A Part of Me - Anouska Knight Mills & Boon M&B

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lifted the découpaged box from the open drawer and regarded it. Dedicated teacher that she was, there wasn’t much Mum couldn’t achieve with PVA glue and patience. My fingers briefly reacquainted themselves with the delicately placed art nouveau motifs in muted blues and greens, the subtle unevenness of the layered images she’d painstakingly crafted. She’d made the firebox for us that August, busying herself in the kitchen while I’d pretended to sleep up here. James had to return to work eventually, for normality’s sake, if nothing else. She’d said such precious things deserved to be kept somewhere nice.

      I let my fingers rest on the lip of the firebox. As if I needed to look. As if I didn’t know by heart the remembrances kept safely inside. The pitiful testaments to our son’s tiny life.

      He’d have been at school now. Greenacres Primary in Earleswicke, where his grandmother, headmistress there, could have kept an eye on him for me. Made sure he ate his sandwiches; comforted him if one of the other kids was mean. Something like anger flared in my stomach. I fed the firebox gently into James’s bag, pulled on my jacket and skipped out across the landing for the stairs.

      Thoughts of Sadie knowing the inside of my home almost sent me into a delirium. The firebox wasn’t the only thing I couldn’t bear her to have been anywhere near. I padded from the pale stairwell carpet onto the milky polished tiles of the hallway. We’d spent months fattening out the file I’d kept safely in the kitchen cupboard. The file that demonstrated the family we could offer to one of the thousands of children awaiting a home. Every last detail of our lives was in there, including our copy of the prospective adopter’s report Anna had put together on us. The PAR was the result of months of countless assessments, interviews with friends, family, diagrams of our support network, income, medical backgrounds, and it was not being left here. Sadie probably knew it all anyway, pillow-talk while I sat at home, oblivious and foolish. Well, it was all coming with me.

      A car horn papped outside as I strode into the white tundra of our clean-lined kitchen. I stood the overnight bag against the wine fridge and stalked over to the last cupboard at the end run of units.

      I yanked open the tall, sleek cupboard door. The door clattered clumsily, opening only a little way before jarring back against my fingers, denying me access. The handle pulled my fingernail with it and a hot pain drew a hiss from my throat.

      I still wasn’t used to the cupboard locks, designed to prevent inquisitive little hands from finding their way to trouble. A searing pain flared where I’d snagged my nail. It was already bleeding happily, a burning sensation spreading not just through my fingertip, but it seemed completely through my core, too. I held it up for inspection and found I’d torn the end of it clean off. It was only a fingernail. Anyone looking in would’ve thought I’d just severed a major artery. I slumped pathetically against the unit doors to the cold tiled floor. Something had been severed, it just wasn’t anything that could be tackled with a tourniquet and fast thinking. At the sight of a silly bleeding finger, something tight in my chest, like an over-stretched elastic band, suddenly gave way. I tried not to, but it was futile. It was as if every muscle in my body wanted to cry for itself too. So I let them, right there on the kitchen floor as the taxi papped on outside.

       CHAPTER 4

      THE WALLS OF my old bedroom weren’t magenta any more but an inoffensive cream and peppermint pinstripe where Mum had done away with the bohemian décor of my youth. My once beloved tie-dyed swathes had been replaced with crushed silk drapes in her favourite sage, more befitting of the 1930s home Dad had left us with. For the last week, hiding out here from my life, I’d been fifteen again.

      ‘Sweetheart? Are you coming down? They’ll be here soon.’ I stopped studying the abstract patterns in Mum’s artexed ceiling and rolled over on my pillow. More clattering sounds of saucepans being thrown into service echoed up the stairs.

      Mum’s Sunday lunch was ritualistic as far as my brother was concerned. Since Lauren had given birth to their second child two months ago, Guy had tried to blag Mum to lay on a regular midweek curry night, too. He’d complained that mealtimes with a mischievous four-year-old had been chaotic enough; add a newborn to the mix and Lauren was beginning to lean towards quicker, easier, less-washing-up meals. Mum hadn’t gone for it. She’d told him to be grateful Lauren was still cooking for him at all after delivering two nine-pounders, epidural-free.

      ‘Coming,’ I called, stepping out onto the landing. The morning had been fairly sedate, with Mum busying herself with her latest crusade on behalf of the WI and greater good. She’d taken my reluctance to talk about James and my crumbling adoption hopes as her cue to lead the conversation. Earleswicke community centre was soon to be levelled because the parish council shrewdly thought it made more sense to sell the place on than stump up the cash for an upgrade. I was with them on that. The community centre had smelled of damp and lost property when Mum used to drag me off to Brownies there. I was eight at the time and to my knowledge, it hadn’t seen a lick of paint since. No doubt I’d hear the whole sorry tale again once Guy and Lauren arrived. I’d use the opportunity to huddle up with Samuel and catch up on all things creepy-crawly and dinosaur. Mum had put them off coming last weekend. A few concerned words from a well-meaning cabbie and Viv had gone on lockdown, prescribing a week of peace so I could lick my wounds. That and endless home-cooking.

      The rich homely wafts of roast beef floated up the stairs to greet me. This was how Mum swung into recovery mode, as if food could fix whatever had been broken. She’d launched herself into maniacal cooking when Dad had first left. All of his favourites, every night for weeks, just in case he walked back in through the door. He never did.

      ‘Okay, sweetheart?’ She was carrying a tray of tea through to the conservatory as I crossed the kitchen towards her. The conservatory was cooler than the kitchen, the rattan armchair creaking beneath me like a groaning shipwreck as I settled into it. ‘How are you feeling today?’

      Outside, the garden had held onto the morning’s frost, as though the lawn had accepted its abandonment by the sun, stoically contenting itself with ice instead. ‘Fine. Thanks. Lunch smells good.’ I smiled.

      Mum nodded approvingly as she poured a drop of milk into each of the cups. Her hair would redden in the autumn, but until then it would remain nearly as dark as mine, with only the beginnings of grey featuring just where she would clip her corkscrew curls over one ear. Miraculously, I’d dodged the full severity of Mum’s curly genes, though I realised now how youthful she still looked because of them.

      ‘A good meal will set you up, sweetheart. Tomorrow isn’t going to be easy, but I think you’re doing the right thing.’

      Thoughts of a Monday-morning showdown with Marcy and Dana heading up the office gossips made my stomach lurch. I’d gone over all the reasons for and against going back there, trying to find a way around it, but the fact was if I just walked out now, I couldn’t think how I’d explain my sudden change in circumstances to Anna. Not that job-security alone was going to be enough to dupe her into seeing through our application.

      ‘She should be the one clearing off,’ Mum declared, vigorously stirring the tea.

      I never thought that James would do this. He’d pleaded for a chance to fix things, to undo the undoable. I’d listened as Phil had coached me through the week on the evils of the unfaithful, but through the malignant mass of bitterness and hurt churning away at my insides, there was something of me that desperately wanted James to fix it all. But we were on social services’ schedule, not Relate’s. We didn’t have time to delve into our brittle relationship and gently nurse what had been broken.

      ‘And should James clear off too, Mum?’ I asked.

      She tapped her spoon on the rim of her cup, ignoring my accusation of her lopsided justice. ‘You know, sweetheart, James has done a terrible thing. But it doesn’t make him a terrible person.’

      I watched as she set the hot drinks in place between us, then looked away through the glass onto the garden. A little robin flitted down onto the lawn and began pecking away at the grass. Maybe I was the terrible person. Maybe I’d

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