Free Another Woman's Daughter by Fiona Sussman Page B

place in Michael’s stories. We didn’t even get to visit the queen. I didn’t want to see her anymore, anyway. Everything was different from how it used to be. The sun was always hiding, the buildings were old and crumbly, and church was very serious.
    We moved house and left behind the dark, dusty one with drooping eyes and a thin, angry mouth, but after we moved,
Mme
felt even farther away. I began to wonder if she’d ever been real or whether she was just some pretend person in my head. Sometimes I’d see her shadow in my dreams, but I knew dreams weren’t real.
    The new house was much nicer than the old one. It had two levels, with windows that popped right out of the roof, like the headlights on a sports car, and a windy staircase with a balustrade you could slide down when no one was looking.
    Because it was farther from school, Michael no longer walked to meet me each afternoon; I had to catch a bus home. I hated that—being locked into the small, smelly school bus for ten more minutes with just my tormentors for company.
    At home, a note under the mat meant I had to go next door to Mrs. McKiddie’s house until Michael came to collect me. I didn’t like going next door. Mrs. McKiddie kept the curtains drawn, even during the day, and her house always smelled of haddock. She had a horrible cat called Queenie and a bluebudgie called Mr. Churchill. Queenie would scratch me if I got too near her, and I wasn’t allowed to take Mr. Churchill out of his cage, even though his wings had been clipped. So I was always happy when I didn’t find a note under the mat; it meant Michael was home, probably bent over his desk, working. Then we’d share afternoon tea together, holed up in his cozy study.
    Madam Rita usually arrived home after dark, the smell of dead people wound around her like a scarf. Her job was to cut up people who’d died, in order to find out what made them die. I didn’t like knowing that. I didn’t like the smell of dead people either. Madam Rita told me it was just the smell of the special bath the dead people had been put into to stop them from rotting. After she told me that, I didn’t have any more baths; I showered instead.
    Neither Michael nor Madam Rita could cook like
Mme
could. Most days they just warmed up something from Marks & Spencer. The trouble was that neither Mark nor Spencer was a good cook either—their pork pies had big bits of jelly in the middle and their peas were all mushy. I missed having slippery green balls to chase around my plate. In fact, I missed all of
Mme
’s cooking—the stiff chunks of
mielie pap
swimming in tomato gravy, the gem squash halves filled with pools of warm butter, the salty chuck stew. I missed apricot jam smeared thickly on wedges of soft white bread. I missed dollops of sweetened condensed milk stirred into my tea. I missed everything from Africa—especially the Saxonwold house. It had been so clean and tidy. I knew that if
Mme
ever visited us in England, she would be very disappointed. The house was such a mess. A lady called Louise did come on Tuesdays to clean, but she wasnot a proper cleaner like
Mme
. And she was always putting my suitcase back in the cupboard even though I wanted it out ready for when the England holiday came to an end. Louise smoked cigarettes too, and I could smell her even when she wasn’t there.
    One morning, I decided to give the kitchen a proper clean. I washed and dried the dirty dishes piled up in the sink, then packed them away in the cupboard—glasses on one side, cups and mugs on the other. I rearranged the fridge—vegetables and fruit in the bottom drawer, yogurt and cheese on the top shelf, meat in the middle. Then I took a bucket of warm water and, with a brush from the bathroom, scrubbed the kitchen floor till the water was brown and the tiles white again.
    â€œWhat
are
you doing, child?” Madam Rita said when she came downstairs