Free Mindsight by Chris Curran Page A

bed.
    The pillow was smooth and cool but I was wide awake again, my mind racing. I turned on the bedside light and picked up the photo frame. Steve and my boys smiled at me. The eight-year-old Tommy in the picture was still more real to me than the awkward teenager I was trying to get to know. And Toby – the gap where he’d just lost a tooth making his grin cheekier than ever. My dear little boy would never be a teenager, never grow up, because of me and I could never look at his face without that agonised throb. ‘I’m sorry, Toby,’ I whispered.
    My husband was standing behind the boys, smiling his wide, white smile. One hand was on Toby’s shoulder, the other pushing strands of fair hair away from his own face. Little Tommy leaned back against him. ‘Oh, Steve…’
    I smoothed their dear faces with a fingertip, then pressed the photo to my chest. But it was only plastic and glass and it gave no comfort.

Chapter Seven
    It must have been close to midnight when the phone rang. Still half asleep I grabbed it. ‘Alice?’ There was some noise in the background, but no one spoke and then the line went dead. I lay down, but couldn’t rest. What if Alice was calling from a hospital to tell me Tom was ill or hurt? I groped for my mobile and texted her.
Did you ring me? Is everything OK?
    Her reply came through almost at once.
Didn’t ring, all’s well here. I’m in bed but call if you need to talk XXX.
    I sent back:
Thanks I’m fine – goodnight XXX
    I slept well for once and woke on Sunday knowing I’d dreamed of my family. They had been happy dreams: the kind of dreams I’d had in the early days after the accident – the cruellest ones of all. In the first waking moments you lie warm and comfortable, knowing everything is all right, everyone is alive and well. It takes a few minutes to remember that the happy dreams are the fantasy and it’s the nightmare that’s real.

    The weather had taken a turn for the worse and as I lay listening to the rain I felt the loneliness twist inside me, worse even than it had been in the first days in prison when I was in too much shock to feel anything.
    My mood today reminded me more of when I was a teenager. By the time I was fourteen I was barely speaking to Mum or Dad and no one at school seemed to like me. Emily was miles away and Alice was too young to confide in. I knew I was adopted, my Romanian birth mother hadn’t wanted me, and I was pretty sure my adoptive parents wished they had never taken me on either. I spent whole days lying in bed paralysed with misery. When I did get up I would wander the streets alone, walking myself into exhaustion.
    It was on one of these tramps when I took shelter from a chill drizzle in a bus shelter. Although it was close to Beldon House, I couldn’t face going home to Mum’s silences and pursed lips. Out in the country like this, with no bus due for an hour or more, the last thing I expected was for anyone to join me, but the girl who did looked around my age and was so chatty it took only minutes to feel we were friends.
    She offered me a drink. It was vodka, and I’d never had more than a sip or two of wine before, but although it tasted like sour fire and made me gasp and cough, I kept pace with her as we passed the bottle back and forth. Her name was Lizzie, and she had dyed yellow hair and eyelashes heavy with black mascara. Her nails were bitten to the quick, there were scars on her thin pale arms, and I thought she was the most glamorous creature I’d ever seen. She told me she had run away from three foster homes and now she was looking out for herself. She’d been staying with some friends in the village, but was having to move on. ‘They got fed up with me. People usually do,’ she said, with a throaty laugh. We swapped mobile numbers and when she got on the bus I longed to go with her.

    I didn’t dare that time, but after the next row at home I met up with Lizzie in Tonbridge and stayed the night at the squat