Free Whatever You Love by Louise Doughty

my mother in a gentle orbit around us. David held me close against his chest, as if nothing in the world would ever hurt me again. I couldn’t believe he was mine at last.

PART 2
     

After
     
     

4
     
     
    Three days after my daughter has gone away; my house is full of people. I find I am thinking of Ranmali incessantly and praying she will not come to the house. Ranmali was the last person to see Betty alive.
    Ranmali and her husband have run the newsagents on Fulton Avenue for as long as I can remember. It is the nearest shop to school and stocks milk and bread along with sweets and newspapers, so most of us local mothers see Ranmali several times a week. If we aren’t dashing in at 3.25 p.m. to grab a necessity or two, we are ambling in at 3.40 p.m., distractedly attempting to calm our offspring as they shove and bump each other beside the El Dorado of the ice-cream cabinet. Ranmali is tiny, with a smile wide enough to plump her cheeks. ‘Good afternoon,’ she always says formally, with a nod, and although I know her name I cannot remember when I learned it and am sure she does not know mine. I am simply one of the herd of mothers who pass through, minds elsewhere. Lots of shops round here have signs in the window, no more than two schoolchildren at any one time, or no unaccompanied children. Ranmali seems to welcome the noisy gangs that descend on her every weekday afternoon – to me they seem more alarming than a crowd of drunks after closing time. She must know that the older boys lift stuff, from time to time. Maybe she thinks that is the price she has to pay, an occupational hazard. Maybe she likes children – she doesn’t seem to have any of her own. Her smile never falters.
    Her husband is a different matter. While Ranmali serves behind the counter, he comes out from the back room to stand and watch us all, arms folded, grim-faced. I have said hello to Ranmali for many years but I still haven’t a clue what her husband is called. We are all a little afraid of him.
    It is not Ranmali’s fault that her shop is immediately after the sharp corner where Fulton Road bends irrationally and becomes an avenue. It is not her fault that a driver came around the corner at that particular moment but all the same, I cannot bear to see her. She was there. Perhaps she cradled my daughter’s head on her lap. Perhaps she fell on her knees in the road beside her, hands lifted palms upwards in the air. Maybe she stood by, for a moment or two, gazing down, then looked around wildly and screamed for her husband. Perhaps she stroked Betty’s face. I have imagined the scene with a thousand different variations. Ranmali’s presence is one of the few facts I have and therefore the only constant in my imaginings. My daughter, lying in the road: I should have been there, but Ranmali was there instead.
    I know that the driver was a man. I know he has been questioned and that he was not drunk and that an investigation is under way. I do not want to know any more, for I know enough to know he is not human – he is no more animate than a bolt of lightning. He did not exist until his life collided with that of my daughter.
    My house is full of people. I think about Ranmali. I think about her smiling face, transformed as she ran out of her shop after hearing the screech of brakes and a thump. Perhaps she was looking out of her window at the time. Perhaps she saw Willow being flung on to the grass verge and cannot now get the image out of her head. I think of Ranmali crying in her flat above the shop, unable to cook for her husband, rocking in a chair. I wonder if their shop is still open for business, if the other mothers fall quiet as they enter. Toni has told me people have been laying flowers on the pavement outside. I am not sure how I feel about this but think I am, in some oblique way, affronted. Toni has said she will take me to see the flowers whenever I feel ready.
    Toni, Antonia Saunders, is the blonde policewoman who