Free Before She Was Mine by Kate Long

this.’
    ‘At least we’re safe here.’
    ‘Are we, though?’
    I thought of Liv, tried to sound careless. ‘There’s no place like home, Toto.’
    ‘How would you know unless you ever left it?’ he said.

From Liv’s diary, 1/05
    Bad start to the day as Alan H rang to say mink reported on reserve. F in mood at breakfast saying she didn’t know what to wear, everything I suggested wrong. Stress
between us dreadful even though I try not to show reaction.
    Arrived M’s house around 10. When she opened door I thought we’d got her out of bed, but nightie/slip turned out to be a dress. Can’t understand how she
wasn’t frozen.
    Hard to see where to sit. Whole space crammed, clutter on every surface, lacy mats & cushions & nick-nacks like an old lady’s house. F thinks it’s trendy. Wonder if M has
a condition.
    Met the ‘brother-who-isn’t’, as he calls himself. Seemed sensible & polite, slightly hunted look about him. Very tolerant of M’s teasing. He told me in kitchen
when on our own, ‘Freya is obviously a well-brought-up girl’. Wanted to ask him whether he thought F seeing too much of M, whether healthy, but worried about how I’d sound so
didn’t. F ridiculously giddy throughout visit. Not the daughter I know!
    Back home made us scrambled egg & bacon, asked if F wanted to come check mink rafts with me. Said she would, but then Michael rang & she got chatting to him. Not heard her laugh so
much in years.
    The trouble is, they are all so young .

A WEDNESDAY
January
    Under different circumstances it could have been quite a fun half hour.
    ‘ Woken Nightly by my Haunted Stairlift! ’ read Liv, holding the tatty magazine aloft and showing me the headline for proof.
    ‘ Jealous Neighbour Fed Me Poisoned Trifle ,’ I countered, flourishing my own mag. ‘ Dr Doom Sold My Kidney .’
    ‘ I Used My Giant Boobs to Squash a Burglar .’
    ‘ Mum Cooked My Guinea Pig. ’
    Other patients in the waiting room frowned and looked away. ‘Sorry,’ said Liv, to no one in particular. The double doors opened and a hospital porter wheeled an empty trolley past
reception. Liv followed it with her eyes till it was out of sight.
    ‘Can they be true?’ I said, to bring her back to me.
    ‘The stories? I’ve no idea.’
    ‘Someone’s been through my magazine and clipped half of them out. Now that’s disturbing.’
    We shifted on the hard plastic seats, checked our watches, sighed. Behind the safety of her desk, the receptionist busied herself on the computer. ‘Do you think it’ll be much
longer?’ asked Liv.
    ‘No. There’s only that couple in the corner who were here before us.’
    Her left hand crept up to clasp her right bicep, a habit she’d started over Christmas. I suspected it was a way of covertly feeling the lump, by pressing her wrist above her nipple.
‘The Breast Care Nurse did say to call if I had any more worries,’ she’d confided on Boxing Day. ‘Then do it,’ I’d urged. ‘Ask for another appointment. Get
a scan.’
    ‘ Locked in the Loo by Evil Burglars! ’ I read out hastily.
    ‘As though there might be any other kind of burglar,’ said Liv. ‘Do you ever feel as though you’ve led the dullest life?’
    When they did finally call her, she wouldn’t let me go in even though I pleaded.
    ‘Let me do this my own way,’ she said, which left me no room to manoeuvre. Instead I sat among the magazines and read about a teenager who’d given birth in a jammed lift, a
Girl Guide who’d used her uniform to rob pensioners, and a man who kidnapped his old maths teacher. My maths teacher in secondary school had been about a hundred; he’d never have stood
to be bundled into the back of a van and driven around with a pillowcase over his head. Oggy’s daft comments alone nearly gave him a heart attack. Once someone planted a Little Snapper mouse
trap in his desk drawer and he had to have the week off for the shock. And then I remembered Melody standing in our hallway,