Coming Home. Annabel Kantaria

my needles clicked, I tried to convince myself Dad must have spent the money on something so obvious I’d completely overlooked it. I finished off the hat’s ribbing and packed my needles away, resolving to go through the receipts with a toothcomb as soon as I could. I plumped the pillows one more time and settled into my favourite sleeping position, but still I couldn’t sleep.

      After fumbling for the torch I kept on the bedside table, I padded into the bathroom and opened the medicine cupboard. I was hoping Mum might have an old box of herbal sleeping tablets somewhere in there, but what I actually saw, as the torch lit up the contents, was a shock: the entire right-hand side of the cabinet was given over to sleep remedies ranging in strength from Night Rescue Remedy to boxes of prescription tablets. I checked the dates on the prescription labels—all were under six months old. I’d had no idea. Had things really got that bad?

      When I finally got to sleep, I dreamed about moving house. Mum and I watched the movers put the last boxes into the lorry, slam the door shut and drive off with a cheery wave. The driver was Dad. Mum and I followed in the car, but we weren’t able to catch up. The faster we drove, the further from us the lorry drew, as we span along dark, wet roads, trying to find shortcuts and straining always for a glimpse of the van that contained my father and the memories of my childhood.

      I woke in a tangle of sheets.

       CHAPTER 22

      ‘Are things improving with your mum now?’ Miss Dawson asked. We were sitting in her living room—each of us in a big armchair. It was the school holidays but my sessions didn’t stop for holidays. Dad was waiting in the dining room. Miss Dawson had bought me a KitKat.

      I bit my lip. ‘Not really,’ I said.

       ‘What makes you say that, Evie?’

      The truth was, Mum wasn’t coping at all. I hadn’t told anyone about what had really happened with Dingbat: all I said was, ‘He got out; he died.’ Then, last week Mum had gone to the supermarket in her pyjamas. They were red-and-white checked and Mum had matched them with red high heels and a pillar-box red lipstick. She’d stood in the hall, finalising her shopping list with her basket over her arm and I’d thought she was doing it for a joke; trying to be funny; trying to cheer me up. My heart had filled with love and I’d laughed.

      ‘What’s so funny?’ she’d snapped.

      I should have spotted the warning tone in her voice, but I was still laughing. I’d thought the joke was still going.

      ‘You’re going to the shops in your pyjamas!’ I’d giggled. Already I was imagining telling my friends about it. My mum was the funny one!

       ‘They are NOT my pyjamas!’

      I froze.

       ‘This is my suit! I am wearing a SUIT!’ she’d shouted. She’d jabbed at her lips, kicked a foot out at me. ‘See? I am wearing lipstick! I am wearing RED SHOES! Don’t you know what a SUIT looks like?’

      She’d kicked hard at the stair I was sitting on and left, slamming the front door so hard behind her that the hall had seemed to reverberate for minutes.

      I was upstairs when she’d come back with the shopping. I heard her put it away in the kitchen then go into her bedroom. When I went down for lunch she was wearing a dress and her lipstick had gone.

      ‘What would you like for lunch?’ she’d asked, smiling at me as if nothing was wrong.

      ‘She sometimes wears her pyjamas to the High Street,’ I told Miss Dawson.