Free The Child Inside by Suzanne Bugler Page A

the sort of person who makes such purchases. I am a person with a mission.
    I walk briskly towards her house. I know my way around these streets now, and that familiarity allows me to adopt an air of assurance, I feel. Why, anyone passing me by might even think I actually lived around here.
    I am little nervous by the time I reach Mrs Reiber’s house, but I shovel that hesitation down inside me. Act the part, I tell myself; act it, and you will be it. So I press my finger hard on her doorbell and paste a smile firmly on my face while I wait for her to answer. I do not even allow myself to consider that she might not be at home. Jonathan breaks up in less than a week and after that I will be housebound, unable to escape, and if she is not in now I will have to come back tomorrow, before the Christmas concert, and that will hardly give me any time at all. But thankfully she is in. The door is unlatched and I pin that smile back, further into my cheeks. She sees that it’s me, and for a moment she looks afraid. Or annoyed. I’m not sure which. But then she slaps her own mask into place: that cold and empty smile. She doesn’t speak, though, and she doesn’t open the door any wider.
    ‘Mrs Reiber,’ I say on a deep breath, ‘hello.’ And quickly I hold out my offering. ‘I bought you these,’ I say, ‘as a thank you for being so kind to me the other day. And as an apology for just turning up like that and for, well, for being so upset.’
    For the count of one, two, three, four seconds we stay exactly like that: me proffering my gift, she holding onto the door that she peers around, and not taking it. But I hold my nerve. ‘You do remember me, Mrs Reiber? I was here the other day.’
    Now she does look annoyed. ‘Yes, yes, of course I remember,’ she says, and somewhat unwillingly she loosens one hand from the door and takes my held-out gift. ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘There was no need.’
    And then another five, ten seconds pass and that smile on my face is cutting in like a grimace now. No doubt she wants to close the door and have me gone, whereas I am of course hoping that she will invite me in again. That, however, is not looking very likely. And so I say, ‘I hope you don’t mind me coming to visit you again.’
    ‘Well, no,’ she says a little reluctantly. ‘I don’t get many visitors.’ And as if her manners won’t allow her to do otherwise, at last she says, ‘Would you like to come in?’
    And I see this as a clue, as more than a clue – as evidence. I mean, surely she wouldn’t let me back into her house if she wasn’t Vanessa’s mother? I could be anyone. I could mean her all manner of harm.
    This time as I follow her down the hallway I say, ‘You have a lovely house. Have you lived here very long?’ Clues, clues, I am fishing for clues. But she doesn’t answer. The door to the living room is open slightly and I try to glance in as we pass; I catch a glimpse of green carpet, green walls and a large, dark wooden bureau. I wish that we were going in there, but she takes me to that room at the back again. I look around the kitchen as we walk through and I see a stack of papers piled up on the side next to a near-empty whisky bottle, and on the windowsill above the sink that diamond ring is perched; the glint of it catches my eye in the general gloom. And again I think, what is she doing letting a stranger into her house? There is no evidence of cooking or food preparation in the kitchen, none at all. But that is how it must be, to be lonely and old.
    But she isn’t that old, not really.
    She’s wearing that’s suit again, and now I notice that although it’s expensive, the wool has worn shiny and thin at the back of the skirt, and at the elbows, too, the material is starting to fray. And I can smell her slightly, a faint, sour smell like old milk. At first I think that it isn’t her, but then I realize that it is and this shocks me, really shocks me. How could Vanessa’s mother let