

Heather seems to haunt me in the days and weeks that follow. I imagine I smell her sour, oniony scent wherever I go, I keep glimpsing her from the corner of my eye, or hear her voice amongst others in the street, causing me to turn sharply, seeking her out with a pounding heart, only to find that she isn’t there at all.

When my Uncle Geoff phones one day out of the blue, I’m relieved almost to the point of tears when he tells me he’s coming round, so grateful am I for the distraction. He sits here now, filling my tiny kitchen with his comforting smell of cologne and cigar smoke, his broad Manchester accent familiar and soothing. I feel his eyes on me, watching me fondly as I make him tea, and for the first time since Heather turned up again, I begin to relax.

‘You all right then, Edie love?’ he says.

‘Yeah, you know. Not bad.’

‘Not long till the little one arrives.’

‘No, not long now.’

He takes the tea I offer him and says, ‘Be the making of you, I reckon. You’ll be a great mum, you’ll see.’

I smile back at him, touched. ‘Thanks, Uncle Geoff.’

‘Everything going well with that fella of yours, is it?’

I nod, and we drop each other’s gaze. He knows as well as I do there’s no fella on the scene, but he’s too tactful to say. I’ve always loved that about him, his unquestioning, steady support. I think about how he’d taken me in when I first arrived on his doorstep at seventeen, how kind he’d been to me, and the memory calms me and gives me strength.

When he leaves again a few hours later, I watch him from my window setting off down the street, and my heart tightens with love for him. He’s nearly sixty now and I’d only ever known him as a bachelor, though Mum had told me he’d been married once, years before, to a woman who’d run off and broken his heart. He never speaks about her, but you can somehow see the memory of her there still, in his eyes and his smile, the way they do remain a part of us, those people who have hurt us very deeply, or who we have hurt, never letting us go, not entirely.

Before

In the square, Edie shivers and stands up, squashing with her foot the cigarette she’d been smoking. ‘Where’re you off to?’ she asks, and when I tell her I’m heading home she smiles and says, ‘I’ll walk with you.’ And just like that it’s as though the man, whoever he was and whatever went on between them, is forgotten.

‘Great,’ I say, ‘fantastic!’

She bends to pick up her bag, and as she does her skirt rides up to show her knickers. I quickly look away. ‘GCSE results will be in pretty soon,’ I say hurriedly, as we begin to walk. Her bare arm brushes mine, the fine hairs on both mingling briefly together.

‘Yeah? How do you think you did?’

I shrug. ‘OK, I guess. I was predicted ten As, so …’

She turns to me, wide-eyed. ‘Ten As? Ten As?’ She whistles. ‘Wow, brainbox, huh?’

I glance at her, trying to work out if she’s saying this in the same way Sheridan Alsop would, as though there’s something mystifyingly pathetic about me doing well at school, but then I see her admiring smile and my tummy dips with happiness.

‘God, I wish I was clever,’ she says a few moments later. ‘I did my GCSEs last year. Total disaster! Got to retake some of them while I do my A-levels.’ I notice again how nice her voice is. Loud and clear and confident, her words spilling out quickly in her Manchester accent. She’s delving into her bag and eventually pulls out another cigarette. She lights it, and offers one to me. ‘No?’ she says, when I shake my head. ‘Very wise. Wish I’d never started.’ She laughs, a lovely, warm throaty sound, and says, ‘See? Not very bright, am I?’ She walks as though she’s on springs, her long legs striding, her chin held high. I trudge next to her, feeling too hot, my thighs rubbing together.

Hesitantly I say, ‘I could … I mean, I could help you, if you want. With your GCSEs – your coursework and stuff.’

She looks at me in surprise. ‘For real? That would be amazing!’ She bumps her shoulder against mine. ‘Seriously, that’s really nice of you.’

I bite my lip, trying to contain the smile that’s threatening to split my face in two.

We walk in silence for a while but as we leave the square she tells me why she moved to Fremton. ‘It’s my nan’s old place, but she died last year. My mum had a car accident and she can’t work any more, so we moved down here to save on rent while she gets better.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry about your mum,’ I say.

‘Don’t be,’ she replies breezily. ‘She’ll be fine. She doesn’t care about me anyway, and neither does my dad – not that I’ve seen him for years.’

I’m shocked by her words, how casually she says them – I could never imagine speaking about my own parents like that.

‘You’re easy to talk to, you know,’ she says suddenly.

‘Am I?’

‘Yeah. Haven’t you noticed how most people when you’re talking to them are just waiting till it’s their turn to speak? You actually listen. It’s nice.’ Her face darkens and she adds, ‘Not that I’ve had anyone to talk to since Mum dragged me away from all my friends – and she certainly doesn’t give a shit, that’s for sure.’

I don’t know what to say to this, and we walk in silence until we turn the corner into Heartfields, where I live, and she brightens again. ‘How about you, anyway? You lived here long?’

So I tell her about our old village in Wales, and how we moved down here, and though I don’t mention Lydia or the way my parents barely speak to each other any more, I somehow find enough to say that we’re almost at my house before I realize I haven’t stopped talking once. ‘Sorry,’ I say, putting my hand to my mouth. ‘I’m going on and on, aren’t I?’

She shrugs. ‘So?’

‘Mum says you should only speak if you can improve upon the silence.’

‘Yeah?’ She raises her eyebrows. ‘Your mum sounds like a right laugh.’

‘No,’ I say, surprised. ‘No, she’s really not.’

She smiles at that, but I’m not sure why.

‘Come on,’ she puts her arm through mine, ‘this your street, is it?’

I hadn’t expected Edie to actually want to come home with me, but she follows me up our front path and waits expectantly as I dig around for my keys. ‘Wow,’ she says. ‘Nice house.’ And as I look at her I see Edie through my mother’s eyes: the make-up and short skirt, the cigarette that she’s only now dropping to the ground. Sure enough, as soon as I open the door, Mum appears, stopping in her tracks in the hallway as she looks past me to Edie.

‘Mum,’ I say nervously, ‘this is—’ but Edie walks in front of me, giving Mum a big smile. ‘Hiya, I’m Edie. I’m going to be starting at Heather’s school. Wow,’ she adds, gazing around herself, ‘look at all those clocks, bet you’re never late, are you?’

‘Um, no,’ my mother replies faintly as I grab hold of Edie’s arm.

‘Come on,’ I say, ‘let’s go to my room,’ and together we run up the stairs, laughter bubbling in my chest, leaving my mum standing by herself in the hall, staring after us.

When I close my bedroom door I look at Edie standing by my bed and feel suddenly shy. ‘I love your skirt,’ I tell her at last. ‘And your hair.’ I look down at my own clothes bought for me by Mum. ‘I wish I looked like you.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ she says, wandering over to my dressing table and picking up a tube of spot cream. ‘You should see me without my make-up.’

‘I don’t wear any,’ I admit. ‘I don’t know how to do it.’

‘I can show you if you want.’ She rummages in her bag and pulls out some mascara and lipstick. ‘This is all I’ve got, though. How about you?’

I hesitate, not sure whether to show her at first, but then I figure of all the things I could share with her, all the secrets I could reveal about myself, this one’s probably not the worst. I go and lift a shoebox down from the top of my wardrobe and pull off the lid. We both stare down at its contents: a mass of unopened lipsticks, mascaras, foundations and eye shadows. I have everything, in every shade.

Edie whistles. ‘Wow. Where’d you get the money for all that?’

‘I suppose I … well, actually … I stole them.’ Even as I say the words the feeling I get when I do it comes back to me; the awful, almost sickening fear of how terrible the consequences would be if I were caught somehow only making it more addictive. I never wear any of it, though – it’s like I have no desire for it once I’ve slipped it up my sleeve in Boots.

She’s still staring at me open-mouthed. ‘What, shoplifted?’ She says it so loudly and sounds so scandalized that I glance at my closed door in alarm.

‘Shussh!’ I hiss urgently. Our eyes meet and though I have no idea why, we both burst out laughing. And pretty soon we can’t seem to stop. The laughter gathers and swells until neither of us can speak, and finally I have to sit on the bed and hold my stomach, barely able to breathe. I have never laughed like this with anyone before. I don’t even know exactly what’s so funny. Edie flops down next to me and I look at her and I think, I love you.

‘Come on,’ she says, and taking my hand pulls me up off the bed and sits me in front of my dressing-table mirror. She starts with my hair, picking up my brush and running it gently through my thick yellow frizz. I close my eyes. The touch of her hands on me, the slow, patient stroke of the brush, it’s all so wonderful, so lovely. I can smell the cigarette smoke on her fingers, a scent of apples when she moves. A hush falls, there’s only the ticking of the clocks beyond my closed door and the sound of the bristles against my scalp.

And then, into the silence, she says, ‘Did you see that lad I was talking to, in the square?’

I open my eyes. The brush stops. When I look up at her reflection I find her watching me, waiting for a response. ‘Yes,’ I admit.

‘Had you ever seen him before?’

I shake my head.

‘Me neither. He said his name was Connor.’ And by the way she says it, I somehow know that she has longed to say the name out loud, loves the shape and sound of it on her tongue.

There’s a silence. ‘He seemed to like you,’ I offer at last, understanding that it’s what she wants, and instantly her face lights up.

‘You think?’ A strange half-smile plays around her lips as she turns back to her reflection in the mirror, and I can tell that she’s no longer here with me, that it’s him in the room with her now, not me.

Even before we reach the top of the hill we hear it: the screams and music and the dull roar of generators, loudspeaker voices and a klaxon’s wail. And then, there we are, Edie and I, looking down at it all spread out below us, the coloured lights and the big wheel and the people and the caravans and the stalls. A magical, other world transported into the middle of Braxton fields.

Edie nudges me in the ribs and I look down to see a bottle of vodka in her hand. I shake my head but when she grins and thrusts it at me again, something makes me hesitate. Real life recedes and in its place I see spread out below me in the lights and music and laughter a million shimmering possibilities. On impulse I take the bottle from her and swig it back, the liquid choking and burning my throat, making me splutter while Edie laughs. ‘Come on,’ she says, grabbing my hand, and we run down the hill together, to where the fair waits for us, the vodka trailing excitement through me like a firework.

I can’t believe I’m here, that my parents have let me come. I’d walked in on one of their arguments earlier, too excited by Edie’s phone call to notice the sound of voices hissing from beneath the closed kitchen door like a gas leak. I think Dad had let me go to make Mum cross. ‘For pity’s sake, Jennifer, she’s sixteen,’ he’d said, and I ran to get my coat, not daring to catch Mum’s eye, my head already full of Edie and of what we’d do tonight.

And now here we are in the midst of it all: little kids with fluorescent rings around their necks, candy floss and giant cuddly toys and goldfish in bags, groups of lads with cans of beer and girls shrieking on the Hearts and Diamonds. A loudspeaker booms a thudding bass as we stand by a ride called Moon Rocket that sends a cage of screaming people soaring into the air. It’s amazing, the colours and noise and lights, but when I turn to Edie I suddenly realize that she’s scanning the crowds as if searching for something. ‘Are you all right?’ I ask her.

She shrugs. ‘Yeah, sure. What shall we go on? Have you got any money?’ Excitedly I pull out the handful of notes I’d grabbed from my savings box before coming tonight and her eyes widen. ‘Christ, Heather,’ she laughs. ‘You been robbing banks now too?’

We go on everything, running from ride to ride. I don’t mind paying for everything at all. I drink more vodka and I laugh and scream as if, were I to stop for a moment, the night might end, the fair and all its possibilities might vanish. But when I notice again Edie’s distracted expression I understand with a stab of disappointment that it’s him she’s looking for, the lad from the square – it’s him who she came for tonight. And soon I’m searching him out too, in the gaps between the rides where the fair’s bright lights don’t quite reach, faces lingering in the shadows, mouths sucking on cigarettes and sipping from cans. Strangers’ eyes flickering back at us, but he’s not there.

The last ride we go on is the waltzers and we spin round and round, the speed and the motion causing Edie to slide along the plastic seat towards me. I feel her softness and her hard angles as she lands against me, catch the scent of her hair. We’re dizzy when we get off, giddy and disorientated and laughing, but I look up and there he is. Standing with some other lads a few metres away, down by the side of the dodgems, huddled over something that they’re passing between them. It’s him. He’s half-turned away from us but it’s definitely Connor, and suddenly he looks up, his face flashing red, yellow, purple, green, his eyes scanning the crowds before landing on Edie, dark and steady as the barrels of a gun.

I try to steer her away but I’m too late. Her eyes are locked on his and it’s as if he’s a magician, a hypnotist, the way she goes to him, as though sleepwalking, as though the rest of the world and all its light and music has vanished. I trail after her and just before she reaches him I pull on her arm. ‘What?’ she asks, without looking away from him, without dropping his eyes, even for a second.

‘It’s late. I better go home.’

‘OK,’ she says, already moving off again. ‘I’ll see you later, yeah?’

‘Aren’t you coming?’

‘No.’ She shrugs off my hand and I feel a sharp slap of rejection. ‘Go home,’ she says. ‘I’m staying here.’ And she moves away, to where he’s waiting for her. For a moment I watch her go before I turn back through the crowds alone.

After

The floorboards are bare except for a large, colourful rug, the shelves full of paperback books. Somewhere, down the hall, a crackling record plays a song by a man with a scratchy, rasping voice. I sit on the sofa alone, twisting my fingers together, wishing I hadn’t come. Above my head, occasional thumps and dragging sounds are interrupted by intermittent swearing: the man who had opened the door to me three minutes ago had clearly forgotten I was coming. ‘Won’t be long,’ he shouts, and I go to the bay window to look out at the street.

This part of New Cross is different from mine. The neat terraced houses have freshly painted front doors in muted shades of green or blue or grey; little olive trees stand neatly outside them in terracotta pots. Down the road a pub that had once been dilapidated for years has tables and hanging baskets out front, where couples drink beer in the sunshine, their babies asleep in expensive buggies. I turn back to the room and look around me, taking in the books, the prints on the walls, the stylish furniture and rugs – the sort of place I’d once imagined myself living, in fact. And I think about that old me as if of a stranger, so certain I’d been that the world would be mine for the taking one day.

At that moment a boy of about five walks into the room. He’s mixed race and very lovely looking with a cloud of light brown Afro hair and deep blue eyes. He’s gazing at me very seriously, as if unsure whether I’m real or not. ‘Hi there,’ I say after a silence, just as the man returns, carrying with effort a cot.

‘Here you go,’ he says, smiling. ‘Sorry about that.’ He puts his hand on the boy’s head and they watch me scrabble about in my bag for my purse.

‘Thirty, was it?’ I ask.

He nods and takes the money I hand him. ‘Cheers. You want me to dismantle it to put in your car, or do you have a van or something?’ It’s only then that I realize – and the stupidity of it leaves me gaping at him with embarrassment – I had entirely forgotten to think about how I’d get it home.

The child and his father look back at me expectantly. Down the hall, the record comes to an end. ‘I don’t have a car,’ I admit.

He looks at me in surprise, his gaze dropping to my seven-month bump. ‘Were you going to carry it home on your back?’

And so, several minutes later, despite my many protestations, I find myself sat between the boy, whose name I learn is Stan, and the man who tells me he’s called James, in the front seat of a battered pickup truck, being driven home with the cot sliding and rattling behind us. I’m overcome with embarrassment.

‘Stop apologizing,’ James says. ‘It’s no trouble, really.’

I glance sideways at him. He’s nice enough looking, with very black skin and an attractive, open face, but though he’s in his thirties and well spoken, he’s wearing a bizarre assortment of clothes: a neon orange jumper with army trousers and paint-splattered boots, his hair cut in peroxide blond tufts. He looks like a student, or a homeless person, I think. During the short drive he’s never quiet or still, whistling between his teeth, commenting on other people’s driving, asking me questions about when I’m due, what I do, where I’m from, all the while ruffling his son’s hair, thumping the horn or drumming his fingers against the steering wheel. I can’t think of anything to say to him. He’s exhausting and I’m relieved when we reach my building at last.

He jumps out and starts unloading the cot on to the pavement. ‘You got someone to help you carry it in?’ he asks. ‘Which floor do you live on?’

I shrug. ‘It’s OK. I can manage.’

He looks at me and I see it dawn on him that there’s no one to help. ‘Don’t be silly,’ he says. ‘I’ll give you a hand.’

And I feel hemmed in by his persistence, his insistence on helping me. I wish he would leave the cot and me alone here on the street. But up the three flights of stairs he follows me, carrying the cot awkwardly, swearing under his breath each time he bangs it against his shin, the little boy trailing after us.

When I open the door to my flat, the threadbare carpet, the old, ugly furniture and the dirty paintwork look suddenly much worse than they did half an hour before. ‘Put it anywhere,’ I say. He hoists it through into the lounge, knocking a shelf and sending its contents scattering, magazines and old bills and a dozen or so loose pages of drawings falling at our feet. I kneel down, hurriedly grabbing at the pictures and stuffing them back into the folder. But it’s too late: he plucks one from where it landed on his foot and begins examining it. ‘These yours?’ he asks, and I feel my face begin to burn, so painful is it to have this stranger – anyone at all – look at my sketches; my inky landscapes peopled by their spindly ghosts.

I hold out my hand to take it from him, but he’s still engrossed. ‘This is actually really good,’ he says slowly, and then he looks at me, his expression different now, curious, reassessing. ‘Do you paint too, or just draw?’ he asks, ‘Because I—’

But I snatch the drawing from his hand. ‘No, I don’t do anything,’ I say, stuffing it back into the folder and moving away.

There’s a brief, surprised silence. I look at the door.

‘Right,’ he says stiffly. ‘Sorry,’ and he takes his son’s hand and starts to leave.

‘Thanks for the cot,’ I manage to mumble when they reach the door, and he smiles again his easy smile.

‘No problem.’ It’s a nice smile, and for a second or two I allow myself to return it, until Connor’s face flashes across my mind and I turn away with a thumping heart, busying myself with the scattered papers while they let themselves out, closing the door behind them.

As my belly grows I find myself thinking increasingly of my mum. I wonder what she felt like being pregnant with me, whether she felt as scared as I do, whether she loved me right away. She was only seventeen when I was born and for as long as I can remember we fought and bickered like sisters. I was six when my dad walked out and I blamed her for his leaving. And yet, in my heart, I always knew we loved each other, a part of me understanding that the passion with which we hurt each other came from something strong enough to withstand the blows we inflicted. Looking back, I guess I always felt that we would have time to work things out eventually, not imagining what was to come; that we would one day have to cut all ties and never speak again.

When I first came to London and lived with Uncle Geoff I would hear him sometimes on the phone to her, passing on news of how I was doing. Sometimes, when he thought I was out of earshot, I would hear him asking her to talk to me, but she never would and I never picked up the phone myself. I don’t blame her for cutting me off, because I left her no choice, not really. If I’d stayed she would have had to have done something, told someone about what happened that night, so by turning her back she was protecting me in a way. And I think, now, that by confessing to her, I was looking for her to force an end to it all – to put a stop to Connor and me.

And still I dream about Heather. Night after night my sleeping mind replays what happened between us in Fremton. I see us at the quarry, all of us: Heather and me, Connor and Niall, Rabbit and Boyo and Tully and the rest. Even the same music is playing on the car stereo and I see again the sinking sun as it stains the quarry’s water red and gold. In the small hours when I wake, breathless and panicky after reliving it all again, I try to make sense of Heather’s behaviour when she visited me. How she’d acted as though nothing had happened back then, as though we were just old friends catching up. Sometimes, in the long sleepless hours before dawn, I wonder if I’d imagined it all, been mistaken somehow in the part she played that night – perhaps time and memory had played tricks, distorted things. But even before the thought has properly formed I know that I’m deluding myself. Whatever it is that Heather wants from me now, nothing can change that.

I’m on my way to the hospital and letting myself out of the front door when the new tenant, the ginger woman from the ground-floor flat, arrives on the steps in front of me, and I look at her with curiosity as I hold the door open for her. She’s very thin and covered in tattoos – a tapestry of names and patterns and hearts and flowers that seems to cover every inch of her. I smile but she doesn’t look at me and though I’m not sure what it is about her that makes me want to talk to her I tentatively clear my throat and say, ‘Hi, I’m Edie, I live—’ But she only nods curtly in response, avoiding my gaze and turning her back on me abruptly as she lets herself into her flat, closing the door behind her. I stare after her, before beginning the long, slow process of getting myself to the hospital.

These days I’m more belly than person; a bump on legs, as if I, or the person I was, has been entirely replaced by my unborn child. And the rest of the world seems to collude in this. In the street, elderly women reach out with narrowed, hungry eyes to touch my belly as though, Buddha-like, it might bring them luck. At my hospital visits I wait, obedient and detached as I’m weighed and measured and scanned and tested, and I feel entirely separate from the life that’s growing inside me. I faithfully attend every appointment and read every leaflet and booklet that’s pressed on me, but if I try to imagine the baby inside me I find that I can’t. When the midwife asks me if I want to know the gender I shake my head in panic, because I only know that I have one wish: I hope with all my heart that it isn’t a girl.

The bus takes me through New Cross towards Camberwell, winding through narrow back roads then on to Peckham High Street, past dusty, sun-baked shopfronts, the jumbled mixture of Georgian terraces and council blocks, strings of nail bars and chicken shops and newly arrived delis and fashionable bars. When we reach Denmark Hill twenty minutes later, the sprawl of King’s College Hospital looms to my right, the low Victorian red bricks of the Maudsley psychiatric unit to my left. I get off at the busy intersection and begin to head towards the maternity unit.

Just as I’m turning into the main entrance I glance across the road and freeze. A woman is standing at the bus stop, turned away and half concealed by the waiting queue of people, but her hair and build and posture is so like Heather’s that my stomach plummets with fright. I crane my neck but a bus pulls up obscuring my view and though I wait, my mouth dry, my heart knocking, by the time it’s moved on again the queue has halved and the woman I’d seen has gone. I stand there for a long time, fear twisting in my gut. But surely it wasn’t her. It couldn’t possibly be. Just another in a long line of lookalikes I’ve spotted over the years – my mind playing tricks again, that’s all. I tell myself to get a grip, the baby gives a hefty kick to my bladder and I hurry on my way.

Today the antenatal waiting room is busy and nearly every orange plastic chair is taken. A small wall-mounted TV shows a daytime property programme, its sound turned low. Women in various stages of pregnancy come and go, each clutching identical blue cardboard folders and occasionally trailing a toddler, a boyfriend or a husband in various states of boredom, excitement or fear. I take the one remaining seat, next to an exhausted-looking Irish woman who nags her four children to get up off the floor, stop fighting, be quiet. I check my ticket. Thirty-nine. The LED screen flashes number twenty-one. I sigh and along with nearly everyone else pull out my iPhone and turn it on.

But a small commotion at the door causes me to look up. A heavily pregnant teenage girl waddles in wearing tracksuit bottoms and flip-flops and shouting at a lad behind her. ‘Fuck off,’ she screams, ‘Fuck off, right? I don’t want you here. I don’t fucking want you here!’ The lad says nothing, his head bowed. They sit on opposite sides of the room, he with his chin almost on his chest, her glaring furiously at him. And as I watch, he looks up and makes brief eye contact with me. He is, I realize, about twenty, the same age Connor was when I first met him, though they are nothing alike – the wounded, vulnerable expression of this stranger is nothing you’d ever have seen on Connor’s face.

In that instant I’m transported back to the night of the fair, the night it all began. I see Connor staring at me across the fairground, feel again the electric charge of excitement. I’d walked towards him and said his name and he’d thrown away his cigarette and nodded. I’d felt suddenly shy and for something to do had taken a swig of the vodka before passing it to him.

‘I saw you,’ he said, when he’d drunk some. ‘On the waltzers, with the fat girl,’ and I’d shivered at the thought of him watching me without me knowing it, those sea-green eyes on me. He’d looked away, and I’d started to panic because he might go: he might walk away and I didn’t know how or when I’d see him again. So I’d blurted the first thing that came to me. ‘Want to go on a ride?’ and he’d smiled; it broke across his face, a beautiful smile, wide and sudden and with such sweetness it had taken my breath away.

In the waiting room the Irish woman gathers up her children and heads towards one of the consulting rooms, but I’m barely aware of my surroundings now, lost as I am in the memory of that night. The big wheel had taken us up into the dark sky, his jeans rough against my bare leg, dark hairs on his arms and stubble on his cheek and a faint smell of sweat and aftershave and cigarettes and something deeper and more pungent, something masculine, indefinable. A man, he was, a proper man, and excitement had fizzed inside me as I’d drunk in his long lashes, the curve of his skull, the line of his neck, and I’d had to sit on my hands to stop myself from touching him.

He pulled a spliff from his pocket and lit it, before turning and squinting at me through the smoke. When he’d passed it to me I’d sucked it down and the hit was instantaneous, mixing with the vodka in dizzying waves, and I’d closed my eyes, then felt the suddenness of his lips on mine, hot and soft and hard, dry and wet, his tongue pushing into my mouth. I touched him, my fingers beneath his jacket eager, hungry, running them over the fabric of his T-shirt, feeling the skin and muscle and flesh of him. Even though I was so nervous I could hardly breathe, I couldn’t stop myself, had no shame, no self-control as I kissed him, ran my lips against his jaw, buried my nose in his neck, breathing him in.

What little I’d done with lads before had been nothing like this. I left that old me there, behind the last tree at the end of the playing fields in Withington, and took a leap into something else, something new. He was touching me too, his hands rough and careless over my chest, beneath my skirt, parting my thighs, slipping his hand beneath my knickers, and the bit of me that would normally smack his fingers away, tell him to get lost, was silenced. I was only feeling and sensation, the big wheel carrying us round and round as I trembled into his neck, not wanting him to stop.

In the hospital waiting room a large West Indian woman touches my arm. ‘Is that you, honey?’ she asks, nodding at the number flashing on the wall.

‘Oh,’ I say, ‘Yeah. Thank you.’ And I gather up my things, pull myself laboriously to my feet and walk towards my midwife’s room.

Before

Edie lives in Tyner’s Cross, the bit of Fremton between the Pembroke Estate and the rest of the town. A scattering of cul-de-sacs and council houses and new builds, as though Fremton proper had emptied out its pockets one day and this rag-bag jumble was what had tumbled out. We get to Edie’s street, a row of small, pebble-dashed houses with falling-down fences, front yards strewn with junk and weeds, and she glances at me. ‘Not like round your way, is it? Mind you, our old place wasn’t much better.’ She sighs, then says, ‘One day I’m going to be rich, Heather. I’m going to move to London, go to Saint Martins and become an amazing artist. I’m going to have a gorgeous flat, and people will go to galleries and buy my pictures for millions,’ she laughs, as though she’s only joking, but I feel a rush of admiration. I want to tell her that I believe her, that it sounds amazing and that I think she could do anything if she set her mind to it, but before I can speak we’ve stopped outside a house with a peeling yellow front door and Edie’s pulling a key from her bag.

At that moment it swings open and a short, stocky woman comes out. She stops abruptly when she sees us, her small eyes flickering over me without interest before turning eagerly on Edie. ‘Ah,’ she says, ‘There you are, Edith.’ She takes a step forward and puts a hand on Edie’s arm, standing very close. Her hungry smile shows a mouth full of sharp little teeth. ‘I’d been wondering where you’d got to. How are you? Everything OK?’

Edie gently releases herself. ‘Fine thanks, Janine.’ She shoots me a look; ‘Mum’s physio,’ she explains.

The woman nods. ‘You look after your mum now. We’ll have her up and about in no time.’ Her gaze lingers on Edie, hot and slippery.

‘Right you are,’ Edie says. ‘See you next time.’ And together we hurry through into the hallway, Edie laughing into her hand as soon as she closes the door. ‘Yuk,’ she says, and though I roll my eyes and nod, unease shifts inside me, an unpleasant memory of playground taunts, an ugly word to describe shameful, unnatural things. I force myself to rid the woman from my mind as I follow Edie down the hall.

The living room is small and cluttered and I drink it all in eagerly, not wanting to miss even the smallest detail. ‘It’s basically mostly my nan’s old stuff,’ Edie tells me carelessly, but I think it’s lovely. Little china ornaments on every surface, flowery wallpaper and a thick, swirly brown carpet and a green sofa with a matching foot stool. A vase of plastic flowers on the brown-tiled mantelpiece. It’s untidy and stuffy and smells of burnt dust and cats, but I know instantly I’d rather live here than my house any day.

Edie throws her keys on the coffee table. ‘Mum,’ she calls, ‘I’m back.’

A woman walks slowly in on crutches and I remember how Edie had told me her mum had been in a car accident. Even in her nightclothes she looks beautiful, so glamorous and young, with make-up and long hair and a pink silky dressing gown very different from the one my mum’s usually buttoned up in. She glances at me and smiles briefly but before I can say anything she looks past me and says to Edie accusingly, ‘Where have you been? I had to wait for that bloody woman to turn up just to have a cup of tea.’

Edie rolls her eyes. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I’ll make one now, shall I?’

Her mum takes a pack of cigarettes from her dressing-gown pocket and lights one. ‘Don’t put yourself out.’ With difficulty, she lowers herself on to the couch and, picking up the remote, turns on the TV, staring sulkily at the screen.

‘Fine,’ Edie mutters. ‘Come on, Heather.’

I murmur a quick goodbye before hurrying after her.

Her bedroom is tiny, barely large enough for the single bed that she’s lying face down on. Half-unpacked cardboard boxes cover almost every inch of the worn pink carpet and I gingerly step over them until I’m standing by her feet. ‘Are you all right?’ I ask.

Her voice is muffled by her pillow. ‘She does my head in. I wish my dad was still around.’

‘Where is he?’ I ask, sitting down.

‘God knows. Buggered off years ago. They were only young when they had me. She drove him away, always on at him about something. Nag nag nag, the way she does with me. Tells me I wouldn’t understand, like I’m a bloody kid. But I know it’s her fault he left, that’s for sure.’ There’s a pause before she adds, ‘And I’ve not seen him since. Not even a phone call.’ She sits up and gnaws at her fingernails, her eyes dark and brooding. Tentatively I move closer to her and, after a few seconds’ hesitation, put my arm around her. She sinks against me, resting her head upon my shoulder as though she were a little girl and my heart thumps loudly as I stroke her hair. After a silence she murmurs, ‘God, it’s shit not having any brothers or sisters, isn’t it? Someone else to deal with all their crap. Don’t you ever wish you weren’t an only, Heather?’ When I don’t reply she glances up at me and her face falls. ‘Christ, what’s the matter? What have I said?’

And so I tell her about Lydia. Not everything, of course, but still, it’s more than I’ve ever spoken about her to anyone else before.

‘Oh, Heather, that’s awful,’ she says when I’ve finished. ‘I’m so sorry.’

We sit in silence for a while and I wipe my eyes, listening to the sound of some kids playing outside in the street. In the quiet I notice a drawing pinned to the wall above her bed. ‘Did you do that?’ I ask, nodding at it.

‘Yeah,’ she says, and jumping up, stands on her bed to take it down. ‘It’s a bit crap really.’

She passes it to me and I stare at it. It’s a self-portrait, a close-up of her face, pouting and narrow-eyed like a model on the cover of a magazine. It’s amazing. ‘Wow,’ I say, ‘it’s great.’

‘Nah,’ she ducks her head. ‘Do you honestly think so? You can have it if you want.’ She goes and pulls out a folder from underneath her wardrobe, takes out a pile of drawings and puts them on my lap, watching my face as I look through them.

My tears, Lydia, Edie’s dad, everything is forgotten as I examine them one by one. A child holding a balloon, a couple kissing, a handsome boy holding some flowers, moonlight shining on water. I think they’re wonderful, romantic, a version of life where everyone’s happy and in love and beautiful. ‘Oh, Edie,’ I say, ‘they’re fantastic. You’re so talented, you really are!’ I look at her in amazement.

She shakes her head, ‘Oh leave off, they’re pretty rubbish.’ But she jumps up and pulls out a sketchpad, waiting eagerly for my reaction as I turn the pages. And as I heap praise on her I watch as her sadness begins to lift, receding with every compliment I pay her. She’s smiling, I’ve made her happy again.

Suddenly she says, ‘You’re different from other girls our age, aren’t you?’

My heart sinks. ‘What do you mean?’ My classmates’ voices come hissing back to me: Weirdo, fucking freak.

She yawns and stretches like a cat, her top riding up to reveal her midriff. ‘Don’t know. You don’t go on about clothes and who felt you up last night, and what a bitch so-and-so is. It’s good.’ She hesitates, glancing away before adding very softly, ‘Even with my friends back in Manchester, I used to feel lonely sometimes. None of them seemed to have the same crap going on at home that I did. Do you know what I mean?’

‘Yeah.’ I nod. ‘I do.’ And we smile at each other in the silence.

‘He’s asked me to meet him on Saturday,’ she tells me a few moments later.

‘Who?’

She grins. ‘Connor, of course! Will you come with me? In case he doesn’t show.’

‘Oh, I don’t—’

‘Please,’ she says. ‘Oh go on, be a pal.’

I hesitate, and she makes a daft face, fluttering her eyelashes until I laugh, and say OK.

It’s Saturday lunchtime and we’re sitting on the bench by the statue in the town square. Edie can’t sit still, tugging at her dress, reapplying lip gloss and spraying herself with the White Musk her Uncle Geoff sent her last Christmas. A couple of girls from school walk past us and look Edie up and down before turning to each other and sniggering. ‘Skank,’ they whisper, but I don’t think Edie hears.

‘Where is he? We’ve been here half an hour now.’

‘I’m sure he’s on his way,’ I tell her, secretly hoping that he’s not. I think about how I’ll comfort her when he doesn’t show, how maybe we can go to the café instead. Perhaps I’ll buy her a milkshake and listen sympathetically as she confides in me about how disappointed she is. I’ll tell her it’s probably for the best after all, that he wasn’t worth it and she can do a whole lot better – all the things I’ve heard you’re supposed to say in this situation. But when I next look up, there he is.

The market’s on today and the square is full of people, huddled beneath umbrellas or caught unawares by the first rainy day we’ve had in weeks, but Connor cuts through the crowds as though there’s no one there at all and I see him through Edie’s eyes: his handsome face, his confident swagger, something bold and focused against the smudgy grey blur of the square.

He stops in front of us. ‘All right,’ he says. I’m surprised by how nice his smile is and I find myself momentarily dazzled by it.

‘Hiya!’ Edie jumps up as if he’d pulled her by a string.

He looks her over. ‘You got dressed up.’ His eyes are a little mocking now, and she shrugs, her own smile flickering uncertainly. Then, reaching out a finger, he traces the low neckline of her dress, not taking his eyes from hers. Edie flushes, opens her mouth as if to speak but seems hypnotized by the slow sweep of his finger. Her flesh goose-pimples beneath his gaze and the rain. Something passes between them, thick and private, containing them, wrapping them together, leaving me outside.

At that moment a passing dog rears back on its lead, barking and snarling, baring its teeth at me and I jump back, giving a little cry as its owner pulls it on. My heart pounds with shock. They both stare at me. ‘This is Heather,’ Edie tells him.

He nods then lights a cigarette. ‘You coming?’ he says to her.

‘Where’re we going?’ she asks.

‘Back to mine.’

She hesitates. ‘Aren’t we going out?’

He takes a drag on his cigarette and looks away. ‘Where to, the Ritz?’

She flicks her hair again and bites her lip, weighing it up. ‘Can Heather come?’

He glances at me and shrugs. ‘If she wants.’

The look she shoots me is so beseeching that I nod and we set off, the two of them walking ahead, both so slim and good-looking as though made for each other, me trailing along behind.

I’ve never been to the Pembroke Estate before and I pause in its centre, staring up at the three high towers, looming black against the grey sky. The motorway is very close here; you can hear the traffic as it roars past somewhere just out of sight. There’s a kids’ play park with broken swings and a sandpit filled with bottles and dog mess and a group of teenage boys sitting around on its climbing frame. They fall silent, eyeing me blankly as I pass, and I hurry to catch up with Edie and Connor.

The lift that takes us to the sixth floor has bumpy metal walls and smells of cigarettes and urine. Connor ignores us as we climb higher and higher, taking out a phone and turning it on, his brow furrowed as his fingers tap away at the buttons. I watch him with curiosity: no one I know has a mobile phone and it looks flashy and expensive. When I glance over at Edie I see that she’s eyeing it too and I wonder if that’s why he got it out now, so that we would notice it and be impressed.

The door to Connor’s flat is at the end of a long row of identical blue ones and we have to traipse along an outdoor walkway to get to it. Above us light bulbs fizz and flicker in little wire cages. If you lean over the metal barrier you can see right across Fremton and down to the roofs of the cars whizzing past below. We stop outside his flat and hear the thud of music from within, which blasts out at us when he opens the door. He leads us through to the lounge, past an empty bedroom with mattresses on the floor, a kitchen with a sink full of beer cans and a bathroom with a broken toilet. I imagine my mum’s face if she knew I was in a place like this and glance over at Edie but she’s looking around herself with bright, excited eyes as if it is in fact the Ritz he’s brought us to.

In the lounge a very thin ginger boy is stretched out on the sofa wearing only his boxer shorts. He’s asleep, despite the music. Connor kicks his foot and he sits up, dazedly rubbing his face, his ribs protruding beneath white, freckled skin. ‘All right, Rabbit?’ Connor says, and he nods sleepily, yawning widely and running both hands over his bristly carrot-coloured hair.

Edie sits on the sofa and I perch on its edge, as far away from the ginger boy as I can. The beige corduroy fabric is covered in stains, and by my feet a large plate that’s been used as an ashtray spills cigarette ends on to the carpet. There’s a smell in the air of old food and stale beer.

‘You want a drink?’ Connor asks, then has to repeat himself over the noise. ‘Got some vodka if you want?’

Edie nods and flashes him a smile.

He looks at me but I shake my head, and he shrugs and leaves the room.

‘All right, girls?’ the ginger lad says, grinning now, and I suddenly notice the size of his front teeth. He’s got the same thick local accent as Connor, which makes them both, in my opinion, sound a bit stupid, and he’s rolling some tobacco into a cigarette paper. It’s only when he lights it and the putrid stink fills the air that I realize what it is. He passes it to Edie and I’m shocked when she takes it from him. I know about marijuana from a talk they gave at school. Perhaps she doesn’t realize. Perhaps I should warn her. I watch her closely in case she passes out or collapses or something and I need to call an ambulance. I wish we’d never come.

When Connor returns he sits next to Edie, passing her a half-full bottle of vodka. Rabbit wanders off and I get up and look out of the window, at the fields stretching out beyond the motorway. The rain has passed and the sky is a brilliant blue again, the sun bouncing off the roofs of the cars. I perch on an armchair and watch as, across the room, Edie laughs and twirls her hair then leans into Connor, putting her head on his shoulder. I can tell she’s a bit drunk. They’re talking and laughing but I can’t hear what about because the music’s too loud. Suddenly they both stand up, Connor pulling Edie after him towards the door. She looks at me and holds up a hand, fingers splayed. ‘Five minutes,’ she mouths, giggling. The door closes behind them and I’m left sitting on my own, the music thumping on around me.

A minute slowly passes, then another and another. Restlessly I go to the window again and look out, biting my thumbnail and hoping Rabbit doesn’t come back. When ten minutes have gone by I turn the stereo down, craning my ears to listen for Edie’s voice. Nothing. I don’t know what to do. My stomach twists anxiously. Is she all right? What if he’s locked her in somewhere and she needs my help? At last I creep to the door and stand out in the hallway until I hear the low murmur of voices.

One of the bedroom doors is ajar and I tiptoe over to it and look through. I see Edie lying on the mattress with Connor. As I watch, he slips a hand under her dress, pulling down her knickers. Shock reverberates through me. I hold my breath, feeling my skin burn as he reaches up and begins to touch her there. She gives a low moan, her eyes closed, her face flushed. I can’t move, a painful lump in my throat making it hard to breathe.

And then a sound behind me makes me jump and turn around. Standing a few feet away is Rabbit, his eyes fastened on me, a slow smirk of realization spreading across his face as his gaze flicks away from my face to where Edie’s lying on the bed. I stumble backwards, heat coursing through me, and go back to the lounge, and though I don’t know why, hot tears prickle my eyes as I sit down again to wait.

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