Free Mothers & Daughters by Kate Long Page A

lips as if for a kiss.
    A slight surface unevenness caught the light and made me turn the print over:
Pretty Woman
, my dad had written, in his loopy hand. I never labelled my photographs, so seeing Dad’s caption was a shock, like suddenly hearing his voice in the shed with me. Hastily I went back and flicked through to check for other hidden messages, but there was nothing more, which left me feeling both disappointed and relieved. What might he have written on the back of Phil’s? I didn’t want to imagine.
    The next batch proved to be a strange selection: Jaz, older, about ten, on a grey horse (when had Jaz ever been on a horse?); two shots of a frog out of focus; a sunset; Jaz’s best friend Natalie astride a gate, balancing on a milestone, hanging by her hands from a tree, pulling a nasty face; Jaz throwing herself about in a field; a black dog tied to the post of a rotary clothes-line; a yellow toadstool. ‘Funny girl,’ I said to the one of her dancing. ‘What were you up to there?’ As I went through the set again, I wondered whether Jaz had ever felt the way I did about growing up, or whether she saw her childhood as a distinct period which was now closed, a life compartmentalised into School, University, Before Matty and after. Pre-Infidelity, Post-Infidelity.
    It struck me that I could call Jaz this evening and tell her about finding them. ‘Shall I bring them round?’ I could say. Or, ‘Do you fancy popping over?’ Important, this, because since thenursery incident she’d been too busy to see me. I knew the drill: left her alone, stayed occupied, kept off the phone, even though I missed Matty like hell. You have to give Jaz space, and then you have to supply her with an opening. It’s the way she’s always been.
    I slid the photos back, put the envelope to one side, and carried on sorting.
    The banging started as I was unrolling a teacloth of spoons. It wasn’t clear at first what the noise was or even where it was happening. Only when I stepped out of the shed did I understand it was coming from the front of my own house. Thumping, violent thumping, as though someone was trying to break in. What the hell was going on? I ran up the path, rounded the corner, then stood and stared.
    A big fat woman was kicking the bottom panel of my door.
    No, not a fat woman: a pregnant one. Dorothy Wynne’s grand-daughter, Alice.
    Kicking because her arms were full of a limp child.
    â€˜It’s Libby!’ she shouted when she saw me. ‘Something’s wrong.’
    I ran to open up, and she stumbled over the threshold and laid the infant girl down in the middle of the hall carpet.
    â€˜What’s happened?’
    â€˜I don’t know what to do,’ she said in a rush. ‘I went to wake her up from her nap two minutes ago and she wouldn’t come round; she was all, like she is now, floppy, wouldn’t open her eyes, and she’s so hot. Look at her, she’s burning up, she’s red.’
    The little girl’s lips were parted and her eyelids closed but fluttery. Her cheeks were scarlet patches, as though someone had slapped her.
    â€˜Get her top off,’ I said. I was thinking, We need to look for a rash.
    Alice unzipped the little fleece and dragged it, with T-shirtand vest, up over Libby’s face while I fed her arms through the sleeves. The child was completely unresisting. Her head lolled back like a baby’s. ‘How long’s she been like this?’
    â€˜She was like it when I went to wake her. I went up and she was . . . her eyelids were all fluttery.’
    â€˜What about before?’
    â€˜Fine, OK, just normal.’
    â€˜Strip her completely,’ I said. ‘Underwear and all.’
    There was a clattering on the step. When I looked up it was Mrs Wynne, leaning against the jamb with her stick. She was trembling and panting, and normally I’d have leaped up to usher her onto a seat. But