Picture of Innocence. TJ Stimson
on the sofa next to her with her arm round her and pinched her hard when the lady wasn’t looking, to remind her to keep smiling and be a good girl. Mae didn’t get cross with Davy in front of the lady, she laughed and said Davy had got the wrong end of the stick, it was a silly accident, she was very careful about where she kept her pills, especially when there were kiddies about, but you know what they’re like, you have to have eyes in the back of your head. She didn’t understand what Mae meant about the stick, but she hoped it wasn’t a big one.
The lady wrote all this down and then she went and Mae stopped smiling and dragged Davy upstairs and she heard Mae shouting and Davy shouted back, and there was lots of banging and yelling and screaming. She didn’t see Davy for a few days after that and then one night he sneaked into her bedroom and crouched down by her mattress on the floor to shake her awake. His face was all purple and bruised and one eye was swollen shut. He told her he was going to track down his own dad and he’d get him to speak to the lady and make her listen this time. You poor bloody cow, he said. If you was a dog, they’d take you off her, they wouldn’t let her treat you like this.
But Davy never came back. Mae said good riddance, just like your father, they’re all the same. Mae said it’s your fault he left, you wicked evil little bastard. Mae must be right, or else why hadn’t he come back for her like he promised?
She hears the door slam now and Mae stomping up the stairs. She scrambles back away from the cupboard door, trying to make herself small in the corner. Even though she didn’t come out of the cupboard, she knows she’s going to be in trouble anyway because of the pee and because she’s a bad lot who’s got it coming to her.
The door flies open and she blinks in the sudden light. Mae reaches in and grabs her arm and yanks her out, and she tumbles onto the bare boards, scraping her knee. Mae doesn’t give her time to stand up. Her arm feels like it’s being pulled out of its socket as she’s hauled along the hallway, and she has to bite her lip hard to stop from crying.
Mae stops suddenly and flings her into a heap against the wall. You dirty little bastard! she screams. Four years old and you’re still wetting yourself! You little cunt!
She curls into a ball as Mae aims a kick at her, trying to protect herself. She didn’t know she was four years old. There are so many things she doesn’t know, including her own name. Davy called her peanut and Mae calls her little bastard and dirty bitch and fucking slag, but she doesn’t think any of those are her name.
Mae grabs her arm again. She just has time to scramble to her feet as Mae drags her down the stairs. She is shocked when Mae hauls the front door open and yanks her outside. She’s hardly ever allowed outside.
There are so many things she wants to look at as Mae pulls her down the street, but she’s too busy trying to keep up with her. Then they get on a bus and she bounces up and down in her seat, so excited she forgets to be scared. A bus! Davy used to get a bus to school every day, sometimes she watched him from the window, but she’s never been on a bus! She wonders where they are going. Maybe Mae has found Davy at last. Maybe she’s not angry with him anymore and they are going to get him and bring him home.
She is sad when they get off the bus, but Mae grips her hand and marches her down a big street, much bigger than the one where they live. It is filled with shops with big glass windows with plastic people standing in them, wearing the cleanest clothes she has ever seen.
Suddenly Mae halts by a black door with gold writing on it and pushes her through it. There are no plastic people in this shop, just a pretty lady with long yellow hair sitting behind a desk. Opposite her is a lady in a blue hat, and an old man with a shiny bald head. The lady with the blue hat is crying.
You want a kid? Mae says roughly. Here. You can have this one.
Emily looked much better the next morning when Maddie stopped at her mother’s house, where Emily had spent the night, to see how she was doing. Her daughter’s spots had started to scab, which her mother said was always a good sign with chickenpox, and her temperature was almost back to normal.
‘You didn’t have to come over,’ Sarah said briskly, putting the kettle on to boil. ‘I told you last night we’re fine. Emily’s helping me make some posters for my sale this morning, aren’t you, darling?’
Emily nodded. ‘We’ve got glitter pens,’ she announced. ‘And special stickers.’
‘Another fundraiser?’ Maddie asked, surprised. ‘Didn’t you have one just last weekend?’
‘That was for Child Rescue. This is the Mercy Foundation.’
Maddie kicked herself for even asking. She’d long since given up trying to keep track of her mother’s good causes. Sarah was an indefatigable do-gooder; Maddie had grown up surrounded by boxes filled with cast-offs destined for jumble sales and had learned to sort china and check pockets almost before she could talk. When her mother wasn’t volunteering at the local soup kitchen, she was helping out with Meals-on-Wheels. It was impossible not to admire the energy and commitment she put into her charitable work, but Maddie had always felt slightly resentful. Her teenage Saturdays had been spent sorting jumble or posting flyers through letter boxes, while everyone else at school had been out shopping and having fun. It was no wonder she’d found it so hard to make friends. Even now, Sarah’s diary was twice as hectic as Maddie’s own. Unless Maddie was in crisis, she had to book lunch with her mother a month in advance. There was always another cause more worthy of her attention.
No, that was petty and mean. Sarah was the first port of call for a dozen local charities and a lifeline for many of them. Her mother wasn’t given to self-pity, but Maddie knew she hadn’t had it easy, losing her parents while still in her late teens and then being widowed when Maddie was just two. Maddie’s father, who had been nearly twenty years older than Sarah, had ensured his wife and child were provided for; their bungalow had been paid off and there’d been just enough money that Sarah didn’t have to work, as long as she was sensible. She’d chosen to pay it forward by volunteering and fundraising.
At fifty-four, she was still an attractive woman, with a neat figure and the same rich strawberry-blonde hair Maddie and Emily had inherited. She’d have no shortage of eligible suitors, should she choose. But she’d never looked at another man since Maddie’s father had died. ‘I’ve already been luckier than most women,’ she said, whenever Maddie raised the subject. ‘I have you, and the children, and my charity work. That’s all I need.’
Maddie finished her cup of tea and stood up. ‘I’ll come back and pick Emily up this afternoon, after work,’ she said. ‘The nursery rang this morning, and said half the children are out with chickenpox, so I’m sure the boys will get it too. I know Lucas will hate it, but there’s not much point keeping Emily in quarantine with you if they’re all going to come down with it anyway.’
‘Oh, please, can’t I stay with Manga?’ Emily exclaimed, using her childhood name for her grandmother, which had evolved when she’d mangled ‘Grandma’ by saying it backwards. ‘I’d much rather be here.’
‘How about you come back and help me with the sale on Saturday afternoon?’ Sarah said. ‘Your spots should be nearly gone by then, and I could really use some help setting up the stalls. It’d just be you and me. The boys can stay with Mummy and Lucas. How does that sound?’
‘Could we go to the Lucky Duck afterwards?’ Emily said eagerly. ‘Can we order burgers? The ones with the special thousand island dressing?’
‘I don’t see why not.’
Emily cheerfully opened a bag of silver foil stars and emptied them onto the kitchen table alongside her poster, good humour restored.
Maddie hugged her daughter goodbye, and put