Free Paper Chains by Nicola Moriarty Page B

breath.
    ‘Sorry, I’ll slow the pace down a bit . . . better?’
    ‘Oh yeah, that’s much better,’ responded India sarcastically.
    Hannah relented and slowed right down to a walk, realising as she did just how much more you noticed when the world wasn’t whipping past in a blur. They were following a runners’ track that wound its way through the outer suburbs of London. In a park on their right a couple were kissing passionately on a picnic rug. A dog was prancing around them, every now and then dropping a saliva-covered ball by their feet and waiting hopefully before picking it up again and resuming its prancing.
    Hannah waited until India’s breathing had returned to normal before she tried to restart a conversation.
    ‘What’s been happening?’ she asked.
    ‘Not a lot.’
    ‘Ready to tell me the truth about why you won’t be with Simon?’
    ‘Ready to tell me the truth about why you’re in London?’ India retorted.
    ‘I asked you first.’
    ‘Child,’ said India companionably.
    ‘All right,’ said Hannah, ‘I’ve got something to tell you. Something real , as you would say. After you told me all about your parents the other week, it made me want to tell you about mine too.’ She paused to take a breath, to find the right words. ‘My mum’s dead too. She killed herself . . . almost four years ago now. I know it’s not the same as your circumstances – you didn’t even get to meet your mum. I just felt like I should tell you.’
    India put her arm out to stop Hannah. ‘Let’s sit,’ she suggested and they stepped off the path and wandered through the grass to a large tree where they both flopped down, Hannah resting against the trunk, India lying flat on her back, eyes on the sky.
    ‘Tell me about her,’ said India.
    ‘My mum?’
    India nodded.
    ‘Which one?’ she replied with a dry laugh.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Sorry, I’m being confusing. It’s just that I’ve always sort of thought of my mum as being two different people. There’s the mum I had before my parents divorced, and the one that I had afterwards, the one she turned into.’
    ‘Ahh.’
    ‘For the first fifteen years of my life, Mum was just . . . Mum. You know, your average run-of-the-mill mother. She wore pale blue denim jeans and nice blouses. She kept her hair long but never wore it out. She could be fun, she could get mad, she drove me to netball practice, she forgot to pick me up from swimming once and I remember burning my tongue on the hot chocolate from the vending machine while I waited. There was one time when we went to Dreamworld on a holiday to Queensland. I was eight; I climbed all the way up thirteen flights of stairs to the top of a waterslide, only to be told I wasn’t big enough to go down the slide. I had to walk all the way back down those stairs and I was sobbing my heart out the whole way. When I got to the bottom, Mum hugged me and called them fuckers and bought me an ice-cream cone with five scoops and I can remember thinking she was the most amazing mum in the world.
    ‘And then I found out Mum and Dad were getting a divorce and it took me completely by surprise and it seemed like it took Mum by surprise as well. Anyway, from that day when Dad left she started changing and kept changing. Withdrew from the world I guess. In the early years I kept trying to snap her out of it, to bring her back. But eventually I started to resent her. I missed the old her and I was angry with her for changing. I moved out of home when I was nineteen, shared a house with three complete strangers. I still saw her, but not often; by then she wasn’t even leaving home any more. Then one day I got the phone call. She had finally left her apartment. For just a second I thought it was good news – maybe she was getting better. Maybe she was coming back. But I was wrong. She had walked straight to Milsons Point train station, waited on the platform for the next train and then stepped out in front of