Free Mistakes We Make by Jenny Harper

was hard to bear.
    Caitlyn straightened and put on her determinedly happy voice. ‘Now – cheesy pasta for supper, or fish fingers?’
    Isla May was easily distracted. ‘Cheesy pasta. Please.’
    ‘Good. And you can help by setting out the forks on the table. OK?’
    When she’d finally got Isla May and the twins into bed, she finished the washing up and turned her attention to the ironing. How her mother had the energy for the extra shifts she’d taken on at the care home, she had no idea, but it meant a lot of chores would be left undone unless she squared up to them herself.
    There. Done. She gathered the pile of sweet-smelling, freshly pressed laundry in her arms and ran up the narrow stairs.
    School shirts for Lewis and Harris. She opened their bedroom door carefully and tiptoed across to the small chest of drawers. Harris was rolled into a ball, one hand under his cheek. Lewis was sprawled across his duvet on his stomach. They always slept just so. Caitlyn studied them for a moment, a small smile playing around the corners of her mouth. If only they were always so quiet!
    She hung Isla May’s best dress on the hook on the back of her little sister’s bedroom door. She’d grow out of it soon, then they’d have to find some money to buy her another one. There was always something.
    Ailsa, plugged in to her earpieces listening to something loud, was oblivious to her entry. Caitlyn didn’t bother to disturb her, she merely slipped her Oasis top, the one she’d asked for last birthday, into a drawer.
    The rest of the pile belonged to her mother. She pushed open the bedroom door and walked in. Joyce had given up the double room at the front so that she and Ailsa could share. This room had a mean aspect out across the yard at the back on to the house behind it, an ill-maintained, ugly place with a broken window and another that had been boarded up, the yard full of junk and slipped slates on the roof.
    She hung up her mother’s spare uniform, pale blue with white trim round the collar. The fabric had been washed so many times it had almost bleached out and it seemed to drag the colour from her mother’s face.
    There was a photo on the chest by Joyce’s narrow bed. She picked it up and studied it. Caitlyn was now twenty-two; her mother was forty-three but looked nearer fifty. Here was Joyce in her twenties, in an off-the-shoulder black sweater and stonewashed jeans. Her hair was tied back in a bouncy ponytail, and she was smiling so that the dimple on her right cheek – the one that exactly matched Caitlyn’s – was in clear evidence.
    When had Caitlyn last seen that dimple? When had her mother’s skin started to look so sallow, her eyes lose their sparkle? She was still slim, her build lighter than Caitlyn’s, but she looked gaunt rather than trim. What had happened?
    Caitlyn answered her own question. Mick bloody Boyce, that’s what had happened. Four more kids and precious little income. A man who’d slid from saviour to sponge in an alarmingly short time.
    As she made her way back downstairs, she heard a key slide into the lock and the front door creaked open.
    ‘Caitlyn, dear—’
    Joyce’s voice was slurred.
    ‘Mum? What are you doing home?’
    Joyce slumped against the doorframe, her skin grey, her eyes drooping.
    ‘Migraine,’ she mumbled.
    Caitlyn leapt down the last few steps. ‘Here. I’ll help you.’
    ‘Tried to—Can’t—’
    ‘Hush. Here.’ Caitlyn hooked her mother’s arm around her shoulders and supported her weight. Joyce Murray was nothing but skin and bone, but it took all her strength to get her mother up the stairs.
    She pushed open the door to the small bedroom. ‘Get your uniform off. Here’s your nightie. I’ll get you a drink and some pills.’
    ‘Too late—’
    ‘Still.’
    Caitlyn was concerned. Joyce had suffered the occasional migraine for years, but recently they’d become more frequent, and the attacks were debilitating. What she needed now was