The Alibi Girl. C.J. Skuse

and bolted. Lounge curtains drawn. The cats are all in and accounted for. I take Emily out of the pushchair and she grizzles but I hold her against me, warm and tight so she’s safe. Only then does my breathing slow. I notice the answerphone flashing. You have one new message. I press Play.

      Silence.

      Crackling.

      Breathing.

       Click.

      Dead tone.

      ‘Wrong number. Means nothing,’ I reassure Emily, though my heart pounds.

      Taking her into the bedroom, I draw the blind and slump down onto the springy single bed the landlord said he’d replace soon. I hold Emily against my neck, skin to skin. Safety. My heart beats in my ears. It’s the only sound.

      I stare up at the walls, almost bare apart from the Frida Kahlo print the previous tenant hung there in a glass frame. I don’t even know who Frida Kahlo is but the landlord said the picture was called ‘Time Flies’ and the guy who’d left it was an artist who died of an overdose. Frida’s wearing a white dress in the picture. And there’s a little aeroplane above her head. And a clock on a shelf. Her eyebrows scare me. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what any of it means.

2

       Wednesday, 23rd October

      My name isn’t Mary. It’s Joanne. Well, that’s the name they gave me. I can’t tell anyone my real name. I might be free now but I still have to imprison parts of myself. And that’s the big part. I don’t have all the children I told the hairdresser about, either, or a successful career in medicine. Or a personal trainer husband called Kaden. I have a new neighbour with that name, and a man’s sweatshirt I got from a charity shop sprayed in a free tester of Paco Rabanne that I pretend belongs to him, but that’s all. Mary is an act. One of my many acts to keep them at bay.

      But they’ve tracked me down, haven’t they? They’ve found me again.

      No, I tell myself, no they haven’t. Maybe it wasn’t them. Maybe Scants is right, as always, and I’m being paranoid. Or maybe he just says that because he’s paid to look after me and this is what he’s supposed to say. If it was them, The Pigs, this is still a big town and at the moment it’s flooded with tourists, families on half term, coach loads of people on outings. I’ve been swallowed by all that. They could think I’m staying at a hotel or one of the B&Bs. So while I’m in the flat, I’m safe.

      As a precaution, I haven’t been outside in two days. I told work Emily has a bug. She doesn’t. I’ve just been playing with her and the cats, making the odd cake, having the odd bath, trimming up far too early for Christmas and watching DVDs – mostly Disney movies up to the sad bits, then I fast forward or switch off. I decided as soon as I was old enough that I didn’t have to watch the sad bits if I didn’t want to. So, in my world, Mufasa’s still alive, Nemo doesn’t even go missing and the Beast never turns into that disgusting prince.

      I’ve ordered a few things off the internet – a new rug to cover most of the hideous old lino in the kitchen that the landlord won’t replace, a board game for my paper boy, Alfie, that I was telling him about the other day and found quite cheap on eBay, these really cute hair slides, and some silver glitter. I don’t know what the glitter’s for yet – a Christmas something I expect. I know I can make use of it somehow.

      I’ve done some research on Frida Kahlo, too. She was a bisexual feminist Mexican painter and her portraits ‘allow a deeply intimate window into the female psyche’. So says the internet. She was also in an accident when she was eighteen which left her unable to have children. And she kept spider monkeys. I like the picture in my bedroom of her a lot more now. Her eyebrows don’t scare me as much.

      And I’ve had another message on the answerphone. More silence. And crackling. And breathing. Then the Click. Then the dead tone. Another coincidence? I have to believe that. It’s a ‘little nothing’, that’s what Scants will say. Unless it’s a viable threat, I cannot pester him about it. That’s the rule.

      I’ve eaten nearly everything in the flat. Even the Findus Crispy Pancakes I keep in for emergencies. I’m like the Tiger Who Came to Tea – there’s still water in the tap, but I bet any minute there’ll be a cold snap and the pipes’ll freeze. Emily’s getting ratty. She needs fresh air. I will go out soon. Maybe I could nip across the road and get some doughnuts from the van? But it’s not healthy, is it? Doughnuts for tea. I counted fifteen sugary paper bags in the recycling box this morning. Fifteen. Plus the one on the table I’ve doodled all over. I pick it up and admire the curly handwriting:

      Ann Hilsom

      Melanie Smith

      Claire Price

      Joanne Haynes

      I feel greasy. I’m going to have a bath.

      I settle Emily in her bassinette by the chest of drawers and she’s happy enough lying there looking up at the mobile I’ve fixed to the side. She’s so small. Sometimes I wish she was bigger so she could hug better. And then I realise what I’m thinking – the bigger she gets, the more she’ll stop being my baby. The more she’ll learn. I want her to stay small and unknowing and thinking the world is a charmed place where imagination is real and everyone thinks you’re fascinating. Being an adult looked so much more appealing when I wasn’t one.

      A bath, I’ve found, is the nearest thing to a hug. You get fewer hugs as you get older but we had loads as kids. Auntie Chelle was always wrapping me and Foy inside her arms and squeezing the breath from us. I can’t hug you two tight enough, she would say. It’s scientifically proven that baths help depression in the same way a hug does. Something to do with balancing our bodily rhythms. As a kid I used to eat the foam. Spread it out on a sponge like a little waffle loaded with squirty cream.

      Scants is funny about hugs since he got mugged in a pub in 2008. He’s funny about a lot of things. I can’t think about him – he’ll visit when he’s next in town, that’s what he said: ‘Don’t pester me’ – and he said it in his Serious Voice so I knew he meant it. I must not call him unless it’s an emergency. It’s three random men and a couple of wrong numbers. That’s all. I’ll leave the flat soon. Everything’s normal.

      I sink down in my warm bath and allow the water and essential oils to hug me all the way up my body and back down again. I picture all my worries as a kite on a string, and imagine letting go of it, watching it float up to the sky as I count backwards from ten. Gradually, the panic disappears, though I know it’s only a temporary break from a world that feels so wrong all the time.

      The door creaks open and The Duchess saunters in. I roll over to tickle her head.

      ‘Hello Duchess, how do you do?’

      She sits proudly on my bath towel, butting into my hand, her white fur soft as clouds beneath my fingertips. She’s looking tubby today – I think I’m overfeeding her. I’d rather that than underfeeding her, though, or any of them. They’re my other babies. The Duke of Yorkums and Earl Grey sleep all day on my bed while the other girls are more inclined to wander. The latest one, Queen Georgie, doesn’t get on with Princess Tabitha Rosynose or Tallulah von Puss, though. She’s taken up residence on the couch on the blanket. Prince Roland won’t come near any of them – he prefers it at the back of the wardrobe guarding all my jumpers from Jumper Pixies who bite holes in clothes to make their little hats. But The Duchess always comes to play or say hello. Of course, I’d never tell the other cats this, but she’s my favourite.

      My dad used to say cats were cursed kings and queens in hiding. That’s why they’re all so aloof and it seems like they don’t care about anything. It’s not that – it’s because they have royal blood. It goes against their protocol to get too involved.

      I wish I could stay in the bath forever, the water lapping against the