Free You Don't Have to be Good by Sabrina Broadbent

Katharine braked hard and squealed to a halt inches from the car in front.
    She swept the hair from her face and found the whole of her upper body was as rigid as an iron pike, the sort that kept the tourists out of the college wine cellars – her back, her neck, her shoulders, her jaw were painfully fused and unmoving. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she yelled at the driver in front. Bea looked bewildered and alarmed, damn her. She would have to tell Bea that this was their last week in Cambridge. It wouldn’t go down well; now was not a good time. Bea was doing her whipped-puppy look, her poor-me look, her it’s-all-right-for-you look. There was no putting it off. Katharine put the hand brake on and took a deep breath.
    ‘Oh, by the way, we’ve got some news.’
    Bea looked straight ahead of her as she listened, heard the words flow past her in an unstoppable stream. After months of thinking about it, talking about it, delay and second thoughts, places had been found for both children at schools in London that would challenge Adrian and push Laura. Amazingly, they could start next week even though term had already begun, and so, what with places being like gold dust, and what with one thing and another, especially the nonsense going on with Laura, they’d decided that this would be best. A bit of a rush, but really, what with Richard’s job already being in London and her consultant job at the London hospital being more or less a foregone conclusion, (hopefully, fingers crossed), there was nothing keeping them in Cambridge any longer. She would manage the London–Cambridge commute somehow until the London job came through, and so the sooner they moved the better for everyone, otherwise Christmas would be upon them and they’d probably all have nervous breakdowns if they left it till then, and believe it or not, crazily enough, that meant this weekend. Well, Friday actually. Mad, isn’t it?
    Bea looked at her hands and said nothing. She thought of them, numb and raw with cold, holding Katharine’s smaller one in sodden wool mittens as she pulled her whining sister up the hill home from school; the happy-sad pain of them against the red bars of the electric fire. She thought of her hands against Katharine’s, fingers clenched tight so she could feel the bones; Katharine’s knee on her belly; the sick ache and helpless struggle for breath; Katharine’s face inches from her own and the hissed threats not to tell. She thought of the giggling, soaring release when one well-aimed kick or bite sent Katharine reeling, screaming and coiling back. Their mother at the door, face like an anvil, words an icy stream from her mouth. And she thought of the shock and shame of it, the burning, stinging pain of it when her mother’s hurtling hand landed on her face. Hate and rage. Slap-bang. Branded.
    Katharine looked at Bea. Looked and drove, looked and talked, adding details, making it ordinary, trying to soften the blow. She asked whether Bea thought Mum would like a day up in London on her birthday. Tea at the Savoy maybe. What was she talking about? thought Bea. They had agreed it was going to be a meal at Oyster Row. Wanda was going to help. Lance was coming. Mum could sleep in the spare room and Lance could sleep on the couch in Frank’s room. Frank would have to sleep upstairs again with her. Bea looked at the satnav on the dashboard and at Katharine’s wedding ring as she held the steering wheel. She tried to think of some words to say, something to calm Katharine’s deluge about mortgages and travel times and careers and schools and how they had tried their best to do the right thing but that when push came to shove they were spending a fortune on tutors and Claudia at Richard’s office had a brother who was admissions tutor at Durham and he said they never even looked at candidates who didn’t get at least ten A*s at GCSE and when all was said and done, they couldn’t rely on the school to make