The Perfect Mother. Margaret Leroy

girls. I kept myself a little apart, not wanting them to find out about me. I saw this as a temporary thing. When things are OK, when this bad bit is over, when I’m back with my mother, I thought—then I will talk to them, make friends, be one of them. Not till then. Aimee at The Poplars was my only friend.

      She was wild, Aimee: a sharp, knowing face, hair like fire, tattoos all down her arm. She had a razor-blade sewn into the hem of her jeans. For emergencies, she said. She never went to school.

      Aimee got picked on a lot by the staff at The Poplars. They told her she was trouble. She wasn’t like me, she wouldn’t just go along with things and bide her time. I’ve always been able to do this—blend into the background, not be conspicuous, not be seen—but Aimee couldn’t or wouldn’t: there was something in her, some flame that wouldn’t be quenched. Brian Meredith hit her more than the others—for nicking stuff and getting into fights and being lippy. She used to call him Megadeath. ‘He’s got it coming,’ she’d say. ‘I’ll do him over. Just you wait. One day.’ Once he kept her for three weeks in Pindown. When she came out she’d ripped all the skin from the sides of her fingernails and sometimes she’d shout in her sleep.

      She ran away often. Sometimes she took me with her. She showed me how to do it, how to travel on a train without a ticket by hiding in the toilet, how to steal. We’d plan it all together in the room we shared, the street light leaking through the thin curtains onto the battered candlewick of our bedspreads. Each time it was like falling in love: each time we thought this was the day, the time, the Real Thing. Usually, we’d head for Brighton, where Aimee had heard you could live in a squat and find some people who’d help you. Brighton was our promised land. We knew how it would be. We’d sell jewellery, those little leather thongs with stones on, we’d live on chips, read fortunes: we’d be like the older girls you saw there on the seafront, with their impossible glamour, their ratty ribboned hair and Oxfam coats and thin thin bodies and wide, generous smiles.

      We’d pack our bags with a change of clothes and Kit Kats we’d nicked from Woolworths or mini-packs of Frosties, and put on our trainers and go. And maybe we’d get there, and sleep on the beach by the pier, and the police would come and pick us up, and we’d be put in Pindown.

      The third time, they let me out after a week of Pindown. I was quiet and sensible and sat at the table and wrote down the wrong things I’d done. But Aimee was kept there for fifteen days, and when she came out she had a chest infection. They’d taken the fuse out of the fire because she’d been stroppy, she said.

      I woke that night to see her sitting up in bed, the bedspread pulled up to her chin, her fists all bone, clasping it so tightly. The orange light through the curtains made her skin look sickly.

      ‘I’m going to tell,’ she said, through her coughs. ‘What it’s like here. What he does, that motherfucking bastard.’

      ‘No,’ I said. ‘You mustn’t. You can’t.’

      ‘Just watch me,’ she said.

      Her social worker from the Civic Centre, Jonny Leverett, was a pallid man who wore heavy-metal sweatshirts. The next time he came, he took her out in his Skoda, and they were gone for hours.

      ‘Well?’ I said, when she came back.

      ‘I told him,’ she said. Tearing at the skin at the sides of her fingernails. ‘They’ll have to do something now. They’ll have to come and get Megadeath. They’ll have to lock him up. Life would be too short for him.’

      Two days later there was a case conference in the staffroom. The car park was full of smart cars and Lesley served coffee in the china cups that were kept for visiting professionals. Jonny Leverett came to take Aimee in.

      I was watching television when she found me.

      ‘I’m going to Avalon Close,’ she said. Defiant still, but her eyes were far too bright.

      ‘You can’t be,’ I said. ‘For Chrissake, they’re all nutters in there.’

      She shrugged. ‘It’s got to be better than here.’

      She kicked a Pepsi can that was lying on the floor, sent it ricocheting across the room, her flaming red hair flying. But I could see she was frightened: there was shaking at the edges of her smile. I’d never seen her frightened.

      ‘What about Megadeath?’

      ‘They didn’t believe me,’ she said.

      The day she went, she cut her wrists—with the blade she’d kept for emergencies. Lesley told me, when I got back from school. She was all right now, said Lesley, they’d stitched her up in Casualty. Lesley said not to worry too much about her, that Avalon Close would be right for her as she clearly needed help.

      I think back to that sometimes. I try not to, but I still do, even now. Because I know there were things I could have done to help her. I could have gone to the police or phoned the Civic Centre and told them Aimee was telling the truth—that someone was lying, but it wasn’t her. I didn’t have the courage. Only silence seemed safe.

      I missed Aimee terribly. What I could bear before, I couldn’t bear without her. Sometimes when I’d wake in the night, I’d think for a moment she was there in the other bed beside me; then with a lurch of cold I’d see it was Jade Cochrane, my new roommate—who was sad and mousey and never laughed at all.

      My mother came again. She had a dark tan and new jewellery. She brought me an extra-big rabbit, with a satin heart on his chest that said ‘Yours 4 Ever’.

      ‘Thanks,’ I said.

      ‘I was going to wrap it up,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t have any paper.’

      She was excited, skittish, pleased with herself. She smelt of alcohol but I didn’t think she was drunk. She looked different. This was it, I knew. At last. The time had come.

      ‘I’m living with Karl now,’ she said. ‘He comes from Dresden. I always did like a man with a nice accent. Karl’s an entrepreneur.’ She pronounced this carefully. ‘We’ve got a new flat in Haringey.’

      ‘I can come and live with you, then,’ I said.

      ‘Just give me a bit of time,’ she said. ‘Karl and me have got to get ourselves sorted. We’re just getting the flat together.’

      Afterwards Lesley sat on my bed, asked how I was feeling. Really, I thought, she doesn’t need to bother any more, I won’t be here much longer.

      ‘My mum’s all right now,’ I said. ‘She’s got this flat with Karl. I’m going to go and live with them. Any day now.’

      Lesley put her arm round me. Her voice was gentle, hesitant.

      ‘Catriona, my love, that’s not what she’s saying to us.’

      My mother never came again.

      They tried to get me foster parents. They were going to advertise in the Evening Standard, they said.

      Lesley took the photograph with her smart new Polaroid.

      ‘Smile!’ she said. ‘Give me a lovely big smile. That’s wonderful—you look like Meg Ryan.’

      I stood there, smiling my most important smile ever. I tried to make my whole self smiley, the corners of my mouth ached with smiliness.

      Lesley showed me the ad. It said, ‘Catriona is a bright, pretty teenager with a real artistic talent. Her record of school attendance is excellent. Because of her troubled past, Catriona can be rather demanding at times. Catriona needs firm and consistent parenting.’

      I thought about this, lying in bed at night in the orange light of the streetlamps, chilly under the candlewick, missing Aimee. I let myself think, just for a moment, about my foster family, what they might be like: nice food and lots of it, gentleness, and a soft bed with a duvet that tucked in at the back of your neck. And I wondered what it meant to be demanding.

      No one was interested; no one even enquired about me. No