Free Unbecoming by Jenny Downham

everything in it, all the rooms upstairs, Katie, Chris, Mum and everything beyond the window. ‘She’ll behappier in a home. It’s the best way I can care for her.’
    ‘But you won’t be there,’ Chris said.
    ‘That’s right.’ Mum nodded her head very slowly at him. ‘You’re going to have to trust me on this one, Chris.’ She turned back to the suitcase and yanked it upright.
    ‘I like having her around,’ Chris said. ‘She makes me laugh.’
    ‘Well, I’m very glad about that,’ Mum said, ‘but perhaps that’s because you don’t have to do any of the work.’

Eight
    The intoxicating sound of a gull brought Mary to stillness. She sat on a handy bench opposite a church and watched the bird dip and soar, its white wings outstretched. She experienced a moment of such unadulterated pleasure that she imagined she really may have been happier than she’d ever been before. But almost as soon as she thought that, a whiff of hot pastry caught her nostrils and she realized she could be happier still if she had something warm and delicious to eat. Like a magic trick, there was the girl. Today, despite the heat, she was wearing trousers and a jumper. Foolish child. However, she was also holding out a brown paper bag from which the delicious smell was coming.
    ‘Here you go, Mrs Runaway,’ she said. ‘One microwaved croissant.’
    Mary took the bag and pointed to the sky with it. ‘Seagull,’ she said.
    ‘Yes,’ the girl agreed, sitting down beside her. ‘It must be lost.’
    The cake was delicious. Mary crammed it into her mouth in only four bites, could really have done with another one besides. She licked the butter from her fingers and wiped them on her skirt.
    ‘When I was young,’ she told the girl, ‘I could fit five cherries in my mouth at once. I’d burst them with my tongue and spit the stones across the garden.’
    The girl laughed, then leaned over and patted Mary’s hand. ‘I’ll buy you a big bag of cherries on the way back from my exam this afternoon. We’ll get Mum to pay. She won’t mind. She’ll be feeling guilty about getting cross at us. You wait and see.’
    ‘Cross?’ Mary said. ‘Was she? I don’t remember.’
    ‘She’s mad at me for chatting with you instead of revising, she’s mad at Chris for talking about Dad, and mad at you for listing your boyfriends at the breakfast table.’
    Mary felt the stirring of panic that came with a blank memory. ‘I did that? I’m usually very discreet. Why did I do that?’
    ‘Chris wanted to know who Mum’s father is.’
    ‘Did I know?’
    The girl pulled a scrap of paper from her pocket and unfolded it. ‘Robert Gibson, you said. Is that right?’
    ‘Ah, Robert.’ Mary pressed a hand to her cheek. ‘Oh, he was marvellous.’
    The girl smiled. ‘Yes, that’s what you told us. Anyway, Mum went crazy. Mostly because Chris got it into his head that she should let us see our dad now she had one of her own. She won’t though, cause Dad’s living with his girlfriend in our old house and they’ve had a baby, which is a pretty unforgiveable offence.’
    ‘I don’t remember anyone going crazy.’
    ‘Well, it’s all relative, I guess. She doesn’t really do yelling. More quiet fury, you know?’
    ‘And I was there? Are you sure?’
    The girl looked awkward and … was that pity in her eyes? ‘Sorry, shouldn’t I remind you of these things.’
    It was like walking the edge of a precipice. No, it was like waking up and discovering a toe had come off in the night, or a finger was missing. She had no recollection of an argument at all. Essential parts of her were falling away and not coming back. What was itthat doctor had told her the other day? ‘I’m suspecting you have tangles in your brain, Mrs Todd.’ Stupid bloody woman. Why couldn’t that be a blank memory? Why did she get no choice in what she remembered and what she forgot?
    ‘People can only do their best,’ she whispered to the girl beside her.
    ‘Yes,’